John: Back in the day, you know on SongMeanings.com, that spot.
There was one kid that would just write out these huge elaborate meanings to our songs.
It all made perfect sense.
But it wasn’t right.
John: I picked up this bass and started playing this bass line.
Our friend Asa, Asa Taccone, was back there hanging out and he heard the bass line.
He had heard something in that, so he had me track this bass line.
As I'm doing it, he's like, Yeah, you got another part in there, you got like a bridge
for me?
I was like, Yeah, sure I go this line.
Zach: Before we knew it, we didn't even realize we were doing anything, after about 45 minutes
or an hour, we just kinda realized, Hey, I think we have a song here.
Which is interesting that it ended up being our single.
John: It’s just the way songs should happen, in my opinion.
Laid down some scratch vocals, just a rough vocal, which is actually, I'm pretty sure,
that's what's on the performance too.
The first two verses are just from that session.
Eric: that's such a crafty opening.
You don't know which way the songs gonna take you at that point.
You don't know what that implies.
John: I have a little daughter named Francis, she's five years old now.
I guess over the course of this album she's obviously been growing up.
She was two and a half, three years old when we started working on this record.
So her growing up’s been a huge part of this record, and I think this song especially,
some of that stuff just kind of seeped into the lyrics as I was writing.
Zach: That was the first lyric that was wrote for the song.
Finding the first line… once you’ve got that, you just kind of go with it.
John: A rebel just for kicks is the guy who’s gonna go out and tell you the truth about
politics, and tell you the truth about religion, and he'll do it in a funny way that's real
and serious, but he's also not going to vote, because he doesn't trust government.
John: So 1966, I wrote this lyric, mainly because it was the first year, like the acid test year.
Eric: The riots that went down in Chicago as the start of the Black Panther Party.
Zach: The music then, that inspired that movement, and that generation, was caused from social
and political climates that are very similar to what's going on now.
Zach: Kind of a straight up reference to Fight For Your Right to Party, Beastie Boys, which
came out on License to Ill in 1986.
Eric: We were just all kind of at that right age to just wanna fight for your right to party.
You know, I was raised kinda like a good kid, but then I kinda learned how to break the
rules a little bit, by the Beastie Boys, thanks to the Beastie Boys.
John: Am I gonna leave my daughter, as she's growing up, am I going to be leaving her with
the babysitter, and then one day I'm just gonna pass away and like ... how much time
do I get to spend with her?
John: With our lyric changes in the chorus, it is very subtle stuff, and it's something
that we tend to do quite a bit.
I think it's important, especially being a rock band, in a way, to have this fluid movement
that isn't held up by like ... you're not hitting that wall of, here's the block, here
comes the chorus block.
John: It’s a George Carlin quote.
Eric: Fighting a war for peace is like fucking for virginity.
It’s just banging your head into a wall over and over again, you’re not gonna win.
John: It’s another one of those lyrics that just kind of seeps in.
With all the talk right now, of building a wall at our borders, and the Berlin Wall,
it was so much just like the image that you had in your head growing up that these people
are separated by a wall, and why do we need that?
John: It was the time when 1966 like, is that movement happening again.
Zach: To me, it's revolution.
It's fighting.
Eric: The fight's always worth fighting for.
The fight's always worth fighting for.
In good times or bad times, we're always trying to be better as a people.
Eric: the whole song, you're talking about, you know, these sort of snapshots of time
and human history, specifically American history, and sort of the struggles that we've gone
through and now suddenly we're trying to make America great, and that's not how you do it.
For me, yeah, it speaks to a new age of a need to be aware and to rile things up, and
to step out of line sometimes.