What is Grand Funk's "I'm Your Captain" about?

Anybody wanna take a stab at telling me what Grand Funk's I'm Your Captain is about? I'm thinkin' it's a mutiny, but maybe there's a more interesting story here.

Everybody, listen to me,
And return me, my ship.
Im your captain, Im your captain,
Although Im feeling mighty sick.

Ive been lost now, days uncounted,
And its months since Ive seen home.
Can you hear me, can you hear me,
Or am I all alone.

If you return me, to my home port,
I will kiss you mother earth.
Take me back now, take me back now,
To the port of my birth.

Am I in my cabin dreaming, or are you really scheming,
To take my ship away from me?

Youd better think about it, I just cant live without it.
So, please dont take my ship from me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah ...

I can feel the hand, of a stranger,
And its tightening, around my throat.
Heaven help me, heaven help me,
Take this stranger from my boat.

Im your captain, Im your captain,
Although Im feeling mighty sick.
Everybody, listen to me,
And return me, my ship.

Im your captain, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Im your captain, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Im your captain, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Im your captain, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Im getting closer to my home ...
Im getting closer to my home ...
Im getting closer to my home ...
Im getting closer to my home ...
Ohhhh ...

Im getting closer to my home ...
Im getting closer to my home ...
Im getting closer to my home ...
Im getting closer to my home ...
Repeated to fade

 

Seems to be about a captain trying to get home on his ship before it's taken away from him.

 

Guy, sick and dying on his death bed, calling out to God hoping he can get to Heaven even though he has strayed from Christianity...

...maybe.

 

I have no idea what the guys in the band actually said about it. The two main speculations I've heard are: (a) the titular captain is supposed to be dying during that endless "I'm getting closer to my home" section; (b) the whole thing is some kind of Vietnam metaphor.

They seem to play this song about once a day on the radio at my office, and I'm thoroughly sick of it.

 

I take it as someone losing control of their direction in life maybe by goverment, band, record company, drugs or whatever and wanting to have one's own control and inner peace back. I don't know really? but that's what I have always thought.

 

The liner notes to the remaster imply that it is about soldiers in Viet Nam.

 

This is Grand Funk claiming the same artistic rights as, say, Reid who wrote for Procol Harum. He took full advantage of the psychedlic period's lax rules of composition - if you can't quite put the words together in a meaningful way, pretend like you did and those who don't follow are somehow unhip or otherwise lacking.

I'm kidding. I don't actually know the answer to your question.

 

True Tom, the strings that come in during the jam late in the track are way up there in class, up there like a Procol or Stones track. This, and to me the rhythm guitar Mark plays when he shuts up (later in the song) are actually pretty great. Made this song an FM favorite. Those simple chords winding out to the brand new era.

So somehow a band lacking true artistic vision gets lucky, hits the mark, and a true classic is born.

 

the Vietnam reference sounds right, when I saw Farner a year ago, he talked about the War in Vietnam before launching into this song, without stating the direct connection

 

Sometimes a song means just what the lyrics say.

 

has anyone noticed the rambling barely audible
vocal heard near the end of the song.

I hear what sounds like
"so bad, so bad"
in there, but not much else is audible.

This has haunted me for Years.

 

Try playing it backwords and it might become more audible.

 

Yes but what in the world does
'Dab os? Dab os?' mean.

Sorry I've been listening to 'BOB' by Weird Al too much.

 

Not sure exactly what the song is about, but it's easily my all-time favourite Grand Funk number.... forget "We're An American Band", this is their definitive masterpiece.

 

Sounds good to me as Mark has always been spiritual.

Another note on this great song is the bleed through of vocals you can hear on the refrain. Heard a story once where it was Terry trying to communicate to the band from the control room.

 

I always thought it was about Vietnam

 

Great song..

 

Were there many ships used in Vietnam?

 

The whole Gulf of Tonkin incident was about ships...

 

Yeah, that bleedthrough is Terry Knight in the control room telling the band, "alright, stop" but they kept on playing anyway. You can hear this bit isolated on the Closer To Home reissue. It's a hidden track at the very end of the disc.

As for the meaning behind "I'm Your Captain", I remember hearing a Mark Farner interview on the radio years ago about this. He said he actually wrote the song (at least partially) in his mid-teens. Mark's father had recently passed away which made Mark feel distraught and alone (understandibly so) and writing this song was therapeutic in helping him deal with the loss of his dad.

 

Okay. I'm not a war buff so that's why I asked. Thanks

 

I always thought it was about drugs. I think it inspired "Ride, Captain, Ride" by the Blues Image.

 

Seems like the best senario! It makes sense that he would write this about the death of his father.

 

That's what I remember too.

 

I always though that with this song, the Captain was Jerry! "..from the San Francisco Bay...."