Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament started writing his first lyrics around 1982 but left the songwriting to singers in most of his earlier bands. “I was in bands with amazing singers and lyricists,” shared Ament in 2023. “You partly feel like, ‘Well, my lyrics aren’t as good as our singer’s,’ and then you feel intimidated by bringing songs to a band that’s so great.”
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After tinkering around with more solo material and releasing his debut Tone in 2008, Ament says he’s been exercising his songwriting “muscle” more since then. Prior to going solo, the bassist was still contributing plenty to one of his first bands Green River, which featured his future Mother Love Bone and Pearl Jam bandmate guitarist Stone Gossard along with a pre-Mudhoney for Mark Arm and Steve Turner.
By the time, Ament was in Mother Love Bone he contributed to the band’s first and only album together, Apple, released following the death of singer Andrew Wood, who died at 24 from an overdose months before its release.
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Still riding with Pearl Jam for more than three decades, Ament has been responsible for composing the music behind some of the band’s biggest hits, including “Jeremy.” Though Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder has been the chief songwriter for the band, Ament also began writing some tracks for their catalog by the late ’90s.
Here’s a look at four songs Ament has written for Pearl Jam’s songbook throughout the past 25 years.
1. “Low Light” (1998)
Written by Jeff Ament
By the time Pearl Jam began working on their fifth album, Yield, in 1997, the album became more of a collaborative effort with the band contributing lyrics instead of frontman Eddie Vedder, who penned the band’s first four albums. On Yield, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, Ament wrote two tracks, “Pilate” and the more contemplative “Low Light.”
Clouds roll by
Reeling is what they say
Or is it just my way?
Wind blows by, low light
Side tracked, low light
Can’t see my tracks
Your scent way back
Can I be here all alone?
Clear a path to my home
Blood runs dry
Books and jealousy tell me wrong
All I feel, calm
Voice blows by, low light
Car crash, low light
Can’t wear my mask
Your first, my last
2. “Nothing As it Seems” (2000)
Written by Jeff Ament
Still on a roll from Yield, Ament served up another two tracks for Pearl Jam’s sixth release Binaural, “God’s Dice,” and the lead single “Nothing as it Seems,” a lament on his safe childhood growing up in Montana.
“It’s a little bit reflecting on where I came from,” said Ament of the more personal story behind the song in 2000. “I grew up in a really rural area in Northern Montana, and ‘Nothing As It Seems’ is looking back at that. I think until 2 or 3 years ago, I looked back at my childhood as being a fairly utopian situation where I had the freedom to ride my bike around town when I was 5 years old, and my parents didn’t have to worry about anybody taking me and killing me or whatever.”
He continued, “In the last couple of years, there have been some things that have kind of allowed some darker things to come to the surface of my childhood, seeing things that I had kind of selectively forgotten for my own mental health or whatever. … ‘Nothing As It Seems’ is just kind of what came out. I’m just now starting to actually really analyze what I was talking about because I still don’t really have a grip on that.”
Binaural was also the first Pearl Jam album to feature former Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron, who replaced Jack Irons during the band’s tour for Yield.
One uninviting chromosome
A blanket like the ozone
It’s nothing as it seems
All that he needs is home
And all that he sees
Is nothing he can believe
Saving it for a sunny day
Something maybe, two tone
Anything of his own
Chip off the corner stone
3. “Ghost” (2002)
Written by Jeff Ament and Eddie Vedder
For their seventh album, Riot Act, the band experimented with more sounds and wrote more existential stories, following the September 11 attacks and the accidental death of nine fans during the band’s Roskilde Festival concert in 2000.
Along with “Help Help,” Ament also wrote “Ghost” for Riot Act, blasting the mental strains of external noises, from the news to marketing, and finding an escape and hope, again.
The mind is grey like the city, packing in and overgrown
Love is deep, dig it out
Standing in a hole alone
Working for something that one can never hold
A place in the clouds
Good place to hide oh my oh…
So I’m flying (away, away)
Driving (away, away)
Finding hope in ways I missed before
I missed before
The tv, she talks to me
Breaking news and building walls
Selling me what I don’t need
I never knew soap made you taller
So I’m riding (away, away)
Hiding (away, away)
So much talk it makes no sense at all
My senses have gone… awol, awol, awol, awol, awol…
So I’m hiding (away, away)
Driving (away, away)
4. “Alright” (2020)
Written by Jeff Ament
With Vedder mostly at the helm writing the next few albums, Ament still co-wrote “Army Reserve” on Pearl Jam’s eighth, self-titled release in 2006, “Got Some” on the 2009 follow-up Backspacer, and “My Father’s Son” on Lighting Bolt in 2013.
The band’s 11th album Gigaton in 2020 also saw a return of Ament’s lyrics on the more brooding “Alright.”
You can’t hide the lies
In the rings of a tree
If your heart still beats free
Keep it for yourself
When you want to run
And leave some part unrevealed
Like the flight of the bee
Keep it for yourself
It’s alright to be alone
To listen for a heartbeat
It’s your own
It’s alright to quiet up
To disappear in thin air
It’s your own
Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage
