Let's see..I think this was the second song recorded, bit of a blur now.

The kids in the beginning of the song are me and my high school friends in January of 1987. We didn't have a video camera so we'd audiotape ourselves getting stoned, and this night we went to Leyva Middle School in San Jose, California - to toke up. This was one of the first times we took my 15 year old step brother Jonathan with us. You can hear Mark say (in regards to my brother's antics) "He's foaming at the mouth, dude!!" Charley even took pics. They're long gone or lost.

Right before the music kick in you hear Charley say to my other friend Che: "Were you the one that saw your parents fuckin?" And we all broke out laughing. I still have this tape, goes for about 45 minutes. Some of it's real funny. I plan to release it as some sort of techno thing as well. Once I learn how to work pro tools.

So, this song was written about a friend of mine who I used to be in another band with. I moved from California to Australia and through email, we kind of had a falling out. The air is cleared now and I'm not even sure he knows this song is about him. Ah well. He may feel honored.

If you put on headphones, my rhythm guitar is in your left ear, Gary in the right. I think it goes that way through the whole album. We didn't use amps, I think I used my Boss GT6, and Gary used a Digitech thing, not sure which one. For the solo in the middle I did use the Ibanez Universe (black and green) even though I didn't use the 7th string.

I played bass on this, and there's one part where I vibrato the fuck out of the string, that's a hats off to Yngwie and his bass playing parts. I always thought that was rad, and I will continue to do that on any bass parts I do. The bass was plugged into some line 6 thing with a bit of distortion on it. I love distortion on bass and told Gary as much. We still wanted it to sound like a bass, but have a bit of grunt. for the equipment we had at the time (1999), I think Gary did a great job. he was dedicated to upgrading his studio and always reading mags on sound and engineering and shit.

Recording was pretty laidback and fun, and vocal days were even better. because we'd drink, ha ha..Beer mostly. I'd write a couple a couple of lines on binder paper and show it to Gary. He'd tweak a word or suggest another word. Then, I'd sing the lines, drink, write some more lines, rinse, repeat til we were done. By the end of the day we'd be pretty drunk. Lots of laughs were had. It was good experience for me and probably for him. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Ahhhh!! At the very end, there's this mess of a guitar lick we both do. It was an Eddie Van Halen thing Gary had figured out (first part of the second solo in I'm the One) and showed me. I thought he would've cut that out but he didn't. He was funny like that. He liked throwaway shit and profanity within the song. He hated any sort of conformity. He urged me to be vile, ha ha..

Our ghost drummer was a running in-joke Gary and I had. We tried looking for a drummer because that'd be key. In my naivete I even gave a Flatstick demo to Virgil Donati at one of his On the Virg shows here in Melbourne, only to never get a response, ha ha. Oh well. You have to try.

For the recording we used a Roland DR-70 and some cheap outdated step writing program. I like it better than an actual drummer, it could play as fast as you wanted with NO FUCKING LIP. I have a love/hate relationship with drummers. Probably more hate than love.

Oftentimes Gary and I would alternate between drum fills, because we loved that shit. And obviously we wanted the drums to sound as real as possible.

But yeah, Gary had a Mac laptop that made that voice and he loved it and did the script for all that shit in between the songs. I really didn't get it, but it made him happy, so who am I to say no? Fuck it, it's a collaboration, right? The dead drummer stays. Vinnen DeLottri, as in Winning the Lottery. Ha ha. Jackpot.

And I thought we had done that voice before Steve Vai had used it in Fire Garden. And I am wrong. I seriously thought we were. I just googled Fire Garden release date ('96), and I am sad. Oh well.

John / Doug teaches you to play Adios: www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1hTXx-GKUw