Okay, it’s Thanksgiving weekend, my roommates are gone, and I’m bored. So I was listening to the radio, and they played Jet Airliner, by Steve Miller, and remembered that I used to think the lyrics were:
Big old Jed had a line-up
Doug can’t be too far away
Which aways made me wonder. What did big old Jed have that was good enough to line up for? Was it a long line up? How big and how old was this Jed? Who’s this Doug character?
So many questions, so few answers. So who else has misunderstood song lyrics they want to share?
A few years ago I was trying to be nice to my niece by letting her play a country radio station (even though I’m not much of a country music fan) I stood it as long as I could and then announced that I couldn’t put up with another playing of ‘Lock me up Inside the Jukebox When I Die’ It took my niece at least 15 minutes to stop laughing and tell me the real lyrics.
Jo-jo was a man who thought he was an owner
but he didn’t pay the tax
Jo-jo loved his home in Tucson, Arizona,
and bought some California grass
This made some sense to me, as obviously, if you weren’t paying the tax, you couldn’t possibly be the owner. However, if you smoked enough California grass, I suppose you wouldn’t care.
Thanks for the link, White Lightning, I just about killed myself laughing!
When Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain first came out, I swear to God she sang “Some underworld spy/Or the life of a clothespin” at the end of the 3rd verse…
And what the heck was Elton John talking about in Levon other than “because this child Jesus”???
I’ve always wondered about a lot of other lyrics, but right now my brain’s shutting down for the evening…
