Songfacts®:

• This song is Eddie Vedder's reaction to the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, when on June 30, 2000, nine people in the crowd were crushed to death while Pearl Jam was performing. The band didn't know there was a problem until too late; when they got word to stop the show, they found out and were devastated.
  
  The group was haunted in the aftermath; some officials in Denmark even tried to blame the band for the tragedy. They took some time off and didn't play another festival until 2005 when they were sure adequate security measures were in place.
• The Love Boat is a very campy TV series from the '70s with a deliciously singable theme song. This song's title doesn't appear to be a reference to the show, but a metaphor for leading with love. The love boat captain will steer us toward the clear.
• When Pearl Jam play this live, Eddie Vedder usually changes the line, "Lost nine friends we'll never know, two years ago today," to "Lost nine friends we'll never know, so many years ago today."
• The band reached out to the families of those killed at the festival and developed relationships with some of them. Some were on hand when Pearl Jam paid tribute to the victims at their concert in Berlin on June 30, 2010, the 10th anniversary.
• This is one of the few Pearl Jam songs with a contribution from an outside writer. Eddie Vedder wrote the music with Boom Gaspar, a Hawaiian musician he met on one of his many surfing trips to the islands.
  
  Gaspar lived in a remote area and met Vedder by chance - he was playing a B3 organ when Eddie first heard him. Gaspar had never heard of Pearl Jam but was happy to make some music with Vedder. That night, they wrote and recorded what was to become "Love Boat Captain" - it was 11-minutes long at this point. Vedder wrote the lyric and invited Gaspar to Seattle to record the song with the band. He ended up playing B3 and Fender Rhodes on various Riot Act tracks, introducing keyboards to their bag of tricks.
• These lines are a reference to the Beatles song "All You Need Is Love":
  
  It's already been sung
  But it can't be said enough
  All you need is love
  
  Eddie Vedder is a big Beatles fan. His cover of "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away" appears on the soundtrack to the 2002 movie I Am Sam and is often included in his solo sets.
• The band made a live music video for "Love Boat Captain" and four other Riot Act songs at the club Chop Suey in Seattle with director James Frost. This was a change of direction for the band, who hadn't appeared in a music video since 1992.