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What Eddie Vedder happened, sounds like it would come directly from a love film. It is actually much better, because what “Het parool “ Now reported, actually happened exactly like that. It has been more 30 years since Eddie Vedder got to know a woman named Valeska Custers after a Pearl Jam concert in Utrecht in Dutch and even let her go home.
In 2019, the singer reviewed the 1993 events during a concert in Amsterdam and asked hopefully whether his acquaintance was by chance in the audience. It was not- but was later tracked down by a Dutch newspaper and confronted with Vedder’s nostalgic comments.
“I am sure that I would still recognize her face again,” he promised on stage.
By bike through Utrecht
The two had met backstage. Custers hadn’t actually come to see Pearl Jam, but her opening act City Pig Unit. But Vedder’s charm impressed her. “He was extremely shy, but I felt a very intensive connection between us,” said the Dutch in an interview with “Het Partool”.
“I still remember her hair that was blown into my face by the wind.”
After the concert, the two met in the “Kafé België” and talked for hours. Custers offered to call the Pearl-Jam front man a taxi, but as the now 51-year-old remembers, the other idea had a different idea: “Do you have a bike?”. And so the two ran on the bike by Utrecht late night. Vedder on the luggage rack took care of the backpack of the then 23-year-old. Incidentally, he never gave it back to her.
“It felt like he was my soul mate”
The likeable Dutchman is married today and has three children, but she never forgot the encounter: “I thought about contacting him again so often, but I didn’t know how to do it. It would be great to meet again. Back then it felt like he was my soul mate”.
And as fate wanted it, Vedder got with her conversation with “Het Partool” and invited her and her husband to his concert in Brussels. Then the friends from old days met in the backstage area. And it didn’t seem to have changed so much: “You still have the same smile,” said Vedder to Custer.