The guitar riff for "Save You" was written by guitarist
Mike McCready, who said about the song: Well, what happened with all that was, I was sitting down with Stone, and I had two ideas, and one idea I worked really hard on and thought it was totally great and then I played it for him, and he goes, "Well, that's not...well that's okay. You got anything else?" And so, the other thing I had was the "Save You" riff, and he goes, "Oh, that's cool." You know, so it's...I was really built up to wanting to play this other song, and nobody seemed to be very excited about it...but they were about the "Save You" riff. It's something I came up with, I live in California, I just came up with the riff down there, and then Stone and I kicked it around in the studio before we went in, and it just...it had good energy to it. And it was more his excitement about it that made it happen. In another interview, McCready stated: I came in with that riff and we just kind of started jamming on it. It was a blast to play. The track that actually ended up on there, halfway through the song, Matt lost his headphones. He was going off. That's my favorite part of that song, his crazy drum fills. I like the solo too, but the drum fills are insane how good they are. He's doing them without his headphones, just by watching the bass. During the recording of the song, drummer
Matt Cameron lost his headphones. He was able to finish the recording of the song by watching bassist
Jeff Ament's fingers as he played the bass. Cameron stated: It was me watching Jeff's fingers and hoping I was in time, you know? There's a breakdown of just me and Jeff. I hit a cymbal, moved my head, and the headphones went flying. A little point of interest there for the listener! ==Lyrics==