To Shelia

Caller - "Is shelia and actual person, a charactor of your mind...and could you maybe tell us about her?"

Billy: "Um..stuff like that it's almost like I take peices from everybody, you know, and that's sorta...it's an ideal-ized form of love, you know, it's a person we hope to meet, and a person we want to believe in. I think alot of sadness in life comes from imposing on our loved ones an ideal which we wouldn't even impose on ourselves. And it's just that idea that if you believe enough, something will come true so. But i take something from everyone, I'm ripping you all off right now and you dont even know it."

Feb. 17 2000 - 99x Interview

"To Shelia, is, was, the first song on our 4th album Adore really represents a turning point - obviously - in our band's history. For those of you that don't know, Jimmy had left the band before the making of that album, didn't participate on that album. Although his uh..laugh..he's not even here right now so it's perfect. He was there sorta spiritually, which we later confirmed between each other. But um besides that point this was the first song that I recorded for that album. I just went in the studio and played live and we later built the music on top of the song. But um, if i can describe two things about this particular song. One, the song is in essence a veiled love song. But it also talks about the idea that all we truely seek in life is to sorta feel alive. And um, so the protagonist, or the antagonist - i'm never quite sure; Is saying to the other person that, you know, "you make me real". Which is sorta a simplistic line. But it has so much hope in the idea that someone's gonna make you whole and complete. And um, in a metaphysical sense this song really symbolized to me the time, the breaking from the past. We were certainly trying to embrace new things and take a new direction with the band which in some sense of the word proved to be gratuitous and in another sense of the word proved to be disastrous. And the thing that I really think about when I play this song is that i can see myself playing in the studio, and I know damn well that there's going to be alot of trouble to follow. And when I finished this particular take that ended up on the album I was shaking because i just knew that I'd stepped off a cliff from which there was no return. When we play this song now it brings back the memory of that time, and the defiance of that time. And so this song still represents very much to me not only the idea that our fans, which we hope we count you in on that, um, represent to us as a band. But also the defiance of our band to sorta stand up to what we belive in no matter what."