Lovebitesandeveryfing
Well-Known Member
Often thought about this.
In the days before internet, google, where you can look up everything, and more simply, lyrics printed on sleeves, which I think started very, very slowly in the sixties and still didn't really catch on till way into the seventies (was Pepper in fact the first? Seems to me it might have been), you just had to work out what was being sung by ear. Given the quality of your average vinyl forty-five, and your average record player with its tinny speaker, you could remain uncertain for months and even years about what was being sung, even after having played it hundreds of times, and putting the needle on the same passage over and over, if you were really intrigued and wanted to sing it properly.
Three examples:
For years I thought Ian Curtis was singing, “I've been waiting for a guy to come and take me by the hand”. I still kind of prefer this. It's more casual, more mysterious to me, than “guide”.
Starsailor. Again, for years, I heard it as “Fall to the floor”. This seemed to me to be logical, and still does. I was sure you'd be my girl, we were even going to have a daughter — when you told me you weren't going to be, I fell off my chair onto the floor in surprise. And actually, I still don't really understand what's meant by “Four to the floor”. Four onto the dance floor? Well, why? and why four? What's it got to do with anything?
And one that I misheard, and therefore mis-sang, for forty years and more. Steely Dan's “Pretzel Logic”. A track I'm very, very fond of. I still stand by my mishearing, which is more creative, in my view. At one point in the middle, the song — which is a kind of bluesy shuffle — stops dead, and Fagen sings, almost a cappella, “I stepped up on the platform/He handed me the news/He said ‘You must be joking, son!/ Where did you get those shoes?’ ” I remember being downright disgruntled when I read it (very recently, actually) and saw that he sings “news”. I felt like writing to Fagen and saying, “You got it wrong, mate. Put it right”. Because I've always been convinced that he sings “noose”. In my scenario, the protagonist has been condemned to death. The platform he steps up on to is where he will be hanged. But rather like the highwaymen of old (think Dick Turpin, but think also Fagen and Becker, who were known for being campus dandies back in their Bard College days, cf. the lyrics to “Hey Nineteen”), the guy wants to die in style, he wants to put on a show, and he's chosen his finest Italian shoes (or maybe blue suede ones) to go out with a bang. The hangman hands him the noose to put around his neck. It's just another day's work for him. Then he does a double take! He's really impressed. I like to think that the crowd then notices it, and cries out for him to be pardoned. He steps down off the platform, his life is saved — all because of those superb shoes! See what I mean? My version's better — I spin a whole story out of it. It made perfect sense to me, given what I know of Becker and Fagen, and the way they see the world.
Anyway, anyone else on here that this has happened to over the years? And do you still prefer your mishearing to what they actually wrote?
In the days before internet, google, where you can look up everything, and more simply, lyrics printed on sleeves, which I think started very, very slowly in the sixties and still didn't really catch on till way into the seventies (was Pepper in fact the first? Seems to me it might have been), you just had to work out what was being sung by ear. Given the quality of your average vinyl forty-five, and your average record player with its tinny speaker, you could remain uncertain for months and even years about what was being sung, even after having played it hundreds of times, and putting the needle on the same passage over and over, if you were really intrigued and wanted to sing it properly.
Three examples:
For years I thought Ian Curtis was singing, “I've been waiting for a guy to come and take me by the hand”. I still kind of prefer this. It's more casual, more mysterious to me, than “guide”.
Starsailor. Again, for years, I heard it as “Fall to the floor”. This seemed to me to be logical, and still does. I was sure you'd be my girl, we were even going to have a daughter — when you told me you weren't going to be, I fell off my chair onto the floor in surprise. And actually, I still don't really understand what's meant by “Four to the floor”. Four onto the dance floor? Well, why? and why four? What's it got to do with anything?
And one that I misheard, and therefore mis-sang, for forty years and more. Steely Dan's “Pretzel Logic”. A track I'm very, very fond of. I still stand by my mishearing, which is more creative, in my view. At one point in the middle, the song — which is a kind of bluesy shuffle — stops dead, and Fagen sings, almost a cappella, “I stepped up on the platform/He handed me the news/He said ‘You must be joking, son!/ Where did you get those shoes?’ ” I remember being downright disgruntled when I read it (very recently, actually) and saw that he sings “news”. I felt like writing to Fagen and saying, “You got it wrong, mate. Put it right”. Because I've always been convinced that he sings “noose”. In my scenario, the protagonist has been condemned to death. The platform he steps up on to is where he will be hanged. But rather like the highwaymen of old (think Dick Turpin, but think also Fagen and Becker, who were known for being campus dandies back in their Bard College days, cf. the lyrics to “Hey Nineteen”), the guy wants to die in style, he wants to put on a show, and he's chosen his finest Italian shoes (or maybe blue suede ones) to go out with a bang. The hangman hands him the noose to put around his neck. It's just another day's work for him. Then he does a double take! He's really impressed. I like to think that the crowd then notices it, and cries out for him to be pardoned. He steps down off the platform, his life is saved — all because of those superb shoes! See what I mean? My version's better — I spin a whole story out of it. It made perfect sense to me, given what I know of Becker and Fagen, and the way they see the world.
Anyway, anyone else on here that this has happened to over the years? And do you still prefer your mishearing to what they actually wrote?
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