Rod: We were working to record the backlog of songs that Daisy and Billy had written. I think they had almost the entire album by that point. We were already talking about what could fit on the record and what couldn’t.
People don’t think about it anymore because the technology is so different but we had such a tight running time back then. You could fit twenty-two minutes on the side of a record most of the time.
Karen: Graham wrote a song called “The Canyon.”
Graham: I had written this song, the only lyrics I’d ever written that I really liked. Now, I wasn’t a songwriter. That was always Billy’s thing. But I’d scratched some stuff down from time to time. And I’d finally written a song I was proud of.
The song was about how, even though Karen and I were both living large by that point, I’d be happy living in a crappy house as long as I was with her. I based it on our old house we all lived in in Topanga Canyon. Where Pete and Eddie still lived.
You know, the heat barely worked and there was rarely hot water and one of the windows was busted and all that. But that didn’t matter if we were together. “There’s no water in the sink/and the bathtub leaks/but I’ll hold your warm body in a cold shower/stand there with you and waste the hours.”
Karen: I was a little skittish about it. I never promised Graham any future for us. And I was worried he was seeing one. But unfortunately, back then at least, I tended to just avoid problems I didn’t want to deal with.
Warren: Graham wrote a song and asked Billy to consider it for the album and Billy blew him off.
Billy: By the time Graham came in with this song he wanted us to record, Daisy and I had the album almost done. And the songs were complicated and nuanced and a little dark.
Daisy and I had talked about wanting to write one or two more songs and we wanted at least one of them to be a little harder, less romantic.
What Graham showed me … Graham wrote a love song. Just a simple little love song. It didn’t have the complexity that Daisy and I were chasing.
Graham: It was the first song I really wrote and I wrote it for the woman I loved. And Billy was so involved in his own shit he didn’t even know who I wrote it about and he didn’t ask. He read my song in about thirty seconds and said, “Maybe on the next album, man. We got this one now.”
I’d always had Billy’s back. I’d always been there for him. Supported him through anything and everything.
Billy: We said, with this album, I wouldn’t tell anybody how to do their jobs. So I wasn’t going to listen to anybody telling me and Daisy what to sing. If we’re staying in our lanes, let’s stay in our lanes.
Karen: Graham sold it to the Stun Boys and they had a big hit off of it. I was happy about that. Happy how it all ended. I wouldn’t have wanted to have to play that song night after night.
I never understood people putting their real emotions into something they know they have to play on tour over and over and over again.