Steven Hyden’s Long Road (2022)

Once upon a time ago, Lara and I went to Jekyll Brewing in Alpharetta, GA. The guy working the bar had a tattoo on his arm that said, “I am myself, like you somehow.”

I said, “Wow, is that a Pearl Jam lyric?” He was impressed that I noticed that because hardly anyone ever does. Lara was too. Who the hell notices the kind of details that I do? Who recalls such an obscure lyric from a relatively obscure song from an album that is (now) over 30 years old? *raises hand and looks around nervously*

It’s from “Release” a not-very radio-friendly track from their first album (the last track). A deep cut that someone would only choose as inspiration for a tattoo for some deeply personal reasons and I didn’t think I knew him well enough to pry. I had already opened up the conversation and if he wanted to divulge more, he would’ve.

Fast forward to today and I’m finishing this book and stumble upon a quote from Eddie Vedder regarding this song just before he played it at a Pennsylvania show on my birthday (the coincidences abound!) in 2016:

“[Vedder] dedicated ‘Release’ to the brothers of Colin McGovern, a twenty-four-year-old Pennsylvanian who had been stabbed to death just two months prior.

“‘It’s not going to lessen the blow of any kind of tragedy,’ he says, ‘but in loud volumes or alone or with a lot of other people sometimes it just helps you get through, because you can’t get around it, you don’t get under it, you can’t get over it . . . you got to get through it.’”

When Vedder wrote this song, he was thinking of his biological father. But pain is pain. Grief is grief. So I listened to the song again. The lines that get me the most are “I’ll wait up in the dark / For you to speak to me / I’ll open up / Release me”

Another quote from the book that I liked:

“In the nineties, an aversion to selling out meant that you wanted to stand apart from a mainstream culture that was frequently corrupt, stupid, and poisonous. It signaled a desire to exist in a space that cared about art, smart conversations, and empathy.”

Who should read this book? I dunno. Any Pearl Jam fan, I guess. Even if you sort of tuned out around Vitalogy. Or if this band was never really your jam (ba-dum-tss) and you just want to understand the grunge and alternative rock of the 90s, you might enjoy it.

Get Steven Hyden’s Long Road.