When, as I have mentioned elsewhere, we covered this song in English class, I described pink champagne as a low-class person’s idea of high-class, and the combination of it with mirrors on the ceiling I described as “tawdry”.
And a cigar that can be more than a cigar: “They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beast”. I took that to be a reference to injecting drugs, but I have heard that choice of words came about because Steely Dan had made a reference to the Eagles in one of their songs, so the Eagles wanted to mention Steely Dan.
And there are several sites devoted to misheard lyrics. The one I know best is http://www.kissthisguy.com/ , because apparently Dave Barry isn’t the only person who thought Jimi Hendrix said “excuse me while I kiss this guy” rather than “excuse me while I kiss the sky”.
And there are several reports from people who saw Hendrix live that he did, in fact, sometimes say “kiss this guy” in performance.
Amen.
A lot of the greatest rock came about when somebody heard another band’s song and said, “Hey, let’s make a song like that one.” It isn’t that they are aping somebody else, but they were inspired by someone else’s work and created a version filtered through their own style.