>>>>Now what is the meaning of "what" in this case? Surely it's not a request for identification.
>>>
>>>You're looking to rock music for grammatical merit?
>>
>>Sure. Are you saying that these guys invented it by themselves? I'm not giving them that much credit :).
>
>What difference does it make? Rock lyrics are not intended to be lessons in grammar. If someone uses language badly, and such language is adopted by rock lyricists, it's just lousy language usage, not something that needs to be dissected and parsed for grammatic accuracy.
Ah, so you mean this was actually bad English? I wouldn't know - if I hear something that confuses me, I can't know whether it's good or not, only that it's confusing. Besides, such things eventually make their way into the regular language, achieve a sort of a legal status. So, regular or not, imagine if I was to translate this - translator's job is to get the meaning across, not to judge the author's grammar. I'd probably pull my hairs out over this one...