JUST LIKE HIS DEAR PAPA...
The Lumberjack Song A simple song about the wholesome adventures of a cross-dressing tree-feller Originating as a typical Python exit to the ‘Homicidal Barber’ sketch, where the reluctant hairdresser expresses his frustrated ambition to be a Canadian lumberjack, it has evolved into a highlight of the live show.
Palin clearly recalls the sketch’s conception. ‘It was the end of the day – around 6.45 – and Terry J and I were still stuck for a conclusion to the barber sketch,’ he remembers. ‘We suddenly came up with this ending where he gets up and says: “I don’t want to do this anyway. I want to be a lumberjack!” From there the words to the song came easily and we were finished in half an hour.’
On the night of the recording, Palin, unused to singing in public, nervously stepped forward with his ‘best girl’ Connie Booth
(Cleese’s wife). To the side stood the Mountie chorus, the Fred Tomlinson Singers, augmented by Cleese and Chapman, selected because of their Mountie-like height. Soon after its debut, Palin sang a German translation (‘The Holzfäller Song’) in Monty
Python’s Fliegender Zirkus and it began its journey to become one of the great British comic songs of all time. It has been sung by both Palin and Idle.
Among the song’s admirers was Python superfan George Harrison. The former Beatle used it as a curtainraiser on his 1974 American tour, produced the song when it was released as a single in 1975 (it reached No.51 in the UK charts and might have done better if they had all agreed to perform it on Top Of The Pops) and appeared as a Mountie singer on stage in New York in 1976. The song was performed at The Concert For George in 2002 by Palin with Carol Cleveland at his side and Gilliam, Idle, Jones and Tom Hanks in the chorus.