Tremor Christ (N.V. 1993) [Live]

"Tremor Christ" has a pretty opaque lyric, even by Eddie Vedder standards. It's the story of a sailor who gets caught in a storm and faces a reckoning, perhaps making a deal with the Devil to spare his life. The point seems to be that little things can have big implications. Small waves can turn into raging storms, and little tremors can become earthquakes.

Vedder wrote the lyric but the rest of the band - bass player Jeff Ament, guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready, and drummer Dave Abbruzzese - composed the music. Ament told Songfacts how it came together with producer Brendan O'Brien. "Stone had that insistent verse part," he said. "It was like a chord that has a blue note. We were at Kingsway in New Orleans at Daniel Lanois' studio with Brendan. I remember that song came together super quickly. That song, 'Last Exit,' and I think 'Nothingman' got recorded in that session. Both 'Tremor Christ' and 'Last Exit' started with Stone playing a couple of chords. And Dave Abbruzzese plays a great drumbeat on that song. The bass is really free – it's sort of moving all over the place, moving around Ed's vocal."

Pearl Jam played an early version of "Tremor Christ" live for the first time in November 1993 a year before it was released on their third album, Vitalogy. Before songs could be easily recorded at concerts and posted online, Pearl Jam would often road test songs in live performance and refine them based on the feedback.