live_tv
Livestream Starting Soon
00
Hours
:
00
Minutes
:
00
Seconds
Up next in 10
As much as you may want to believe them, most rumors about famous celebrities are often completely false. Considering all the sex, drugs, and rock and roll in rock music, it's not surprising that almost every rock star has a few rumors that surround them. But, again, most of these simply aren't true.
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
Hard to believe stories about musicians and their decadent rock-style lifestyles have made the rounds among fans since the dawn of rock and roll
0:07
And most of the time, they're nothing more than stories. But every once in a while, you encounter a wild rumor about one of music's most famous figures, only to discover that it is 100% the unvarnished truth
0:21
Today on Weird History, we're running down some of the craziest rock star rumors that turned out to be true
0:26
Okay, time to find out why sex, drugs, and rock and roll isn't just a clever saying
0:36
In his autobiography, Glow, R&B icon and producer of Eddie Murphy's Party All the Time
0:42
Rick James confirmed a long-standing rumor when he revealed that he was extremely high on
0:47
when he made his 1978 nationwide TV debut on American Bandstand. James got so high and fat
0:54
that his nose started running during his interview with host Dick Clark
0:58
He later wrote that he was sure his constant sniffling and nostril wiping made the situation entirely obvious to not only Dick Clark, but also the viewers at home
1:06
Luckily, that was the first and last time anyone was ever noticeably under the influence on television
1:12
Yeah. On the song Rocket Queen from Guns N' Roses' classic debut album, Appetite for Destruction
1:23
you can supposedly hear the dulcet sounds of frontman Axl Rose romancing Adriana Smith
1:29
an exotic dancer who was dating drummer Steve Adler at the time. According to engineer Steve
1:33
Thompson, this is totally true. As Thompson tells it, Rose wanted to hear some lovemaking on the
1:39
track, so he brought in Smith and they hooked up in the recording studio. The pair laid down about
1:44
30 minutes of what Rose referred to as ____ noises. Some of the audio they recorded was included in
1:50
the final track that appears on the album. Smith later confessed to Rolling Stone that her boyfriend
1:55
aka Axl Rose's bandmate, had not known about Rose's plan. And it ended up causing a serious rift in their relationship
2:02
Seems like there would be a lot of rifts. Axl and his bandmate, the bandmate and his girlfriend
2:06
the girlfriend and Axl, the sound engineer who had to listen to it all. That's a lot of rifts
2:16
Before he made headlines as the most notorious mass murderer in American history, Charles Manson wrote and recorded several songs in hopes of making a career
2:25
as a singer-songwriter. As the story goes, he ended up sharing some songs with Beach Boys drummer
2:30
Dennis Wilson. Believe it or not, that is actually true. They worked on the song together in Wilson's
2:35
studio, where Manson demanded that they not change the song. However, Wilson ended up completely
2:41
overhauling the tune, changing some of the lyrics, the title, and its musical style before featuring
2:46
it as a song on the B-side of a Beach Boys album. Manson was unhappy with the changes and was also upset that Wilson didn give him any songwriting credit Their relationship soon disintegrated and Manson headed down his well path to becoming a minor character in a Quentin Tarantino film
3:08
Did you know that Michael Jackson composed background music for the 1993 Sega Genesis game Sonic the Hedgehog 3
3:16
That's not just a rumor you may have heard at recess in the 90s. It's actually true
3:20
As far back as the early noughts, Internet users had collectively noticed that a stage in Sonic 3 featured a tune somewhat similar to the Michael Jackson track, Jam, found on his Dangerous album
3:31
The idea that there was some connection between the songs fueled years of obsessive speculation in the Sonic fan community
3:38
Brad Buxer, a former collaborator of Michael Jackson's who had served as his musical director, finally confirmed these stories during an interview with the French magazine Black and White
3:48
He and Jackson had collaborated on some music that was intended to appear in Sonic the Hedgehog 3
3:53
though none of the music they worked on wound up making it into the final game
3:57
Jackson was allegedly not pleased with how his songs sounded after the massive compression
4:02
and simplification required to fit them into a 16-bit video game cartridge. Furthermore
4:07
Jackson was publicly accused of in 1994, just before Sonic 3 was due to hit stores
4:13
not the kind of publicity you want around your Sega game. The collaboration quietly
4:18
ended, but you can still hear Jackson's influence in the game's music
4:27
One of the most infamous rock and roll anecdotes is also among the least understood. Van Halen
4:33
memorably asked for M&Ms in their dressing room as part of their contract, but added in the fine
4:38
print that they wanted all the brown candies removed. This became an infamous tale of Hollywood
4:43
with diva behavior and excess, and even gets referenced in the film Wayne's World 2
4:48
as a joke about how rock stars be crazy. But there was an actual method to the band's madness
4:53
Van Halen's contract and rider also included very specific and genuinely important safety
4:58
guidelines and requirements for their concert staging in their progressive light show
5:02
If they showed up and found brown M&Ms in their dressing room, it provided an early clue that the venue staff had not
5:08
closely read the rider, and they would need to carefully inspect the stage and lighting setup
5:13
Also, everybody knows the green M&M's are the best M&M's, but asking for a whole bowl of green M&M's
5:18
That would be a bunch of divas. In terms of machine-like dedication to churning out a lot of music quickly
5:29
it's hard to top Van Morrison, who once recorded 30 nonsense songs in a single day
5:34
during a marathon session designed to satisfy his contract with Bang Records
5:39
Morrison owed the upstart label 36 songs, but had quickly soured on the deal
5:42
Realizing that nothing in his contract required him to turn out songs that were any good
5:47
or had any possibility of actually selling records, he knocked out what came to be known
5:51
as his revenge song collection The aggressive bow to recording included anti like Here Comes Dumb George Ringworm and Want a Danish Although that last one sounds pretty good
6:03
Maybe not to listen to, but you know, eat. It's a well-known fact that Prince was a practicing Jehovah's
6:13
Witness for decades prior to his passing. But stories of the singer showing up at random homes
6:18
to preach the good book sounds like one of the many tall tales of the internet
6:22
However, the purple one himself revealed that the stories were absolutely true
6:26
Part of his faith required him to do regular missionary work, which included going door to door
6:31
In 2008, Prince told The New Yorker, sometimes people act surprised, but mostly they're really cool about it
6:37
While that is kind of interesting, it turns out people weren't always thrilled with his visit
6:41
A woman from Minneapolis described her experience with Prince knocking on her door
6:45
as a period of initial excitement that quickly gave way to genuine annoyance
6:50
Apparently, Prince couldn't take We're Not Interested for an answer. In his autobiography, Life, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards confirms a few of
7:03
the long-held rumors about him and his personal life. Specifically, he discusses going for
7:08
extended periods of time with no sleep whatsoever. Yeah, you can kind of tell just by looking at him
7:13
Richards reports that, in 1978, he recorded the song Before They Make Me Run during a relentless
7:19
five-day session. Though engineers would reportedly tag in and out to grab some shut-eye, Richard stayed up the entire time
7:26
He claims to have stayed up for nine days straight, only to suddenly pass out without warning
7:30
and wake up in a pool of blood. That does sound alarming, unless you're Keith Richards
7:35
Then it's just another Wednesday. Not to be outdone by his bandmate
7:44
Rolling Stone's frontman Mick Jagger also had been the subject of numerous rock rumors
7:49
in his lifetime. Perhaps the most consistent surrounds claims by David Bowie's ex-wife, Angie, that she
7:54
found the two rock gods passed out in bed together one London morning in 1973
8:00
She claims to have banged on the door and yelled, morning, ready for breakfast, boys, but says that they were pretty viciously hungover
8:06
and didn't respond with an appropriately clever answer. The duo later memorably appeared together
8:11
in the video for Dancing in the Street, in which they predictably danced through the streets
8:14
wearing baggy clothes. Maybe that's why they were so tired. The mid-1970s were an extremely memorable time in the life and career of David Bowie
8:22
but that doesn't mean he necessarily remembered much of it personally. He later reported having no memory of recording his classic 1975 album Station to Station
8:30
which he made during a 10-day blizzard in Los Angeles. That phrase is another direct quote
8:36
Bowie was nothing if not a gifted lyricist. this wouldn't be a list of crazy rock star debauchery without the king of rock and roll
8:49
rumor himself ozzy osbourne the story of ozzy biting the head off a bat on stage has almost become legend although it definitely happened on January 20 1982 at a performance in Des Moines Iowa
9:01
A fan threw the animal on stage, and Ozzy responded the only way he knew how, extremely, and without much thought
9:08
According to his autobiography, I Am Ozzy, Ozzy thought the bat was made of rubber
9:13
because fans would frequently throw rubber animals on stage during their shows. Most versions of the story claim the bat was alive
9:19
Though the fan who actually threw the animal claims it was long dead and had begun decaying
9:24
before Ozzy put it in his mouth. Not sure if that makes it better or worse. Insanely, that wasn't
9:29
even the only creature that Osborn sacrificed to his dark art. When first meeting with Columbia
9:34
Records executives in 1981, he allegedly brought a pair of live doves with him and consumed their
9:40
heads right in front of the suits when their meeting started to go sour. Incredibly, that is
9:44
not the end of Ozzy's misadventures in animal ingestion. According to both Ozzy's I Am Ozzy
9:50
and the classic Motley Crue autobiography The Dirt, during a memorable 1984 joint tour
9:56
bassist Nikki Sixx and Ozzy snorted lines of ants into their noses as part of an escalating
10:02
series of dares. I bet those ants got a pretty good story out of it too for a little while
10:06
Even after the gone, the most famous and impactful musicians continue to fascinate, inspire, and even perplex
10:18
fans around the world. Rapper Tupac Shakur became a larger-than-life figure after his 1996 death in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas
10:25
Rumors persisted for years that Tupac was still secretly alive and recording songs under a pseudonym
10:31
But members of the rap group The Outlaws later claimed that not only was Tupac definitely dead
10:36
but they had mixed some of his ashes with and smoked his remains
10:40
The group members claimed they got the idea from one of the rapper's own songs, Black Jesus, in which he says
10:45
Last wishes, smoke my ashes. It is hard to misinterpret that lyric
10:50
Tupac was being super literal. Back in 1973, former Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers
11:01
singer-songwriter and guitarist Graham Parsons passed away after overdosing on alcohol and a** in Joshua Tree, California. But that wasn't the
11:09
end of his journey on Earth. Though the Parsons family had wanted to fly Graham's body back to
11:14
Louisiana for burial, Parsons' friend and producer Phil Kaufman stole his corpse from LAX in a
11:19
borrowed hearse. Before he died, Parsons had stated his desire to have his ashes spread at Joshua
11:24
Tree's Cap Rock, and Kaufman was keen on fulfilling his friend's final wish. Kaufman doused Parsons
11:30
coffin with gasoline and set it ablaze. The makeshift cremation didn't take, however
11:35
and Parson's body was recovered and flown to Louisiana to be laid to rest in Garden of Memory Cemetery in Metairie
11:42
Incredibly, Kaufman hadn't technically broken any laws other than stealing a coffin
11:46
and was ultimately fined $750 for the incident, a small price to pay for a place in rock and roll history
#Celebrities & Entertainment News
#Entertainment Industry
#Rock Music