We, oddly enough, had an Elton John Christmas this year. Dad gave mom Tumbleweed Connection and Madman Across the Water on CD, not knowing that she had also bought me Goodbye Yellow Brick Road on CD. (all of those we had on album, but I had been wanting Goodbye Yellow Brick Road on CD for AGES… it was one of those albums that I always thought to myself, ‘I’ve got to get those on CD’ and then I always forgot about it as soon as I went in a record store. Anyway.)
There are two Elton John songs that I’ve always misheard the lyrics for. I mean I’m the one who thought a line in Livin La Vida Loca was “Lips like deviled eggs.” But the weird thing about this is that both of these Elton John songs I mishear the same thing.
I finally looked them up tonight to find out what the real lyrics were.
This is the original verse of “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting”:
Don’t give us none of your aggravation
We had it with your discipline
Saturday night’s alright for fighting
Get a little action in
The way I’ve always heard it was:
Don’t give us none of your aggravation
We had it with your death star plans
Saturday night’s alright for fighting
Get a little action in
This is the original verse of “Love Lies Bleeding”:
And love lies bleeding in my hand
Oh it kills me to think of you with another man
I was playing rock and roll and you were just a fan
But my guitar couldn’t hold you
So I split the band
The way I’ve always heard it was:
And love lies bleeding in my hand
Oh it kills me to think of you with another man
I was playing rock and roll to your death star plan
But my guitar couldn’t hold you
>So I split the band
That’s the way I’ve always heard BOTH songs. As I got older I got to thinking, why would Elton John be singing about Death Star Plans so much? Then I realised, hey, that album came out before Star Wars, HOW could he be singing about Death Star Plans? So tonight I finally looked them up. I guess that’s just me, Permanent-Star-Wars-on-the-brain-since-1983.