The Ziggens played a cover of "Badfish" after Nowell's memorial at a gig at Knott's Berry Farm on June 1, 1996, just a month after Sublime played their cover of The Ziggens' "All the fun that we missed".
Īccording to Bert Susanka, the guitarist and vocalist for The Ziggens, Nowell's favorite Ziggens songs was "All the fun that we missed", which was reportedly the inspiration for the melody of "Badfish". Nowell had gone to a treatment facility, and been clean for some time before he died after a relapse he said would be his last, on May 25, 1996. Lyrics like "Tonight it used to be so cool/Now I've got the needle/And I can't shake/But I can't breathe," speak directly to Nowell's clonidine usage, heroin usage and withdrawals, and his inability to give up the idea that heroin gave him a cool mystique. While "Badfish" came before Nowell's heroin addiction, on Sublime's 1994 album Robbin' the Hood, the song "Pool Shark" was written at the peak of his addiction, when he started to try to get sober. His widow, Troy Nowell, said he tried heroin because "it would be a cool rock-star thing to do,” his father said that he wanted to be more creative and said that he needed to maintain a persona, and others have reported it was because other rock stars were doing it. Reportedly devoted to maintaining an image representative of the local culture and their music, Nowell started a four-year battle with heroin.
Drugs quickly became a central part of Sublime's image. It is suggested that the term "Badfish" is slang for a heroin user who gets someone else hooked on the drug, or a heroin addict, and the song is described as being an anti-drug song to the scene that Sublime frequented early on, or as being written about Nowell's drug addiction. The introduction, "a field recording of a bar", was reportedly inspired by The Specials' 1979 song "Nite Klub", and was recorded at Shannon’s Bayshore Saloon in LBC, and "Todd", who is told he can "turn the radio back on", was the bartender. įor Long Beach, California (LBC) locals of the working class in the historically a blue-collar industrial port city, the metaphors of the experience resonated as a hard-times poetry, contrary to Sublime's typical straight-forward lyrics, allowing them to tout future lyrics like they were "Well Qualified to Represent the LBC" on their 1996 self-titled album. Sublime recorded the remainder of their 1991 demo, Jah Won't Pay the Bills, with Happoldt at CSUDH and released it on Skunk Records, Happoldt's record label.
#Sublime badfish lyrics professional#
Happoldt, who went on to become a producer, guitarist, and vocalist for Sublime, asked Bradley Nowell if he wanted to record tracks in a professional studio, and the band recorded the track, which earned Happoldt a C. The first version of "Badfish " was recorded as a student project for Michael "Miguel" Happoldt, who was a recording student at the time and in a band called The Ziggens, at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) in Carson, California in 1989. Mixolydian modes are common in ska and reggae music. "Badfish" is in the key of A mixolydian, which is a mode of D Ionian of major scale.
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