One of the best songs ever written!!! It's my favorite from Blaze. Jon has never performed it live though.

He said in an interview he wanted the first three lines to be as cliche as possible because, in his mind, hearing those cliches would be like being reminded of the ghosts from your past or the skeletons in your closet. There was a scene in the YGII script where Keifer Sutherland's character was being taken in chains back to Santa Fe to face his past and that's the scene that inspired the song.

Jon has mentioned that he was hiding behind the characters in the songs and it took him a while to see that and admit it. I've always wondered if the line "it's this world that turns a killer into a hero" meant not only Billy the Kid, but also was about Jon's feelings toward the music industry. He has said (and I'm paraphrasing) when you start out you're naive to what the business is really like and you could allow it to crush your innocence and joy that you get from making music or you can take control of it and accept that side so you can still embrace the part that brings you joy. At that time in Jon's life, his greatest love, music, had been turned into a multimillion dollar business that was killing him.

I see "You've got ot face your ghosts and know with no illusion that only one of you is going home again" to be about facing those demons and knowing that either the bad part or the good part is going to win out and it's kind of up to him which part he let win. "Tell my guns I'm coming home" is like Jon's message to the band (his "guns" in old west talk) that he's going to take control and keep the good and throw out the bad.

Well, I'll stop there. I can get waaaaaaay too absorbed in talking about the lyrics on the Blaze CD.