A little too much TMI, but I’m glad you liked.
I now realize I misunderstood the OP’s intent, and didn’t comment on what the hell were meant by certain lyrics in “Goodbye yellow brick road”. I always thought it meant he wanted to get back to his rural roots and stop chasing fame and fortune. I guess EJ didn’t want to end up like Tony Danza.
I think a simple ‘that’s’ would make the line way more understandable, and would’ve even fitted the melody quite well. So:
Back to the howling old owl in the woods that’s hunting the horny black toad.
But my impression is that Taupin’s implicit goal was to write indecipherable lyrics.
Elton would edit Bernie’s lyrics in order to fit into his musical score. That and Elton was on heavy drugs and alcohol. Combine the two and you get “Take me to the pilot, take me to the chamber, take me to the pilot I am not a stranger”.
I always thought this line was “back to the Hollywood out in the woods”. Which yeah, doesn’t make a lot of sense, except maybe I thought he preferred the holly wood of the woods to the real Hollywood, or something.
I had heard Tiny Dancer for decades before I understood the line “Lay me down in sheets of linen”. I’m not sure what I thought he was saying, but the last word sounded more like “landing” to me.
Damn you for that earworm of a misheard lyric!
There’s no way you will convince me that Bennie doesn’t have electric boobs and mohair shoes.
Pretty much…young, naive, falls in with wrong crowd. I heard “can’t let me in your penthouse,” making me think he’d tried for stardom and failed, but “plant” makes more sense. “This boy’s too young to be singing the blues.”
I wondered if the horny backed toad was part of some home remedy, so they “hunted” them.
At the time I would have said that Elton intentionally mangled his pronunciation of words to sound cool. Now I wonder if the music was making him emote so hard that pronunciation was secondary to musicality? Is some of it possibly British English pronunciation? In one song of his he sings the word “garage” like GAIR idj instead of ga RAHJ. Listening to it just now, I realize that the AM monaural I had available to me was never going to suffice.
Putting the accent on the first syllable of “garage” is a standard pronunciation in British English, not an idiosyncrasy of Elton John’s.
Surely moss grows on rooftops … and if you’re up there trying to think of the next verse, you might literally scrape it off with your shoe?
My point exactly.
Every once in awhile I’ll stumble across something like that.
controversy
BE: cun TROV er see
AE: CON truh ver see
I just found this…
Well, I believe that David Geffen is meant to be the subject of FMIP.
This oft-quoted mondegreen always bugs me for a couple of reasons. First, “Tiny Dancer” was released in 1971, well before Tony Danza became an actor, let alone a household name.
Second, Elton’s enunciation of “Tiny Dancer” is, to my ears, crystal clear. Oh, by the way, it’s the actual name of the song.
Anyone hearing “Tony Danza” instead of “Tiny Dancer” is, to me, inventing a sort of lyrical equivalent to a backronym.
(this is not at all directed specifically at Qadgop, by the way, just a silly pet peeve of mine)
mmm
Ian Anderson somehow manages to do both.
For me, the Tony Danza thing comes from an episode of Friends. The wife and I use it as a joke when we hear the song now.
I never heard the burning out his fuse part right either. And I really don’t know what it means. I thought the last part was “ever gone” for some reason.
Oh, no, no, no
I’m a rocket man
Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone
Wait. It’s the owl that’s hunting the horny-backed toad? I always thought it was hillbilly Elton John.
TIL, I guess.
Like many others who posted I grew up with vinyl. It was becoming pretty standard in the early 70s to include the printed lyrics within the album (did Sgt. Pepper start this trend?). I recall following every lyric on every tune, and I also recall the disappointment I felt on the occasion when printed lyrics were nowhere to be found.
So I knew every one of Elton’s lyrics, but of course, knowing what words are being said is quite different than understanding their meaning.
mmm
Once upon a time… One day I was trying to figure out what a word was in Levon. I listened several times, couldn’t figure it out and gave up. That same day I met someone from England and we were talking about different words in US vs. England, such as boot vs. trunk. She mentioned the pronunciation of garage and I realized that was the word.
Syd Barrett?