This is basically about how death comes to everyone, sometimes unpredictably. This first verse shows two vignettes of sudden death. In the first scene, Jack is sleeping in a ship's rigging (?) when it comes loose and he falls onto his back. In the second, an unnamed woman is looking at herself in the mirror and misses a turn in the road, crashing her car. In the second verse a serial killer is going to murder a prostitute, but in an ironic twist he only finds her dead body after she'd gone missing several weeks before. All of this serves to emphasize that "you never really know when the whistle's gonna blow", i.e. when you're going to die.
This is basically about how death comes to everyone, sometimes unpredictably. This first verse shows two vignettes of sudden death. In the first scene, Jack is sleeping in a ship's rigging (?) when it comes loose and he falls onto his back. In the second, an unnamed woman is looking at herself in the mirror and misses a turn in the road, crashing her car. In the second verse a serial killer is going to murder a prostitute, but in an ironic twist he only finds her dead body after she'd gone missing several weeks before. All of this serves to emphasize that "you never really know when the whistle's gonna blow", i.e. when you're going to die.