| Date Performance |
2000-00-00 | | Running Time |
5:05 | | Performers |
John Popper (Vocals), John Popper (Harmonica), Crugie (Hussein Riccio) (Guitar), Brian Kingman (Mixed By) | | Comments | by John Popper (appears courtesy of A&M Records, a division of UMG Recordings) (P) & (C) 2000 Viacom International Inc. John Popper: "It's about a friend of mine, Steve, who I knew in the first grade. He had a really bad run of luck when he was a kid. I met him because his sister drowned in the river that we would later come to play in. I asked him, 'What's it like when your sister dies?' We were six and I was really curious about that. As it happened nobody talked about it and it wasn't discussed and it was this thing that kind of loomed and then we became friends. In the second grade his biological father had some problems and kidnapped him and took him across several state lines. Again nobody discussed it, and I was like, 'Wow what's it like to be kidnapped?' It became sort of a bonding thing for us, his tragendy... it was sort of weird. Then in fourth grade another sister died in a car accident. It was the only time he gave her the front seat. So he had all this repressed guilt, and as we got older this really plagued him and I became the only one he really talked about it with. So, as you do with friends you lose touch. He moved to New York, and I bumped into him while I was going to school there. We hit it off and we became friends again. We were experimenting with pot in his room and we would get really stoned. He actually turned me onto Jimi Hendrix. It got to the point where my band, Blues Traveler, was starting to take off and I was starting to get a little more positive and the anti-social aspect started to lift, because I had music and he didn't. There was a real sense of, 'I had to go sit with him in his room and feel miserable,' which is what he was going through at the time. And there was a point where I just had to leave and I didn't see him for years and years. I sort of wrote this song as a way to communicate to him. He actually read the song, like I thought he would, 'cause I figured he would be buying my records. He actually sent me a note, and we hooked back up recently and it's nice to have him back in my life. So this song is sort of a letter about him. It's sort of an open letter to Satan, actually. In the Rolling Stones song, 'Sympathy For The Devil', Satan constantly says 'Hope you guess my name'. So that's the reference in the beginning of this song, 'well I guessed your name.'" | | Appears On | |
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