Songfacts®:

• The title's letters are an acronym for Tibetan Book of the Dead. Composed by the Buddhist guru Padmasambhava in the 8th century, it's a very large book that's analogous to Christianity's Last Rites as a way to ease the transition into death.
  
  But Ed Kowalczyk, the band's frontman and primary songwriter, is careful not to be too heavy-handed with his religious references because he wants the fans to relate to Live's music on their own terms.
  
  "I'd rather just title a song 'TBD' and go about it by inference instead of by saying it or getting in anybody's face about anything," he told The Sun Sentinel in 1997. "If there is a doctrine, a message behind Live, it's just that wordless intensity, that doesn't necessarily have to mean anything."
• Lead singer Ed Kowalczyk sings as if he is the one dying, trying to cope with his imminent fate. The song details his inner conflict and injects some Eastern philosophies into the discussion, as the title suggests. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Live Freak - Beirut,Lebanon, for above 2
• This was inspired by the death of Aldous Huxley, a writer and philosopher who also had a keen interest in the effects of psychedelic drugs. When the Brave New World author was on his deathbed in 1963 after a three-year battle with laryngeal cancer, he convinced his wife, Laura, to administer LSD to ease his passing.
  
  According to a letter she wrote after her husband's death, the couple also read Timothy Leary's guide to LSD trips based on The Tibetan Book Of The Dead in his final months. Huxley had introduced his friend Leary, a famous psychologist who also supplied him with the drug for his final trip, to the spiritual tome.
  
  In 1964, Leary's manual was published as The Psychedelic Experience, which inspired John Lennon to write "Tomorrow Never Knows."
• This song was a portent of things to come, as the group's next album, Secret Samadhi, (1997) had many references to Eastern philosophy in the lyrics. That album sold 2 million copies in the US.
• Live's popularity exploded with Throwing Copper, which sold 8 million copies in America. Their performance at Woodstock '94 (which didn't include "T.B.D." on the setlist) gave them a lot of exposure and helped the album reach #1.