Songfacts®:

• This driving rocker seems to have some autobiographical lyrics in which Anthony Kiedis references some sort of battle going on in his life. The title references Fort Ticonderoga, which was built by the French during the mid-18th century in northern New York. The fort played a role in both the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War.
• Bassist Flea recalled the story of the song in a track-by-track commentary: "I was lying in bed one morning. And you wake up in the morning and before you even really start having conscious thoughts, you're kind of in that dreamy kind of state, not quite conscious. I just remember hearing in my head the kind of groove for the rock part of that. And I was like, oh that'll be good. And I got right out of bed, went downstairs to the piano, started playing it, and then I started playing these other really funky chords that I thought would be a cool bridge departure and went into rehearsal that day excited about it.
  
  And we just kind of pieced those together and made this kind of two-part song; this one real aggressive, animal, feral, rockin' part and this other real kind of slinky, Sly Stone-ish, funky thing. And put them both together and ended up playing back and forth between the parts and it just sounded really fun and exciting and beautiful. Once again, Anthony took to it right away and started writing and singing stuff on it."