From the 20th anniversary edition: Wouldn't it be cool to take a visiting alien to the beach for a little surfing? With that simple daydream, a song, and, unknowingly, an album were born. The trick was getting the track to be rock-tight, yet have its own unique swing. For a new, never-heard-of guitar sound I used a combination of of Vox Wah Wah and Chandler Tube Driver straight into an old Marshall amp, with an Eventide 949 Hamonizer providing some random pitch shifting. As luck would have it, the 949 overheated and stopped functioning just as we finished using it on the outro. That was the end of that tone! John found this unit called a Cyclosonic that gave the jets their flying, stereo image. He also added some of his recordings of random European radio transmissions to the "mothership" intro. After that, it was all about keeping the mix up on its feet. From Anthology: SURFING WITH THE ALIEN: One day I had a funny daydream about an alien from outer space dropping in for a visit. After exchanging hellos and such, I would then suggest we go to the beach for a little surfing. You know, show the alien some of the more fun things to do on Earth, rather than all that "Take me to your leader" stuff. Silly daydream, but, it gave me the artistic license I needed to blend my love of Chuck Berry with some modern guitar styling to make my own version of the surf instrumental. We had so much fun recording and mixing this one. I think the Eventide Harmonizer we were using for the guitar sound immediately fried after our one and only take of the main performance. So much for overdubs! The voices speaking in different languages you hear at the start of the track was John's idea. He had made some random radio broadcast recordings while in Europe shortly before our sessions and though it would be a cool way of illustrating what incoming aliens would hear if they were sampling earthly communications as they prepared to land.