'One day I called and left a message on her answering machine, then went off. When I came back, there was a response on my machine. "Hey, Anthony, this is Sinead, I’m moving out of Los Angeles tomorrow, and I don’t want you to call me or come by before I leave. Good-bye." I was shattered. It had gone overnight from "Can’t wait to see you again" to "Don’t call and don’t come by," I didn’t know who to turn to, so I called up John. He was irate that she could treat me like that, and he suggested that I write about it and we’d get together later that night and create a song. It had been raining for two days straight when I sat down at my dining room table, put Jimi Hendrix’s version of "All Along the Watchtower" on continual rotation for inspiration, and started writing some lyrics about what had just happened to me. I drove over to John’s house around midnight. He was like a mad scientist, empathizing with me, but absolutely possessed with the idea of finishing this song. So we worked and worked and stayed up all night, listening to that pouring rain. We finally finished the song at five in the morning and, cassette in hand, rushed out to drive through this rainstorm of rainstorms, straight to Sinead’s house. It was her last night there, and I didn’t knock, I just bundled up the tape and shoved it through her mail slot. She left town the next day. The years went by, and our record came out, and life moved on. There were tragedies and triumphs and successes and failures and people died and people had babies and I always wondered what it would be like if I ever saw that girl again.’ — Anthony Kiedis
This is what Anthony had to say:
'One day I called and left a message on her answering machine, then went off. When I came back, there was a response on my machine. "Hey, Anthony, this is Sinead, I’m moving out of Los Angeles tomorrow, and I don’t want you to call me or come by before I leave. Good-bye." I was shattered. It had gone overnight from "Can’t wait to see you again" to "Don’t call and don’t come by," I didn’t know who to turn to, so I called up John. He was irate that she could treat me like that, and he suggested that I write about it and we’d get together later that night and create a song. It had been raining for two days straight when I sat down at my dining room table, put Jimi Hendrix’s version of "All Along the Watchtower" on continual rotation for inspiration, and started writing some lyrics about what had just happened to me. I drove over to John’s house around midnight. He was like a mad scientist, empathizing with me, but absolutely possessed with the idea of finishing this song. So we worked and worked and stayed up all night, listening to that pouring rain. We finally finished the song at five in the morning and, cassette in hand, rushed out to drive through this rainstorm of rainstorms, straight to Sinead’s house. It was her last night there, and I didn’t knock, I just bundled up the tape and shoved it through her mail slot. She left town the next day. The years went by, and our record came out, and life moved on. There were tragedies and triumphs and successes and failures and people died and people had babies and I always wondered what it would be like if I ever saw that girl again.’ — Anthony Kiedis