When Austin, Texas trio Fastball released “The Way,” the first single from their second album, 1998’s All the Pain Money Can Buy, they hoped it would be successful. And it was. “The Way” claimed the No. 1 spot on U.S. and Canadian alternative charts, reaching the Top 40 on six others, and earned the band a gold record (eventually going platinum), catapulting the unsuspecting trio into the big leagues.
Thanks to the band’s mix of classic songwriting values, sharp hooks, and always-thoughtful lyrics, Fastball’s music has continued to earn critical acclaim. Tony Scalzo, Miles Zuniga, and Joey Shuffield are still together after more than three decades, releasing their ninth studio album, Sonic Ranch, in June.
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SPIN spoke with songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Tony Scalzo about “The Way,” an impossibly catchy and upbeat tune—and one that paradoxically has its lyrical roots in a terrible, true-life tragedy.
Tell me about the lyrical inspiration for “The Way.”
I love to write lyrics, but I hate to attempt to write lyrics. You feel like, “This song is almost finished, I’ve just got to come up with some better—or any—words.” Sometimes that’s the most challenging thing. I could be a composer and write music and never have to worry about words, but I have to write these words that are in English!
Anyway, I was dry. I didn’t have any ideas of what to write about. At the time, Rob Seidenberg was our A&R guy at Hollywood Records; today he’s my friend. And I called him and asked, “What do I write about?” I just threw it out there. And he said, “Why don’t you do what the Beatles did? Look at a newspaper and see if anything strikes your fancy.”
And right away, I found this story in the regional news section of the paper. This family was looking for their matriarch and patriarch, who hadn’t been around in maybe four or five days. It was like, “If anybody’s seen these people anywhere, let us know.” So I jumped on [the idea] when I saw it.
This was before there was any resolution to the news story. It’s a speculative outcome that I dreamed up myself. I just thought, “These people are gone, and their kids are all adults. It’s their lives; they’re probably just trying to get back that flavor of young love and adventure: “Let’s go! We don’t have to tell anybody where we’re going; what business is that of theirs?”
That’s where “The Way” really comes from, and that’s why it has this sort of optimistic arrow that points through it. I wasn’t trying to say that they’re dead, that they’re ghosts or any of that stuff. I was just trying to say that they were trying to be free. And I think, without knowing it, those are some of the best lyrics I’ve ever written.
At what stage in the writing process did the actual story come out about what happened to the elderly couple, Lela and Raymond Howard?
The song was already written—and probably demoed—before they were found. I think it was less than two weeks after [the initial story broke] that they had been found at the bottom of a ravine; they had veered off and crashed.
The demo recording of “The Way” was included as a bonus track on the 25th Anniversary Edition of All the Pain Money Can Buy. It’s all you, isn’t it?
Yes. I was so excited about the music part of it that I called my friend Mickey Williams. We had been working in his little home studio in Austin, and we put it together on his synthesizer that had all these patches and a rhythm thing that you could play along to, much like an old “Fun Machine” organ. It came together very quickly; we both really liked it.
The demo version is in a completely different key than the finished recording. Why the change?
Probably just to exploit my range a little more. For “Out of My Head” and “The Way” I was in a mood to sing as low as I could, to get really close to the mic. I really wanted to sound more mature; I wanted to pretend that I was a bigger, older man. At the time I was really into Elvis Costello’s mid period, especially Imperial Bedroom. It was almost this weird, disembodied croon.
And I think it worked. Whenever Elvis Costello’s music would come on in random play at home, my kids always thought it was me!
When you brought it to the band, what did Miles and Joey think of the song?
There was not a huge reaction because we were [already] trying to come up with all these other songs for an album. This was our second album. We were on a major label, and they had already spent loads of dough on the first record, which sold [very few] copies.
The pressure was on to come up with stuff that was really good. But frankly, I don’t feel like we felt it very much because our writing had already matured really quickly. With the first album, I think we were paying lip service to the trend of being a pop-punk kind of melodic, hard-and-fast band. For the second album, we ran away from that. We wanted ballads; we wanted some sort of late-period Beatles progressiveness to it.
And what resulted was this sort of sleeper track because we were trying to come up with a single after the rest of the album had been recorded.
How did the record execs react when they heard the finished track?
We didn’t know that it was going to be the single until our manager called us from an office with all the record dudes—and yes, they were all dudes at that time—telling us that we should go with “The Way.” So we did, and stuff started happening right away.
You’re still writing strong material today. Sonic Ranch is filled with songs that hold up against any of the tracks on your second album.
Thank you. When we played an in-store [gig] recently, we only played songs off that record, and it was remarkable.
…So you don’t play “The Way,” “Out of My Head,” and “You’re an Ocean” in your sets these days?!?
Of course we do…I like playing them! We can’t go out to, say, Augusta, Georgia, and not play those songs! Who do we think we are?!
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