Pearl Jam – ‘Daughter’

I am seriously of the opinion that Pearl Jam have been successfully releasing slightly altered versions of ‘Daughter’ for the last fifteen years. You can’t really blame them; alongside Bush’s ‘Glycerine’ and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ ‘Scar Tissue’ it’s easily the most enduring alternative-rock-grunge-acoustic jam of all time. If I had written a song like ‘Daughter’, have no doubt that I would be changing the tempo and key signature every so slightly, replacing a maligned kid with learning difficulties with a popular president with learning difficulties and proceed to laugh all the way to the bank. To me, it represents everything that was great about the ’90s; the ability to strum an acoustic guitar earnestly without anybody laughing at you or saying ‘This one is a cover’, the faint tinkling of sleigh bells or a tambourine that your drummer picked up off the side of the road after you told him he couldn’t use sticks for this one and then the beat drop when he decides Screw You, He’s Going To Do It Anyway. It’s amazing that Pearl Jam managed to get it right only two albums in, a feat I feel they only matched again with the release of their fifth. Certainly, this ‘Daughter’ is a keeper.

Like most casual Pearl Jam fans, I usually get all of the words Eddie Vedder warbles wrong. There are certain moments where he opens up his palate and you can definitely discern what it is the man is saying, and that has been the consistent theme with what I hook onto for his group’s music for most of my adult life. In this case, it’s the second line of the chorus, ‘The picture kept will re-m-i-i-i-nd me.’ Seriously, I can wail that shit for hours. There’s something about the synergy between the strumming and the growling that can’t be replicated by any of these newer versions of Pearl Jam, particularly the ones that aren’t actually Pearl Jam. Mainly because none of them would have the balls to put in a totally bitching powerchord riff straight after the chorus that simpletons like me have only just realised we know how to sing.

Sure, it’s not deep-sea diving of music, but it’s depth nonetheless. And that gorgeously affecting guitar solo, brief as it may be, is very special stuff. So special, in fact, that second guitarist Mike Mcready has gone on the record that it’s one of the few solos he ‘had to sit down and actually work out.’ And we all know the only time grunge musicians sit down to work something out is when they’re shooting up or fighting over royalties. And dropping away the guitars to just have Eddie and Dave (former drummer) bashing it out, like a hip-hop track? That is genius. The real trick of ‘Daughter’ is that it encourages bros to hug other bros in a completely heterosexual expression of love and kinship. There’s just enough balls to push it over the line and besides, in case you were wondering Eddie gives his vocal chords a right shredding just before the solo. He does that because he can. And also because somewhere deep down he knows that in 2011, he’s still going be in the same band that wrote this song and that will in some inherent musical way render him godlike and untouchable. Kind of like somebody else’s daughter. Or George Bush in 2003.

Pearl Jam – ‘Daughter’