This is a tale of it. Not a tail, because an ear doesn't have a tail. But a tale, which is a story - of the kind you tell rather than of the kind of which buildings may be composed. The tale is of 'Penny Lane', a song I've known since it was released in 1967 and therefore for 42 years. How could I be wrong about its opening lines? But I was, for all those years, and only discovered it yesterday. This is how.
There was a Guardian editorial in praise of Paul McCartney, and it gave as an example of his 'effortlessly fluent' lyricism the second line of 'Penny Lane', which it rendered thus:
Of every head he's had the pleasure to know
No, I said to myself, that's not right. And I Googled for confirmation. But instead of confirmation, I got disconfirmation and this:
In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs
Of every head he's had the pleasure to know
Well, I'll be fresnified. I could have sworn it was 'Of every head he's had the pleasure to have known'. I ask WotN and she's on my side. So we listen on YouTube, and we listen again. It is indeed 'to know' rather than 'to have known', and 'to know' also fits better with the lines that follow, which have the rhymes 'go' and 'hello'. So, stupid or what? But that is what we've been 'hearing' all this time, and the only thing I can say in extenuation is that 'to have known' scans better. My ear was wrong but it had a reason for being wrong, and this, perhaps, may count as the tail of my tale of an ear.