I was living in a studio flat in Long Beach at the time. Broke. A buddy of mine from Texas lived next door.

I had written the guitar for the verse, chorus and bridge drenched in reverb and a slow, saturated tremelo and I really felt like I had something. The song sat like that for a few weeks. The riff was strong but the lyric story had yet to hit me and I was getting pretty frustrated about it.

So, after working the guitar line for an hour or so one afternoon I hear my neighbor call to me from outside. I walk out and there is a huge snake on the grass in front of my door. My buddy is freaking out a bit, I guess he thought it was a rattler or something. It looked to me like a gopher snake. Since he's freaking out, I naturally start feeling like a macho man so I reach down and grab the snake. The snake in turn bites my hand and wraps tightly around my arm as I'm standing there trying to be Fonzie or something. I walk three houses down and drop the snake in this lady's back yard who likes to leave bitchy notes on people's windshields.

I had a beer, and finished writing the song that night.