If I remember correctly the lyrics were written first, and very shortly after that I came up with the music. The manic drum beat, kind of like Love's "7 and 7 Is" played in 7, came into my head at a bus bench one afternoon; and I played it very hard with my fists on the wood 'til the bus came. If anyone else at the stop noticed, they didn't say anything. The melody arrived before the bus did, and by nightfall the song concept/arrangement had developed. The melody and chord structure came from the vocal line. At that time I thought I'd make it the title track of an album, and it would take up side 2.

(The picture included here as track art was originally intended as the album cover, and this image -photo tinted dark purple w/yellow highlights- was also designed, in my head, that day, based on a b&w image in one of my textbooks.)

At first I imagined lots of strange instruments in it. I later abandoned that and tried to work the song into "Night Circus", reconceptualized as a 3 piece jam, like Cream, or the jams on "Man Who Sold The World". Eventually it ended up in that form on "A Man Who Was Here". There is a version recorded for "Night Circus", which I like very much and intend to release someday.

For "A Man Who Was Here", this was intended to start off side 2. The album was arranged so that side one was all shorter tunes, and side two featured 3 longer songs with extended solos.

After the second verse and chorus, the jam section was left totally open. The fretless guitar in this section was bought with money I had been saving for the session. I bought it about 2 weeks before recording for $170. The first time I saw it had been years earlier, and I'd always wanted it. Originally it had been selling for something like $1200. Each year, it went down in price, as people would come in and play it for hours, but never buy it. Finally, one day I walked in and there it was at a price I could afford. I found out it had been sitting in the store for 10 years. I had to shave off recording time to buy it, but I ended up with more time than I needed, shaving off 10 hours. (I was originally going to do 2 fifteen hour sessions-totally unnecessary.) I'm very glad I took the chance to do it. It's a fantastic instrument, very unique and distinctive and capable of a wide variety of sounds.

The drum solo is a first take, straight through, and in retrospect I wish I'd done a second take. The solo's O.K., but I was capable of much better. At the time, I didn't want to interfere with the natural flow, and chose to leave it just the way it happened.

The voices at the end, during the coda, were fed through my 16 second delay. This enabled me to put an entire chorus of backing vocals on one track and use the delay to alter the pitch. It also enabled me to put in the backwards and slowed down voice, which is saying" there is no backwards message". This section ran overtime into the count off for "King of the Night"; I left it alone.

All of the released and recorded versions differ pretty significantly from how the song was originally conceived. There are two more variations on this I'd like to try, so you never know- they may pop up one day.