The list of performers assembled at New York's storied Madison Square Garden on October 16, 1992, to celebrate Bob Dylan's 30 year recording history was a testament to the iconic singer/songwriter's legendary status. Superstars such as Stevie Wonder, George Harrison, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Lou Reed, Tom Petty and Johnny Cash were among those paying tribute to Dylan's influence by covering classic and deep cuts from his catalogue, with a handful of younger artists - Sinead O'Connor, Tracy Chapman and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready among them - also stepping up to pay their respects to one of the most acclaimed musical artists of all time.
For their salute to Dylan, the Pearl Jam duo elected to cover Masters of War, from 1963's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, his second studio album. Interviewed by MTV at rehearsals for the show, Vedder and McCready gave the reasons for their choice, stating that the song was still "relevant" almost thirty years after it was written.
"It's a scathing indictment against conservative war-mongering and of people that are in power," McCready explained, "and now that we have our wonderful President George Bush it's a good time to play this."
Eddie Vedder also expressed his hope that the duo's participation in the concert might lead younger fans to discover Dylan's work for themselves.
"Certain pieces of art are timeless," he said. "And if somebody even hears that we played it and goes, 'I wonder who Bob Dylan is?' and maybe goes into their parents' record collection and pulls out something, I mean, that's cool, they could be hooked for at least a few weeks on another kind of music that helped form what's being done now."
In the liner notes for The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration, a double album commemorating the evening, released on August 24, 1993, Vedder and McCready's acoustic performance was described as "riveting" and "arguably the evening's most pleasant surprise."
"These two young Dylan fans didn't need any loud Seattle sonics to get across Dylan's pointed protest classic," it stated. "Vedder, who blissfully watched rehearsals for the concert from the front row of a nearly empty Madison Square Garden, proved with his wonderfully intense interpretation that when it comes to a great song, there's no such thing as a generation gap."
Watch the performance below:
In the autumn of 1993, Matt Snow, a writer for [now defunct] English music magazine Q, spoke to Vedder about the evening, and learned that the Pearl Jam duo hung out with Dylan long after the TV cameras documenting the concert had been packed away. Vedder was loathe to get into too much detail about what he and Dylan spoke about - "it would be a desecration" he insisted - but he did reveal that the old master had expressed his appreciation of Pearl Jam's music and offered some advice for the young musicians.
"He calls me Eddie and I call him Bob," Vedder said. "He actually likes our music a lot. Did he ask me to write a song with him? I didn’t take that seriously. We’d had a few pints that night. It was about seven in the morning and we’d been up all night in this Irish pub in New York, Tommy Maken’s.
"Bob had some advice," he added, "the biggest piece being, ‘Go to Dublin’. His song we sang that night, Masters Of War, still has relevance. That night made you think how nice it is to have a body of work. It made you just want to lock yourself in for six months, not talk to anyone and just do this. Especially if you’re capable of doing it."
In the subsequent three decades, Vedder has covered other Dylan songs - Forever Young and Girl From The North Country among them - during solo shows and with Pearl Jam.
