This song is an acoustic instrumental showcasing guitarist Jorma Kaukonen's formidable fingerpicking style. According to the album's liner notes, Kaukonen composed the tune in 1962 as part of a guitar workshop in Santa Clara and included it on Surrealistic Pillow at the band's behest.
In "Embryonic Journey," Jorma Kaukonen captures optimism in an instrumental. "I wish I could tell you how that came to pass," he told Mojo magazine. "I was obviously in an in-the-moment process that I was able to capture it as it happened. I was fooling around in a drop D tuning in a workshop I was giving. A friend said 'you oughta check that out.' So I made it into a song. It just made sense to me."
"Embryonic Journey" plays at the end of the credits for the 1980 documentary Berkeley in the Sixties. Other uses of the song in movies include: 1982 dramedy Purple Haze 1999 drama A Walk on the Moon 2002 sports drama The Rookie "Embryonic Journey" also played in the final Friends episode (titled "The Last One"), and in Ken Burns' 2017 TV documentary series The Vietnam War.
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