THE LUMBERJACK SONG

'The Lumberjack Song' is one of the best-known and most popular sketches by the Monty Python comedy troupe. The song was written by Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Fred Tomlinson.
The sketch appeared in several forms (on the original television series, film, stage, and LP). It first appeared on the ninth episode of ''Monty Python's Flying Circus''. Each time the sketch started differently.
The common theme was of a man (originally Michael Palin, in later live versions Eric Idle) who expresses dissatisfaction with his current job (as a barber, weather reporter, pet shop owner, etc.) and then announces, "I didn't want to do this job. I wanted to be... a lumberjack!" He proceeds to sing about the life of a lumberjack ("Leaping from tree to tree"), and lists various trees by their scientific names. He then rips off his coat to reveal a red flannel shirt, walks over to a stage backed with a coniferous forest, and begins to sing about the wonders of being a lumberjack. He is unexpectedly backed up by a large set of male singers, all dressed as Canadian Mounties (several were regular Python performers, while the rest were members of an actual singing troupe, the Fred Tomlinson Singers).
In the original sketch from the program and in the film version, the girl is played by Connie Booth, John Cleese's then-wife; in the Live version, the girl is played by Carol Cleveland. In the video/DVD version of ''And Now For Something Completely Different'', it follows on from the infamous Dead Parrot sketch.
As the song continues, the lumberjack increasingly reveals cross-dressing tendencies (''"I cut down trees, I skip and jump, I like to press wild flowers, I put on women's clothing, and hang around in bars"''), which both distresses the girl and confuses the Mounties who continue to repeat and chorus his lines until they walk off in disgust. The girl cries out "And I thought you were so rugged!" (That was in the original TV sketch; in other versions, she says, "I thought you were so butch!") before running off. In the video/DVD version of ''And Now For Something Completely Different'', at the end of the song the lumberjack is pelted with rotten fruit and eggs by the mounties, who can also be heard shouting insults. Another notable difference is that in the original version the lumberjack wishes he was a girlie "just like my dear mama," whereas the ''And Now For Something Completely Different'' version substitutes "mama" with "papa," implying that the lumberjack inherited his tendency for transvestism from his father.
The music is similar to ''Là ci darem la mano'', Don Giovanni and Zerlina's duet in Act 1, Scene 2, of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera ''Don Giovanni.^[1][2]
The sketch took its inspiration from a discussion Palin had with an assistant cameraman, in which the subject was the cameraman's former jobs. One of the jobs was revealed to be that of a lumberjack.
There also exists a German version of The Lumberjack Song for which Palin learned the German text phonetically and the group of Mounties was replaced by a group of Austrian border guards. Instead of one of his parents, the German version credits the lumberjack's "Uncle Walter" as inspiring his passion for cross-dressing; this change was likely done simply for a rhyme with "Büstenhalter", the German translation for "bra", which caps the phrase preceding the "I wish I'd been a girlie..." line.
The most recent public performance of the song was at The Concert for George in November of 2002, featuring Pythoners Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam, along with Neil Innes, Carol Cleveland and special guest, American actor Tom Hanks. At the conclusion of the performance, the troupe turn to face a portrait of George Harrison projected on the back of the stage, and they salute him. During his 1974 North American tour, Harrison would play a recording of The Lumberjack Song over the arena p.a. systems just prior to taking the stage to perform.

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References in popular culture

References

References in popular culture

★ King of the Hill episode 45 (KH311):
:Hank: "Heck, I thought I'd go ahead and sharpen all the axes."
:Dale: (singing) "Hank's a lumberjack, and he's OK...."

★ In the game World of Warcraft, a non-player character in Elwynn Forest is a lumberjack named "Terry Palin".

★ In the MMORPG RuneScape, the character named "Lumberjack Leif" says, when examined: "He's a lumberjack and he's okay." From one of the game's minigames, a character can also acquire a 4-part Lumberjack outfit. All pieces have the examine information: "You'll certainly be alright wearing this/these." The enemies they are acquired from, Undead Lumberjacks, have the examine "He is one, but he's certainly not alright." The outfit looks exactly like Michael Palin's costume in the sketch.

★ In the game Kingdom of Loathing, there is an outfit named the "OK Lumberjack Outfit."

★ In the city-building simulation Master of Olympus - Zeus, lumberjacks will warn of high unemployment with the words: "A lot of people are out of work! But I'm a lumberjack, so I'm okay."

★ In the comic strip Liberty Meadows by Frank Cho, the frog Leslie in one strip dresses up as a lumberjack and suddenly can't help beginning to sing the lumberjack song.

★ In the Hollywood-themed world in the anime Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, Grandpa Masa randomly exclaims that he always wanted to be a lumberjack while ripping off his shirt (as in the sketch) in front of a Canadian wilderness-style backdrop. The voice actor for Grandpa Masa, Takeshi Aono, provided the voice-over for all of Michael Palin's dialogue when Monty Python's Flying Circus was dubbed into Japanese.

★ The Blender movie Lumberjacks in the Blender Gallery is based on The Lumberjack song

★ In the game Serious Sam The Secound Encounter, Sam sings "I am a lumberjack and I'm OK" when he picks up a chainsaw.

★ The RPG Golden Sun contains a reference to the song in one NPC's thoughts: "I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK with that."

★ The WWE used the song when wrestler Goldust sang the song in one of its skits

★ In Shining Time Station's Christmas Special, Ringo Starr as Mr. Conductor is dressed in lumberjack attire, he sings the intro to the song but changes the lyrics to "I'm a lumberjack and I'm all right."

References

1. Patrick Kidd, 'Where the other half lives', ''The Times'' (16 May 2003)
2. Keepers of the Vans (18 September 2006)