Primus Songs - Wynona's Big Brown Beaver Lyrics

Primus - Wynona's Big Brown Beaver

Primus - Wynona's Big Brown Beaver Youtube Music Videos and Lyrics

Album: Tales From The Punchbowl
Released: 1995

Wynona's Big Brown Beaver Lyrics

Wynona's got herself a big brown beaver and she shows it off to all her friends.
One day, you know, that beaver tried to leave her, so she caged him up with cyclone fence.
Along came Lou with the old baboon and said "I recognize that smell,Smells like seven layers,That beaver eatin' Taco Bell!".

"Now Rex he was a Texan out of New Orleans and he travelled with the carnival shows.
He ran bumper cars, sucked cheap cigars and he candied up his nose.
He got wind of the big brown beaver So he thought he'd take himself a peek,but the beaver was quick and he grabbed him by the kiwis,
and he ain't pissed for a week.(And a half!)

Wynona took her big brown beaver and she stuck him up in the air, said "I sure do love this big brown beaver and I wish I did have a pair.
Now the beaver once slept for seven days And it gave us all an awful fright,
So I tickled his chin and I gave him a pinch and the bastard tried to bite me. Wynona loved her big brown beaverAnd she stroked him all the time.
She pricked her finger one day and it occurred to her she might have a porcupine.

Writer/s: CLAYPOOL, LES / LALONDE, REID L. III / ALEXANDER, TIMOTHY W.
Publisher: Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Wynona's Big Brown Beaver

Nice beaver.
Thank you. I just had it stuffed.

This exchange is from the 1988 movie The Naked Gun, where Leslie Nielsen is admiring Priscilla Presley's taxidermied beaver.

Primus used a similar gag seven years later in this story about a woman and the adventures of her pet beaver. In our interview with the band's frontman Les Claypool , he explained that the story was inspired by a fishing trip. "I was fly fishing with a friend of mine up in Lassen County (California), and the sun was going down and we were heading back to the car," he said. "He was off in one direction, and I went off in another direction. I come around this corner and I step into the creek. And just as I spied this thing, it spied me. It was this big, furry mass coming my way. It flipped and popped its tail and scared the s--t out of me, and I scared the s--t out of it.

It was this giant beaver. I mean, it was huge.

So it kind of got in my head. This big brown beaver, big brown beaver. Okay. Well, how can I make a song out of that? And then it became, 'Wynona's got herself a big brown beaver.' And from there it just built into this little mythological character that obviously had a little double entendre to it."

Primus has never had a Hot 100 hit, but this is one of their most popular songs, making #12 on the Alternative chart and #23 on the Mainstream Rock chart. The band had much more modest ambitions for the song when they conceived it, at first considering it one of the filler pieces the band sometimes puts between their proper songs for comic relief.

"It just happened that I had this bass part with all these triplets in it and it kind of fit real well with those lyrics," Les Claypool told us. "So when we did Punchbowl, we put the two together and that became the 'Wynona's Big Brown Beaver' that everybody came to know."

The video was quite a production. Shot at a time when record companies were willing to shell out big bucks for videos (which MTV still played), this one featured the band in foam rubber suits dressed like cartoon cowboys. The film was shot 25% slower than normal (18 frames-per-second instead of 24), to create a sped-up, jerky look to match the cartoon theme when it was played back. This meant that the band had to mime to the song at a slower speed, so the song was played 25% slower so they could match their movements.

Les Claypool's sideband Duo de Twang recorded this song on their 2014 debut album Four Foot Shack. This version was similar to the original vision of the song, which was more stripped-down.

Due to the name, there was confusion over whether this song was written about actress Winona Ryder, which Les Claypool denied in interviews. In response, Ryder's then-boyfriend, Soul Asylum singer Dave Pirner took offense and renamed one of his songs "Les Claypool's A Big F--king Asshole" in concert. (thanks, Lucas - Los Angeles, California)