I first became aware of the “West Memphis Three” via an
HBO documentary entitled “Paradise Lost”. It wasn’t until I saw
the sequel, “Paradise Lost 2: Revelations” that I had a strong feeling
that the accused were innocent. It was also a book by Mara Leveritt
entitled, “Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three”
that made it fairly obvious to me that these three boys couldn’t
have committed these horrific crimes. Prevent This Tragedy was,
in a way, written from the perspective of death row resident Damien
Echols. Although I can’t come close to imagining what life is like
for him now, it breaks my heart to think of him or any person doing
hard time for crimes they didn’t commit. It is basically a song about
alienation that took on new meaning the more we worked on it.
I thought about the case quite a lot while writing the lyrics. We
couldn’t think of a title for it, so I named it after a T-shirt Thrasher
Magazine used to make that had an image of a kid falling out of
the back of the family car with a caption that read, “Prevent This
Tragedy In Your Famiy”. I always loved that shirt and thought
“Prevent This Tragedy” would make an appropriate title and
would be a nice little nod to our friends at Thrasher Magazine.
-Matt Skiba
I first became aware of the “West Memphis Three” via an HBO documentary entitled “Paradise Lost”. It wasn’t until I saw the sequel, “Paradise Lost 2: Revelations” that I had a strong feeling that the accused were innocent. It was also a book by Mara Leveritt entitled, “Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three” that made it fairly obvious to me that these three boys couldn’t have committed these horrific crimes. Prevent This Tragedy was, in a way, written from the perspective of death row resident Damien Echols. Although I can’t come close to imagining what life is like for him now, it breaks my heart to think of him or any person doing hard time for crimes they didn’t commit. It is basically a song about alienation that took on new meaning the more we worked on it. I thought about the case quite a lot while writing the lyrics. We couldn’t think of a title for it, so I named it after a T-shirt Thrasher Magazine used to make that had an image of a kid falling out of the back of the family car with a caption that read, “Prevent This Tragedy In Your Famiy”. I always loved that shirt and thought “Prevent This Tragedy” would make an appropriate title and would be a nice little nod to our friends at Thrasher Magazine. -Matt Skiba