Videos by American Songwriter
While they’re currently under fire for misquoting the Bieb, Rolling Stone has always been the go-to authority on rock facts and figures. There’s a fun feature up on their Website today, in which author Andy Greene presents eleven “famous rock songs” (although Run-D.M.C. are technically hip-hop… see, fact-checking is easy) which contain factually inaccurate lyrics.
“In their 1985 classic “King Of Rock” RUN-D.M.C. rhyme, ‘There’s three of us, but we aren’t The Beatles,'” writes Greene. “Do we even need to say it? There were, of course, four members of The Beatles.”
Greene also tackles Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane,” (Dylan was sued by Patty Valentine due to her inaccurate portrayal of her) Bruce Springsteen’s “Racing In The Street” (Bruce got his car parts wrong) and The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” (which messes with the timeline of the Civil War).
Check out the article here, for the “real” story of the Hurricane and more.
In their “correction” of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” I see that there was no recognition of the article “the” in the line “Virgil, quick come see, there goes the Robert E. Lee.” RS assumes the reference is to the man. But from the day that song was first released, I always assumed it referred to the steamboat of that name, passing by on the river.
Yeah. Author “the Andy Greene” sure is dense.
How indeed does a steamboat ‘set foot’ in Tennessee?
Truly, there are no editors at RS.