After breaking up with his girlfriend, moving out of his house with his lifelong friend, and joining a 12 step program for addiction, Alex Ebert spent a year sleeping on a blow-up mattress in a tiny apartment, disconnected from the world. This time alone left him to contemplate Edward Sharpe, his alter ego. “I don’t want to put too much weight on it, because in some ways it’s just a name that I came up with. But I guess if I look deeper, I do feel like I had lost my identity in general. I really didn't know what was going on or who I was anymore. Adopting another name helped me open up an avenue to get back.” Ebert developed Sharpe into a messiah figure, saying "He was sent down to Earth to kinda heal and save mankind, but he kept getting distracted by girls and falling in love."
One such girl was the singer Jade Castrinos, whom he saw sitting on an outdoor bench and immediately knew he needed to have a relationship with her. Their resultant affair formed the seeds of what would become Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.
