The Way (song)

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"The Way"

Single by Fastball
from the album All the Pain Money Can Buy
Released	September 21, 1998 UK
Format	3-track CD, Cassette
Genre	Rock
Length	4:17
Label	Hollywood Records
Chart positions
#1 (US Modern Rock) #21 (UK)
Fastball singles chronology
???	"The Way" (1998)	"Fire Escape" (1998)

"The Way" is a 1998 single by Fastball from their album All the Pain Money Can Buy. In the U.S. the single reached #1 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart in April and remained there for seven weeks. It was also #12 on the magazine's year-end Hot 100 Singles Airplay chart.

It only reached #21 on the UK Top 40, despite having had a fair amount of airplay from independent radio stations like Forth One.

[edit] Meaning

'The Way' seems to revolve around an older married couple who decide to give it all away by packing up and going driving. Along the way their car breaks down, so they continue on foot. The theme of the song shows how these two are essentially committing suicide as they are continuing lost wandering a highway. "They'll never go hungry, they'll never get old and gray", "They won't make it home but they really don't care", this is a metaphor for how they don't care to remain hanging about with the rest of the world.

This is based on the true story of Lela and Raymond Howard, an elderly couple from Salado, Texas who drove to a nearby family reunion and kept going. She had Alzheimer's disease and he was recovering from brain surgery. When they disappeared, a reporter from the Austin American-Statesman wrote a series of articles about the missing couple. Fastball bassist Tony Scalzo came up with the idea for the song after reading the articles (the band is from Austin). He says, "It's a romanticized take on what happened" - he "pictured them taking off to have fun, like they did when they first met." However, he found out after writing the song that the couple had died. They were found at the bottom of a canyon in Arkansas about a three-day drive from their destination.