Go Behind The Scenes Of Sturgill Simpson's 'Turtles All The Way Down'

(Big Hassle Media) Grammy Award winning country star Sturgill Simpson takes viewers behind-the-scenes of the official music video for "Turtles All The Way Down," celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Metamodern Sounds In Country Music, in the latest installment of Vevo Footnotes.

In the episode, Sturgill describes how he wrote "Turtles" in a motel shower. He recalls hitting his head on the toilet after getting out of the shower, and elf angels telling him he had to deliver the song's message. He says that after singing the first verse of the song to his band, they looked at him as if he had asked them to join a cult. Sturgill says he wanted the song to sound like a combination of late '60s Gene Clark/Godson Brothers and The Beatles. Furthermore, he reveals that while he's always described the song publicly as being about drugs, it was actually inspired by his reading of books such as 'DMT: The Spirit Molecule' by Rick Strassman and the Omega Point theory by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Additionally, he discusses the Electric Sheep screensaver in the music video, pointing out that it had nothing to do with the song. Director Graham Uhelski adds that an edited-out shot where they lit a cymbal on fire with moonshine lying around the shoot looked forced, so they decided to remove it. Finally, Sturgill reveals that shooting music videos has always been "extremely awkward and unnatural," and that during filming the entire band was "high as giraffe balls." Sturgill jokes that if he had to reshoot today, he'd "wear a mask and change his name."

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