In 1998, I’d play one of my all-time favorite Pearl Jam songs, the exceedingly wistful and gentle “Wishlist” (that year’s Yield is their third-best album IMHO after Vs.My favorite song on Ten as of this hour is “Release.” In 1991-the year Pearl Jam’s debut album, Ten, invented grunge, Seattle, dudely romanticized moping, growling, and guitar solos-I rocked the classic PJ “Stickman” shirt under various flannels and was consequently the coolest kid in any junior high anywhere in America, along with the 80 million other dudely junior high mopers wearing the same thing.Real quick, my credentials are as follows: When they sing, “I’m still alive,” it’s like they’re celebrating and, here’s the thing, when they changed the meaning of those words, they lifted the curse.I grimaced a little while typing out the words “a tragedy of errors,” but a little valiant grimacing is a core component of the Pearl Jam experience, and extra-gruff frontman Eddie Vedder-his voice still a strident, scrawny, yearning weapon of mass introspection-is for sure not having a laugh. The audience changed the meaning of these words. So every night when I’d look out at this sea of people reacting in their own positive interpretation, it was really incredible. Folks are jumping down the aisles, using their bodies to express themselves, belting it out, singing along en masse. You know, “fine you tell me these secrets, I’m supposed to forgive, but I got to figure out a way to live with this.” So it was a curse, “I’m still alive.” Cut to years later and we’re playing to larger and larger audiences, and they’re responding to this chorus in a way you never thought. To be honest I was barely there to be known. I mean the guy was me but I barely knew me then.
So when the mom relays this information of the real father’s death it leaves the kid, who’s not particularly stable at that point in his development, plenty confused. Hard truth number two was that the real father had passed away a few years before. One was that the guy he believed to be his father when growing up was not. The original story being told in the song is that of a young man being made aware of some shocking truths. “Our interpretation of this song has been transformed through the years.
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