<P> The primary topic of the song itself is perhaps how two struggling musicians (Duritz and bassist Marty Jones of The Himalayans) "want to be big stars," believing that "when everybody loves me, I will never be lonely ." Duritz would later recant these values, and in later concert appearances, "Mr. Jones" was played in a subdued acoustic style, if at all . On the live CD Across a Wire Duritz changes the lyrics "We all wanna be big, big stars, but we got different reasons for that" to "We all wanna be big, big stars, but then we get second thoughts about that," and "when everybody loves you, sometimes that's just about as funky as you can be" to "when everybody loves you, sometimes that's just about as fucked up as you can be ." </P> <P> Some believe the song is a veiled reference to the protagonist of Bob Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man", based on the lyric "I wanna be Bob Dylan, Mr. Jones wishes he was someone just a little more funky ." According to Adam Duritz on VH1 Story Tellers "It's really a song about my friend Marty and I . We went out one night to watch his dad play, his dad was a Flamenco guitar player who lived in Spain (David Serva), and he was in San Francisco in the mission playing with his old Flamenco troupe . And after the gig we all went to this bar called the New Amsterdam in San Francisco on Columbus ." </P> <P> In a 2013 interview, Duritz explained that even though the song is named for his friend Marty Jones, it is actually about Duritz himself . "I wrote a song about me, I just happened to be out with him that night," Duritz said . The inspiration for the song came as Duritz and Jones were drunk at a bar after watching Jones' father perform, when they saw Kenney Dale Johnson, longtime drummer for the musician Chris Isaak, sitting with three women . "It just seemed like, you know, we couldn't even manage to talk to girls,...we were just thinking if we were rock stars, it'd be easier . I went home and wrote the song," Duritz said . </P> <P> In the live version of the song, as on the album Across a Wire: Live in New York City, the first couplet of the song is a quotation of the 1967 song So You Want to Be a Rock' n' Roll Star by The Byrds . </P>

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