Actor Bradley Cooper joined Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder for a surprise appearance last night (May 25) during the band’s set at the BottleRock Festival in Napa, Ca., with the pair duetting on the Jason Isbell-penned song “Maybe It’s Time” from A Star Is Born. Cooper sang the tune in the 2018 film, for which he was nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award, and Vedder has performed the song in his solo sets on a handful of times since.
“There was an absolutely beautiful film a few years ago about a singer/songwriter named Jackson Maine,” Vedder told the crowd. “In the end of the film, he passes away, and it’s brutal and very powerful and very moving. But tonight is a very special occasion, because he is coming back to life. Please, would you join me in welcoming to the stage, my great, great pal Bradley Cooper.”
In an anecdote relayed during Vedder’s 2020 appearance on The Howard Stern Show, the artist said he almost got involved with A Star Is Born before Cooper took the Maine role, at a time when Sean Penn was attached to star and Clint Eastwood set to direct. Vedder had a phone call with Eastwood about the project and even sent him some music for potential use in the film. When Stern asked if Penn could have pulled off the singing aspect of the role, Vedder replied with a laugh, “I think depending on the tone of the voice, we might have been able to buy it.”
Then, once Cooper took the lead role, he spent several days in Seattle with Vedder asking him for advice about how to make the music portion of the character seem realistic. “Make sure your guitar covers your balls at all times,” Vedder said he told him. “I think sometimes when the guitar gets a bit high it looks like a bib. And then punk-rock is, like, super-low, but that wouldn’t be his character. That way, if the crowd throws anything, let’s say an orange or a tennis ball, you’ll be covered.”
When it came time to see a pre-release screening of A Star Is Born, Vedder told Stern he drove to the theater “thinking of all the ways I can let [Cooper] down nicely. … I tell you, when I saw it, I was just f—ing blown away. It just took me there. I’m getting chills right now.”
Cooper stuck around last night to re-appear during Pearl Jam’s set-closing cover of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.” The first leg of the band’s Dark Matter world tour wraps May 28 and 30 with the band’s first hometown Seattle shows in nearly six years.
