So how did "Come Out and Play" come about? Yeah, that was the last song I wrote for that album, and I was trying to figure out how to put it together. I liked the main riff, but musically it bounces around a lot. The verses are kind of like a rap almost, more spoken than sung. And then there's that Middle Eastern riff or whatever you want to call it, which is very Southern California, going all the way back to Dick Dale, and we'd messed with some of that stuff in previous records. I guess I was trying to come up with something in a different way, that would grab you with all these elements. The "keep 'em separated" element was just because I wanted it so there was a stop, with something fun to say in the middle. That just kind of came to me at school one day. So all those things, but you never know if it's gonna work. You just have to go into the studio like "this might sound weird but let's try it anyway."

And it was your roadie that said that part? It was actually a friend of ours, who was more like a fan, from a very Latin, gang-related neighborhood. We became friends because he was in our face always yelling for certain songs - he always wanted us to play stuff from our first album. He would come to the T-shirt stand afterward - back then you had easy access to the band. We were gonna hire a voiceover guy but he had that accent so I thought we should give him a shot, his name's Blackball. He did a take, that was pretty much it. Did it a second time and that's the one you hear.

That brings us to "Self-Esteem," which didn't really sound like anything you'd done before that. Is there a true story behind that or a person who inspired it? Sort of. When I talk to people it's interesting how they think that anything a guy writes is autobiographical, which of course it's not, it could be something you've made up off the top of your head, or combined stories.

Were any of the images taken from real life, like taking her back and making dessert? The thing where late at night she knocks on my door was real, and practicing all the things you would say was a funny thing that had happened before.