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Behind The Music With JB, Midland, TX (2025)

06/25/2024

In an interview with Details magazine for their July 1996 issue, Blind Melon manager Chris Jones explained that Shannon Hoon would sit on his mother's porch, singing this song over, and the family considers it a song of wonderful innocence; a song of hope. Said Jones: "He wrote it at the very end of a three-day coke binge in Indiana. During the first part I don't feel the sun's gonna come out today he was on the other side of the room, trying to see through the venetian blinds which were drawn so no light was coming in, and he was at a point where he couldn't even get up." Shannon Hoon dedicated this song to the late Kurt Cobain during the band's April 8, 1994 performance on The Late Show with David Letterman. Hoon added new lines to the song concerning Cobain's recent passing. "Soup," a song released on a later album, also addressed the musician's passing. The lyrics, "I know we can't all stay here forever so I want to write my words on the face of today and they'll paint it" are on Hoon's gravestone. If you listen to this song only through the left speaker, you will hear only the harmonica and Shannon's voice in the intro. He is truly missed. 🕊️

06/17/2024

AC/DC - THUNDERSTRUCK
(1990)

AC/DC's Young brothers - guitarists Angus and Malcolm - wrote this song. They would often tell a story about how the song came about when Angus was flying in a plane that was struck by lightning and nearly crashed, but in the 2003 re-release of The Razors Edge, Angus explained in the liner notes: "It started off from a little trick that I had on guitar. I played it to Mal and he said, 'Oh I've got a good rhythm idea that will sit well in the back.' We built the song up from that. We fiddled about with it for a few months before everything fell into place. Lyrically, it was really just a case of finding a good title, something along the lines of 'Powerage' or 'Highway To Hell.' We came up with this thunder thing and it seemed to have a good ring to it. AC/DC = Power. That's the basic idea." According to The Story of AC/DC: Let There Be Rock, Angus Young created the distinctive opening guitar part by playing with all the strings taped up, except the B. It was a studio trick he learned from his older brother George Young, who produced some of AC/DC's albums and was in a band called The Easybeats. This song marked a return to form for AC/DC, whose previous three albums didn't generate any blockbusters. It was the song that set the tone for the album, a truly thunderous track that electrified the crowd as the opening number on The Razors Edge tour. The apostrophe-free album title gels with the song: Australians call the dark clouds of an approaching storm "the razor's edge."

06/16/2024

TEMPLE OF THE DOG - HUNGER STRIKE

Temple of the Dog began when Chris Cornell of Soundgarden wrote two songs in honor of his good friend Andrew Wood, who died of a he**in overdose in March 1990. Wood was kept on life support for three days after he overdosed, during which time Cornell and his band mates came to see him. Wood was in a promising Seattle band called Mother Love Bone with Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, who were forming their new band that would become Pearl Jam. Cornell teamed up with them and guitarist Mike McCready with the intention of recording some of Wood's solo songs along with Cornell's two tribute tracks. Responding to concerns that they were somehow exploiting Wood's work, the guys decided to release an album of all original material in tribute to Wood, and called the band Temple of the Dog after a Mother Love Bone lyric from their song "Man of Golden Words."

"Hunger Strike" was the last song recorded for the album; Chris Cornell wrote it because they had only nine tracks and he has a compulsive distaste for odd numbers. Describing the song in the Pearl Jam Twenty collection, he said, "I was wanting to express the gratitude for my life but also disdain for people where that's not enough, where they want more. There's no way to really have a whole lot more than you need usually without taking from somebody else that can't really afford to give it to you. It's sort of about taking advantage of a person or people who really don't have anything."
The same verse is repeated twice in this song, as Cornell felt he had said everything he could on the subject with those words. Once these verse lyrics are out of the way, it's all chorus and bridge, which works thanks to the second vocalist on the song: Eddie Vedder.

Temple of the Dog recorded the song on the very day Vedder flew in from San Diego to meet with his new bandmates in what would become Pearl Jam: October 8, 1990. It was the first time he met any of the guys, and for most of the sessions, he kept to himself (Vedder was chosen based on a tape he sent to the guys where he added vocals to some of their tracks). Chris Cornell planned to sing both the high and low parts of the "Going Hungry" chorus by himself with the help of overdubs, but he was struggling with the low register. In a defining moment, Vedder stepped up to the microphone and sang the low parts of the chorus, which made the song click for Cornell.

With two distinct voices, Cornell could now sing the verse lyrics at the beginning of the song, and Vedder could follow with the same lyrics, giving it a different sound. With both voices on the chorus, the song really came together and became the highlight of the album. It was a huge moment for Eddie, as he interjected himself into Cornell's song without coming off as arrogant, and gained the respect of his new bandmates in the process. It was Vedder's first recorded vocal for a major record, and it proved to those in the room that he understood their sound and was willing to contribute any way he could, even if it wasn't for his band.

06/16/2024

LED ZEPPELIN - WHOLE LOTTA LOVE

This blistering track from Led Zeppelin's second album contains some of Robert Plant's most lascivious lyrics, culled from the blues. It's not poetry, but he gets his point across quite effectively, letting the girl know that he's yearning, and ready to give her all of his love - every inch.
Plant's lyrics are based on a 1962 Muddy Waters song written by Willie Dixon called "You Need Love," where Waters sings:

I ain't foolin', you need schoolin'
Baby, you know you need coolin'
Woman, way down inside

The band reached an agreement with Dixon, who used the settlement money to set up a program providing instruments for schools.

The 1966 Small Faces song "You Need Loving" also coped from Dixon's song, and those lyrics are more similar to what Plant used. In that one, Steve Marriott sings:

I ain't foolin', woman you need coolin'
I'm gonna send you, right back to schoolin'
Way down inside your heart, woman
You need lovin'

06/11/2024

Blind Melon bass player Brad Smith wrote this song before he formed the band. He had moved from Mississippi to Los Angeles, where he fell into a funk. Brad told Songfacts: "The song is about not being able to get out of bed and find excuses to face the day when you have really, in a way, nothing."

At the time, Brad was dating a girl who was going through depression (she would sleep through sunny days and complain when it didn't rain), and for a while he told himself that he was writing the song from her perspective. He later realized that he was also writing about it himself. "No Rain" has a very intriguing video featuring a girl dressed in a bee costume. The bee girl, Heather DeLoach, was 10 years old when she starred in it, creating one of the most enduring images on MTV. The concept for the video was inspired by the Blind Melon album cover, which features a 1975 photo of Georgia Graham, the younger sister of Blind Melon drummer Glenn Graham. DeLoach was the first to audition for the role, and because she resembled Graham's sister so much, director Samuel Bayer (who also directed "Smells Like Teen Spirit") chose her. The bee girl parlayed the role into a credible acting career, appearing in the movie Balls of Fury, a remake of the Shirley Temple film A Little Princess, and the TV shows ER and Reno911. She got married in 2017. DeLoach recalled to MTV News her audition for the bee girl: "They told me Sam didn't look at any other tapes. I went in with my hair in braids and wearing those chunky glasses, because they said to look nerdy. My mom said we had to find some glasses before we went in, so we ran to a local mall right before the audition and bought them, and Sam liked them so much they're the same ones I used in the video." The video made #22 on MTV's Greatest Videos Ever Made countdown at the end of 1999. This was a hit on a variety of formats. It reached #1 on the AOR (classic rock), Modern Rock and Metal charts.
The first performances of this song were on Venice Beach, where Brad Smith would do his busking. "That's where the lyric and the song was inspired from, is just having to write songs," he said. "Then being in the state of mind I was in and having to come up with material to go play down on the beach for change. I played that song on the beach for change for over a year before Shannon Hoon actually joined the band and really made that song a hit." The band didn't always appreciate this song. When they opened some shows for The Rolling Stones in 1994, they left it off their setlist. Their tour manager, Paul Cummings, explained: "They had become one of those bands that hate their hit - at least at that point. I couldn't understand it, but it's not my call. That probably would have been the only song that crowd would have recognized." A hallmark of Brad Smith's lyrics is a feeling of melancholy, which doesn't always match the music he puts to the song. He describes the music to this song as a "jaunty little happy halfway island beat," which sounds like "Don't Worry, Be Happy." He explained: "A lot of my songs come from a darker place. And if you just met me walking down the street, you'd say, 'Oh, you're such a happy guy, Brad. Why the dark songs?' I'm like, 'I don't know.' For me, it just has more meaning if you can get inside someone's soul and identify with them on a heavier level and try to connect with them on that level. Because when you're sad and you're down, you're the most vulnerable, and you feel the most alone." Blind Melon's songs, including this one, were credited to the entire band even when one member wrote the vast majority of the song, as Brad Smith did with this one. Brad says that even though he wrote it, lead singer Shannon Hoon took it to a new level with his vocal. "That was a good song, and Shannon made it a great song," he told Songfacts. In 1993, Heather DeLoach reprised her role as Bee Girl in the Weird Al Yankovic video for "Bedrock Anthem" (a parody of "Give It Away" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers). The inertia described in this song sounds typical of the stoner ennui like that described in "Because I Got High," but you can't blame this one on the herb. "I wasn't even on drugs or drinking," Brad Smith told Songfacts. "It was just a tough point in my life. And the cool thing about that song, I think a lot of people do interpret those lyrics properly and can connect with it on that level, where 'I don't understand why I sleep all day and I start to complain that there's no rain.' It's just a line about, I'd rather it be raining so I can justify myself by laying in the bed and not doing anything. But it's a sunny day, so go out and face it." In 2003, this was used in a commercial where a girl in a hot dog costume meets a guy in a Pepsi costume. Love blooms.
Pearl Jam has a song called "Bee Girl" that they first performed in 1994. With lyrics like, "Bee girl, you're gonna die. You don't wanna be famous, you wanna be shy," the track was seen as a very accurate warning to Shannon Hoon that he was on a path of destruction. The song can be found on their Lost Dogs rarities album.

06/10/2024

This song is about lead singer Jonathan Davis' drug problems (mostly amphetamines); how he would feel scattered when he was under the influence. It's a track from Korn's first album, which Davis says was easy to write because he had his whole life experience to draw from (all 22 years of it). And while he sings about finding a way to cope with the drugs on this song, he didn't sober up until 1998, motivated by an incident where his son saw him drunk.

Davis would later get addicted to the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, which required rehab.
"Blind" is the first track on Korn's debut album, and also the first single from the album. It was quite an introduction, with a slow build leading to Davis' famous question: "Are you ready?"

It became one of their most popular songs and helped the album sell over 2 million copies in America.
Korn's songs are written with contributions from all members. Their guitarist, Brian "Head" Welch, has fond memories of this one. In our 2013 interview, he said: "That was a crazy time. We were over in the Malibu Hills and this dude, Chuck, had this studio - it was in the hills and it was all like vintage stuff. This guy's like a mountain man, he had a big old beard and he was kind of a mad scientist up there.

We went up there and camped out there for a month - they had living quarters and everything. We hung out there and developed this sound, Korn, with Ross Robinson, the producer. It was just amazing how it all came together."
The first video Korn made was the one for this song. It was directed by McG, who would later become famous for his work producing/directing movies (This Means War, We Are Marshall) and TV shows (Chuck). He directed three more Korn videos: "Clown," "Shoots And Ladders" and "Faget."
"Blind" started out as a song Jonathan Davis played in a band called S*xArt in 1992. He revamped it with Korn but kept many of the elements, including the "are you ready" line. After Korn released their album, two of Davis' S*xArt bandmates - Ryan Shuck and Dennis Shinn - took legal action, claiming they helped write it. As a result, they were added to the track as songwriters along with the five members of Korn.

Apparently there was no animosity between Shuck and Davis. In 1997, Shuck's band O**y became the first act signed to Korn's Elementree Records. They had a hit out of the gate with a cover of New Order's "Blue Monday."
"Blind" is one of the most enduring Korn songs. It's been in their setlist since they released it, and it found a new audience in the age of TikTok when it showed up in loads of videos.

Korn was ahead of the game when it came to raw self-expression in songs, with Jonathan Davis openly singing about (and talking about) his mental health issues and struggles with addiction. A generation later, this was the norm, but Korn's music stands out for its unadulterated fury. Their debut album held up very well and got a lot of support from Millennials. In 2014, Korn played the entire album front-to-back when they toured.

06/10/2024

Folk singer-songwriter John Prine explained in a Performing Songwriter interview how this track was sparked from a John Lennon tune and evolved into a poignant song about growing old:

"I heard the John Lennon song 'Across The Universe,' and he had a lot of reverb on his voice. I was thinking about hollering into a hollow log, trying to get through to somebody - 'Hello in there.' That was the beginning thought, then it went to old people

I've always had an affinity for old people. I used to help a buddy with his newspaper route, and I delivered to a Baptist old peoples home where we'd have to go room-to-room. And some of the patients would kind of pretend that you were a grandchild or nephew that had come to visit, instead of the guy delivering papers. That always stuck in my head.

It was all that stuff together, along with that pretty melody. I don't think I've done a show without singing 'Hello in There.' Nothing in it wears on me."
Prine on choosing the name Loretta for the song's aging wife (as told to Bruce Po***ck): "The names mean a lot. You know, like Loretta in 'Hello In There.' I wanted to pick a name that could be an old person's name, but I didn't want it to stick out so much. People go through phases one year where a lot of them will name their kids the same... and I was just thinking that it was very possible that the kind of person I had in mind could be called Loretta. And it's not so strange that it puts her in a complete time period."

As for the name of old factory friend Rudy, Prine explains: "We used to live in this three-room flat and across the street there was this dog who would never come in and the dog's name was Rudy. And the lady used to come out at five o'clock every night and go 'Ru-dee! Ru-dee!' And I was sitting there writing and suddenly I go 'Rudy! Yeah! I got that.'"

06/08/2024

STONE TEMPLE PILOTS - PLUSH

The lyrics were inspired, in part, by an unfortunate news story in Stone Temple Pilots' hometown of San Diego, California about a missing young woman who was later discovered dead by local law enforcement ("And I feel, when the dogs begin to smell her...").

At a concert in Columbus, Ohio on May 17, 2008, lead singer Scott Weiland said that he and STP drummer Eric Kretz wrote the lyrics in a hot tub after hearing the story. Weiland has described the song as "a metaphor for a lost obsessive relationship."
This was STP's breakthrough hit off of their major label debut album. Like all of their songs of the era, it is a band composition. When Songfacts spoke with drummer Eric Kretz in 2013, he said it was a very collaborative and energetic time for the band in terms of songwriting. "There was enthusiasm and excitement and everyone was in the room and participating creatively, artistically," he explained. "It's the most fun time to be in a band when everyone has the same ideas and everyone has the same goals."
Bassist Robert DeLeo came up with the riff for this song in the back of a U-Haul truck the band was using for a local tour. The song's instantly recognizable chord structure was inspired by DeLeo's love of ragtime music.
The most widely broadcast version of this song is an acoustic rendition that starts with Scott Weiland saying, "This is a song called 'Plush.'"

Thanks to "S*x Type Thing," the group was invited on the MTV metal show Headbangers Ball for an interview. Guitarist Dean DeLeo suggested that he bring his acoustic guitar so they could perform this song on the show, and the network agreed.

The show was recorded on December 5, 1992 after the band had finished a month of concerts opening for Rage Against the Machine. They took a plane to New York and ingested some pills to help them sleep. When they got to their hotel, DeLeo and Weiland both got sick, but they made it to the MTV Studios for the 6 a.m. taping, as Weiland recalled, "high as zombies."

In this altered state, DeLeo and Weiland performed the song, delivering a far more relaxed and poignant version than is heard on the album. This version also turned out to be quite radio-friendly, and lots of stations started playing it. This version made #39 on the US Airplay chart on August 14, 1993 and stirred a great deal of interest in the band, although listeners who bought the Core album expecting similarly mellow fare were in for an unpleasant surprise.

In America, no singles from Core were made available for purchase, since Atlantic Records liked selling $16 albums more than $2 singles.
The title never appears in the lyric, which is also true of the Core tracks "S*x Type Thing" and "Naked Sunday."

The line, "Where you going with the mask I found?" is often misheard as "Where you going with the master plan?" >>
Scott Weiland told the English music publication NME that the band's name came from Scientifically Treated Petroleum - petrol. He explained: "STP came from the image of STP oil treatment, which was always a powerful image. Richard Petty, the famous NASCAR racing driver, had the STP logo on his car and he was always a sort of renegade. We were Shirley Temple's P***y but we had to change. I think it was Dean (Deleo - STP guitarist or Robert (DeLeo - STP bassist) who said, 'How about Stereo Temple Pirates?' and then we decided on Stone Temple Pilots. It wasn't a very quick process."
This won the 1993 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance with Vocal. It's the group's only Grammy win.
Core was the only STP album where vocalist Scott Weiland was identified only by his last name. Some critics took this as a sign of pretense, mocking it in reviews that compared the band unfavorably to the likes of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Nirvana. With many grunge bands being snatched up by record labels and foisted on the public at this time, it's understandable why critics were wary, but the Core album would later be vindicated as a classic of the era.
The video was directed by Josh Taft, who also did the videos for "S*x Type Thing" and "Lady Picture Show." The "Plush" video got a lot of airplay on MTV and earned Stone Temple Pilots the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist in 1993.
When they made the Core album, Stone Temple Pilots were motivated by fear they wouldn't get a chance to make another one. "When you get signed to a major label, it's scary, and you don't know what's going to happen next," Robert DeLeo told Songfacts. "So it was great that that first record allowed us to make a second one, and a third one. I look at that as a really good time right then. Ambitious."

06/08/2024

TEARS FOR FEARS - MAD WORLD

This song is about a depressed young person who feels out of place in this world. He sees life as being empty, and looks for ways to escape the pain. The line, "The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had" suggests thoughts of su***de, but according to Roland Orzabal, who wrote the lyrics, it relates to the psychologist Arthur Janov's idea that our most dramatic dreams release the most tension. So, the guy in the song isn't necessarily looking to die - he wakes up from morbid, lucid dreams feeling better.
Roland Orzabal came up with this song when he was living in an apartment in Bath, England, with his girlfriend, Caroline, who later became his wife. She was working three jobs so he could work on his music (a keeper, for sure!). Orzabal spent a lot of time strumming his acoustic guitar while staring out the window, watching people go about their business. "It's a bizarre viewpoint to watch people go about their daily routine, having to work for a living when you're sitting in a flat, unemployed," he told Top 2000 a gogo. "That's where it came from."
This was written by Roland Orzabal but sung by the group's other vocalist, Curt Smith, who connected with the tune right way. He explained it "was easy for me to sing because I could relate to Roland's lyrics. We were both the middle of three sons and had been brought up by single mothers with absent fathers. My father always worked away, and died when I was 17, but I hated him by that point. It hit me later in life, but back then I was teenage and angry. The song was the perfect platform. It worked better with my voice because it's more melancholic, darker."
Orzabal, then 19 years old, wrote the song on an acoustic guitar after hearing Duran Duran's "Girls On Film." He explained: "I just thought: 'I'm going to have a crack at something like that.' I did and ended up with 'Mad World.' It sounded pretty awful on guitar, though, with just me singing. However, we were fortunate enough to be given an opportunity by a guy called Ian Stanley to go to his very big house and muck about on his synthesizer. Ian became our keyboard player and he had a drum machine, too. All we needed was someone who knew how to work it. Eventually, we made the first demo of 'Mad World' still with me singing. But I didn't like it. So I said to Curt: 'Look, you sing it.' And suddenly it sounded fabulous."
This was Tears For Fears' first hit in their native UK, where they soon became a top act of the '80s. In America, "Mad World" went nowhere, but two songs from their next album, "Shout" and "Everybody Wants To Rule The World," went to #1. "Mad World" gradually came to the attention of American listeners, but very few of them knew about it when it was first released.

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There is a striking dissonance between the upbeat, forward-leaning music and the darkly serious lyric, which was typical of the Tears For Fears approach: they would juxtapose very intense lyrics with a pop sound.

That dissonance was eliminated by Gary Jules, an American singer who recorded a slow, melodic version in 2001 that went to #1 in the UK. Many feel his rendition is more in keeping with the lyrics. Others believe the original to be ironic, and that is lost in the Gary Jules version.
In a 2013 interview with The Guardian, Orzabal said of the timeless nature of the song: "'Mad World' hasn't dated because it's expressive of a period I call the teenage menopause, where your hormones are going crazy as you're leaving childhood. Your fingers are on the cliff and you're about to drop off, but somehow you cling on."
When Tears for Fears' first two singles failed to chart, there was talk of their record label, Phonogram, dropping them. Fortunately, Dave Bates, a shrewd A&R man at the company, listened to their new song "Mad World," slated to be a B-side, and convinced the duo it was hit material. The duo's Curt Smith told The Quietus in 2013: "Us and Dave actually believed that it was the coolest sounding thing on the album because it was very, very different. But it's pretty dark. The reason we released it was that we felt it would give us credibility. I always thought it would just take time. I honestly felt the quality was there. It was just a question of finding the right breakthrough."
The song was also influenced by the English synthpop group Dalek I Love You, whose songs tapped into Orzabal's lifelong struggles with depression: "One of their lyrics went something like, 'I believe the world's gone mad,' which summed up my feelings of alienation from the rat race. I had suffered from depression in my childhood. My dad had been in the second world war, had electric shock treatment, suffered from anxiety and was abusive to my mum. I kept a lid on my feelings at school but, when I was 18, dropped out of everything and couldn't even be bothered to get out of bed. I poured all this into the song."
Before forming Tears For Fears, Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith were in a traditional 5-piece band called Graduate. When they heard acts like Gary Numan and Depeche Mode create powerful soundscapes with drum machines and synthesizers, they realized they could scale down to a duo record that way, which they did on their first album, The Hurting. "Mad World," which is part of that album, is driven by a synth bass with drum machines forming the rhythm.
This was produced by Chris Hughes, a former drummer with Adam and the Ants.
Most of the music video features Curt staring mournfully out of a window while Roland dances outside, but a short birthday party scene includes the duo's real friends and family, including Curt's mother and his then-wife Lynne.
Gary Jules covered this for the 2001 movie Donnie Darko. The director Richard Kelly hoped to end the film with the U2 track "MLK," but he couldn't afford the rights. So composer Michael Andrews and childhood friend Gary Jules made a rough recording of this Tears for Fears song to see if Kelly thought it would be suitable. Kelly was so impressed that he used that same recording on the film.
The Paul Simon song "Still Crazy After All These Years" was an inspiration for the lyric. In that song, Simon sings:

I'll sit by the window and watch the cars
I'm sure I'll do some damage one fine day
Jules' version was the surprise UK Christmas #1 of 2003, holding off The Darkness and Ozzy & Kelly Osbourne. >>
The video for Gary Jules' version was directed by Michel Gondry (The Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind). Speaking to AOL Music in 2011, Jules explained the clip was conceived wholly by the French director. "Working with him was humbling," he said. "So easy. What I loved about his vision was that he didn't try to tell you anything about how mad the world is. No news clippings, no snide quips or saccharine melodrama. No tanks, no soundbites, no politics. Just universal images, art, life. More powerful than any issue-oriented sentiment."
Wondering what Tears for Fears think of Jules' version? Not only does Orzabal love it, he cites the cover's leap to #1 as the proudest moment of his career, saying, "I was in my 40s and had forgotten how I felt when I wrote all those Tears for Fears songs. I thought, 'Thank God for the 19-year-old Roland Orzabal. Thank God he got depressed.'"

Smith is also a fan, but points out a lyrical discrepancy in Jules' rendition. "Gary Jules sang 'enlarging your world' at one bit, but the correct lyric is actually 'Halargian world,'" he explains. "Producer Chris Hughes had a running joke in the studio about this made-up planet and a catchphrase: 'Oh, that's so Halargian.' I put it in the song, and it sounded right."

06/01/2024

Don’t Follow - Alice In Chains

"Don't Follow" is a sad conversation partly sung by guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell and partly sung by vocalist Layne Staley. The split isn't merely an artistic novelty. The parts represent two halves of a parting discussion. Jar of Flies producer Toby Wright opened this window into the song when, in Alice in Chains: The Untold Story by David de Sola, he explained that Cantrell developed the "two-sides-to-the-story type of thing" split-vocal concept. In the song, Cantrell is trying to break off his relationship with Staley because it's become too painful to try to save him from his self-destruction. It begins with Cantrell singing the opening verse:
Hey, I ain't never coming home
Hey, I'll just wander my own road
Hey, hey, I can't meet you here tomorrow, no
Say goodbye, don't follow
Misery so hollow
Hey you, you're livin' life full throttle
Hey you, pass me down that bottle, yeah
Hey, hey you, you can't shake me 'round now
I get so lost and don't know how, yeah
And it hurts to care, I'm going down

Staley then comes in, speaking as the wayward other half.

Ooh, forgot my woman, lost my friends
Things I'd done and where I've been
Sleep in sweat, the mirror's cold
See my face, it's growin' old
Scared to death, no reason why
Do whatever to get me by
Think about the things I said
Read the page, it's cold and dead
And take me home
Yeah, take me home, oh oh
Take me home
Take me home, yeah
Take me home

The sad, closing response that meets Staley's desperate request is poignant in its brevity: "Say goodbye, don't follow." The story works as a universal tale of people growing apart, but it rings too true to the actual Alice in Chains situation to believe it was anything but biographical. At the time they recorded the song for their third EP, Jar of Flies, Staley was deeply mired in he**in addiction. Problems started to arise with the previous recording, Dirt, but now they were coming to a head. Staley entered rehab just after they completed the EP, but it didn't take. He quickly relapsed while rehearsing for a tour with Danzig, Metallica, Suicidal Tendencies, and Fight. AIC had to drop out and were replaced by Candlebox. His final performance with the band came in 1996 after a rocky couple of years. He died from a speedball overdose in 2002. Cantrell was the driving force behind AIC. Disciplined, focused, and ambitious, he led the band to fame. He and Staley were close friends, but Cantrell also had a business to run and decisions to make. The biographical interpretation also makes sense knowing that AIC from their inception determined to make emotionally raw music that drew directly from their lived experiences. It was their philosophy that only honest, personal songs could be performed with real conviction. It's strange to think of Cantrell and Staley writing and recording this song of separation while still together, but it wouldn't be the first time such a thing happened. "Go Your Own Way" by Fleetwood Mac had Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks singing about their own breakup essentially as it was happening. "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes was performed at every show long after frontman Alex Ebert and frontwoman Jade Castrinos broke up.
Staley never performed "Don't Follow" live with AIC. The band didn't perform it at all until September 25, 2006, nearly 10 years after its release and four years after Staley died. New AIC vocalist William DuVall sang it, as he did for its many performances during the 2006-2007 AIC reunion tour. This is the theme song for the Instagram TV series titled Mind Wide Open. Lily Cornell Silver, wife of deceased Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell, hosts the series. "Don't Follow" was the third single released off Jar of Flies, following "No Excuses" and "I Stay Away." After going out on October 1994, it spent seven weeks on the US Mainstream Rock chart and peaked at #25 on the week of December 3.

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