I had this tune where I had this image of Lazarus on a motorcycle that didn’t mean anything [laughs] – or at least it didn’t mean enough. But then I had this other sort of Jamaican sounding thing that had a melody I liked.
I had a bunch of friends during the Bush era that were like, ‘Fuck this shit let’s get out of here! I’m leaving! I’m going to Europe or Canada.’ They had it all figured out. And I remember feeling, ‘you know, you’ll always find some problem.’
I didn’t like what the administration was doing at the time either, but the idea of running away? And at the same time there was all these bank bailouts, and so it kind of all got stirred up in the soup of ‘Me and Lazarus’ who got a second chance. The narrator paling around with Lazarus. It doesn’t mean it’s, not a particular thesis on any particular point, it’s just a big… soup.
From an interview at the time:
I had this tune where I had this image of Lazarus on a motorcycle that didn’t mean anything [laughs] – or at least it didn’t mean enough. But then I had this other sort of Jamaican sounding thing that had a melody I liked.
I had a bunch of friends during the Bush era that were like, ‘Fuck this shit let’s get out of here! I’m leaving! I’m going to Europe or Canada.’ They had it all figured out. And I remember feeling, ‘you know, you’ll always find some problem.’
I didn’t like what the administration was doing at the time either, but the idea of running away? And at the same time there was all these bank bailouts, and so it kind of all got stirred up in the soup of ‘Me and Lazarus’ who got a second chance. The narrator paling around with Lazarus. It doesn’t mean it’s, not a particular thesis on any particular point, it’s just a big… soup.