In Too Deep: My Journey With Pearl Jam (Part 4 - Growing Up, just Like Me)

We’re driving along I-435 toward Worlds of Fun. My girlfriend is driving her red, Honda CR-V. Travis is curled up, quite uncomfortably, in the hatchback. It’s late July in Missouri. It’s hot and humid. The car’s a/c is cranked. And the three of us are chattering away, laughing and screaming at each other like… well, like teenagers on a perfect, sun-bleached, summer afternoon on their way to an amusement park where they will eat junk food, drink sugar water, and ride rollercoasters well into the night without any parents or youngers siblings around to crush the good feelings. It’s 1996. I’m sixteen. And this is freedom.

“Shhh! Everyone shut up, they’re playing it!”

I turned up the radio. The three of us held our breath and leaned toward whichever shitty speaker was closest.

#

“Who You Are” was the first single from Pearl Jam’s fourth studio album, No Code. The first time I heard it was the first time I’d registered having an experience that would end up being repeated over and over again throughout my life — especially online in the internet age. Not to put too fine a point on it, I loved it and everyone else didn’t.

The song didn’t make any sense. Not as a lead single. Not as a Pearl Jam song. It’s about as far away as you can get from “Spin The Black Circle” (the band’s previous lead single). It was jolting to hear on the radio for the first time. But an invigorating sort of jolt. I loved it. I wanted to hear it again, immediately. My friends were not as excited. My girlfriend said it was fine but I could tell she didn’t like it but didn’t want to bring me down. Travis (the guy who’d gotten me into Pearl Jam in the first place all those years ago) said, “What the fuck was that?!” His face was scrunched, almost angry. Part of that was probably the discomfort of the Honda’s hatchback. But at least some of that twisted and indignant expression was “Who You Are.”

On Tuesday, August 27th, the day it dropped, I picked up No Code on CD from my local Best Buy as soon as class ended. Travis came with me. He also purchased a copy. We went back to my house and blasted the album in my basement bedroom. With each track I became more engaged, more excited. My head kept cocking to one side. My eyes went wide. My mind fired like I was solving a puzzle. But out of the corner of my eye, I watched Travis slip further away. We didn’t talk during, we just listened, front to back. When it was over, I hit play again, immediately. But I turned down the volume so we could chat.

Travis said, “It’s fine. There’s some good stuff, I guess. All of it’s better than that single.”

Over the years Travis would tell me that his fandom dipped by degrees with each new album. He said Ten was a perfect 10 out of 10. Vs was a 9. Vitalogy was an 8. No Code a 7. You get it.

While it is absolutely true that No Code was nowhere near my favorite Pearl Jam album, in fact, it was my least favorite, I still loved it. It was a great departure from the previous album. There were familiar themes but also fresh sounds. And the song craft is excellent. Many say the production and sound of the album is perfect. I find the sound a tad muddy at times. My favorite way to describe it is that No Code has an underwater quality. I still think that’s true. Though, I tend to think of that as a feature instead of a bug. And besides, I’m most at home, most myself in the water.

The first six tracks (‘Sometimes - Off He Goes’) might be my favorite run in the entire Pearl Jam catalogue. Those six songs are perfection. Look, art is only subjective, it can never be objective, but those first six tracks on No Code are objectively great. If that was the entire album, No Code would be my favorite record.

Within that opening run is ‘In My Tree.’ It’s a divisive song among the fandom at large but I think it’s the best pop/rock song ever written. All these years later and the song still moves me. Inspires me. Calls to me. Comforts me. Builds me up. Makes me believe.

A good friend of mine once said that if Eddie Vedder met and wrote a song about me, that song would be ‘Off He Goes.’ I take that as a tremendous compliment. And for better or worse the character depicted in that song does feel terribly familiar:

“Know a man his face seemed pulled and tense
Like he's riding on a motorbike in the strongest winds
So I approach with tact
Suggest that he should relax
But he's always movin' much too fast”

And

“And now he's home, and we're laughing, like we always did
My same old, same old friend
Until a quarter-to-ten

I saw the strain creep in
He seems distracted and I know just what is gonna happen next
Before his first step, he is off again”

When I was away at an out of town conference for a few weeks, years after No Code was released, another friend of mine told me she found great comfort in listening to ‘Smile.’ It made her think of me. “I miss you already” was a mantra to be sung out loud, repeated until peace of mind was achieved. Until we could meet again in person and trade laughs.

So much of me is wrapped up in No Code. Each song has a memory, a friend attached. Especially those first six perfect tracks.

#

There are a ton of theories and rumors and even band interviews about why the album is called No Code. Someone in the band (Eddie, maybe?) said it was an ironic title, that the album is actually full of code. Who am I to argue with the band, but my memory is that the album carried that title because it doesn’t have a barcode on the packaging. That’s it. There’s no mystery. I don’t remember why that was so important to Pearl Jam. Maybe it was just a marketing gimmick. But that’s it. No barCode.

I do remember being at my friend Winston’s house when I fully realized how cool the cover art is — you see, Winston had found a visual code. If you have a copy, unfold it and lay it flat. You’ll see an image of an eye in a triangle revealed among the multitude of polaroid pictures that adorn the packaging.

Pretty cool. Winston purchased a second copy of the CD because:

1: each copy came with a different set of “polaroids” inside that had the lyrics and writing credits from one of the songs (no single copy came with all the polaroids, so you had to trade or collect them all in other ways)

and

2: He wanted a second copy to unfold, frame, and hang on his bedroom wall. He had that thing up all through high school and most of college.

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No Code left a lot of fans dissatisfied. Some jumped ship entirely. But I think that’s exactly what the band wanted. The turning away from fame was a big storyline back in the day. I can’t speak for other fans but I think it was good thing. While I missed the universal conversation with my friends, this was the time when the band started to feel like mine — not in any proprietary way but emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. In a way, Kurt Cobain was the “voice of a generation,” but Pearl Jam was becoming my voice within the generational conversation. They were informing my worldview more than any other artist in any format: film, tv, music, theater, all of it. No Code wasn’t instantly my favorite Pearl Jam album but it was the one that first felt like me. It was the one with skin and bones and heartbeat I could relate to, but also that I could feel and chat with. I related to more than just the anger and frustration and bigness of the era, of a scene, of being a misunderstood teenager, of coming to terms with privilege in terrifying and unexpected ways. The previous albums were like gods, unearthly, impossible somehow. No Code felt human, flaws and all.

Next time, I’ll tell you about how Pearl Jam’s Yield led directly to me walking out of Youth Group and away from religion in general. It’s evolution, baby!

No Code is available on vinyl, CD or digitally pretty much anywhere you like to buy music.

No Code’s Top 3 Tracks: “In My Tree,” “Hail Hail,” “Off He Goes”