Song meaning

Brett: "(...) L.A. is burning literally and does so terribly every two years. We just lived through the worst case of it, and the disregard for nature and the hubris---the overbearing pride, if you will---of culture. On the other level, it’s a comment on the way that people in this country have their world view tilted by the way reality is depicted on television, and using L.A., the media Mecca, as the setting for a story about that."^[1]

Jay: "It's about the media making a bigger deal over lame issues than they should."

"The song was written while Los Angeles was physically burning. It actually was on fire. But metaphorically speaking the song is about the media's hype about everything that happens and how a little forest fire becomes the end of the universe and half an inch of rain is the flood of all times. Have you ever noticed that? Have you ever noticed that the news makes everything one thousand times worse?"

Additional musicians

Mike Campbell from 'Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' played guitar (all the lead guitars and the solo). John Ginty played Hammond B3.

Music video

According to Brett, the TV cameras in the video are spewing fire instead of capturing it, because reality isn't reflected, but created by the media.

The video for Los Angeles Is Burning was shot in London in the middle of a tour by the company Lightborne. Ben Nicholson, one of the directors, was inspired by two books, "City of Courts: Socializing Justice in Progressive Era Chicago" (2003) by Michael Willrich and "Fahrenheit 451" (1953) by Ray Bradbury. The cityscape backdrop was made out of aluminum and glass, materials that aren't flammable under high temperature. The moving images in the foreground were cutouts animating at 15 frames per second. The final video was a composite of traditional stop motion and after effects.

Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (FLIFF) and MVWire.com partnered up to present cutting edge music videos at Cinema Paradiso on November 20, 2004. One of the videos that was planned to be shown was Los Angeles Is Burning.

References