The Good Fight Lyrics
By: Jimmy Buffett, J.D. Souther
1980 – Coconut Telegraph
To Muhammed Ali for twenty years of excitement and entertainment
They talk about their women too much
The women got ’em so confused
They don’t talk about their lives as such
My life is all I got to lose
You take it with a grain of salt
And laugh at the complexities
They’re good at pickin’ all the faults
I keep laughin’ so they don’t pick me
Chorus:
Jesus if I had to quit tonight
I’d never know if I was wrong or right
But that’s just what you get
You got to go the distance
If you want to fight a good fight
Good fight
Keep it up and keep a good fight
Good Fight
The telephone begins to ring
That could only be one call
I might as well be on the moon
Standin’ in the shower stall
Can’t believe she picked it up
She didn’t know the rules somehow
Then I hear her say hello (hello)
Panic in the grey room now
Chorus:
Jesus if I had to quit tonight
She’d kill me whether I was wrong or right
That’s just what you get
You got to go the distance
If you want to fight a good fight
Good fight
Keep it up and keep a good fight
Good fight
You never know until you try
It’s hard to see the side you’re on
Some people say I’m halfway here
Some people say I’m halfway gone
Chorus:
Jesus if I had to quit tonight
I’d never know if I was wrong or right
But that’s just what you get
You got to go the distance
If you want to fight a good fight
Good fight
Keep it up and keep a good fight
Good fight
All I want is just a good fight
Good fight
Yes it’s got to be a good fight
Good fight
The line, “I keep laughin’ so they don’t pick me” is really central to my life. And damn if the women ain’t got me so confused.
I empathize, perhaps too much, with Jimmy’s dilemma in the second verse. But the thing that really gets me is that sometimes, no matter how certain you are that the other person knows the rules of engagement, somehow, some way, they show that they don’t. And you end up completely powerless to stop something from going into motion.
“Might as well be on the moon” is exactly how you feel.
When I was in Atlanta visiting Erien, the lyric “Panic in the grey room now” suddenly made sense. To me, it’s talking about the sudden thought process of being caught at something you shouldn’t have been caught at: your mind races, your body starts to sweat, and you go into overdrive trying to figure it out. Your brain, of course, is the “grey room”. And here I’d always assumed the shower stall was grey.
In the long run, I feel this way about a lot of my relationships with women: sometimes rules I think are obvious are unknown, sometimes I laugh so that they don’t pick me, and damnit if there’s not always panic in the grey room
