Composition
The song features a memorable opening guitar riff, containing a sound very reminiscent of the alternative music scene of the time. The riff has also been said to bear a striking resemblance to a riff in Jim Croce's famous 1970s hit, "I Got a Name". Overall, the song has a notably country-western or Southern rock feel to it, reflective of the "leaving on a Southern train" lyrics.
According to Weiland, the song dealt lyrically with a number of themes, particularly "honesty, lack of honesty, my new relationship with heroin." At the time he was having relationship troubles with his girlfriend, as he was using heroin while recording Purple but told her he no longer was.
Read more about this topic: Interstate Love Song
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“Since body and soul are radically different from one another and belong to different worlds, the destruction of the body cannot mean the destruction of the soul, any more than a musical composition can be destroyed when the instrument is destroyed.”
—Oscar Cullman. Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? The Witness of the New Testament, ch. 1, Epworth Press (1958)
“Every thing in his composition was little; and he had all the weaknesses of a little mind, without any of the virtues, or even the vices, of a great one.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)