Re: Johnny

["rslovacek" <rslovacek>]

    They're called "Mondegreens".  Check out
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~wilkins/writing/Resources/essays/mondegree
ns.html

    "Misheard lyrics".  You can add your own  :)  It's a fun site.


    As for the immediate question,  I can hear it as being interchangebly
"heroin" and "heroine", though the latter, I think, would be very dated for
such a feminist/humanist as Patti.

>>The conclusion was that Patti, as an artist and a clever person, probably
intended it that the lyric could work both ways, and enjoyed the ambiguity.
Maybe this one is the same way.
Personally I had always heard "sperm coffin" but if it works the other way for
some people, so much the better.<<

    Yah, I've read interviews with Robert Hunter saying that whenever a
listener hears his lyrics differently than he'd written them, then that's just
as valid as what he'd actually written.
    Which is a good thing, since the Dead, along with Dylan, are who I can
hear saying different things than the "official" songbooks or lyrics-page
says.  Well, Dylan just changes the words all the time anyway, but still...

  My own classic Dead mondegreen is one I'll still swear by, thirty years
later, from "The Wheel";  "If the Joker don't getcha then the Blind Man will",
instead of the lyrics in the songbook, "If the Thunder don't getcha then the
Lightning will".   (I like mine better  :)



--Bob