And while the dark backstory of Vedder’s lyrics lends the track a frisson of complexity, Alive’s true charm lies in its uplifting power, Vedder’s impassioned delivery (within a year countless rock frontmen would be mimicking his hearty burr) and that solo, which could move a corpse to play along on air guitar. However, delivered in Vedder’s heroic baritone over Gossard’s incandescent riff, and gifted one of the most unabashedly classic-rock guitar solos in recent memory (courtesy of Mike McCready), Alive was interpreted as an inspirational message by the thousands of fans who sent Pearl Jam’s debut single into the US top 20. Its lyric suggests an incestuous affair between the hero and his mother, while its hookline, “I’m still alive”, was intended as a rueful statement of fact from the homicidal/suicidal teen. Alive is the first chapter in this trilogy ( Once, off Pearl Jam’s debut album Ten, and the early B-side Footsteps tell the rest of the story). A lifelong fan of Pete Townshend, he concocted a song-cycle, Mamasan, telling the story of a troubled young man whose traumatic discovery that his supposed birth father was actually his stepfather (a Tommy-esque drama drawn from Vedder’s own life) sends him on a killing spree, for which he is ultimately executed. A serious-minded, humble surfer dude – in many ways Wood’s antithesis – Vedder’s first contribution to this new project was to write lyrics for a demo tape of Gossard riffs.
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