And I didn't think it was good. I was gonna cut it. As a matter of fact, I was gonna put cuss words in it so it'd never get on the radio. We were done and Billy's like, "That's one of those -- the kids, Manson ..." He made the sign of the devil. I'm like, "No, man." Then it grew on me, 'cause I love, love, love the bridge. It's genius. And the lyrics took about all of 10 minutes to write. It just was there. It acquired a certain profundity as it grew. Sometimes it takes 20 minutes, it takes five years to write a 20-minute song.

Erlandson: Somewhere along the line, I kind of thought it should go into sort of a Bowie, glam, modern ...

Love: That's when you first played it, what I hated about it. I'm like, "This sounds like Mott the Hoople." It should be a keyboard. Yuck. And I just kept going only 'cause you guys wanted to. And I thought it was retarded. But also the irreverence of the process of it. And the same thing happened with "Awful" -- where I started spewing really obnoxious lyrics without thinking about it.

ATN: Tell me a little bit about the "Celebrity Skin" lyrics. Is it kind of a joke?

Love: No, it's not. It's a little tongue-in-cheek. Someone said, "Is it about you?" I don't know. It's sort of, but not really -- it's not really about me. I was doing the choreography because we had dancers, which we'll probably never use. But you probably have friends that are strippers. Just pretend you hate your job and just don't even try. That's what this song is about, the fact that you're being exploited by me right now for no money. I don't even know what it's about. You know, it's your job to figure out what it's about, 'cause I don't know. I don't know. It's burlesque is what it is. And that's why I have mixed feelings about it because it's the only song that's burlesque in a highway-to-hell sort of way.

Erlandson: It opens the door to the album. Come in. It's short, it's over. This is like the poppy, trashy ...

Love: [sings] "Ooh Cabaret ooh Cabaret ..."

Erlandson: And then, bam, the album happens.

Auf Der Maur: And then it grows.

ATN: The whole idea of "Celebrity Skin" ... there's all these people, there's all these "stars" that are in L.A. and they all have this celebrity skin. But inside, everyone's a person inside. And how they're presented or how the media presents them ... all that stuff.

Love: Yeah. There's so much you can read into it. Within the song, though, it's sort of about a girl, isn't it? I love writing about girls. It's sort of about a girl who, I don't know, I don't know ... And there is one personal kind of part in it, which is silly. In the glam part, the line "There's only us left now." Which is where I was at a club in New York and [Jon] Spencer was playing, Blues Explosion were playing. I looked around and I saw all our peers from when we started. So many of them were back at their day job or doing the German circuit or bitter.

A lot of the reasons that they were bitter was maybe because they'd been overtaken by irony, they'd been conflicted about selling out and what that means. They were talented, talented, talented composers who never lived up to their own vision. They wouldn't go Albini and just go all the way with that. They fence-sat. They signed with major labels, yet they didn't write hits. You make up your mind. Go be Ani DiFranco. Go be Albini. Go be Ian MacKaye. Or don't. If you're gonna make the commitment, you have to make the commitment. And if you're narcissistic enough to feel like your world-view is worth imposing, your building is worth erecting and being the tallest building, you've got to understand that people have got to like that building too.

I see this with filmmakers too -- 'Oh, I don't want to put the obvious scene in.' I'm not saying low-ball yourself, but don't shoot yourself right in the foot so you have to go back and be a bartender. So, I looked at a couple of people that had survived with me and prospered and not become anorexic, alcoholic, drug-addicted, dead, everything. And I thought, there's only us left now. And I was thinking of a couple of people in particular. So I put that line in. It's a long explanation for one little line.

ATN: Obviously, people are gonna look at the lyrics on this album and they're gonna interpret them as being about you, about you writing about Kurt and you writing about yourself and all of that.