The musician remembered the fan and invited her to a Pearl Jam concert
In 1992, while Pearl Jam was touring with their debut album Ten, Eddie Vedder met Valeska Custers , a fan who was at the show in Utrecht, Netherlands.
After the performance, the vocalist went out for coffee and they talked until the early hours of the morning. When they left, at 3 am, Vedder had no way to get to the hotel and Valeska was on a bicycle, so she gave the musician a ride.
The event remained etched in Vedder's memory, and while in Amsterdam last week, he recounted the story to the audience. "I remember her hair kept flying in my face. And I'm almost certain I would still recognize her face," he said, and asked if she was there.
She wasn't there, but she found out about the incident from a newspaper that later interviewed her to hear her side of the story. Valeska said she hadn't gone to the 1992 show to see Pearl Jam, but rather a band of some friends, City Pig Unit. While she was backstage, Vedder approached her and asked about her new tattoo.
“He was extremely shy, but I felt a connection with him,” she told the newspaper. After that, she tried to talk to him several times, but never succeeded. “I thought about it a lot, but I didn’t know how to do it. It would be amazing to see him again. I feel like he’s my soulmate.”
When the story was published in the newspaper, Vedder invited her to see him play in Brussels, and they met after the show. "You still have the same smile," the musician told her, also revealing that he had kept the woman's address written on a piece of paper because he wanted to return a shirt of hers that he had kept, but that never happened.
See a photo of the meeting below.
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