Since its inclusion on Vs., ‘Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Time’ has become a staple of Pearl Jam’s live performances. She’s just too embarrassed to say ‘hello’.” And then she sees him, and at first she doesn’t even remember who he is, and then she realizes who it is. Small towns fascinate me: You either struggle like hell to get out, to some people want to stay ’cause then they’re the big fish in the small pond, and then others just kind of get stuck there,” Vedder explained in Mick Wall’s biography on the band.Īdding: “So here she is working in this little place, and then an old flame comes in, and he’s probably driving a nice car and looking kind of sharp-not a fancy car, but he’s moved on. “It’s kind of about a lady, and she’s getting on in years, and she’s stuck in this small town. While the song’s title was a knowing reference to the band’s penchant for giving their tracks one-word titles, the actual content of the song’s lyrics represented a change from the doom and gloom of the Seattle scene.

Stone was sitting outside reading the paper, and he was like ‘I really like that.’ So we recorded it that day.” I don’t even think I scribbled the lyrics down.

I remember waking up one morning and playing pretty normal chords that sounded good, and I put on the vocal master to hear myself and it came out right quick. “I was able to fit a Shure Vocal Master, which is a 1960s PA, and two big towers of PA and a little amp and a 4 track. I’m talking the size of a bathroom,” Vedder recalled to Rolling Stone in 2006 about the process of writing ‘Elderly Woman’. “We were recording the second record, and we stayed in this house in San Francisco, and I was outside the house in my own world and the little outhouse had a small room.

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