Get On The Snake

Album: Louder Than Love (1989)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song is an ode to the days when Soundgarden was just starting out, traveling from gig to gig in a beat-up van (the "snake" is the highway). It wasn't comfortable, but the band was doing what they loved and hungry to make it. Like Bruce Springsteen in "Born To Run," they found themselves traveling in "suicide machines" - not the safest way to get around, but a chance to follow your dreams.
  • Soundgarden uses some unusual time signatures in their songs, which are not always easy to identify. Like "Never the Machine Forever," this one is in 9/4 time. "You can't dance to it, but it sort of sneaks up on you anyway," their guitarist Kim Thayil said.

    Thayil wrote the music for the song; Chris Cornell added the lyric.

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