Songfacts®:

• Written by Jackyl lead singer Jesse James Dupree, there is little doubt what he has in mind on this track. The "heat of love's flame" is a common theme for Dupree, as he often writes in double entendre.
• A track from the first Jackyl album, Jesse James Dupree wrote it before the band got their record deal. At the time, the band's future was in question, as Dupree - a new father - was planning to leave the group and get a new job. Around this time, he ran into Steve Walsh of Kansas at a party, and Walsh suggested they write together.
  
  Dupree took him seriously and wrote "Down On Me" as a Kansas song, hoping Walsh would work on it and record it with his band. Dupree never heard from Walsh, so he made it a Jackyl song. When John Kalodner signed Jackyl to Geffen Records, Dupree played him this song, and Kalodner introduced a surprise guest. In our interview with Dupree, he told the story:
  
  "Steve Walsh walked into the rehearsal room that we were at in Atlanta, just totally coincidentally out of nowhere. He said hello to John Kalodner, and John was going, 'Look, guys, this is the legendary Steve Walsh. Look at this, can you believe it?'
  
  And so Walsh ends up leaving, and Kalodner goes, 'That's pretty cool. Steve Walsh comes in here and says hey.' And I said, 'Yeah. You know that song that you said you liked? The 'Down On Me' song? I wrote that for him and he blew me off.' And Kalodner goes, 'You know what the moral to that story is? You've got a hit, he don't.' And we just took it home from there."
• The music video, directed by Greg Vernon, took a swing at the practice of labeling certain albums "explicit" and making it illegal to sell them to minors. In the clip, rock music ends up getting sold on the black market.