Jeff Buckley notes:[1] It's a song about a friend of mine, who's led a rather excessive life...
But I am one big hypocrite because when I called him up and told him about the song I'd written, that same night I took an overdose of hash and woke up the next day feeling terrible.
Life is total chaos.The title was also used for a biography of Jeff and Tim Buckley, written posthumously by journalist David Browne, as well as an album featuring covers of some of their most famous by several artists including The Magic Numbers and Sufjan Stevens.
The song was covered by English progressive metal band TesseracT on their Perspective EP.
In October 2024, the song was remixed by Russian-German electronic music producer Zedd on Telos.