PRESS REWIND - A blog by Legacy Recordings (UK) - Eddie Vedder - ‘Hard Sun’ (live from Water on the...

28 Jun 2012
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Eddie Vedder - ‘Hard Sun’ (live from Water on the Road DVD, 2011)

Eddie Vedder recorded ‘Hard Sun’ for the soundtrack to Into The Wild. While it was ‘Guaranteed’, taken from the same album, that was the award-winner, ‘Hard Sun’ was also released with a video and managed to reach #13 on the US Modern Rock chart.

‘Hard Sun’ was one of two cover versions on the album (the other being ‘Society’, originally by Jerry Hannan) and is actually very faithful to the original, by Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Peterson.

Peterson released the song under the name of Indio on 1989 album, Big Harvest. While the album was a bit of a flop, it’s notable that some pretty significant musicans played on it—including Joni Mitchell providing backing vocals on ‘Hard Sun’. Peterson faded back into obscurity and became a bit of a recluse after being dropped by his label, but came back into the public eye recently to bring a court case against Eddie Vedder for changing the lyrics to ‘Hard Sun’:

In a Manhattan federal-court suit, Peterson alleges that “Vedder altered certain key lyrics of ‘Hard Sun’ … eroding the integrity of the composition.”
(NYPost)

Let’s take a look at those lyrics changes then…

Vedder sings:

“When she comes to greet me
She is mercy at my feet
I see her inner charm
She just throws it back at me”

Peterson sings:

“When she comes to greet me
She is mercy at my feet
When I stay to pillage her
She just throws it back at me”

…and that is it. Has that eroded the integrity of the song? I’m not convinced.

Either way, have a listen to the song. It’s big, it has beautiful harmonies, it bounds and it exudes the heat of the big, hard sun it describes. It’s great!

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