As some of you may or may not know, fans of the Detroit Red Wings have a somewhat bizarre local tradition of tossing dead octopi onto the ice following a hat-trick (i.e. a home player scoring three goals in a single game), and playing the Beatles tune “Octopus’ Garden” on their stadium's PA system.
So in my lifelong struggle to stave off boredom, I went over to Wikipedia--that source of all concrete information—this morning for some info (if any) on the song origins, and came up with the following:
"The idea for the song came about when [Ringo] Starr was on a boating trip with his family in Sardinia in 1968. He was offered an octopus lunch, but turned it down. Then the boat's captain told Starr about how octopuses travel along the sea bed picking up stones, and shiny objects with which to build gardens. Starr said that hearing about octopuses spending their days collecting shiny objects at the bottom of the sea was one of the happiest things he had ever heard. Starr then decided to write [the] song."
I think I want to be an octopus in my next life, preferably one living as far away from Detroit as possible.
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