Mary asked Amy Lane:

I really loved Beneath the Stain, I was listening to it at my desk at work with tears streaming down my face. I love the references to some of my favorite bands as well, I was wonder was there a band or bands you had in mind when you were writing? I hear certain bands now and wonder if they held an inspiration for you as the lyrics you wrote were something I could picture that band singing.

Amy Lane I had a couple of bands in mind-- Green Day and Cage the Elephant among them. I saw Cage the Elephant in concert two days before starting the book (I'd had it outlined for a year before that) and Matty Shultz, the lead singer, was higher than helium during the performance. He was charismatic, he did his job, but it was a festival concert that had gone long, and you could tell he and the rest of the band had been backstage getting wasted while they waited for their turn to come on. Shultz's brother--the base player--is this sort of stolid looking guy, usually has a buzz cut and turns his back to the audience when he plays. During the performance, Matty actually got on his back and wiggled on the floor so he could look up into his brother's face and fuck with him.

I thought, "Aha. That's it. That's the dynamic between Mackey and Kel right there."

I came home and looked up their videos--including "In One Ear", because that's the song I play at top volume when critics are particularly heinous--and although the band is from Bowling Green Kentucky instead of Bumfuck, California, you could see that a small town was a small town, no matter where you go, and these guys were DYING to get out.

So yeah-- I had the story in my head for a year before that--it just sort of wrote itself when I was watching a Muse concert--but by the time I'd started writing, Cage the Elephant had put a big fingerprint on the work.

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