JAN/FEB 2010 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM BEHIND THE CLASSICS Lance Mercer “Alive” Pearl Jam Ten (1991) Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, Eddie Vedder, Mike McCready, Dave Krusen

ON A SUMMER DAY IN SAN DIEGO IN 1991, EDDIE I’m still alive.” “All he knows is ‘I’m still alive’—those three words, that’s Vedder paddled his surfboard out toward the horizon of the Pacifi c totally out of burden,” he said. “I’m the lover that’s still alive.” Thus Ocean and let his mind wander. Through a mutual friend, he had the instrumental that guitarist Stone Gossard had dubbed “Dollar just received a three-track instrumental demo from a band looking Short” was renamed “Alive.” for a lead singer and lyricist. As he rode the California waves, he Vedder’s tale only grew darker over the next two songs. In began imagining lyrics for the three songs—and a tragic melodrama “Once,” the son’s confusion and anger leads him to become a serial that would bind them together as a coherent story. killer. He is captured, and in “Footsteps” he laments his fate while The tale Vedder invented begins like this: A young man’s mother awaiting execution. Once the lyrics were completed, Vedder dubbed informs him that the man he believes to be his father is in fact his himself singing over the instrumentals and hastily mailed them to stepfather, and that his real father is dead. This much, at least, is Seattle. “The music just felt really open to me,” Vedder recalled in drawn from Vedder’s own autobiography. At 17, he learned that the 1991. “Then I thought, ‘Wow, the music is really good; maybe I man he thought to be his father, Peter Mueller, was not—and that his should have paid more attention. Maybe I should have written it down. true father, Ed Severson, had died from multiple sclerosis. (Vedder Maybe I should have really listened to it before I sent it off.’” is his mother’s maiden name.) He needn’t have worried: Vedder was immediately invited to As the story continues, the mother’s unrelenting grief over Seattle to audition for the band that would become known as Pearl her former husband’s death leads her to pursue an incestuous Jam. “Alive” was the fi rst song the group attempted during their fi rst relationship with her son, who looks eerily similar to his late father. rehearsal together, it was on the set list for their debut performance “The son grows up to be the father, the person that she lost,” Vedder that October, and in 1991 it would become the fi rst single from explained in 1993. “His father’s dead, and now this confusion, his their debut album, Ten. mother, his love, how does he love her, how does she love him?” Pearl Jam has performed “Alive” in concert (according to the Thankfully, this part of the band’s own tabulations) 567 story is fi ctional … mostly. “There times over nearly two decades. WRITTEN BY STONE GOSSARD AND EDDIE VEDDER was no incest in my situation,” he Audiences have taken up the said in 1991. “But people who RECORDED AT LONDON BRIDGE STUDIO, song’s incongruously anthemic knew my dad—women—would SEATTLE, WASH., SPRING 1991 chorus as a celebration of come over and stare at me when EDDIE VEDDER VOCALS resiliency, and increasingly I was a teenager like you wouldn’t as an affirmation of the STONE GOSSARD, MIKE McCREADY GUITARS believe. They were looking at me JEFF AMENT BASS enduring bond between band because I have his face and he’d and fans. It’s an interpretation DAVE KRUSEN DRUMS been dead for at least 10 years. that Vedder never discouraged, So they can’t take their eyes off and eventually came to actively me. And I probably caught my embrace. “They lifted the mom—you know, she’d just stare curse,” he said in 2006. “The at me.” audience changed the meaning To punctuate the tale, for me.” Vedder wrote a refrain: “Hey, –Chris Neal

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