Davy Jones's Locker

Davy Jones’s Locker is the place of the dead at the bottom of the sea in pirate mythology.  The opening guitar riff is one of my favorites in the Sanoma set.  It has a surf quality, but is also really dark and foreboding.  I get the image of pirates ready to board another ship, cannons, blasting, sailors yelling in aggression and terror.   I wrote this riff during a snowstorm.  I’m a fan of rock & roll – surf, British invasion, early punk and the early fist-pumping proto-metal of Zeppelin, AC/DC, Motorhead, and Sabbath.  I think the opening riff gives away my love for the last genre. 

I am fascinated with the way humans explain life after death.  Like the sea, death can be dark, mysterious and fearful.  I used the mythology of Davy Jones’s Locker as a metaphor for heaven and hell.  Davy Jones was known as “sailor’s devil”, and the Locker cast fear into the hearts of sailors. The life of a pirate was cut-throat – full of debauchery, murder, theft, and cheating.  I imagine these sailors feared retribution for their sordid lives. 

I think most people grapple with a similar fear, and with the mystery of death.  We’ve heard stories about bright lights, encounters with God, and we’ve read in Dante and the New Testament about the terrors of hell and the paradise of heaven.  In my mind, this is fantastic subject matter for this kind of rock & roll.