mike watt talks w/michael t. fournier about "double nickels on the dime"

Teen years I wrote this song called "Mr. Bass King Outer Space" about blowing everybody away with a bass solo. I never wrote a song, you know? We had no thing in it - no craft. You know? It's just words. Words were like - Bob Dylan was some weirdo showed up at Thanksgiving muttering. All the other words, T. Rex, Alice Cooper. Alice Cooper, you didn't think twice with Alice! You know, he's in a band - "Be my lover." What does that mean? Well, you don't even think twice about what anything means. It's like lead guitar. They're just sounds. Smoke off water - what is that? Smoking the bong? What I found out later, it was literally about a fire or something, but that didn't help. I liked it better when we thought it was bongwater, bong smoke. We didn't know what any of them - what words were for. Words come on us. Sorta like a Lenin pamphlet, you know? What is to be done. What is to be done? But then the Trotsky thing, with the pen knife, all the art. He murdered a lot of people - the pen knife. The art uses the pen knife, it is what is to be carved, eh? We know this - it's like a bicycle, after a while you don't fall down, but is it really about riding with no hands, upside down, on one wheel? No. Where are you going to fucking take the bike? I told those kids at the bass seminar - there's granddaddy fusion at the end of the hallway - "more notes, more notes!" - luckily, physics punishes, because the more notes you play, the littler we get. Same thing with writing.