"Badfish" is a song by American ska-punk band Sublime, released as part of their 1992 debut album, 40oz. to Freedom. The single was released in 1993, and again in 1997. The song was written by Bradley Nowell and originally recorded in 1989, reportedly influenced by The Ziggens song "All the fun that we missed" and Nowell's love of reggae. First released on the band's 1991 demo tape, Jah Won't Pay the Bills, "Badfish" appeared again on most of the band's compilation albums. An extended play (EP) was released in 1995 named after the track.
The song resonated with the band's hometown of Long Beach, California (LBC), with familiar lyrics about the struggle of being in the working class, and utilizing local landmarks in the audio and video recordings. The track serves as an after-the-fact reminder of Nowell's struggle with heroin, and was reportedly informed by the slang term "Badfish" and his struggle to resist trying the drug.
MTV and radio stations refused to play the song prior to Nowell's tragic overdose in 1996, but "Badfish" later became one of the band's most popular songs, and is one of the few beloved by Sublime's critics.
A tribute band, Badfish, is named after the song.
History and writing
"Badfish" is in the key of A mixolydian, which is a mode of D Ionian of major scale. Mixolydian modes are common in ska and reggae music.
The first version of "Badfish" was recorded as a student project for Michael "Miguel" Happoldt who was a recording student at the time and in a band called The Ziggens, at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) in Carson, California in 1989. Happoldt, who went on to become a producer, guitarist, and vocalist for Sublime, asked Nowell if he wanted to record tracks in a professional studio, and the band recorded the track, which earned Happoldt a C-. Sublime recorded the remainder of their 1991 demo, Jah Won't Pay the Bills, with Happoldt at CSUDH and released it on Skunk Records, Happoldt's record label.
For LBC locals in the historically blue-collar industrial port city, where Nowell grew up, the metaphors of the experience resonated as a hard-times poetry, contrary to Sublime's typical straight-forward lyrics, allowing them to tout future lyrics like they were "Well Qualified to Represent the LBC" on their 1996 self-titled album. The introduction, "a field recording of a bar", was reportedly inspired by The Specials' 1979 song "Nite Klub", and was recorded at Shannon’s Bayshore Saloon in LBC, and "Todd", who is told he can "turn the radio back on", was the bartender. The song's sound was heavily influenced by Nowell's love of reggae music.
Until 1992, Nowell feared heroin, and refused to try it. It is suggested that the term "Badfish" is slang for a heroin user who gets someone else hooked on the drug, or a heroin addict, and the song is described as being an anti-drug song to the scene that Sublime frequented early on, or as being written about Nowell's drug addiction.
Bud Gaugh developed a heroin addiction around the time the song was first recorded in 1989, eventually falling into homelessness. Nowell did not want the drug around the band, and Gaugh was ousted from the band while he was in and out of rehab until Sublime released 40oz. to Freedom and before they wrote and recorded Robbin' the Hood, when heroin quickly became a central part of Sublime's image. Reportedly devoted to maintaining an image representative of the local culture and their music, Nowell started a four-year battle with heroin in 1992. His widow, Troy Nowell, said he tried heroin because "it would be a cool rock-star thing to do," his father said that he wanted to be more creative and said that he needed to maintain a persona, Gaugh said he argued "the needle" was safer than smoking, and others have reported it was because other rock stars were doing it.
While "Badfish" came before Nowell's heroin addiction, on Robbin' the Hood, the song "Pool Shark" was written at the peak of his addiction with Gaugh, when he started to try to get sober. Lyrics like "Tying up the dinosaur, tonight/It used to be so cool/Now I’ve got the needle/I can shake but I can’t breathe/Take it away and I want more, more/One day I’m gonna lose the war," speak directly to Nowell's use of clonidine, an opioid withdrawal medication, heroin usage and withdrawals, and his inability to give up the idea that heroin gave him a cool mystique. Nowell had gone to a treatment facility, and been clean for some time before he died after a relapse he said would be his last, on May 25, 1996. Gaugh kicked the habit after finding the body of his band mate.