(4) Privateering (6:19)

[shangri la 1]

Privateering (Mark Knopfler)

LYRICS
Yon’s my privateer
See how trim she lies
To every man a lucky hand
And every man a prize
I live to ride the ocean
The mighty world around
To take a little plunder
And to hear the cannon sound
To lay with pretty women
To drink Madeira wine
To hear the rollers thunder
On a shore that isn’t mine
Privateering we will go
Privateering, yo ho hoho
Privateering we will go
Yo ho ho, yo ho ho
The people on your man o’ war
Are treated worse than scum
I’m no flogging captain
And by God I’ve sailed with some
Come with me to Barbary
We’ll ply there up and down
Not quite exactly
In the service of the Crown
To lay with pretty women
To drink Madeira wine
To hear the rollers thunder
On a shore that isn’t mine
Privateering we will go
Privateering, yo ho hoho
Privateering we will go
Yo ho ho, yo ho ho
Look’ee there’s my privateer
She’s small but she can sting
Licensed to take prizes
With a letter from the King
I love the streets and taverns
Of a pretty foreign town
Tip my hat to the dark-eyed ladies
As we sally up and down
To lay with pretty women
To drink Madeira wine
To hear the rollers thunder
On a shore that isn’t mine
Privateering we will go
Privateering, yo ho hoho
Privateering we will go
Yo ho ho, yo ho ho
Britannia needs her privateers
Each time she goes to war
Death to all her enemies
Though prizes matter more
Come with me to Barbary
We’ll ply there up and down
Not quite exactly
In the service of the Crown
To lay with pretty women
To drink Madeira wine
To hear the rollers thunder
On a shore that isn’t mine
Privateering we will go
Privateering, yo ho hoho
Privateering we will go
Yo ho ho, yo ho ho

[LoveExpresso]

Heard this one for the first time (as many amiter I think) after the Glasgow 2011 gig - on YouTube.. it was phantastic and I fell into love with this track immediately. I heard it live in Oberhausen and Hannover in 2011 and listened to many live versions.. BUT when the album version finally saw the light of day, I was pretty ... disappointed! The change between the acoustic and the band part is somewhat artificial, if you know what I mean, it is clearly audible that it is overdubbed and cut, not played live as a whole. Also the strange clapping annoys me, why change the clapping rhythm, it is somewhat "intellectual", "we are a world  class band, so it would be too easy to just clap along, so we have to do it a little more complicated.. and Guy's synth at the end is quite annoying.
It must be the track that is almost never played when I listen to Privateering, together with Hot Or What..
Live, it is a total other story, it is the track I really have listend to from all those 2013 recordings..

LE

[happy to be here]

"To drink Madeira wine"  Hmmmm...

I can't help but to still sing what I thought I'd heard for years before I saw the words... "To drink my dear ol' wine"   

 

[rmarques821]

"To drink Madeira wine"  Hmmmm...

I can't help but to still sing what I thought I'd heard for years before I saw the words... "To drink my dear ol' wine"   

 

It's funny because the way he says it is a bit different in the original Portuguese: it's MAH-DAY-RAH and not MAH-DEAR-RAH. It does sound like My dear old wine 

[dmg]

"To drink Madeira wine"  Hmmmm...

I can't help but to still sing what I thought I'd heard for years before I saw the words... "To drink my dear ol' wine"   

 

It's funny because the way he says it is a bit different in the original Portuguese: it's MAH-DAY-RAH and not MAH-DEAR-RAH. It does sound like My dear old wine 

Who's to say the lyrics in the book are correct...

[Stanko]

but it is Madeira wine, it all matches.

[dmg]

but it is Madeira wine, it all matches.

Only joking.  Although where do they get the lyrics in the booklets?  I've noticed in some songs the lyrics haven't matched the booklet, Planet of New Orleans being an example.  He doesn't sing "the other planet" during the chorus, yet it's in the booklet.  There are probably other anomalies I can't recall offhand so you cannot rely on the booklets to be 100% accurate.

New Orleans - the other planet
With other life upon it
And everythin' that's shakin' in between
If you should ever land upon it
You better know what's on it
The planet of New Orleans

[Stanko]

but it is Madeira wine, it all matches.

Only joking.  Although where do they get the lyrics in the booklets?  I've noticed in some songs the lyrics haven't matched the booklet, Planet of New Orleans being an example.  He doesn't sing "the other planet" during the chorus, yet it's in the booklet.  There are probably other anomalies I can't recall offhand so you cannot rely on the booklets to be 100% accurate.

New Orleans - the other planet
With other life upon it
And everythin' that's shakin' in between
If you should ever land upon it
You better know what's on it
The planet of New Orleans

i guess it is because the booklet could be printed before the record is out sometimes.

[dmg]

but it is Madeira wine, it all matches.

Only joking.  Although where do they get the lyrics in the booklets?  I've noticed in some songs the lyrics haven't matched the booklet, Planet of New Orleans being an example.  He doesn't sing "the other planet" during the chorus, yet it's in the booklet.  There are probably other anomalies I can't recall offhand so you cannot rely on the booklets to be 100% accurate.

New Orleans - the other planet
With other life upon it
And everythin' that's shakin' in between
If you should ever land upon it
You better know what's on it
The planet of New Orleans

i guess it is because the booklet could be printed before the record is out sometimes.

What I'm getting at though is the booklet lyrics are presumably the text Mark sends to his management, then passed on to the designers.  What Mark decides to sing in the studio doesn't necessarily need to be exactly as he originally wrote it.  This is clearly seen with the evidence above and yet when sung live he uses the original text!

[crimmer]

yes really like privateering Live loved hearing in 2011 and 2013 but 2015 felt it was played just to slow

I was another person who was disappointed with it on the album , sounded over produced , prob because liked the live 2011's versions so much

[Fletch]

I was another person who was disappointed with it on the album , sounded over produced , prob because liked the live 2011's versions so much

Amazing how we all have our preferences. Now with hindsight, I feel Privateering was the last truly 'great' album Mark recorded. If the ever-so-dire blues songs were replaced with the 'bonus' songs (River of Grog, Occupation Blues, Follow the RIbbon) it would have been a double album to rival the White album or The Wall. A very personal point of view!