Q&A: Conor Oberst

Your new video for "Souled Out" features a shirtless Conor Oberst. . . .
I was in a pool!

OK! I wanted to ask about the tattoo above your heart.
I got it in Vegas, when I was, like, 20. The design is from some wallpaper — sailboats and a nautical theme — from my childhood room. I had to get my mom to rip a piece off and FedEx it to me. Me and my friend Ted Stevens, from the band Cursive, decided two days beforehand that we'd do it. They're not matching tattoos — he's got an anchor — but it was like a blood-brothers ritual.

On "Sausalito," you sing, "I close my eyes, and I see a staircase." Do songs come from your dreams?
That has happened, and it's always amazing. A friend recently said to me that he thinks that songs are like dreams. Sometimes you'll dream about the day you just lived, but there'll be something in there that doesn't make any sense. That's true with songs too.

Can you pinpoint the moment you came up with the song title "I Don't Want to Die (in the Hospital)"?
Yeah, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who celebrated his 75th birthday a few months ago.

Willie Nelson?
[Laughs] No. This guy didn't mind the idea of dying, but he just didn't want to die in such an undignified place. He wanted to be out in the desert, under the stars. He told me if he was ever in a hospital that I should break him out. It's a jailbreak song.

How did you cope with the insect situation in rural Mexico?
Well, I killed a scorpion. It was an alien-looking thing, about the size of one of those mini-golf pencils. I put my boots on, sprung across the bedroom and stepped on it. That was pretty exciting! I don't like killing things, but at some point, it's you or them.

[From Issue 1061 — September 18, 2008]

• Review: Conor Oberst
• More from Issue 1061