Sweet Lew

Album: Lost Dogs (2003)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song is about the basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was known as Lew Alcindor when he played in college for UCLA. He played most of his NBA career with the Los Angeles Lakers, winning five championships with the team.
  • Pearl Jam bass player Jeff Ament wrote this song and sang the lead vocal. The band recorded it during sessions for their 2000 album Binaural but it wasn't released until 2003 as part of the Lost Dogs compilation.

    "I never expected it to be on a record, but I thought it might have been a B-side," Ament said in the Pearl Jam book Twenty. "I believe it is known as the worst Pearl Jam song of all time!"
  • Pearl Jam aren't the first band to write a song about a Lakers star. In 1989, Red Hot Chili Peppers released "Magic Johnson," who like Kareem was part of the Showtime Lakers. Back in 1991, the Chili Peppers took Pearl Jam along as an opening act on their Blood Sugar Sex Magik tour.
  • Pearl Jam has played this song live just a few times, typically with Eddie Vedder dribbling a basketball while Ament sings.

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