Songfacts®:

• This song is about John Entwistle's mansion in Gloucestershire, England, known as Quarwood. Inside, he had a bar he called "The Hammerhead," as he had at least one cast of a hammerhead shark. Waterboys frontman Mike Scott, who wrote the song, was never there, but a friend of his who went there told him all about it, which is how Scott formed the lyric. The first verse is nearly a word-for-word description, and the rest of the song is what Scott calls "my invention, between rock-Babylonian-gods-of-excess type lines."
• Some of the characters who belly up to this bar include Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Ringo Starr's son, four Uriah Heep roadies, and some groupies from Lithuania.
• Mike Scott co-opted David Hood, the legendary bass player in the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, for the band's Out of All This Blue album. The groove of this song is based on a 1967 Etta James song called "Watchdog," on which Hood played.