jmtorres | Full lyrics of "Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me."

"Yo Ho, Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life For Me)"

©1967 X. Atencio & George Burns

We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!

Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.

We extort, we pilfer, we filch and sack.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Maraud and embezzle and even hijack.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!

Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.

We kindle and char, inflame and ignite.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
We burn up the city, we're really a fright.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!

Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.

We're rascals, scoundrels, villans and knaves.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
We're devils and black sheep, really bad eggs!
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!

Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.

We're beggars and blighters and ne'er-do-well cads.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Aye! But we're loved by our mommies and dads!
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!

Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.

The line about the eggs that Jack sings a couple of times makes more sense in context. I think he's trying to reassure himself of his scoundrelness?

It's a pirate's life, with little of the 'yo ho'
By Jon Burlingame, Special to The LA Times
July 8, 2003

In the opening scene of Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," a little girl on the bow of an 18th century sailing vessel sings, "Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me." For anyone who has ever taken the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, the tune will be instantly familiar. It's the most famous faux-pirate ditty ever written, considering the millions of visitors who take the ride every year at four Disney parks.

Yet, apart from three fleeting references to its lyrics, "Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me)" is buried deeper than a pirate's chest of ill-gotten treasure.

F. Xavier Atencio, who co-wrote the song with veteran Disney composer George Bruns ("Davy Crockett," "Sleeping Beauty"), has not yet seen the film. Told that the song is never played in full, he laughed, "I feel left out."

The film, which opens Wednesday, borrows several other elements from the ride, small visual nods such as the dog with keys to the jail cell, a skeleton drinking wine and an underground treasure trove, among others. But fans of the ride, which has been one of Disneyland's most popular attractions since 1967, may wonder why the song isn't used more.

Disney's answer is that the film is not "based on" the ride but rather "inspired by" it, and is therefore not required to slavishly follow every aspect of the source material. (Those closest to the subject, composer Klaus Badelt, who scored the $140-million film with aggressive "Gladiator"-style music, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski, didn't want to talk about it for this story).

The song is indelibly linked to the ride, but it didn't start out that way, according to Atencio, who also wrote the script for the ride. Atencio, now 83, started at Disney in 1938 as an apprentice animator on "Pinocchio," and eventually storyboarded dozens of Disney TV shows and theme-park rides until his retirement in 1984.

According to Atencio, park designers had been at work for a year or more on the Pirates ride before the idea of a song even came up.

"One day I got a phone call from Walt, and he said, 'I'd like to have you do the script for Pirates of the Caribbean.' So I said OK, and I put on my pirate hat," Atencio said. "I researched what I could - 'Treasure Island' and stuff like that - to get the feeling and the jargon of pirates. By the time I finished scripting it, I thought, why not a song?

"I think it was at the final story meeting I had with Walt that I brought it up. I had a rough idea for a lyric and a melody in mind, so I recited and half-sang the "Yo Ho" song. And Walt said, 'Great, get George to do the music and we'll put it in the show.' " Not being a musician, Atencio expected that Disney would assign Richard and Robert Sherman to write it. They were under contract to the studio, had already penned "It's a Small World" for the park and had won Oscars for "Mary Poppins." Instead, Disney gave the job to Atencio and Bruns, "and I became a songwriter overnight," he recalled.

Atencio's words ("We pillage and plunder, we rifle and loot ... / We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot") launched a second mini-career. With another Disney composer, Buddy Baker, Atencio went on to co-write "Grim Grinning Ghosts" for the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland and several other songs for Disneyland and Florida's Walt Disney World.

Whimsical flavor

In the Pirates ride, the song is not only sung several times by the animatronic figures during the 15-minute boat trip, it is also heard on a harpsichord (which appears to be playing itself), a piccolo and in various other musical combinations.

Unlike more hard-core pirate numbers such as "Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest," which feature such R-rated lyrics as "The skipper lay with his nob in gore / where the scullion's ax his cheek had shore," the Caribbean-style Pirates tune is mostly lighthearted and whimsical, ending with the G-rated lines "Aye, but we're loved by our mommies and dads / Drink up, me 'earties, yo ho."

Songs in pirate movies are a venerable tradition, according to film historian Rudy Behlmer ("Inside Warner Bros.," "Behind the Scenes"). The first significant one in the sound era, he noted, was composer Herbert Stothart's use of a male chorus singing the traditional "Dead Man's Chest" song in the opening moments of the 1934 "Treasure Island." "You were immediately thrust into that milieu, with the pirate mystique," Behlmer said.

Similarly, the traditional sea chantey "What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor?" was part of the score of Burt Lancaster's 1952 swashbuckler, "The Crimson Pirate." Film composers loved to write their own pirate songs. Errol Flynn's privateers burst into song ("Strike for the Shores of Dover!") in Erich Wolfgang Korngold's score for 1940's "The Sea Hawk," and Tyrone Power was heralded at the start of 1942's "The Black Swan" by Alfred Newman and Charles Henderson's high-spirited theme ("Heave Ho! Lubbers Avast! Mates Ahoy!").

When a period film opens with a tune about wenching or sailing for treasure, "there's no question what the movie's going to be about," Behlmer said, "particularly when it's sung rather than just referred to instrumentally. It's part of the dramatic construction, and it's very effective."

Cole Porter wrote an entire score for MGM's Gene Kelly-Judy Garland musical "The Pirate" (1948), and Disney's animated "Peter Pan" (1953) features Captain Hook's crew singing Oliver Wallace and Ed Penner's "A Pirate's Life" ("Give me a career as a buccaneer"). Among more recent films, the charming "Muppet Treasure Island" (1996) offered yo-ho-ho tunes by '60s pop writers Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.

Atencio is pleased that Pirates is still running at Disneyland, with his song intact, 36 years after it opened. "That's amazing to me. It makes me very happy to know that I was a part of it, and that it has lived this long and is as good now as it was yesterday."

But he has his own theory as to why the complete song isn't in the movie: "I think if they play more than six bars of the song, they'd have to pay me a royalty. I think that's why they didn't go any farther."

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Well I sure as hell can't imagine him singing about his mommy and daddy...
Plus "really bad eggs" is kind of catchy.

1967? Was this song from some other Disney thing? IS this the song the pirates on the ride sing?

Yes, it's the song from the ride.

Yes, this is the pirates ride song.

Look here (google cache of an LA times article) for details on why the entire song wasn't included in the movie.

crap, that link doesn't work anymore. Just recap why for me?
Because it's DUMB? lol

Disney says the movie was "inspired" by the ride, not "based on" it. The guy who wrote it suspects if they'd used more than 6 bars, they would have had to pay him royalties.

(Editing my post to include the article.)

Well, even Jack Sparrow had to have had a pair...

Or not. (Still working on the whole immortality thing.)

We're devils and black sheep and really bad eggs

I wonder if he hadn't, in his head, assigned an epithet to himself and Will and Elizabeth. This is just a completely random thought on my part, though. I think Elizabeth would end up the black sheep of her noble family, and I still think Jack's referring to himself when he vocalizes the line about really bad eggs... leaves "devil" for Will. Hm.

Well if you go with the theory that Jack wanted Elizabeth, I think "devil" works perfectly for Will. "Deepest circle of hell being reserved for betrayers" and all that.

Or from the opposite perspective--
Elizabeth remains the 'black sheep'
Jack becomes the 'devil'
Will is the 'really bad egg(s)' because he turned his back on the pirate lifestyle. And if the song is sung by pirates, about pirates, then what Will did would be consider wrong/bad.

"Deepest circle of hell being reserved for betrayers" and all that.

Gee, but Will knew Elizabeth first. And I'm not sure how much I *do* believe in the Incredible Attraction of Jack to Elizabeth (don't be fooled by my writing. Don't.) but if you wanted to leave Elizabeth out of Will and Jack's relationship, I could see Jack declaring Will a devilous betrayer for a) knocking him over the head and leaving him to Barbossa the first time they rescue Elizabeth and b) not doing Jack any favors when he's trying to get Elizabeth freed by the "she goes free or I shoot myself!" gambit.

Will is the 'really bad egg(s)' because he turned his back on the pirate lifestyle. And if the song is sung by pirates, about pirates, then what Will did would be consider wrong/bad.

I dunno, the whole of the lyrics is pretty much "pirates are bad, bad people!" (tongue-in-cheek in context, I suppose).

wow i love you

er... you're welcome?

Full lyrics of "Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me."

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Tosses in two pence

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