John the Fisherman Lyrics
One, two
[Verse 1]
When he was young, you'd not find him doing well in school
His mind would turn unto the waters
Always the focus of adolescent ridicule
He has no time for farmer’s daughters
Alienated from the clique society
A lonely boy finds peace in fishing
His mother says, "John, this is not the way life's supposed to be
Don't you see the life that you are missing?"
[Chorus]
And he says
"When I grow up, I want to be
One of the harvesters of the sea
I think before my days are done
I want to be a fisherman"
[Instrumental Break]
[Verse 2]
Now years gone by, we find a man who rules the sea
He sets out on a dark May morning
To bring his catch back to this small community
He doesn’t see the danger dawning
Four hours up, oh, the ocean swelled and swelled
The fog rolled in, it started raining
The starboard bow, oh my God, we're going down
They do not hear his frantic mayday
As he says
"When I grow up, I want to be
One of the harvesters of the sea
I think before my days are done
I want to be a fisherman"
[Outro]
"I'll live and die a fisherman"
Calling John the fisherman
Calling John the fisherman
We're calling John the fisherman
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
About
“John the Fisherman” is the debut single by Primus, originally released in 1989 on the live album Suck on This and re-released on Fizzle Fry in 1990. The song details frontman, Les Claypool’s, enjoyment of fishing, which he states has been a family pastime since childhood:
“…I like to write about things I know about so that I don’t sound like a dipshit talking over my head. I fish. Some dads take their kids to football games or baseball games. My dad took me fishing. That’s what we did, almost every weekend. My uncle, my grandfather, that’s what we did. It’s a big part of my history. So, for me, it was always easy to write about. These fishing songs kept popping up, themes about the ocean, and it made it like a chronicle, a subdivision of our body of work.”
-Les Claypool
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
“John The Fisherman,” I remember years ago, I was watching the news and they had talked about, “There’s this fishing boat that’s gone down outside the Golden Gate Bridge” – I believe it was a salmon boat. Apparently, it had gotten struck by a cargo ship. They played the audio of this guy calling the coast guard, and it was unbelievably haunting to hear this guy going, “There’s a ship coming through the fog! It’s going to hit us! It’s going to hit us!” And then that’s all you hear.
I remember hearing him say, “Oh my god, we’re going down,” or something to that effect. And that was it – that was all you heard. It just gave me chills. So I thought, What would be the story of this guy? So I built this whole story of John The Fisherman, and the notion that they get struck – I don’t know if it actually says it in the song, but, “Oh my god, we’re going down.” It’s taken from the account of this fishing vessel getting struck by a ship and it going down. And they never found anybody.
- Les Claypool in a 2014 interview with Song Facts
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- 6.John the Fisherman
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