Pearl Jam Venezuela

Pearl Jam - Nothing As It Seems (Live)

Binaural (2000)

It’s a little bit reflecting on where I came from…I grew up in really rural area in Northern Montana, and [“Nothing As It Seems” is] looking back at [that]. I think until two or three years ago, I looked back at my childhood as being a fairly utopian situation where I had the freedom to ride my bike around town when I was five years old, and my parents didn’t have to worry about anybody taking me and killing me or whatever. In the last couple of years…there have been some things that have kind of allowed some darker things to come to the surface of my childhood, seeing things that I had kind of selectively forgotten for my own mental health or whatever. I had just seen Affliction and I had just read Nine Below Zero by this guy, Kevin Canty, all very kind of rural things that unearthed a lot of stuff. [“Nothing As It Seems”] is just kind of what came out. I’m just now starting to actually really analyze what I was talking about…because I still don’t really have a grip on that.

- Jeff Ament