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Fear Is A Man's Best Friend Lyrics

Artist: John Cale
Album: Fear

Standing waiting for a man to show
Wide eyed one eye fixed on the door
This waiting's killing me, it's wearing me down
Day in day out, my feet are burning holes in the ground

Darkness warmer than a bedroom floor
Want someone to hold me close forever more
I'm a sleeping dog, but you can't tell
When I'm on the prowl you'ld better run like hell
You know it makes sense, don't even think about it
Life and death are just things you do when you're bored
Say fear's a man's best friend
You add it up it brings you down

Home is living like a man on the run
Trails leading nowhere, where to my son?
We're already dead, just not yet in the ground
Take my helping hand I'll show you around
You know it makes sense, don't even think about it
Life and death are just things you do when you're bored
Say fear's a man's best friend
You add it up it brings you down

Comments/Interpretations

by alicia on 7/20/2009 4:51pm
hahaha :-) I love this song

by janis on 7/7/2010 3:52am
me too <3

by farkn0se on 11/20/2010 2:47pm
make that 3

by Raymundo Flores on 9/18/2011 10:31pm
I love this song and it's been taking me months to come up with an interpretation for this song. None the less, the rest of John Cale's genius songs;. So, I think this means that Cale or other's such as myself, believe that men are mostly motivated by fear which gets us through the years and all the random stuff that happens is just for no reason and to "past time" as though fear will come again.

by Reed on 10/11/2014 9:52am
I'd always heard the lyrics as:
"You know it makes sense, just don't think about it" / "Life and death are things you just do when you're born". I like my misheard lyrics better. But Cale always been fascinated by death (who among the living can help it?). He also wrote (unless I again misheard him) "And the cold of the living, and the cold of the dead hand in hand from beginning to the end". There's a French saying: "Le mort saisit le vif", which I've read translated as "The dead grip the living". As Cale says, "we're already dead, just not yet in the ground".

by john xero on 3/1/2017 9:46am
i recently heard a cover of this on a benefit compilation for vietnam veterans and i played it for my dad since, we're both huge fans of the original and he was like, this is a vietnam song? and i was like idk, let me check the lyrics. after reading them i definitely think this song is about soldiers in vietnam

by mechtheist on 6/10/2017 10:56pm
I came here trying to see how many said 'bored' how many 'born'. I'm more in the bored camp, but I think it's almost irrelevant. "There's birth, ... there's death, and in between there's maintenance.” Say Fierce Invalids, who understand. [Sorry Tom Robbins]