Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder has played a cover of Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros’ 2003 song “Long Shadow.” Vedder’s performance was captured in a new video produced and directed by Lance Bangs. Watch below.
“I just think that what Joe did with the Mescaleros and those records, and those songs, and those words, it was a very communal sound,” Vedder remarked. “I think when you have a communal sound, the listener feels like they can be part of that community.”
“Long Shadow” appeared on the posthumous album Streetcore, which got released nearly a year after Strummer died in December 2022 at the age of 50. Strummer had originally recorded a demo of “Long Shadow” in the 1990s and submitted it to Rick Rubin and Johnny Cash with the hopes that Cash would perform it on an American Recordings album, but the country legend was unable to record it during his lifetime.
Next month, on September 16, Dark Horse Records will release the new collection Joe Strummer 002: The Mescaleros Years. Below, listen to the album’s “Fantastic.”