By Conor McKay
According to Pearl Jam’s website, portions of the band’s Sunday night set at Lollapalooza were missing from the AT&T Blue Room live webcast. Fans alerted the band to the missing material after the show. Reportedly absent from the webcast were segments of the band’s performance of “Daughter,” including the sung lines “George Bush, leave this world alone” and “George Bush find yourself another home.”
After questioning AT&T about the incident, Lollapalooza was informed that material was indeed missing from the webcast, and that it was mistakenly cut by AT&T’s content monitor. Tiffany Nels of AT&T told CMJ that they are working the matter out with the band. “We regret the mistake,” she explains. “This was not intended and was an unfortunate mistake made by a webcast editor.” She went on to explain that AT&T has a policy for any excessive language, and that it was set up because of its all-ages audience.
“This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media,” the band wrote on their website. “AT&T’s actions strike at the heart of the public’s concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.” The band went on to point out that “most telecommunications companies oppose ‘net neutrality’ and argue that the public can trust them not to censor.”
The full version of Pearl Jam’s performance of “Daughter” at Lollapalooza will be available on the band’s website in the near future.