Daughter --> Leash --> RVM

Brez

I've seen on another thread a while back that these three songs are all about the same character. If I remember correctly, Daughter is the kid beginning to be unhappy with his life..."The shades go down.." (or something of that matter), then Leash is the kid fighting back/trying to break away (or something like that) and then RVM is the kid finally getting away..."Finally the shades are raised.." I also heard someone say that Why Go fits perfectly right in between Daughter and Leash.

So... comments? Ideas? Questions? Bashing me on how stupid this idea is? Let's hear it.

Pearl Jam and toast

I can definetly see that.

Housing Jim

Why Go and Leash are certainly written about the same girl.

Rear View Mirror is a song about suicide I believe

Pearl Jam and toast

Housing Jim wrote:

Rear View Mirror is a song about suicide I believe

100% wrong. Wrong as hell. So wrong it's the opposite of the real meaning..

Usually I'm all for open interpretation but this one is just way too good of a song to take the wrong way.

It's a song about survival. About driving out of a bad situation and LIVING.

Also, I saw an interview where somebody asked Ed "Is RVM about suicide?" and Ed got this really frustrated look on his face and said basically what I said above.

Beatriz

I agree with you, i also saw that interview, and Ed was a bit sad, that people thought RVM was about suicide. I believe he said it was about getting out, and fight to survive.

thelowlightargentina

Pearl Jam and toast wrote:

100% wrong. Wrong as hell. So wrong it's the opposite of the real meaning..

Usually I'm all for open interpretation but this one is just way too good of a song to take the wrong way.

It's a song about survival. About driving out of a bad situation and LIVING.

Also, I saw an interview where somebody asked Ed "Is RVM about suicide?" and Ed got this really frustrated look on his face and said basically what I said above.

100% right it´s about escaping to stay alive

Housing Jim

"Eddie struggled with 'Rearviewmirror' as he felt it was too catchy for a song about suicide" - Mike McCready, GuitarWorld magazine.

......That's just what I was going off. Personally I never thought the song was about suicide until I read that. For me, it was a song about leaving something behind thats been holding you back for a long time

ShE.dREAmS.in.CoLOr

where is all this suicide talk coming from!?! i've never thought RVM had even slightest thing to do with suicide!

bacchanal

Pearl Jam and toast wrote:

100% wrong. Wrong as hell. So wrong it's the opposite of the real meaning..

Usually I'm all for open interpretation but this one is just way too good of a song to take the wrong way.

It's a song about survival. About driving out of a bad situation and LIVING.

Also, I saw an interview where somebody asked Ed "Is RVM about suicide?" and Ed got this really frustrated look on his face and said basically what I said above.

thats what i always thought too....

The Waiting Trophy Man

Housing Jim wrote:

"Eddie struggled with 'Rearviewmirror' as he felt it was too catchy for a song about suicide" - Mike McCready, GuitarWorld magazine.

......That's just what I was going off. Personally I never thought the song was about suicide until I read that. For me, it was a song about leaving something behind thats been holding you back for a long time

i also read where mike said eddie thought it was too catchy for suicide. and i agree with everything you said.

in fact, the whole album is about surviving against the odds. it's about fighting back. and it's about being extremely pissed off against those that oppose you and your beliefs.

TrixieCat

RVM is my favorite PJ song. When he sings "Saw things, saw things, " etc
it sends chills down my spine. LOVE that song. Never thought about suicide. Just getting away.

norm

I've been listening to this song for what 13 years and I never, ever thought it was about suicide.

Androgynous Mind

Pearl Jam and toast wrote:

100% wrong. Wrong as hell. So wrong it's the opposite of the real meaning..

Usually I'm all for open interpretation but this one is just way too good of a song to take the wrong way.

It's a song about survival. About driving out of a bad situation and LIVING.

Also, I saw an interview where somebody asked Ed "Is RVM about suicide?" and Ed got this really frustrated look on his face and said basically what I said above.

Exactly. I dont see how you could mistakenly think this was about suicide. I thought it was always pretty obvious that it was about suriving and rising above the shit.

Brez

Judging by the sudden attack on the person who thought that RVM was about suicide, I'm assuming that everyone in here that has posted has agreed with me??

JD Sal

I always caught the connection between Daughter and RVM, but I never included Leash as part of it. Leash certainly could be interconnected ... I'm curious to see what others think.

Pearl Jam and toast

Brez wrote:

Judging by the sudden attack on the person who thought that RVM was about suicide, I'm assuming that everyone in here that has posted has agreed with me??

Absolutely.

UsmanI

RVM is about both! C'mon, it's so obvious, besides, i remember reading it on some site last year. It's about getting away from a dark and depressive (suicidal) state and just wanting to escape it all. I used to think the song was about getting away from someone, especially because of that line "saw things so much clearer once you were in my rvm", then I realized he could be talking about getting past that suicidal state and seeing it as something behind him and being glad that he escaped it. I can relate to that, cuz that's how i felt after i got over a depressive time not too long ago, the effects still linger under the surface as they always will ("We are the sum of everything we have done added to the sum of everything that has been done to us" - Robin Hobb) but its alot better now.

As Napoleon would say: "Gosh!" lol

Pearl Jam and toast

UsmanI wrote:

RVM is about both! C'mon, it's so obvious, besides, i remember reading it on some site last year. It's about getting away from a dark and depressive (suicidal) state and just wanting to escape it all. I used to think the song was about getting away from someone, especially because of that line "saw things so much clearer once you were in my rvm", then I realized he could be talking about getting past that suicidal state and seeing it as something behind him and being glad that he escaped it. I can relate to that, cuz that's how i felt after i got over a depressive time not too long ago, the effects still linger under the surface as they always will ("We are the sum of everything we have done added to the sum of everything that has been done to us" - Robin Hobb) but its alot better now.

As Napoleon would say: "Gosh!" lol

I love what you said there

Brez

UsmanI wrote:

RVM is about both! C'mon, it's so obvious, besides, i remember reading it on some site last year. It's about getting away from a dark and depressive (suicidal) state and just wanting to escape it all. I used to think the song was about getting away from someone, especially because of that line "saw things so much clearer once you were in my rvm", then I realized he could be talking about getting past that suicidal state and seeing it as something behind him and being glad that he escaped it. I can relate to that, cuz that's how i felt after i got over a depressive time not too long ago, the effects still linger under the surface as they always will ("We are the sum of everything we have done added to the sum of everything that has been done to us" - Robin Hobb) but its alot better now.

As Napoleon would say: "Gosh!" lol

Yeah, that was a good compromise between the two views of the song... and above all, it made a lot of sense.

goldstar

why go and leash are definitely about the same girl (forgot her name), and that's their chronological order.

"the shades" are a theme to be reckoned with when approaching both daughter and rvm, and they're there to show the connection. it's too obvious to be ignored.

however, as far as i have been able to tell so far, daughter is about a child with learning disabilities, and her parents' intolerance and ignorance towards her problem (the lyrics say "violins/ence" to emphasize this).
i totally agree with what UsmanI said about rvm, and when trying to connect the 2 songs (actually 4: daughter -> why go -> leash -> rvm, in that chronological order), i would use both explanations: 1 - escaping from her ignorant and intolerant parents. 2 - leaving her troubled thoughts behind.

DOSW

I never took Leash as part of a series.

Brez

DOSW wrote:

I never took Leash as part of a series.

Well hopefully you do now...?

DOSW

Brez wrote:

Well hopefully you do now...?

Nah. The songs have similar themes to them, but to say they're all a coherent story is a stretch. There is no concrete evidence that shows they're all one story.

But hell, it's all interpretation. (see my sig)

Pearl Jam and toast

DOSW wrote:

Nah. The songs have similar themes to them, but to say they're all a coherent story is a stretch. There is no concrete evidence that shows they're all one story.

But hell, it's all interpretation. (see my sig)

I agree about these songs. Though I think a coherant story with Daughter and RVM is very possible.. even likely. The "Shades" reference is a big signal.

DOSW

Pearl Jam and toast wrote:

I agree about these songs. Though I think a coherant story with Daughter and RVM is very possible.. even likely. The "Shades" reference is a big signal.

Hmmm... now that I think about it, that's very true. That definitely makes the end of Daughter a lot more interesting...

goldstar

'why go' and 'leash' are related to one another. ed said so himself.
as to the rest of that stuff i wrote there, it's just an interpretation. it's not a definite fact.
i just tried showing a connection is not improbable.
isn't that the entire beauty about songs?

Brez

goldstar wrote:

'why go' and 'leash' are related to one another. ed said so himself.
as to the rest of that stuff i wrote there, it's just an interpretation. it's not a definite fact.
i just tried showing a connection is not improbable.
isn't that the entire beauty about songs?

It is... And now that I think about it, it does make sense. Because "Why Go" was the first song to be written of all the songs that we're talking about here. So it wouldn't make sense to be in the middle of the series (Daughter --> Why Go --> Leash --> RVM). So it would make more sense that they are two separate stories: Daughter --> RVM being one, and Why Go --> Leash being the other.

And the whole time that I had been listening to these songs I had never really noticed the "shades" thing. For some reason I just never thought about it. But one day I saw it on another thread and it smacked me in the face, hence me making this thread. But that is the reason that I am 100% sure that "Daughter" and "RVM" are related... But "Why Go" and "Leash" can be argued upon forever, it just depends on how you look at things I guess.

goldstar

INT: On a more serious note, I asked Eddie about the song, Why Go.

Eddie: The song Why Go Home was written about a specific girl in Chicago who is... I think her mom caught her smoking pot or something. She was about 13 years old and she was just fine. I think her mom thought she had some troubles when I think it was really maybe the parents that were having troubles and the next thing you know, this young girl was in a hospital. They kept her there for quite a long time. She was so strong that she refused to accept many of the accusations of her doing terrible things when she wasn't really doing anything and the next thing you know she was in this ...she'd been hospitalized for like two years. The fact is that this is going on all over the place and this insurance thing that goes on with hospitals and insurance and these kind of counseling...
Stone: Prisons.
Eddie: ...prisons that they set up and it's really something that I think is really addressed subliminally in the song, but it has to be addressed on a bigger level. It happens everywhere and I just hope that someday we're able to change the fact that it is happening.
Stone: If you're below 18, you really have no rights in this country. Your parents can basically stick you in prison if they feel, if they deem it necessary, so that's kind of a frightening thing considering there's a lot of really screwed up parents.
Eddie: So it's called, Why Go Home.

that's from here: http://www.sonymusic.com/artists/PearlJam/echoes/echoes2.html

Leash was another song (Daughter is the other) that described the painful, regrettable rifts between children and parents who refused to understand or sympathize with them."

"The song (concerning 'Leash') had been written about the same girl that 'why go' on 'Ten' had been written about. Her name was Heather and Eddie remembered what had happened to her with a fierce clarity: 'She was stuck in a home because she was, like, caught smoking pot or something,' he told SPIN magazine. 'This is what they do in Chicago, in the suburbs. That's another thing i should have really said at the MTV Awards, I should have just went up there and said, 'You know, as long as i've got everyone's fucking attention, will you guys start fucking listening to your kids.Will you just please open up your ears and eyes and quit paying so much attention to yourselves, and just spend a little time with your kids, trust them, open yourselves up to what they're going through these days?' 'Instead of doing that, they put 'em in a little hospital, which is a big insurance scam anyway.If the kid has any resilence at all they'll go 'Fuck you, there's nothing wrong with me. My parents are fucking freaks. My mom's a fucking paranoid freak, she gets home from work and sits and watches TV, get all this information bout teenagers from Hardcopy and then takes it out on me. I'm a pretty good fucking kid.' 'Yhis girl Heather was in for two years, two fucking years, and she's one of the smartest kids i knew. Now, Heather finally gets out, but her mom's still doing the same fucking thing, threatening her with putting her back in the hospital. I mean, this girl was 15 ,16 years old, she couldn't be on the phone after 8:00 at night. She couldn't go out, she couldn't spend the night at anyone's house, she couldn't do anything. It was after talking to her again one day that i wrote the song in the car. ' Drop the leash' you know? 'Get out of my fucking face.

that's from melody maker's pearl jam biography by allan jones.


just wanted to clear that up.

Brez

I think that settles it.

Thanks

Pearl Jam and toast

Really fantastic articles/interviews, and not just because it settles this interpretation.



A little off topic, but anyone else get the sense that Ed is going to be a really fantastic father?

Brez

Pearl Jam and toast wrote:

A little off topic, but anyone else get the sense that Ed is going to be a really fantastic father?

That isn't too off topic, considering what the articles were saying and everything about the parents being fucked up and what not. But yeah, after hearing him say this stuff I think he will be.