For me, one of the great delights as a music fan is that moment when you discover that a song you really like is actually a cover.
Last night after watching the incredible POINT BLANK (1968) with a friend, I put CAN: The Singles on the turntable and eventually "Mushroom" came on. I love the CAN original, but it always reminds me that for many years the only version I was familiar with was the Jesus and Mary Chain live version from "Barbed Wire Kisses", which I wore out on cassette when it came out in '88.
In looking up the lyrics, I stumbled upon something odd. It seems that in the J&MC version the lyric is:
When I saw her mushroom hair I was born and I was dead
While the CAN original's lyrics are listed as:
When I saw mushroom head I was born and I was dead
Weird.
Such an ominous vibe in both versions, I always imagined it was written about a very heavy or dark psilocybin trip. But in the hands of the Reid brothers, does it become a hallucinatory meet-cute?