Album '4', interview with Slash and Miles Kennedy: 'That point where you wave the white flag'

SLASH: That's one of the newer pandemic songs. The riff itself was just a direct result of the frustration of being stuck, and not able to do anything for an extended period of time. And the intro was influenced by the main riff as well. It has almost a Middle Eastern kind of feel or flavor to it. I wrote it on guitar, but when I went in to record it, I pulled out an electric sitar to play it at the beginning. Normally I don't pull out that sitar because it can be very cliché sounding, but it seemed appropriate for this one. And we put it through a Marshall at full blast, so it sounds a little like it's almost dying. [laughs] 

KENNEDY: Every time I hear this song I see, like, a cobra dancing in front of a snake charmer. [laughs] It’s got this very kind of slinky, spooky vibe to it. And the lyric is bizarre because I wanted it to be spooky, too, but with an almost sexual element to it. I thought, what if the whole song documents someone who thinks they're in a dream state, and is having a relationship with someone in the spirit realm? Like a ghost or something. But what's interesting is there's a twist at the end, because the person realizes that they've been in the spirit realm all along – they’ve basically been dead the whole time, and it wasn't a dream. This is just the existence that they’re in.