"It's our most emotional and moving song." In 1986, Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder taped something off the TV. Years later, that recording would leave fans wondering what in the name of grunge was going on

With Ten and Versus, Pearl Jam had accidentally got massive, largely by writing good songs, recording them well and earning a reputation for being a must-see band. Who could have predicted that?

So by the time this Seattle five-piece started work on their third album, they'd hit something of a self-destructive streak. Stone Goddard wanted to quit, his co-guitarist Mike McCready entered rehab for drink and drug abuse, while vocalist Eddie Vedder became a de facto grunge arbitrator.

To say tensions were running high in the studio would be something of an understatement.

Over the course of a year, the band worked on Vitalogy at four different studios: Bad Animals in Seattle, Southern Tracks and Doppler in Atlanta, and Kingsway in New Orleans. Piss on their own chips, they may have tried, but this difficult listen still yielded some classic moments.

Sure, there's Corduroy, Not For You and Tremor Christ. But there's also Bugs, a horrible result of Vedder buying a clearly fucked accordion and ruminating about insects in his bed.

That wasn't the first avant-garde moment on the album. The second, fully-fledged, beret-sporting, chin-stroking moment came at the very end of the release.

On May 15, 2000, an online chat was hosted by the search engine Lycos, and gave fans a chance to quiz Pearl Jam on anything they liked. A fan named empty_stares asked the band what inspired Hey Foxymophandlemama, That's Me, a seven-minute sonic collage which closed their 1994 album.

“I had taped something off the TV when I was maybe 17 or something," explained Vedder. "I think it was people who had mental problems who were being let out of the hospitals early because the states were taking away funding for mental hospitals. They were setting these folks out without the necessary care, but it was still very intriguing the way their mind worked and what they would say. We experimented and tried to incorporate it into what to date is our most emotional and moving song.”

Sarcasm and its nuances are difficult to detect.

The TV programme in question was called A Matter of the Mind, which was first broadcast on the free-to-air television network PBS on May 27, 1986, which would have made the vocalist around 21 years old.

A Matter of the Mind was filmed at a halfway house in St. Paul, Minnesota. During the hour-long film, documentary maker Robert Thurber sought to "examine mental illness from the point of view of those who struggle with it as they fight their psychological demons and confront the social stigma of their disease".

Vedder's field recording formed the basis of the fourteenth and final song, also known as Stupid Mop, something uttered by one of the halfway house's residents during the programme.

Towards the end of the recording of Vitalogy, the band parted ways with drummer Dave Abbruzzese. In an interview with Spin, guitarist Stone Gossard said: "It was the nature of how the politics worked in our band: It was up to me to say, 'Hey, we tried, it's not working; time to move on.' On a superficial level, it was a political struggle: For whatever reason, his ability to communicate with Ed and Jeff [bassist Ament] was very stifled. I certainly don't think it was all Dave Abbruzzese's fault that it was stifled."

Jack Irons, formerly of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and longtime friend of the band from their days when they were known as Mookie Blaylock, drummed on Stupid Mop.

Recorded and mixed by Brett Eliason, Irons drums on this musique concrète piece, underpinning swathes of feedback and Ament's simple bass line. As a sort of audio garnish, there are clips of one resident explaining why she wants to be spanked – with the original source material's pitch made higher, for added creepiness – while another person discusses how to clean a floor and admonishes their "stupid mop".

My search for Hey Foxymophandlemama, That's Me did not match any setlists, setlist.fm?

Well, there's a reason for that. It's abrasive, unsettling and most definitely surplus to requirements. Simply put, if there was a an international criminal court for music in The Hague, this song would most definitely be in the dock. Get Bugs a seat, actually. That's next.

Stupidmop - YouTube

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