EDDIE VEDDER - VEDDER CLINGS ONTO JOHNSON AFTER BOAT DISASTER

VEDDER CLINGS ONTO JOHNSON AFTER BOAT DISASTER

Rock pals EDDIE VEDDER and JACK JOHNSON survived an "ill-fated canoe trip" convinced the other would make sure they wouldn't die. Pearl Jam singer Vedder insists his high spirits kept him alive when the boat tipped them out in stormy seas - and he would have been too terrified to concentrate if his friend hadn't been there with him. As a result, the two cool stars came out of a near-death experience virtually unscathed. In a tribute to surf-rocker Johnson in the new issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Vedder recalls, "We were sailing, and we flipped over in a channel. That was quite the little adventure. "It got kind of life-threatening for a bit. The coolest thing about it was that we were floating in the water - big ocean swells, lot of wind - and we're bobbing along out there and the mast is pointed straight towards the bottom of the ocean. I didn't know if we were going be able to upright the deal. "I looked over at Jack and thought, 'Well, I'm in the water with Jack Johnson, so I was gonna be OK.' And it turned out he looked over at me and I had a smile on my face, so it made him feel like we were gonna be OK, too. "It's interesting how you can give each other confidence even though the situation is a bit dire."