The song is perhaps best known for its opening lines: “Timothy Leary’s dead / No, n-n-no he’s outside looking in”, which allude to Leary’s use of eastern mysticism (most notably The Tibetan Book of the Dead) to frame the psychedelic experience.
Thiel was born in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, on 11 October 1967, to Klaus Friedrich Thiel and his wife Susanne Thiel.