Father Said

After spending weeks with the “death tape” during the writing of I’ll Be Your God: The Psychobiography of Jim Jones, Scott Lines composed this song. Although he fronts for a Bay Area alt-country band – which he says is “appropriately” called The Dirges – the song has never been publicly performed.

Father said to lay the children down upon the ground
Close their eyes and make them go to sleep
Point their heels up to the sky
Answer not their questions why
Just tell them pray to me their souls to keep

Father said I wouldn’t lie
I can look you in the eye
Heal the sick and I can raise the dead
And if they die before they wake
Pray to me, their soul I’ll take
It’s either that or they will rot instead
Revolutionary suicide

Father said as children cried
It’s gonna be one hell of a show
We must go and leave no trace
We’re going to a better place
We leave this earth tonight, that’s all I know
Now take yourself the bitter drink
Hurry now, no time to think
The mercenaries hiding in the trees
The heavens fall, the blood runs cold
Nine hundred now who won’t grow old
No longer will they feel the world’s disease
Revolutionary suicide

Father said as children cried
They won’t ignore me now, this I know
We must go and leave no trace
We’re going to a better place
We leave this earth tonight, that’s all I know
One by one, they took their place
A strange light fell on every face
The birds above them, sitting on a wire
Stepping up the final rung
The cause of death: frozen tongue
The congregation now funeral pyre

Father said it’s almost over
Drink it down, we’ll be in clover
Leave this bitter world far behind
Can’t you see I’m growing tired?
Find another God for hire
What better God you think you’re gonna find?
Revolutionary suicide

Father said as children cried
It’s gonna be one hell of a show
We must go and leave no trace
We’re going to a better place
We leave this earth tonight, that’s all I know

Scott Lines
8-5-07