Watch Eddie Vedder Pay Tribute to Tom Petty, Chris Cornell

Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder has lost a lot of his friends too early to drugs and suicide.

In 2018, when you consider the Seattle grunge scene from which Vedder and Pearl Jam arose in the early-'90s, it's hard to separate heroin and mental illnesses like anxiety and depression from the music.

There was Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood who died of a heroin overdose in 1990. Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994. Alice In Chains frontman Layne Staley who died of a heroin overdose in 2002. Former Alice In Chains' bassist Mike Starr who died in 2011 of a prescription drug overdose. And of course Temple of the Dog, Audioslave and Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell's suicide in 2017. 

And those are just a few from Seattle that got famous.

Vedder hasn't spoken much publicly about the losses he's endured, but he referenced the deaths of his longtime friends Cornell and Tom Petty at a recent Pearl Jam concert in London.  

"This is a song by a friend of mine — I feel very fortunate that we could all call him a friend of ours," Vedder said before singing a cover of Petty's "I Won't Back Down." "He's been gone for a little bit now, we've lost a few folks — it's just life. You are lucky to live a long time, but you will get beat up and surprised in some horrible ways."

Vedder continued, suggesting that he tried to deal with losses in the same way.

"Maybe you will learn to live with those people and their memory in your life, and make sure that their energy is still with us in the form of us doing good things and being better people."

Petty then shouted out a fan who overcame her own "health issues" to make it to the show. 

Watch video of the performance above. 

Vedder also sang part of Temple of the Dog's "Hunger Strike" during "Better Man" at a recent festival show. 

Photo: Getty Images