The album was titled after the concept of "All", which Stevenson and his friend Pat McCuistion had invented during a fishing trip on Stevenson's boat "Orca" in 1980. According to Aukerman, "While drinking all this coffee in the midst of catching mackerel they came up with the concept of All — doing the utmost, achieving the utmost. The more they got into it the more it turned into their own religion; it's partly humor, but it's also an outlook on how to conduct your life: to not settle for some, to always go for All." Stevenson described the concept of "All" as "the total extent", and he and McCuistion had quickly written several short songs "in a fit of Allular frustration", two of which were recorded for "All": "All" and "No, All!". "The songs were only seconds long, but that was all the time we needed to make the point", he said. McCuistion also shared writing credit on "All-O-Gistics", a musical set of commandments for achieving All, such as "Thou shalt not commit adulthood", "Thou shalt not partake of decaf", and "Thou shalt not suppress flatulence". "Stephen had those chords, and I wrote my own religion for his chords", said Stevenson.