Vitus had written a song called "Eight After One" in March '79, and when in early 1980 we were approached to do a title song for the upcoming Dennis Christopher film Fade To Black I started playing around with the song, changing the words "Eight after one and I'm here with a gun" to "I fade to black - I was thinking of you".

It worked really well, so I took all the parts to the original song and shuffled them into what I thought would be an appropriately cinematic/dramatic sort of movie theme. (I think I added a little bit, musically, but the melody is essentially Vitus'.)

To this day, I don't think Vitus has forgiven me.

Anyway, this was recorded during the Look Again sessions, and we were actually filmed for the movie.

Unfortunately, they ditched the song, and cut our scene out (though supposedly we did get a credit for about four seconds of "Every Summer Day" that played in the background during some burger stand scene - this is unconfirmed), so the song languished till Bomp put it out as a 12 inch in '82.

To this day I have never seen the film.

—Joe Nolte

We had played a show at the Whisky A Go Go in February, sharing the bill with the Zippers, among many others. Watching another band from the audience, I noticed the current drummer from the Germs bouncing around in front of me, just to my left. Immediately to my left was a surly, mean and getting meaner by the second looking biker dude who was probably twice the guy's size. Said biker was directly behind Germs drummer guy, who, unwittingly, kept bouncing up and down and back and forth, and accidentally and unknowingly repeatedly bouncing slightly into the biker dude.

Biker dude finally decides enough is enough, makes a fist, and begins to rear back his arm.

Well, Germs fan that I am, I had to do something. So I grabbed Biker dude's arm (remember, he was probably twice as big as me as well), and attempted to give him my most earnest "we're all just having fun" smile. Biker dude looks at me incredulously, begins to rear back the aforementioned arm in my direction, and I shudder to think what would have happened had not the Whiskey bouncers shown up at that moment.

Now - if you're a Whisky bouncer and you have a choice between an 800 pound biker or a 120 pound me, who would you choose?

So I was thrown out of the Whisky, scant hours after having been on its stage.

In retrospect, the bouncers probably saved my life, as far as I know no violence ensued subsequently, and I probably could've gotten back in the club ten minutes later.

At the time, however, I was outraged. I hadn't started the trouble - I was trying to prevent a fight! (Remember, I was young and stupid.) Anyway, this song came out of all that, the first line conceived being "One more club that don't allow the likes of you inside".

—Joe Nolte

The mid-part ("See the days just die in the sunlight, etc.) was written, words and music, on December 3, 1976 as a bridge for a current song of Mike's called "Garden of Youth". Since we'd never done anything with that song, I stole the bridge for this one. The rest of this song evolved out of a fake Dylan thing I'd come up with October 8, 1978, but never finished, and the resulting combination as revised was written for "G", who I actually may end up naming.

Lyrically the usual over romantic nonsense, although I have actually had the dreams described in the song.

—Joe Nolte

Ah, yes, speaking of Vitus and my meddling, this is the definitive example. I really wanted to do a rockabilly song, but hadn't come up with anything. Vitus had demoed a song earlier that year that was essentially a slow, creepy, gothic, million voiced chant, with the haunting refrain "I take the subway home" repeated over and over. It was chilling and cool, and I had no idea how we would ever be able to do it live. The arrangement was, literally, a whole lot of Vitus voices chanting over a subdued organ.

Just for fun, I was sitting in the basement of the Church and goofing around, and started doing the thing with a rockabilly rhythm.

It worked - real well, in fact.

The lyrics are Vitus', and emerged (relatively) unscathed. Ditto for the music, though I did add enough room for some cool rockabilly licks.

Vitus hated the arrangement.

Then people began congratulating him on an outstanding composition.

Hopefully that mollified him, somewhat.

For me, I never worried about ruffling feathers in the late '70's. My concern was to create the best versions of the best songs possible, and I did not differentiate between dissecting and mixing up my own songs, or anyone else's.

By early 1980, I began to feel bad, that I had been meddling too much. I backed away, just in time for the Look Again sessions, stopped meddling as much, and let The Last become a more democratic organization.

Which is partly why we fell so fast from our exalted position in the early 80's, and which is probably why this album was never released.

—Joe Nolte