The Pearl Jam classic Eddie Vedder said came to him in a dream
Dreams are a mystery; no amount of research can ever account for them. No scientist can ever truly explain how our brains conjure these things up, whether they’re people and places we know, giving them new storylines or speaking words through their mouths in our subconscious minds, or often completely unknown spaces and made-up happening that something in us brings up. It’s one of the biggest mysteries of the human mind as people wonder how and why our brains seemingly act so independently of us while our bodies rest. Sometimes, you wake up confused, almost mourning the situation you left behind in your slumber, or sometimes, it stays with you, like one night’s dreaming did with Eddie Vedder.
It’s incredible what we can do in dreams. Only a few weeks ago, I had a dream where I got a letter from someone I used to know. I remember reading paragraph after paragraph, hearing it in their voice with the wording written how they would write it. My mind had not only formulated this fictional situation, but had formed sentences and statements without me doing anything or thinking anything as my body lay still and sleeping. When I woke up, parts of the letter stayed with me as if I’d actually read it, but there was no envelope to be found.
It’s fascinating. Similar to creativity, it’s impossible for anyone to adequately understand how inspiration strikes or how ideas work. For those granted this almost spiritual, god-given talent in which some higher-up force seems to drop inspiration down into their lap, it arrives just like that: a line or a melody pops into their head without any real work or effort to prompt it. Just like a dream, it seems to be subconscious, so it’s no wonder there’s a long history of incredible songs coming from a singer’s slumber.
Paul McCartney wrote a few of them as he’d find himself waking up one morning and running to his piano to get a track like ‘Let It Be’ or ‘Yesterday’ out of his head and onto paper in time. Keith Richards stirred in the middle of the night, woken by an idea, and wrote the whole riff for ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ before going back to sleep. Jimi Hendrix’ ‘Purple Haze’ was inspired by a dream he had of being surrounded by a thick purple mist, writing it in an attempt to understand.
In Eddie Vedder’s case, ‘Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town’ was his dream song. “We were recording Vs., and we were staying in this house in San Francisco, but I was outside in a little outhouse, in my own world. I slept in there, too,” he recalled. Having crammed a little amp and tape recorder into his small quarters, Vedder was always ready to catch any strays of ideas to develop songs they’d been working on that day. But one night, something completely new came to him.
“I was dreaming that I was going back to where I lived in San Diego, and when I woke up, the dream was still alive,” he said. Able to recall the characters and the emotions, they translated into the song and into the elderly woman the singer is trying to place.
Feeling exactly like a person trying to peer through the fog of a dream and understand his subconscious, the track is the direct result of that night. “It came out right quick — I don’t even think I scribbled down the lyrics,” he said, adding, “It was bizarre.”
