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