The story behind the Mother Hips' new single, 'White Falcon Fuzz,' forms some kind of lesson about the creative process. It's also an anecdote about the future rewards you may reap when you don't get the guitar of your childhood dreams.

"We were a little more than halfway done with the new record and we needed a couple more songs," frontman Tim Bluhm tells Spinner. "The label was kind of sweating us for a couple more." So Bluhm mined his journal for potential candidates and stumbled upon some jotted-down lyrics that vaguely referenced the Gretsch 'White Falcon' guitar. As a teenager, he saw a picture of it in the gatefold to Neil Young's 'After the Gold Rush' and longed to have one of his own.

He never did get that guitar. And as for the song, well, that wasn't working out either. "The melody kept on sounding too much like this Beach Boys song and I couldn't figure out how to get away from it," he says. "And then finally, I found this one chord, this C minor chord, and it changed everything. I showed it to the band the next day and they loved it. We recorded it and it became the lead track off the record. And it almost didn't even exist!"

The lesson here, kids : If at first you don't succeed, try, try playing a C minor.