COVER BOY

Put Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder on the very short list of people not happy to see themselves on the cover of Rolling Stone. The magazine’s current issue marks a rare time that it put someone on the cover without the subject’s authorization or participation.

“We had negotiations with the band and basically couldn’t come to an agreement [about doing an interview], but we felt our readers still deserved a piece on Pearl Jam,” says Rolling Stone senior editor Mark Kemp. “So we sent our reporters out to do a story.”

Rather than quotes from Vedder, the story, written by RS regulars John Colapinto, Matt Hendrickson and Eric Boehlert, uses anecdotes and memories of Vedder’s past friends and acquaintances to paint a picture of his past and seek insight into his current role as reluctant star.

Will this end the magazine’s chances of getting any future interview with Vedder? Pearl Jam manager Kelly Curtis was unavailable for comment, but the group did boycott Time magazine after it put Vedder on the cover without interviewing him several years ago.