The Pearl Jam track Eddie Vedder called “a drug song”
Eddie Vedder, the frontman of Pearl Jam, has never fallen into the trappings of drugs like many of his peers. However, he has seen levels of excess take its toll on those around him and seen the negative effects of substance abuse up close, which he discussed in the song, ‘Gonna See My Friend’.
The track appeared on Pearl Jam’s 2009 album, Backspacer, which opened up the record. It tells the story of Vedder visiting a friend who is struggling with drug abuse, and he’s doing everything within his power to help his companion out. Unfortunately, despite his desire to sort out the dire situation, the singer’s efforts alone weren’t enough to make the troubles instantly disappear.
Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2006, Vedder opened up about his preferred drug of choice, which firmly keeps him on the straight and narrow. “Music, for me, was fucking heroin. It was something I needed. Live shows gave me strength. A day or two after a show, the high would wear off, but listening to the bootlegs with your eyes closed was like getting high again,” he explained.
That’s not to say Pearl Jam have always lived a clean-cut lifestyle, and in the band’s early days, they dabbled with substances as much as any Seattle grunge group. “Every third person was shooting heroin. It was the thing to do,” the band’s guitarist Stone Gossard once recalled. However, he did insist their flirtation with substances was thankfully “done early”.
Unlike many acts of their generation, Pearl Jam are still here to tell the tale, but on ‘Gonna See My Friend’, Vedder opens up about his second-hand experience of drug addiction. In the chorus, he painfully sings: “I’m gonna see my friend, I’m gonna see my friend, make it go away, I’m sick of everything, I’m gonna see my friend, make it go away, I’m gonna see my friend, Gonna see my friend, make it go away.”
When Vedder did a track-by-track of Backspacer with The Globe and Mail, he was coy about the meaning behind the track and solely discussed its creation from a technical standpoint. He explained: “All I remember is writing it in a little room on a small table with a little 4-track tape machine. I got it sounding loud real quick, without disturbing the neighbours. I work using headphones a lot. I’m not going to have any hearing left. We all make sacrifices at our jobs, and my hearing is obviously going to be the first thing to go.”
However, on the same press run, Vedder delved into more detail about ‘Gonna See My Friend’ during an appearance on the Canadian radio station, The Edge and confirmed it was “a drug song”. According to SongFacts, the Pearl Jam frontman confirmed it was about trying to help a friend get clean and not about his own struggle with drugs.
Vedder’s description of “a drug song” is different to the usual definition and is about the perils of drug addiction rather than written while under the influence. Contrarily, John Lennon was referring to the latter when labelled ‘Day Tripper’ by The Beatles as “a drug song”, whereas, in their effort, Pearl Jam explored the ugly side of drugs and didn’t glamourise substance abuse.
