Here is what the song is about:
What is Handlebars about? What’s the deal?
From Jonny 5’s lips:
Here’s the deal. A few years ago, I was talking to a friend.
“Hey man, I’ve never understood how you can ride your bike with no hands on the handlebars.” I said, “I can barely even put one hand in the air!”
“It’s easy.” He said, “Just put all your weight in your butt and focus on guiding the bike that way.”
So I tried it. And it worked. I was riding my bike a lot those days, to and from the sushi restaurant where I worked as a busboy. So I practiced riding with no hands on the handlebars and got pretty good at it.
On one particular day, I was riding home from work across this field next to my old middle school. The sun was setting. The sky was beautiful. My hands were in the air. It was such a simple thing, but it gave me such joy to feel a sense of accomplishment! It was good to be alive.
As soon as I had that thought, though, I had another thought. It’s good for ME, but what about everyone else? I thought about all the civilian in Iraq and all the violence around them. Was it good to be alive for them?
I thought about the tens of thousands of US troops who were stationed in Iraq as a result of the President’s decision to invade. I thought about how young so many of these soldiers were. I thought about the military in general, how people with incredible talents, abilities, and courage volunteer to be a part of something larger than themselves with dreams of accomplishing great things for humanity.
Then I thought about the politicians who send the military to war, and wondered what exactly it is they hope to accomplish. I began to wonder about this idea of “accomplishment”. As a child, every accomplishment is likely to be celebrated! As we get older, there are more conflicts about our accomplishments. At the extreme, some people gain the ability to “accomplish” horrific things, to create death and destruction.
Up until that moment, the Invasion of Iraq had made me angry. At that moment, I realized that it made me sad. With all our creative abilities, war struck me as the ultimate tragedy.
So, when I got to my apartment, I put my bike away, got out a three sheets of computer paper, and wrote the lyrics to handlebars. When I finished writing it, I called my mom and left it on her answering machine. Then I called Stephen (Brer Rabbit) and read it for him. He liked it. We brought it to the rest of the band, and the rest is history.
