Wow Timmy, Why?

I do like my rock, me. But I'm not always happy with the lyrics. You may remember my problem with the Who's 'Pinball Wizard' lyrics, and the reason why 'Whole Lotta Love' is now ruined for me. (Search the blog if you don't) But sometimes it's simply that I can't quite catch the lyrics. But there's a compulsion to sing along with a good rock tune, even when you don't know the words. So the other day I was driving home and Steppenwolf (How's that for a rock band name!) were singing 'born to be wild' feeling good I was singing along, but I couldn't quite remember the words, so I just did my best. And this came out of my mouth...

Get ya motor runnin'
Head out on the highway.
Looking for a French Shirt
and a dickie bow tie yeah!

In my weird spontaneous version Steppenwolf are going shoping with their mum. To buy some smart clothes for the school photograph. I had a check to see if anyone's made a similar mistake, and found www.kissthisguy.com- an archive of misheard lyrics. The site name comes from the moment in purple haze where Hendrix sings 'Excuse me while I kiss the sky'- although he could actually be saying that, there's no way of telling. There are some 'born to be wild' misquotes and by far the best one is the icelandic teenager who interpreted the song's title as 'Wow Timmy, why?' I'll let him explain himself...


"Well I am from iceland and I were not very good in english when i was 14. When i heard the song and not very clear, i sang very low... wow Timmy why... in front of my friends and they stood still for a moment and then just laughed at me. I thought that the story behind the song were that this Timmy guy had done something wrong, like shooting somebody and that the singer sung about it. So it sounded perfectly to my ears."