When I was writing that, I remember going to visit Meg, who was living with some
chicks down in Maida Vale, in her old flat. I was living in a hotel in Marylebone
High Street and had just been kicked out of my flat in Chiswick, for being drunk
and disorderly.
Anyway, I went over to Meg's. I wasn't seeing her, she was just a mate and, this
may sound really corny but I had the music and melody for the song in my head but
I didn't have any words. While I was around there we were listening to a Pixies
album called, I think it's Supernova. As we were listening to this album, we were
watching a documentary about where they make Champagne in France.
You may laugh but it's true. I was there drunk going, "Champagne supernova?
Yeah man" and to this day, everyone's going, "But what does it mean?". I can't be
arsed to explain it 'cause it sounds really corny.
Some of the lyrics were written when I was out of it. There's the words:
"Someday you will find me caught beneath a landslide in a champagne supernova in
the sky." That's probably as psychedelic as I'll ever get. It means different things
when I'm in different moods. When I'm in a bad mood being caught beneath a
landslide is like being suffocated. The song is a bit of an epic. It's about when
you're young and you see people in groups and you think about what they did for
you and they did nothing. As a kid, you always believed the Sex Pistols were going
to conquer the world and kill everybody in the process. Bands like The Clash just
petered out. Punk rock was supposed to be the revolution but what did it do?
When we started we decided we weren't going to do anything for anybody, we just
thought we'd leave a bunch of great songs. But some of the words are about nothing.
One is about Bracket The Butler who used to be on Camberwick Green, or Chipley
or Trumpton or something. He used to take about 20 minutes to go down the hall.
And then I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with hall apart from cannonball,
so I wrote; "Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball" and people were
like, "Wow, fuck, man".
There's also the line; "Where were you while we were getting high?", because that's
what we always say to each other. But the number of people who've started clubs
called Champagne Supernova is fucking unbelievable.