Airborne Toxic Event Frontman Mourns Loss of 'Goodbye Horses' Songwriter

Posted on Feb 23rd 2010 3:00PM by Dan Reilly
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Mikel Jollett of the Airborne Toxic Event

Some artists are flattered when their songs are covered, while some tire of it -- case in point: Leonard Cohen and 'Hallelujah.' After the Airborne Toxic Event started covering Q Lazzarus' hit 'Goodbye Horses' -- best known as the song serial killer Buffalo Bill dances to in 'Silence of the Lambs' -- frontman Mikel Jollett heard from the song's writer, William Garvey. Unfortunately, Garvey wasn't happy with Jollett's interpretation of the song.

"He e-mailed me and he was pissed," Jollett tells Spinner. "He was like 'What the f---? I've been watching your YouTube clips. I wrote this song and you're f---ing up the lyrics.'"

The words in question come at the song's crescendo -- Jollett sang the phrase "I'm lying over you" while Garvey wrote it as "I'm flying over you." "I thought I was getting the lyrics right. Even some of the lyric websites had it listed as 'I've been lying over you,'" Jollett says. "The 'flying over you' is a reference of somebody who's just so sad they literally have an out-of-body experience and decide to no longer be part of this world. I wrote him back and said, 'I meant no offense. I'll sing it your way from now on.'"

After that, Garvey warmed to Jollett and the two developed a friendship that would sadly not last very long. "He said, 'I really like your band and it's cool that you're covering the song' and we kind of just dialogued with emails back and forth," Jollett says. "We planned to maybe play a show together when we were through Cleveland on the fall tour and then a few months after that he died."

Garvey's passing last August from a stroke hit Jollett hard, naturally. "He was the first [songwriter] I ever spoke to that I had a real connection with where I felt like we were peers," he recalls. "That was the first time I ever felt like I'm not really just some total snot-nosed punk, that I'm doing something, you know? It was great, so when he died it was really visceral to me. It really meant something and then when I read about what the f---ing song actually meant, it just resonates with me so deeply."

Originally, Airborne started performing the song in rehearsals as a joke, acting out the famous 'Lambs' scene for a good laugh. But after a few times playing it, they liked it so much they decided to add it to their set, and it's since become a concert staple alongside their biggest songs. "People go to Airborne shows and if we don't play it they're like, 'Why didn't you play 'Goodbye Horses?'" Jollet says. "They think of it as part of our repertoire."

Now, Jollett says, the band will most likely end up recording a version of it, possibly to go on their forthcoming follow-up to their 2008 self-titled debut. "It's really a pretty song and if you think about what it's about and now the story of it with William, it's almost like we have to record it," he says. "We played that song a bunch this year and it felt like kind of our song, like maybe in some ways it honors his memory. We want to put that song out and take the proceeds and give it to somebody who does research into strokes – he died of a stroke -- or maybe just give it to his family."

Airborne Toxic Event perform 'Goodbye Horses'