As I said previously, I realized I didn’t have any love songs for the “Call Me Ishmael” album. I had songs about stalkers, drug dealers, arsonists, smugglers and the homeless, but no love songs. So, I consciously sat down to write a couple for the album. So just before we were deciding on the songs for the album, I wrote three songs: “Roll the Dice”, “Strung Out” and “Top of the World” all rather quickly (and all very different) “Top of the World” was the last song I wrote.
I had been working on the chorus and really liked the guitar riff in it, but I couldn’t come up with a verse that I felt worked. I went back and started reviewing some of my older songs for idea’s I could use and found a song I wrote in the 1980's. The verses just fit so well with the chorus that I decided to use them together.
I had a real cool guitar part I was working on that fit perfectly as the intro and Walla!!!
This wound up being more of folk rock song closer in style to a Dan Fogelberg, America etc. than anything else on the album. The title was from the iconic line by James Cagney in "White Heat" and also DiCaprio in Titanic. (though I was thinking Cagney at the time)
I played all the guitars, Rob Hall was on bass, Ethan Sherman on Mandolin and Stephen Haaker was on drums. Harrison and Phoebe Crenshaw along with Diana Ortiz were on backing vocals. The song was engineered and produced by Brett Grossman and Stephen Haaker. We recorded at Perfect Sound Studio’s in Frogtown CA and Cosmic Voyager Studio in Los Angeles. Emily Lazar from the Lodge in NY did the mastering.