TREVOR: This song was written when I was about 21 years old. That’s a long time ago. It predates the High Dials. Yes the name was inspired by the Spiderman villain. But there are also references to Greek mythology in there.
Like Chinese Boxes, it wasn’t intended for the record nor was it recorded in the ballroom. It was the first night of preproduction in Shane Watt’s practice studio. We were experimenting with four-track cassette recording. We had played the song together once or twice and no one really knew what he was doing. Basically it’s a recorded jam session. All the music except the vocals are live. I started kicking my amp towards the end, no one was taking it very seriously. We were also wasted. But it’s a special moment captured on tape.
There’s nothing better than a perfect demo for me. I was attached to this take for a long time and eventually the others agreed and we included it. Mike Musmanno mixed Robbie’s end guitar extra loud. It was melting the paint off the walls in his mixing studio at 4am.
ROBBIE: This recording is from our demo sessions. It was recorded live off the floor with Shane pulling double duty: manning the controls AND playing bass. Trev overdubbed his vocals and I doubled the main guitar bits later with my Rickenbacker, but the rest is just us “in the moment”. And this was a particularly tense moment.
There were nasty vibes brewing in the room on this evening for various reasons. I remember being in a dark mood and also very tired from working all day and playing all night for several days straight. I had also probably had a bit too much to drink. Max and I got into an argument over some sonic issue – I believe it was to do with my use of a chorus effect. I was going for a kind of a Felt-ish, 80’s jangle thing but, for Max, the sound just brought back memories of crap 90’s bands that he hated. Anyway, a verbal fight broke out right before this take. It must have given us all a strong dose of adrenaline because we nailed the song and then proceeded into a totally unscripted outtro jam that sounds (by our standards anyway) like all-out warfare. Max leads the way with crazed-yet-incredibly-tight rolls. I’m not sure who won the battle, but it’s one of my favorite moments on the record.
