This redheaded stepchild of a song crosses a crazy real-life tour bus driver with Jeffrey Dahmer. “It starts out slow and then it gets a little larger and a little larger and then it breaks and then it comes down again.” “I just kind of imagined it as sort of a wave in an ocean,” McCready explained. The soul-soaring spirit of 1998’s Yield hits a high mark of uplifting optimism on this track, and it’s no accident that the melody mirrors Led Zeppelin’s “Going to California” – the tale is a mix of messianic symbolism spun into what could be interpreted as an autobiographical streak of Ed’s own journey to California in his younger years.

It’s also helped by the anxiety-spawning fatal finality in the solo, red-lining a delicate engine before easing the song out again somberly. The songwriter, bassist Jeff Ament, attributes this to some darker hidden childhood memories that began to surface in more recent years. The sparse nature of this darkly melancholic Binaural gem leaves a great deal open to interpretation.

Songs by pearl jam