"Hollywood, Ending" was one of the first songs I wrote for "Paint No Devils." In fact, it was a late contender for my solo debut, "The New Forever," but an original recording of the song was lost due to a computer malfunction. Probably for the best, I think the tune benefited from a little marinating time in the old songwriting fridge.

When I wrote this I was on a big Jimmy Webb kick, ignited when I heard Johnny Cash's version of "Wichita Lineman." Webb also wrote "By The Time I Get To Phoenix," "The Moon Is Harsh Mistress," and "MacArthur Park," among other hits popularized by singers like Glenn Campbell, Donna Summer and Richard Harris.

That summer, I even picked up his autobiography, "Tunesmith: Inside The Art Of Songwriting," but I can't say I got much out of it, aside from the fact that Webb was down on himself for slanting a rhyme in one of his best-loved couplets. It's the tearjerker in "Wichita Lineman"—"I need you more than want you. And I want you for all time. And the Wichita ineman is still on the line."

"Time" and "line" don't rhyme exactly, so Webb was sort of whipping himself in the book over his laziness and griping a bit about the lack of time he had to write the song, a superior follow-up to "By The Time I Get To Phoenix." The story only confirmed my belief in Neil Young's songwriting theory—the first idea is usually the best idea.

Anyway… for "Hollywood, Ending," I wanted to write a song with a simple conceit, like the one that structures "By The Time I Get To Phoenix." In that song, Webb measures his lover's response to his departure by the cities he's traveling through.

The chords and melody for "Hollywood, Ending" suggested a person coming to the sobering realization that a relationship is long over and that his romantic notion of rekindling it in some dramatic way is actually a delusion—she's moved on with her life and now he needs to do the same.

The verses list the ways in which it's too late to reenact the Hollywood-movie-like endings in his head. I think I got most of the clichés in there—the late-night call, the dramatic airport scene, the drunken scene outside her apartment, the blues song that wins her back. The comma in the title is just a cheeky comment on the Hollywood system as we know it. In the coming years, the internet will likely impact the movie industry in much the same way it's hit the music industry. All for the better of the art, I hope, but we'll see.

This is one of the last songs we tackled in the studio. It didn't seem like it called for much, and certainly not a full drum kit. I ended up recording the acoustic and a scratch vocal to a click track, then Andrew [McMullen] overdubbed a bunch of awesome percussion on there. There's a shaker or two, some weird wooden frog clacker, even some finger snaps. It gives it a sort of Latin feel in the choruses.

While we were tracking all that, Calvin [Brown] had been playing around with this toy organ called a Fun Machine that was out in the studio's lounge area. I think John had salvaged it that week from a neighbor's basement or something. As it turned out, the thing had the perfect sound for this track. It really filled out the frequencies around the guitar. Calvin also doubled my vocal melody with electric guitar in the chorus, and played the piano melody in the break based on something I was messing around with at the baby grand.

I think it all adds up to a nice smoky sound that's perfect for those late-night soul searches.