Jimmy’s Note about “Twelve Volt Man”:

Michael Nesmith once told me a story about a man he ran into down in Baja who is the unknown inspiration for this song. During the Baja race, Michael had broken down somewhere near East Jesus and went to a small village to wait for his repair team. He ran into an American, a fisherman who lived in a small hut with what he called his “essentials”. He had a collection of my albums, packaged margarita mix from America, an old Waring blender, and a tape player hooked up to a peculiar power system made out of a Honda generator and a Sears Die Hard battery. It seems he would fish all week, and on Friday night, he and his friends would hook up the blender and tape player and make margaritas while they sang along to my songs. This ceremony would last until the gas for the generator dried up. I got the inspiration to write this when I was in Isla Mujeres, a small island near Cancun, where life had escaped most of the twentieth century. The tough part was rhyming Die Hard, but with a few inspiring margaritas, the word came. This is one of my favorite songs.