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Fri 2 October 2026 4:00, UK
On June 30th, 2000, Pearl Jam were headlining a major rock festival in Roskilde, Denmark, when the unthinkable happened. A sudden crowd surge toward the stage at the beginning of the band’s set led to nine fans being trampled to death in one of the worst concert tragedies in recent memory.
“To have that happen while we were playing, it was hard to continue on from there because your memories get connected to things, especially music,” frontman Eddie Vedder told the Chicago Tribune two years later, “That was a matter of life and death that absolutely had us thinking the band couldn’t go on.”
While many people have survived traumatic events, the unique feelings of guilt that came from this particular situation left Vedder and his bandmates with few people to turn to for advice. Fortunately, though, one man who could absolutely understand their predicament made a point of reaching out as soon as he could: Pete Townshend of The Who, a friend of the band who also happened to be one of Vedder’s rock ‘n’ roll heroes.
Two decades earlier, during a concert at the Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1979, Townshend and his own bandmates found themselves faced with an eerily similar nightmare, wondering what to do after learning that 11 of their fans had died in a crowd crush that they didn’t even know about until after the gig had concluded.
“For us, it came close on the heels of the death of Keith Moon,” Townshend told Mojo in 2021, “So it was a double blow. I was definitely still really pretty fucked up from that… I remember going on the stage, and Roger [Daltrey] saying, and I should really make it clear I was perfectly behind what Roger said at the time, ‘Let’s play this gig for rock ’n’ roll and the kids of Cincinnati!’ It was just entirely inappropriate. I mean, just wrong. You know, we shouldn’t have gone on, we shouldn’t have performed.”
While Townshend carried that regret with him for years, the experience had provided him with wisdom that suddenly now had a new purpose in 2000, as he was able to reach out to Vedder confidently with a simple piece of advice. “When Roskilde happened,” Townshend said, “I just sent Eddie a two-word message: ‘Don’t leave’. And they did stay [to talk to the people affected]. And I think it was very important that they did.”
He understood better than anyone how tenuous the first 24 hours after Roskilde could be for Pearl Jam. The Who had never quite been the same after Cincinnati, and Townshend didn’t want to see something similar happen to a band he respected. Vedder remained grateful for the guidance, and in 2002, Pearl Jam were able to return the favour in a way, opening for The Who in Chicago at one of the band’s first gigs after the death of their longtime bassist, John Entwistle.
Further reading: From The Vault
“How do you make God laugh? You make plans for tomorrow,” Vedder said after the show, “I thought the day John passed, that was it. I wasn’t just mourning John, I was mourning the fact that I’d never see The Who play live again. But they kept going and didn’t lose much of their stride. Instead of going home, they played on, which enabled them to process it as a group, a family of people.”
He also paid forward Townshend’s moral support through his own friendship with the late Irish singer/songwriter Glen Hansard, whom he personally took under his wing after a tragic onstage death occurred at a Swell Season concert in 2010.
“He just wanted to know if I was OK,” Hansard later recalled, “which was incredibly kind of him. We spoke for an hour each night for a week. He’s a beautiful soul, Eddie, really deep”.
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