#btlh

It does have the element of having to sacrifice your blood in order to get back what is sometimes worthwhile… and the elusiveness of it. I mean the verses - that was written over a period of years actually, that song, and the verses were much later. In other words, the chorus, “bleed to love her,” was written at the top of a new relationship and the verses, “pretending that she’s not there,” you know, the elusiveness of all of that, was written near the end.

[T]hat song actually sort of evolved over about a two year period and when I wrote the chorus in which that appears - “bleed to love her” - uh, I had just entered into a relationship with someone and I really felt that I, you know, would be willing to bleed in order to make that work. And then of course maybe two years later, uh, things had kind of, um, drifted a little bit and the verses in there are talking about how elusive someone can be, ah, which I guess is the other side of the coin.

In these quotes, it’s about a relationship which has drifted and come to an end in about two years. Anne Heche lasted less than that, I would’ve thought (in addition, I NEVER got the sense it was quite as intense and serious as those lyrics would indicate; they fit Stevie or a long-term relationship, if I want to be generous, MUCH more), and so one might go to Cheri, I guess. Except they didn’t break up until his OOTC tour (and had been together for like seven or eight years by then?), after all. Would he call their second attempt at a relationship being in a ‘new’ relationship? I’m pretty sure her friend thought it was about Cheri, but I have mo doubts, especially after how he introduced the song all through this recent leg of the tour.

These are the first and last BTLH speeches which I videoed on the recent tour. It’s a ‘read between the lines’, ‘is he being general or specific?’, ‘has the meaning changed over time?’, ‘is he just crowbarring a song into a prior speech?’ type thing. I think it would be VERY easy to just see these speeches as Lindsey simply wanting to give some band history and relate it to a song which deals with that theme, even if that theme was initially about a different subject. He’s definitely connecting the song to the idea of the love the band (let’s be real, SnL) have shared and the bleeding that came/comes with that, though. 

SYDNEY, 22nd October

Well, I think, um, you would have to say that one of the things that has always been appealing about this band, is that we have, to a fairly substantial degree, lived our lives in the public eye. We have been couples who were going through turmoil and had written about that and had put it out there for people to see. And I think it added an element to the music that people understood and empathised with and also identified with. And in order to do that, in order to continue for all this time, through break-ups, through people leaving and coming back - which would include myself, Stevie, Christine at various times -, you know, you have to assume there is a great deal of love. And yet with that love, there’s been a lot of sacrifice, a lot of heartache at times, so, you know, I would say we’ve all done our fair share of bleeding. While we loved. So we’re going to do a song that uses those words very much in that context. 

BRISBANE, 12th November