Jerry Was A Race Car Driver

In a Songfacts interview with Primus frontman Les Claypool, he explained the inspiration for this song: "I always had this image of this guy I knew in high school who would race around. He was one of these guys that always wanted to be a cop. And I'm not saying this about all cops, but there's that certain faction of individual that wants to be a cop because they got picked on when they were younger and they just felt the need to be in a position of authority. "I'll show them" sort of thing. And this guy was one of those guys. He had this semi-hopped-up family car that his parents had given him, and he used to race that thing around and do stupid things, like do burnouts in the Jack in the Box parking lot when it was full of teenagers hanging around. He'd almost wipe somebody out every time. Just one of those guys. So that's where the image of Jerry for 'Jerry Was a Race Car Driver' came from. But then it just expanded from there, because Jerry, you know, 'He never did win no checkered flags, never did come in last.' So he's this mediocre racecar driver. And then of course in the end he gets drunk and wraps himself around a telephone pole."

A theme of this song is disappointment and how different people handle it. In the first verse, Jerry is a race car driver living it up. In the third verse he crashes his car into a telephone pole. In the second verse the firefighter is forced to retire earlier than he expected, which is much to his dismay. It's a much deeper a song than one may perceive on first listen.

One of Primus' most popular songs, "Jerry Was A Race Car Driver" was the first single from their second studio album (and first released on Interscope), Sailing The Seas Of Cheese. More accessible than most Primus songs, it got some airplay on Alternative radio and leveled up the band; the following year they served as opening act for both U2 and Rush. The album went on to sell over a million copies in America, as did their next one, Pork Soda.