This 90s anthem was filmed at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco. Though it might be hard to believe today, a music video that featured people openly celebrating smoking weed was something that still took a lot of people by surprise in 1994.
Director Josh Taft worked with just about everyone in the 90s. Taft has directed videos for Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Nas, A Tribe Called Quest, Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam, Mad Season, and Fuel. Taft has also worked as a commercial director, doing ads for Adidas, Reebok, Nike, Energizer, Sprite and Nissan Xterra. In 2013, he directed a documentary called Alive & Well, which profiled 7 individuals living with Huntington’s Disease.
Would? was originally written in 1990 as a tribute to Andrew Wood, the lead singer of Mother Love Bone, after Wood’s death from a heroin overdose. The song first appeared on the soundtrack to 1992’s Singles and the subsequent music video was released to coincide with the release of the film. Singles director Cameron Crowe co-directed this video but the only direct reference to Singles is a quick shot of the film’s poster.
Would? went on to win Best Video From A Film at the 1993 VMAs.
This is a song that has often been misunderstood throughout the years. I can say that because I’m one of those people who has often misunderstood it.
Of course, we all know that Stone Gossard wrote the music for the song when he was still a member of Mother Love Bone. (Gossard called the instrumental track A Dollar Short.) Even before he was formally invited to become the leader singer of the band that would become Pearl Jam, Vedder heard Gossard’s music and came up with the lyrics for Alive. The song deals with a boy who discovers that the man he thought was his father was actually his stepfather. That part is autobiographical. The song also tells the story of how the boy has an incestuous relationship with his mother. That part is definitely fictional.
The lyrics are pretty dark and Vedder has said that the “I’m still alive” chorus was originally meant to be an acknowledgement of a curse. With everything terrible that has happened, the song’s main character was still alive and still having to deal with all of his pain. However, people like me heard that “I’m still alive” and adapted the song as an anthem. We interpreted the song as saying that, despite everything, the singer is still alive. We saw it as a positive thing.
(Of course, we didn’t consider that Alive is the first part of a three-song mini-opera about a man who goes mad and embarks on a killing spree.)
According to Vedder, seeing the positive reaction to the song’s chorus caused him to realize that the song’s “curse” had been broken. That’s a very Eddie Vedder way of saying that it’s okay to see the song as being an anthem.
As for the music video, the shots of the ocean remind us that Vedder reportedly came up with the lyrics while surfing. The rest of the video was filmed at an actual Pearl Jam concert in Seattle. Playing drums for the video was sessions drummer Matt Chamberlain. Reportedly, the man who would become Pearl Jam’s official drummer (on the recommendation of Chamberlain), Dave Abbruzzese, was in the audience while this video was being filmed. The video was directed by Josh Taft, a childhood friend of Stone Gossard’s who also directed videos for EMF, Stabbing Westward, and Stone Temple Pilots.
This video is probably about as 90s as you can get but the 1990s were a cool decade and this video introduced a generation to meditation. According to the band itself, this song was written as a way to thank the fans who were “down” with them before 311 ever found any sort of mainstream success.
This video was directed by Josh Taft, who also directed Plush and Sex Type Thing for Stone Temple Pilots.
Through the Shattered Lens 