Going in the opposite direction, we tweaked "The Shearing's Not For You" into the first person so that it could be sung totally from the woman's viewpoint by my musical partner Margaret.
My view - which others may dispute - is that songs can be tweaked as long as you always own up to what you have done and point the way back to the version that you tweaked.
The other device favoured by ballad writers/compilers/tweakers is the preliminary "As I walked out... I overheard" verse which then allows you to tell the story from any viewpoint.