Mangled Lyrics

My friend Marty sent along this really funny Joe Cocker video today, and it really struck a chord – musically speaking.

Mike had told me about a singer he worked with long ago who didn’t always hear lyrics correctly and just wrote down phonetically what he thought he was hearing. Mike got a look at his notes one time and saw these two jewels.

There’s a line in “Whiter Shade of Pale” that goes, “He would not let her be one of 16 vestal virgins leaving for the sea.” The singer had written it – and sang it: “He would not Letter B.” Makes the song even more mystical

Mike’s favorite was the line from “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” which should have been “sitting in a nest of bad men,” but had been translated as “sitting in a mask of Batman.”

One night at a club, a note written on a napkin got handed up to the stage. The writer had scrawled, “Can you play ‘Amos Moses was Caucasian’?” The guys were pretty sure that he meant “Amos Moses was a Cajun.”

I’m sure you remember the Waylon Jennings’ song that went “Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas with Willie and Waylon and the boys.” Mike’s second favorite song request on a napkin posed the question “Can you play ‘Looking back on Texas’?”

I was laughing up a storm at all the goof-ups when my husband reminded me that we were at a restaurant once when “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight” by England Dan & John Coley started playing. I confessed to him that there was a line in the song that made no sense to me. “Listen. Here it is,” I told him, and I sang along, ““I’m not talking ‘bout millennium.”

He told me that the line is “I’m not talking about moving in and I don’t want to change your life.” I still think he’s wrong.

Anyway, enjoy Joe Cocker singing the Beatles’ “I Get By With a Little Help From my Friends” captioned for the clear-headed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4_MsrsKzMM