Top 10 Wildest Rock Music Myths
Some of these rumors are so bonkers you'd swear they were cooked up during a particularly strong acid trip. Others are just the musical version of a high school bathroom whisper, wild, impossible to prove, yet somehow too juicy to ignore.You're not here for facts. You're here for the stories that make you question reality. The ones involving fake deaths, secret surgeries, bizarre backstage antics, and body parts that apparently defy human biology. Rock stars have always been magnets for mythology. You've probably heard a few of these whispered between tracks on a late-night radio show or passed along by that one friend who still thinks MTV has the inside scoop.
But which of these myths deserves the crown for most outrageous? That's your call. Vote for the rumors that made you laugh, gasp, or double-check Wikipedia at two in the morning.
I feel he's not dead, because:
1. His "replacement," William Campbell, is dead. He died in 2011, and Paul is still using his social media, meeting fans, and performing.
2. Wouldn't the amount of secrets the band would have to keep be a little much? I mean, not just them, but friends and family. Like, how do you not notice someone close to you was dead, and never returned?
3. If William Campbell died in 2011, and Paul was really dead, Ringo would have to be the one looking for another Paul. Plus, people KNOW when stuff seems out of whack.
4. This one is short and to the point: HOW do you find someone that looks like Paul, talks like him, sings like him, and has the same musical talent?
5. I kinda feel Paul is just embracing this theory. His album 'Paul is Live' basically parodies the Abbey Road cover, and the songs have "messages" backwards. I also feel he was just having fun experimenting with sound and lyrics.
Ok, I'll be quiet now.
If you don't know the rumor, don't ask!
Besides their continuing popularity, the most improbable aspect of the long-running theatrical rock group Kiss has to be the freakishly long tongue of singer-bassist Gene Simmons. For years comic-book nerds convinced each other that Simmons had in fact had a cow tongue surgically grafted to his own. Sadly, it's just a fluke of Mother Nature.
"I was oblivious, for the first thirteen years of my life, that I was endowed with a large oral appendage, my super long tongue," Simmons wrote in his autobiography. "It really was longer than everyone else's, and I was soon to find out that having a long tongue came in handy with the girls."
He's so enamored of the rumor that, when he recently launched his own men's magazine, the name was obvious: Tongue.
Some fans still believe that Manson, born Brian Warner, was the bespectacled child actor (Josh Saviano) who played Paul Pfeiffer, best friend of Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage), on the hit television show The Wonder Years, which was broadcast from 1988 to 1993. At the height of his notoriety in the mid-Nineties, Manson also got plenty of mileage out of the rumor that he had a rib removed so he could perform oral sex on himself.
The list of tall tales associated with the singer is as long as his reach: He supposedly had breast implants. He replaced one eye with a testicle. He played Charlie in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Manson, a master of deception and reinvention, welcomes the rumors: They make him a continuing topic of discussion. "It's kind of irrelevant sometimes whether they are true or not," he once said. The Paul Pfeiffer one's not true... and Alice Cooper didn't play Eddie Haskell either.
Why isn't this higher?
This is highly disputed.
There is no evidence, but there's strong suspicion that she did. They were both heroin addicts at the time.
When Kurt Cobain was found dead with a gun in his hand (rumors suggest she put the gun in his hand after shooting him), he was also on a high dose of heroin (but not a deadly overdose). When you're high on heroin, you don't kill yourself - you are in too strong a state of euphoria to consider such a thing. Only during withdrawal do you actually have suicidal thoughts. Otherwise, you wouldn't even think about the act of suicide.
Rock & roll was undoubtedly waiting for a savior when the White Stripes, the eccentric garage duo from Detroit, hit the big time a couple of years ago. In the increasingly processed world of pop, Jack and Meg White's inspired primitivism was the key to their success.
It didn't hurt, however, that the band came equipped with a provocative rumor attached. Sharing jet-black hair and pasty complexions, the Whites passed themselves off as a brother-and-sister team, the two youngest siblings in a family of ten. In March 2001, a writer for the Detroit Free Press exposed the pair as a once-married couple. County records show that John (Jack) Gillis and Megan White were married in 1996 and divorced in 2000.
As with most phenomena, the facts about the White Stripes remain subject to distortion. Yes, they did turn down an offer to license a song for an ad for the Gap. No, it wasn't for $1 million.
"I can't untie the threads of how much I played up to the part that was written for me," Keith stated with full honesty.
The myths and facts surrounding Mr. Richards have grown way beyond his control to the point where the lines between them don't exist anymore. Unfortunately, this myth was written off as false, and to much disappointment, it doesn't even have a spectacular story to it.
While boarding a flight at Heathrow Airport, Keith was approached by a group of journalists. He told them to "F** off" but then added, "I'm going to have my blood changed." "Boom, that's it. And then off to the plane. After that, it's like it's in the Bible or something. I just said it to fob them off. It's been there ever since."
The Newcomers
When "Mama" Cass Elliott died in 1974 at the age of thirty-two, initial reports suggested she choked while eating a sandwich in bed. The sweet-voiced belter for the Mamas and the Papas had been enjoying a successful solo career at the time, with hits such as "It's Getting Better" and the vaudevillian throwback "Dream a Little Dream of Me."
At almost 240 pounds, she had always struggled with her weight. Fans could easily believe her death was associated with eating. Reports were soon embellished with details. Like Jimi Hendrix, Cass had supposedly asphyxiated on her own vomit. And the sandwich, like the singer's showier instincts, was ham. Some believed she died from a heroin overdose. Others said she had been carrying John Lennon's baby at the time.
In the end, the truth was less lurid. Mama Cass died of massive heart failure, probably as a result of her weight problem and the occasional crash diets she tried. Though a sandwich may well have been found at her bedside, an autopsy revealed no evidence of food in her trachea.
While on tour with Motley Crue in the 80s, high on cocaine and other drugs, both Ozzy and Nikki Sixx snorted a line of ants. Later, Ozzy licked Nikki's piss before Nikki could and pulled Tommy Lee into a hotel room where Ozzy then defecated on the floor and started smearing it on the wall. Osbourne has no recollection of these events.
The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, etc., are often related to psychedelic music or floating prog music. Maybe certain substances have linked Dark Side of the Moon with the Wizard of Oz. Who knows? It could be very true.
This theory states that Kurt Cobain faked his death and became the Weezer frontman. Some points shown are similar facial features, the formula book of Cobain's lyrics Rivers has, the side project Goat Projector, and the Foozer tour.
Even scholars of Shakespeare and Joyce don't read their heroes' writing this closely. When the diminutive Genesis frontman hit the Top Twenty with "In the Air Tonight" in 1981, fans interpreted its lyrics (apparently a commentary on Collins' failed marriage) literally.
"Well, if you told me you were drowning/I would not lend a hand": Collins is said to have witnessed the drowning of a real-life friend from afar. A stranger who was closer to the drowning man offered no help.
Like a game of Telephone, the folklore took on further embellishments: Collins supposedly tracked the man down and gave him a free concert ticket, then debuted the song with a spotlight trained on the offender. By some accounts, the negligent man later committed suicide or was arrested as a result of Collins' diligence.
In a postscript, Eminem's psychopathic fan "Stan" compares his rapper-hero, who he believes has abandoned him, with the man on the beach: "That's kinda how this is, you could have rescued me from drowning/Now it's too late, I'm on a thousand downers now."
"In the Air" is certainly not drowning, as it's recently been remade by rappers DMX and Lil' Kim and alt-rockers Full Blown Rose.