Rockin’ the vote in Ohio

There are some stock phrases rock stars can use when they look out on a concert crowd in the heartland, most of them variations of “Let’s rock, Toledo!”

On Saturday night, however, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam looked out on a deliriously boisterous crowd of 6,000, pulled out a sheaf of notes and newspapers and began reading unemployment reports.

“I have a statistic here....”

Pearl Jam is part of a coalition of pop acts on a political fundraising tour cutting across battleground states to sing and stump against President Bush.

The venture is the most ambitious teaming of pop stars on behalf of a national candidate. The more than a dozen shows are expected to raise money and attention for groups opposed to Bush’s bid for reelection Nov. 2.

While Vedder gained notoriety a year ago by using a clownish mask of the president onstage, he is hoping to use more than just imagery to deliver a point on this tour.

Speaking before the concert at the Toledo Sports Arena, Vedder said the mask stunt made headlines but the season now called for a different approach, even if the setting was a creaky old hockey arena on the blue-collar banks of the Maumee River.

“The problem with spectacle is people use it -- even if it’s something fairly innocent -- to say you are on the fringe. I even had people saying that was some sort of Satanic ritual,” he says. “I’m not joking.”

The acts on the tour represent a wide range of music styles. From Bruce Springsteen to the Dixie Chicks to Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds -- but few attract a crowd as young as the tandem of Pearl Jam and Death Cab for Cutie, the indie-rock outfit from Seattle.

On Friday, the second night of the formal tour, the Toledo concert brought in an expectedly youthful crowd -- and the atmosphere was more aggressively partisan than at the Springsteen and R.E.M. performance the night before in Philadelphia.

The fans’ views here could be heard in their lusty booing of Bush’s name and could be read in the messages on their T-shirts, which showed an impressive array of profane political slogans.

Youth culture was memorably tapped by Bill Clinton in his 1992 victory over Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush. And Vedder said that the young vote is vital now for the Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.

“If you’re young, the two words right now that should scare you in voting are ‘mandatory draft,’ ” Vedder said in the parking lot after chatting with some young fans. “Bush has said there will only be a voluntary army, but he also said in 2000 that we would not be involved in nation-building. This is an important time for young people.”

Important enough that this visit to Toledo also brought in veteran rocker Neil Young, who is enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame over in Cleveland. The surprise guest and his frequent Pearl Jam sidekicks whipped the room into a frenzy with Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” and Young’s own show-closer, “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

The show also featured an odd contribution from Oscar winner Tim Robbins, who performed in his “Bob Roberts” mode, the character from his 1992 film about a conservative politician who fancies himself a folk singer.

His ironic rants seemed to confuse many of the youngest fans, but the boos turned to cheers with his reworking of the Phil Ochs song “Here’s to the State of Richard Nixon” that was changed to name the current president.

The venue was shaped like a shoebox and sounded like a bucket, but the crowd loved Pearl Jam’s set, which included “Corduroy,” “Alive” and “Even Flow.” The intensity onstage peaked with a quieter song, “Wishlist,” which Vedder changed to include “I wish it was Nov. 3 / and I’d wake up to a brand-new world.”

The band supported Ralph Nader in 2000, but guitarist Stone Gossard said there’s urgency to Pearl Jam’s backing of Kerry. “Right here, right now, Bush must go. It’s a simple choice about where we want to go and where we are.”

The Vote for Change Tour is logging time in 11 states and then a finale Oct. 11 in Washington, D.C., that will unite the various acts. No locale, though, may be more important than Ohio. The state is under intense focus in this election year.

Bush and Kerry were in the state over the weekend, and Ohio plays host to the lone vice presidential debate Tuesday. Karl Rove, political advisor to Bush, has called the state “ground zero” for this election.

During the concert, Vedder read aloud the statistic reported in the local press that Ohio represented 4% of the nation’s population but accounted for 25% of the lost jobs in the U.S. during Bush’s tenure. “And this is a swing state?” he asked the crowd. The rocker folded up his paperwork and encouraged the crowd to “vote your conscience, vote for me, vote for you.”

He and the band launched into “Better Man,” a song that may have masked another message about the election.