Pearl Jam have a lot of great tracks in their arsenal. One of their best is a quiet, introspective, hidden gem of a song, which makes it a bit of a secret weapon amongst the harder-edged, electric, and more rousing tracks that often take the spotlight.
Elderly Woman Behind the Counter In A Small Town is the full title of the tenth track on Pearl Jam’s second studio album Vs., released on 19 October 1993. It is easily one of the most touching tracks the band ever recorded.
While Pearl Jam have many emotional songs, this one is unique. The lyrics fall into a storytelling tradition, focusing on a single person and her regrets, heartbreak, frustrations, and ultimately being resigned to her situation. It’s heartbreaking, really, and the song leaves the listener with a feeling of resigned sadness.
Why should we listen to a song equipped to make us sad? It’s a good question, but there is also a good answer: the best songs are the ones that makes us feel something.
This one also has a story that perhaps – I hope not, but still, perhaps – could trigger feelings of recognition. Many of us have regrets, and this song manages to put words on it.
The song is incredibly strong melodically, and the melancholic twist which just amps up its emotional weight. The arrangement is tender, the performances delicate. The track was written relatively early in the band’s career, but they still don’t have too many other songs quite like this.
The lengthy title stands out immediately. In a 1993 interview with the radio show Rockline, Vedder revealed that its length was a reaction to the fact that most of their songs had one-word titles, and he mentioned he was ‘Fed up with one word titles.’ The song is often referred to simply as Elderly Woman (or sometimes Small Town) by the band and its fans.
Pearl Jam had seen an incredible rise to fame with their first album Ten (1991), and has started backing off a bit when it was time to think of a second album. They resisted the need to chase further success that their record label and management wanted. After a certain point, they stopped making music videos. They started declining invitations for appearances and parties. They resisted superstardom as best they could, trying to keep their feet on the ground. This mentality carried over into the making of their second album, where the band definitely felt the pressure of trying to match the success of the first, but were determined to make music that pleased themselves first.
Vs. has a much looser and rawer sound compared to their debut. It is more direct and powerful in some ways, but also more diverse and quirky. A few songs incorporate elements of funk, others have a twist of punk, and there are indie and even metal moments. There are also a few acoustic ballads.
Lyrically they did not shy away from difficult topics, covering child abuse, gun culture, police racism, and the media. More surprisingly, the band also started coming up with storytelling songs – Daughter, Dissident, and Elderly Woman.
Although credited to all members of Pearl Jam, Elderly Woman was primarily written by vocalist Eddie Vedder. He wrote it during the Vs. album sessions, which took place at a compound called The Site in Nicasio outside San Francisco.
“It was really just an exercise in the morning,” Vedder told Howard Stern in 2020. “I’d set up this 1960s Shure Vocal Master – this is the same type of PA that the Beatles played through when they played Shea Stadium – those speaker columns. I even slept between two of those speakers. And in the morning, the thing that I was playing through the speakers… and I think Stone [Gossard, guitarist] was sitting on the porch with a coffee, and said ‘What was that thing you were playing?’ And it was… [plays initial verse chords] Just basic, you know.”
He elaborated further to Rolling Stone Magazine, saying “I remember waking up one morning and playing pretty normal chords that sounded good, and I put on the vocal master to hear myself and it came out right quick. I don’t even think I scribbled the lyrics down. It took 20 minutes. Stone was sitting outside reading the paper, and he was like ‘I really like that.’ So we recorded it that day.”
Although everybody in the band added their instrumentations to the song, they were careful to retain the initial acoustic approach as that felt very appropriate to the story that the song was telling.
The main character is described in the song title, and the song is sung from that woman’s perspective. She has lived all her life in a small town, always having had dreams of getting out of there and seeing more of the world one day. This never happened, and the lyrics reveal some heartbreak about this (“I wish I’d seen the place / But no one’s ever taken me”) and may even hint at a life without a significant other. At this point, she is resigned to living out her days behind the shop counter in the same old town (“It’s hard when you’re stuck upon the shelf”). Breaking out is now too hard; it is too late.
One day, someone from her past who meant something to her once walks into her store. At first she doesn’t recognise him, but then it hits her. Seeing him again after all those years shakes her to the core, and the thoughts that are shooting through her head in that moment are the ones that make up the lyrics in the song.
The encounter stirs up long-forgotten feelings in her, but sadly it appears that the man who walked into the store doesn’t remember her.
I seem to recognize your face
Haunting familiar, yet I can’t seem to place it
Cannot find the candle of thought to light your name
Lifetimes are catching up with me
All these changes taking place
I wish I’d seen the place
But no one’s ever taken me
Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away
I swear I recognize your breath
Memories, like fingerprints, are slowly raising
Me you wouldn’t recall for I’m not my former
It’s hard when you’re stuck upon the shelf
I changed by not changing at all
Small town predicts my fate
Perhaps that’s what no one wants to see
Eddie Vedder spoke about Elderly Woman to Mick Wall for the book Pearl Jam (1996): “It’s kind of about a lady, and she’s getting on in years, and she’s stuck in this small town. Small towns fascinate me: You either struggle like hell to get out, to some people want to stay ’cause then they’re the big fish in the small pond, and then others just kind of get stuck there. So here she is working in this little place, and then an old flame comes in, and he’s probably driving a nice car and looking kind of sharp—not a fancy car, but he’s moved on. And then she sees him, and at first she doesn’t even remember who he is, and then she realizes who it is. She’s just too embarrassed to say ‘hello’.”
I just want to scream, “Hello
My god, its been so long, never dreamed you’d return
But now here you are and here I am“
Hearts and thoughts they fade away
See Eddie Vedder discussing the song’s creation on Howard Stern in 2020 (external link).
The song is as utterly beautiful as it is heartbreaking. You really feel for this woman, who for a moment reconnected with her hopes and dreams of a near-forgotten time. Ultimately she buries these feelings and memories yet again. She serves her customer and lets him go without saying anything about herself. She is left with her thoughts, presumably in sadness, symbolised by the long outro where “Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away” is repeated several times.
The lyric page for the song in the album’s liner notes featured a picture of an ‘elderly woman,’ but the picture had to be replaced for subsequent pressings as the original woman allegedly never gave permission for her picture to be used. The replacement image is easy to spot, as the text “the new and improved woman behind the counter” was printed below the new picture.
The song was first performed live at the band’s 16 June 1993 concert in Missoula, Montana. Live performances can be found on several releases, including the Dissident/Live in Atlanta box set, the live album Live on Two Legs, on many of the plentiful ‘official bootlegs,’ the Live at the Gorge 05/06 box set, and the live album Live at Lollapalooza 2007. A performance of the song is also included on the DVD Live at the Showbox.
Elderly Woman was not released as a commercial single, but it still saw some action on radio charts. It peaked at #23 on Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks, and #17 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks, and still played on popular rock radio today. The live version from Live on Two Legs also performed well, reaching #21 on Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks and #26 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks in 1998. In Canada, this version reached the top 30 on the Canadian Singles Chart.
The band are clearly proud of the song, opting to include it on their 2004 greatest hits album Rearviewmirror (Greatest Hits 1991–2003).
Facebook Comments