Listening to the Beach Boys’ rendition of Sloop John B as an adult, I found one line very unconvincing: “This is the worst trip I’ve ever been on.”  Really? You get in a little fight, and someone steals your corn and grits, and that is the worst trip you’ve ever been on?

So, I decided to take that one line, and refashion the classic tune in a modern telling that I felt was worthy of the tag “The worst trip I’ve ever been on.”

We’d come on the sloop John B, my grandfather and me;
around Nassau town we did roam.
Drinking all night, we got into a fight.
Now, I feel so broke up I just want to go home.

But then, the first mate, he got high and put a bullet in the captain’s eye.
He swallowed the next and he fell back into the sea.
I called Sheriff John Stone on the satellite phone:
“I feel so broke up, I just want to go home.”

So he said: “Hoist up the John B sail, see how the main sail set.
Head for the Florida shore and make your way home.”
I’m going to make my way home.
I just want to go home, because this is the worst trip that I’ve ever been on.

But then, the poor cook, he lost his head when he saw that the captain was dead.
He grabbed the wheel and steered us out into the storm.
Let me go home. I just want to go home.
This is the worst trip that I’ve ever been on.

So, hoist up the John B sail, see how the main sail set.
Call for the captain ashore: let me go home.
Let me go home. Why won’t they let me go home?
This is the worst trip that I’ve ever been on.