'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy and Other Misheard Lyrics by Gavin Edwards

They signed with Atlantic subsidiary Big Tree and spit out ‘70s soft rock gold hits including “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight,” “Nights Are Forever Without You,” “It’s Sad to Belong,” “Gone Too Far,” “In it For Love,” “We’ll Never Have to Say Goodbye Again” and a cover of the Todd Rundgren-written “Love is the Answer.” (the latter barely missing the Top 40 in 1969 with the very-of-its-time tune “The Smell of Incense”).Īfter becoming a duo England Dan & John Ford Coley, they scored a minor hit with “Simone,” but A&M Records released them. “She was so proud of me!” Must have been that mustache.īorn in Dallas, Coley first met Dan Seals as a teenager, and the pair played in bands including Theze Few and Southwest F.O.B. “My grandmother was pissed!” Coley laughs. It happened initially when he was at a restaurant with his family. Like the first of many times he was mistaken by someone in public for…Sonny Bono. They talked us into it! And when it took off, we were like okay…”Ĭoley also tells the story in his entertaining “unauthorized autobiography” Backstage Pass along with plenty of others from his life in and out of music. “Both Dan and I thought it was a female song, so we didn’t want to do it. “The funny thing is that I rejected the song too!” Foley laughs. It was only released after two scrappy execs from a smaller label who heard it through the office walls of another exec who had turned it down that it was snapped up because they could smell a hit. Their version-often played live by the duo in various offices of record company execs and A&R men-got rejected many times. Record cover The pair and their breakthrough chart song had been on a very long and winding path. But they never clarified in the movie what it was that we were actually saying! We wrote them and got a nice chunk of money out of it. “We didn’t even know the song was in that film because it wasn’t licensed! Shane Black, who wrote it, just liked the song. “I joke about it onstage! And it thrills me!” Coley laughs from his home in Nashville.

Jackson’s character tries to convince Geena Davis they’re singing (for the record, what sounds like “ the linen” is actually “ movin’ in”).

Needless to say, the actual words to some famous tunes were not “Hold me closer, Tony Danza” (Elton John, “Tiny Dancer”) “Scuse me while I kiss this guy” (Jimi Hendrix, “Purple Haze”) or “There’s a bathroom on the right” (Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Bad Moon Rising”).įor ‘70s hitmakers England Dan and John Ford Coley, their breakthrough hit “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight” does not include the phrase “I’m not talkin’ ‘bout the linen.” But in the 1996 action movie The Long Kiss Goodnight, that’s exactly what Samuel L. Analyzing misheard lyrics in rock have provided music nerds endless hours of fun (and even been the subject of a series of books by Gavin Edwards.).

'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy and Other Misheard Lyrics by Gavin Edwards