The FADER: The first time I heard this song on your debut solo album, I was 13 and I was like, "What the fuck is Westworld?"

Stephen Malkmus: I know you're younger, but maybe there were a few things you saw on the telly or on the internet that freaked you out. That movie was on TV in the '70s, and there was a part where Yul Brenner's face comes off and there's no face — just computer circuitry — but he's still killing people. It really freaked me out. It was before The Six Million Dollar Man, so it was presaging this obsession about the birth of computers and what robots could do. I found this 10" record that was an interview with him about his life, and I wrote the song around it. We added the voiceover from Yul at the top of the song and didn't credit anybody. I hope that's not an issue.

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Did you watch the Westworld TV show, and what did you think?



I think Evan Rachel Wood's really pretty, so I liked her. Duh, she's a Hollywood actor, that shouldn't be surprising. It lost the plot after a while and got out of control. It felt like Lost to me, in a way — up its own ass, but kinda cool, too. She lip-sync'd to "Jo Jo's Jacket" on the internet at one point, I liked that.