Alive has sexual mother/son undertones?

When I saw them in Reno in 1994, right before they played the song Ed said, "my mom fucked me and all I got was this lousey t-shirt".

cincybearcat wrote:

I gotta say, I'm a bit surprised that anyone doesn't already know this.

+1

Once, Alive and Footsteps were all written in conjunction with each other...PJ's own 'mini-opera' as Ed stated in a VERY early Pearl Pam performance in Italy, I believe...(their first time there)

musicismylife78 wrote:

i was responding to asher who suggested Black, alive and Jeremy were all "semiautobiographical works of fiction". I am not too sure exactly what that means. I was suggesting that all those songs are really more fact based than fiction based.

Finbury, you suggested my post was off the wall, I assume thats what the Lady Macbeth statement meant. That it has no basis in this discussion. I dont know what you are smoking but you may want to look into cutting down.

Semi-autobiographical means it includes events that happened to him AND that didnt happen to him.

Jeremy - Partly inspired by the kid Jeremy from Texas that Ed read about in a paper. This made him think about & include references to a kid Ed use to fight with when he was in school.

Black - Basically this song is about something that happened to Ed, but he's written it in such a way that the song is more about the emotional toll on a person, rather than the specific event. There's nothing really "Biographical" in Black, because he speaks completely in metaphors, so its hard to know if he's talking about a dead lover, an ex-lover who's gone, an aborted baby, etc. So its inspired by an event in his life, but its hardly a biographical account of it

Alive - Ed himself has said its a dramacised version of his own story. Fins point seemed to say that there's enough in the lyrics to argue validly for AND against the mother/son sexual relationship. You can argue it, but you're inferring it as he actually talks about a man in the 3rd person. The lyrics to the song are not "I" and "me" like they are in Black. .

So you could argue (1) that it is his exact experience & Ed is merely saving public face when he says its fictionalised.... OR (2) you could say he presents a neutral story, which is in inspired by his own fucked-up childhood, except thinking about how more disturbed it could have been.

Personally, I would go with the 2nd argument because it completely explains the lyrics to Once and Footsteps. Doesnt really make sense the other way in the overall context that the songs were written as one piece, all on the same day.

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

It would seem that you have failed to understand the concept of an illustrative analogy. My analogy was this. A zealous feminist critic without the necessary grounding in feminist literary theory would try to explain Lady Macbeth's behaviour by overreading the line "I have given suck" and imagining her past history of infant mortality and probably abuses, to boot. Now this would be a misreading of the text because there's nowhere near enough textual or supporting evidence to back it up. This example is in common usage in academia to illustrate bad reading.

Now, my point which this analogy was illustrating (which I didn't think I had to labour, but here you go) is that by imagining that Pearl Jam lyrics are somehow evidence for sinister forms of childhood abuse on the actual author is, to me, a gross misreading of the text for which there is no supporting evidence in the body of the work itself. If you want to bring in interviews to back yourself up, then you have to blur the distinction between author and authorial narrator, and in all sincerity I'm not entirely certain you know the difference, or perhaps even between author, authorial narrator ... and listener?

So, my points are entirely relevant to this or any discussion about interpretation of meaning in song lyrics, as they would be in other forms of poetry, dramatic playtexts or prose fiction. One doesn't formulate a critical ability by "smoking" anything. One gets it by going to college and getting a couple of degrees in how to read things closely. Get it?

why are students of literary studies always so smarmy?

signed, a student of literary studies

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

NothingIsEverything. wrote:

why are students of literary studies always so smarmy?

signed, a student of literary studies

I'm not a student, matey, I'm a master.

And as such, YOU ROCK. :ugeek:

I enjoy your posts, sir, post on.

weenie wrote:

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

NothingIsEverything. wrote:

why are students of literary studies always so smarmy?

signed, a student of literary studies

I'm not a student, matey, I'm a master.

I'm gonna hate myself for asking, but based on whose assessment, your own?

The universities that award postgraduate degrees generally tend to assess their high- scoring students as having mastered their particular discipline of research, come the end of their study.

Man, I can't believe Eddie banged his own mother, I never knew that.


No but seriously, didn't Ed say he wrote and recorded the lyrics for all three songs in two hours? He was probably like "hmmm lets see, I don't know what a Mother Love Bone is but these guys must know a thing or two about the Green River killer, so I'll try to write lyrics from a serial killers perspective."

I saw a picture of Ed's real dad, Ed doesn't really look like him.

weenie wrote:

I don't feel that "education" should thwart freedom of expression. Everyone is entitled to their interpretation, regardless of what an authority may declare on a subject.

I believe this forum, is exactly that - a destination for all opinions. An authoritative slam of someone's opinion is not very becoming. Higher education teaches one to think, not regurgitate. :geek:

I agree with you completely. That was exactly my point. If i wanted to read/hear solely "expert" opinions, i obviously wouldnt come here. But, If i can have someone point out literary techniques in Eds lyrics that ive never noticed myself i'll love to hear it.

Someone who hasnt studied it is most likely not going to point it out. For example, there was an English teacher who posted her lesson of "Black" that she taught her class. It revealed little things i hadnt noticed myself before. Or the political interpretation of HelpHelp that U R A Crazy Breed posted recently...id never considered that angle of a song before.
Its not about who provides the discussion, its that people provide something NEW to discuss, thats all.

Im not interested in people "giving the right answer" in a music discussion - neither was Fins, that was my point.

JordyWordy wrote:

weenie wrote:

I don't feel that "education" should thwart freedom of expression. Everyone is entitled to their interpretation, regardless of what an authority may declare on a subject.

I believe this forum, is exactly that - a destination for all opinions. An authoritative slam of someone's opinion is not very becoming. Higher education teaches one to think, not regurgitate. :geek:

I agree with you completely. That was exactly my point. If i wanted to read/hear solely "expert" opinions, i obviously wouldnt come here. But, If i can have someone point out literary techniques in Eds lyrics that ive never noticed myself i'll love to hear it.

Someone who hasnt studied it is most likely not going to point it out. For example, there was an English teacher who posted her lesson of "Black" that she taught her class. It revealed little things i hadnt noticed myself before. Or the political interpretation of HelpHelp that U R A Crazy Breed posted recently...id never considered that angle of a song before.
Its not about who provides the discussion, its that people provide something NEW to discuss, thats all.

Im not interested in people "giving the right answer" in a music discussion - neither was Fins, that was my point.

Thankyou for the thoughtful response, however my comment wasn't directed toward you. It was my intent to point out that a discussion becomes less of a free exchange when one feels justified, based on educational credentials, to pursue arguments utilizing a condescending style.

Yes, participants on this board should be open to the opinions of everyone, even those of a pompous ass.

musicismylife78 wrote:

its pretty obvious ed's childhood anger didnt come out of his parents not buying him a surf board for christmas or something. it grew out of something much more serious and sinister.

I always figured the trouble from his childhood stemmed from the step-dad. Eddie wrote Better Man when he was about 14 so he clearly had issues with the guy. The way he treated his mother and most likely the things he did to Eddie. I would definitely assume verbal abuse (isn't that Step-Dad 101?) and probably some physical abuse. Maybe the guy was a drinker; his mom was left lying alone in bed while her husband was at the bar until 4 in the morning. Wouldn't doubt he cheated on her either.

While I don’t think Eddie actually had sex with his mother, it’s not hard to believe that she told him how much he looked like his father once he became a teenager. (Shortly after she broke the big news about daddy to him.) When you connect the picture painted in Better Man of his mother who is in a loveless marriage and has a son that looks like a former lover, it makes sense that Eddie noticed some change in the way his mom looked at him at that point in his life. Finding out your dad is not your dad and oh by the way he also dead is going to mess with your head quite a bit. Having your mom point out all of the similarities between you and him all of a sudden could easily seem a bit creepy.

On a lighter note... What would childhood Eddie have done with a surfboard in Evanston? Drift away into Lake Michigan?