Songfacts®:

• This song is about the absurdities of traditional weddings. The territorial battles, rings, and vows seem ridiculous from an outsiders point of view.
• The lyrics were inspired by the early poetry of Dylan Thomas.
• Gabriel's marriage to his first wife Jill hit a crisis when she had an affair with David Lord, the co-producer of the Security album, and in this song he foreshadowed the marital tension. He told Mojo April 2010: "We think we're islands, but we're all connected in a landmass. What you see above the water is two people getting married. But beneath the water are the tentacles of two larger, dominant organisms which are the families making connection through those two particular tentacles. But we never observe and recognize that."
• Running 7:04, "The Family And The Fishing Net" got its sounds from Ethiopian pipes, a Linn LM-1 drum machine, various synthesizers, and traditional instruments like guitars and saxophones. Throughout his career, Gabriel was eager to use the latest technology to create new sounds while also bringing in musical forms from Asia and Africa.
• David Sancious, who played keyboards on Gabriel's So (1986) and Back to Front (2012) tours, says this is the most musically complex song he ever had to recreate live. "It's a fantastic song," he told Songfacts. "It's one of my favorites to play with him because it's like a movie with the lyrics and the mood and everything - it's a totally cinematic song. And there's a lot of things that have to happen exactly on cue and a bunch of different sonic sound shifts. It was pretty interesting to put it together in rehearsal and I remember it took Peter and I together a minute to be clear on where we were coming in and where we're not playing, but we got it together. I loved playing that song, but it was a very specific little piece of music."