The One You Loved Is Gone

Album: Living The Dream (2018)
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Songfacts®:

  • Slash originally wrote this song's music for the AMC zombie drama The Walking Dead back in the mid-2010s. He's close to some of the cast members and at the time they didn't have anything other than score music, and he was trying to push them to play an original song on there.

    Slash put something together on an electric guitar that wasn't plugged in, recorded it on to his phone and sent it to somebody at The Walking Dead's music department.

    One would have thought the former Guns N' Roses guitarist would be the perfect fit, having prior experience at creating music for scary films - Slash composed "Nothing Left To Fear," the title track of the 2013 horror movie of the same name, which was from his production company Slasher Films. However, the music department didn't go for it, as the show don't want to have any recognizable names as part of the Walking Dead world.

    Slash still thought it was a good musical idea, so he introduced it to his vocalist Myles Kennedy to see if he could develop it. Kennedy came up with a verse and chorus, but by the time they recorded it in 2018, his lyrics had changed completely from Slash's original Waking Dead idea.
  • Kennedy recalled in a track by track breakdown that he was sitting in a Los Angeles hotel room when the song's first line, "And I wonder even now whatever came of you," just popped into his head. He said to himself, "That's a really strong hook. Now we're getting somewhere." And he chased it down from there.
  • Though Kennedy sounds like he's longing for a romantic relationship, the lyrics are actually about missing his Chow Chow/Golden Retriever mix pet dog named Cinnamon. Kennedy explained he had to leave Cinnamon behind at his parents' house when he started touring.

    "He was already a little older by that point, and eventually he passed away," he said. "But he was such a great dog. So, yeah - the song's essentially about Cinnamon!"

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