Edited by Eric Nielsen
Ball Tongue: The meaning of balltongue is simple. Some thought it had to do with oral sex, but in fact its about a guy they had to work with on a T-shirt. He either had a pierced tongue or a wart or something on his tongue and he was a dick to them.
Clown: "We were playing a show in San Diego and this skinhead guy came up and said, 'Fuck you! Go back to Bakersfield!' I didn't understand that and I bent down and he tried to swing at me. Our road manager Jeff knocked his ass out. So that song is 'Clown'..."
Faget: "Everyone thinks I'm bashing gay people in this song, and I'm not. It's really about me going through high school being called 'pussy', 'queer', and all that stuff, about getting picked on by all these jocks."
Shoots and Ladders: "The lyrics are all from nursery rhymes, and a lot of nursery rhymes go back to the Middle ages. They're actually pretty twisted if you know the stories behind them, like about Black Death and stuff."
Helmet In The Bush: "It's about a
speed problem that I had. You know, you do a lot of speed and -- if you're
a male -- your penis retracts severely." In the song he says: 'Please
God let me sleep tonight.' Jonathan really had trouble sleeping, because
that's what it does to you.
The guy heard at the beginning of the song
is La Caco, a friend of the band. His real name is Michael and likes taco
bell. He's a really nice guy and he has been friends with the band for
years.
Daddy: "People think Daddy was writen because my dad fucked me up the ass, but that's not what the song's about. It wasn't about my dad or my mum. When I was a kid I was being abused by someone else and I went to my parents and told them about it. They thought I was lying and joking around, so they never did shit about it. They didn't belive it was happening to their son. I don't like to talk about that song, this is the most I've ever talked about it."
Chi: "Chi is about a lot of alcohol and drug abuse; people turn to that when they have problems so that they won't have to feel their pain." Jonathan has said that Chi is actually Chi Cheng from the Deftones: "We named it after him because he used to call it reggae, and he loves reggae music."
Swallow: "That's about being paranoid. Drug-induced paranoia."
Lost: "It's the sterotypical thing about your best friend meeting a chick, and then you're nothing."
Good God: "It's about a guy I knew in school who I thought was my friend, but who fucked me. He came into my life with nothing, hung out at my house, lived off me, and made me do shit I didn't really wanna do. I was into new romantic music and he was a mod, and he'd tell me if I didn't dress like a mod he wouldn't be my friend anymore. Whenever I had plans to go on a date with a chick he'd sabotage it, because he didn't have a date or nothing. He was a gutless fucking nothing. I haven't talked to him for years."
Kunt: "People think it's sexist but it isn't. It's more subconcious bitching at all the women who've been with me in my life. It's not about women in general, just those women who hurt me. Initially, we wrote it to send to American radio for a joke, because they always chop up all the other songs. So we were going to send a 'real' single seven days later."
Wicked: It's an Ice Cube song from his album "Predator". Chino, the lead singer of the Deftones, covers vocals.
Ass Itch: "That was the last song I wrote, and I was so burned at writing out lyrics because everytime I write I get depressed because I start thinking about things, you know? So the whole song is about that. In the chorus it says, 'Before day, my sun will be dying'. It's because I put myself on the line all the time and for what? Because people aren't going to be listening to it anyway."
Kill You: "It's about a relative I first met when I was 12. I fucking hate that bitch. She's the most evil, fucked up person I've met in my whole life. She hated my guts. She did everything she could to make my life hell. Like, when I was sick she'd feed me tea with Tabasco, which is really hot pepper oil. She'd make me drink it by saying, 'You have to burn that cold out, boy'. Fucked up shit like that. So every night when I'd go to sleep, I'd dream of killing that bitch. In some sick way I had a sexual fantasy about her, and I don't know what that stems from or why, but I always dreamt about fucking her and killing her."
