"When we first put together the Great Speckled Bird, we had some very adverse reaction," Sylvia told me in our 2001 interview. "We had some situations where the minute people saw pedal steel on stage, they would get up and walk out. They thought of us as folk music, as the acoustic thing, and the idea of an electric instrument on stage was an anathema to certain people who, for whatever reason, just couldn't deal with it."

The last verse of Flies in the Bottle appears to be Ian's response to the protests of their former fans. But it is indistinct.

They all love the changes
Till we get them down home?
We keep earning? new? checks?
Excluding home
And time rolls along
Till one day we're told;
We're all alone here...