Hall states that Jesus did "anything he wanted to do," and, anachronistically, could have surpassed the achievements of Jimi Hendrix, Wayne Gretzky, and Mikhail Baryshnikov in their respective fields.
"[1] In the liner notes of the compilation Fluting on the Hump, Hall described "Jesus Was Way Cool" as a reflection on Catholicism and poetry: After recording most of Mystical, I went up to Toronto for a week, where I performed with a bunch of great Canadian poets, including... Meryn Cadell.
Meryn's work, which dealt in part with a strict Christian upbringing, reminded me of my Catholic school traumas, and my relationship and eventual estrangement with Jesus....
The song appears with slightly different lyrics and a radically different arrangement as "Jesus Was Way Cool (Millennium Edition)" on the band's 2003 album The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.
A German-language version of the song, entitled "Jesus was so Cool", appears on the 1996 album "Das Jahr Schnee" by East German art rock band Herbst in Peking