When you really love a rock band, you want to dig deep and learn everything there is
to know about them: good times, the bad times...the really, really weird times.
Well, here are some truly strange stories about some truly iconic bands.
Hit it!
Van Halen are in a class all their own.
Trained pianist and self-taught guitarist Eddie Van Halen reinvented the electric guitar,
making the instrument mimic animal sounds and wailing away so fast you'd swear he was
playing a stringed machine gun.
Meanwhile, on-again, off-again vocalist David Lee Roth was the ultimate showman…goofy,
gaudy, and gleefully ridiculous.
And what's more ridiculous than a rock band that demands concert promoters provide bowls
of M&Ms backstage, but...
"ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES."
That was a serious request, too.
As David Lee Roth tells it, the concert rider explained exactly what would happen if band
members found brown M&Ms backstage.
"The promoter would forfeit the entire show at full pay."
It sounds like a case of celebrity egos gone wild...but as Roth explained, the outlandish
request was actually a precautionary measure.
Van Halen concerts involved sophisticated lighting and stage directions, and if they
weren't followed to the letter, it could lead to unsafe working conditions.
Finding brown M&Ms was a telltale sign that promoters hadn't bothered reading the technical
specifications in the concert rider.
Pretty clever, eh?
When it comes to post-grunge, it doesn't get much grungier than Puddle of Mudd.
Not only is the band named after wet dirt, but frontman Wes Scantlin is often compared
to grunge icon Kurt Cobain.
Unfavorably compared, that is.
Critics have bristled at Scantlin's stage persona.
For example, Variety called him out for mimicking Kurt Cobain during a live concert, and even
said his performance was "annoying."
As time went on, Scantlin became less of a Kurt Cobain clone…but started behaving more
and more erratically.
"Wes Scantlin is being held on disorderly conduct charges.
He was arrested for an incident at Mitchell International Airport."
"Earlier this year, he was arrested at Denver's airport for riding on a luggage carousel."
One of the most glaring examples of Scantlin's unhinged behavior?
According to NME, he attacked a neighbor's patio with a buzzsaw.
That neighbor happened to be electro-pop musician Sasha Gradiva, who claimed Scantlin's behavior
stemmed from a long-running feud.
Gradiva says Scantlin envied the view from her patio and lashed out in "creative" ways,
like blocking her lovely view with flags and a tent.
In 2016, Scantlin reportedly rigged his car to look like an improvised bomb, and his outrageous
behavior affected multiple neighbors.
He was allegedly trying to scare away would-be thieves...but his stunt ended up attracting
the bomb squad, and they immediately ordered nearby residents to evacuate.
Led by the legendary Iggy Pop, the Stooges were pioneers of punk in the 1960s and '70s.
And all these years later, Pop hasn't exactly mellowed with age:
"Can't see you I'm in pain?
I don't care about the money.
Where's my integrity?"
Although Iggy Pop occasionally wore dog collars and sang the 1969 classic "I Wanna Be Your
Dog," you should never ask him to dog-sit for you.
In 1973, he reportedly fed Valium to his girlfriend's dogs, Puppet and Furburger.
According to The Guardian, Pop's girlfriend found him lying in a bathtub with her two
pets, which prompted the rock star to calmly reassure her:
"I'm a dog lover!
I know a lot about animals."
Thankfully, the canines recovered…but only after getting turned away from St. Vincent's
hospital.
Oh, and here's another furry anecdote involving Iggy and the Stooges.
In 1973, Elton John reportedly pranked the band by storming the stage in a gorilla costume.
Pop was reportedly under the influence of something or another, and he couldn't tell
whether he was hallucinating or seeing a real gorilla.
He later said of the incident:
"I was like, 'Oh my God!
What can I do?'
I couldn't fight him.
I could barely stand."
Guitarist James Williamson was also unprepared for the hairy surprise and said that,
"[Elton John came] very close to getting a guitar smashed against him."
Fortunately, Elton John revealed his true identity before things got violent.
The name Hall and Oates sounds like part of a complete breakfast.
In fact, Early Bird Foods & Co. even named a breakfast cereal "Haulin' Oats," prompting
the musicians to sue in 2015.
Of course, prior to that trademark battle, Daryl Hall and John Oates produced tons of
rock classics.
Since releasing their debut album, 1972's Whole Oats, which also sounds breakfast cereal,
they've written more hits than you can shake an oversized drumstick at.
There's the infectious head-bopper "You Make My Dreams" and the moody, melodramatic "Maneater,"
to name just a few.
But when Hall and Oates first met in 1967, they were busy getting away from knife-wielding
high schoolers.
As Hall told the Independent in 1998:
"I was about 17 or 18 years old [and] I had a doo-wop street-corner group called the Temptones."
Meanwhile, Oates belonged to an R&B band called the Masters.
Both groups were slated to perform at a Philadelphia venue, but then things got a little crazy.
As Hall remembers it:
"We're just ready to go on, and we're looking outside, and we hear this bang bang, and there's
guns going off."
Hall explained to the Independent:
"A fight broke out between rival high-school fraternities, which really were just gangs
with Greek letters."
As the frats started attacked each other with chains and knives, Hall and Oates both hurried
for the exit…and that's how they wound up meeting.
The rest, as they say, is rock n' roll history.
Enigmatic Doors frontman Jim Morrison would no doubt be remembered as a legend no matter
how he died.
But the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death add an extra layer of mystery.
Morrison's lifeless body was discovered in a bathtub on July 3rd, 1971, but his untimely
demise went unconfirmed for nearly a week, and an autopsy was never conducted.
There were loads of conspiracy theories at the time.
Did Morrison fake his death?
Was the CIA covering it up?
As founding member John Densmore told Huffington Post in 2013:
"No one I've ever met would be more capable of faking their death than him."
There's another eerie component to the singer's death...specifically in regards to L.A. Woman,
the last Doors album Morrison recorded.
In a weird bit of foreshadowing, Morrison recorded the vocals for L.A. Woman in a bathroom.
According to Rolling Stone, The Doors decided not to record the album in a high-end studio,
opting instead to create the record in the cluttered Santa Monica Boulevard "workshop"
where they often rehearsed.
Morrison reportedly tore the door off the bathroom and recorded his vocals in there.
The last vocals he ever recorded for The Doors can be heard in the song "Riders on the Storm."
That song entered the Billboard charts on the exact same day Morrison died.
A creative mind can find artistic inspiration in even the most heartbreaking circumstances.
Known for whipping it good and wearing energy dome hats, Devo formed in response to the
Kent State shooting.
According to History, the shooting lasted a mere 13 seconds.
For several days in 1970, students at Kent State University protested then-President
Richard Nixon ordering the invasion of Cambodia.
On May 4th, 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire and killed four students.
Among them were Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller, both of whom were friends with Devo
co-founder Gerald Casale.
As Casale told Vice:
"I saw the blood running out of Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause from their exit wounds
in the noonday sun."
On top of dealing with the trauma and loss, Casale was also profoundly affected by news
coverage of the event:
"The stories were lies.
The way the media portrayed it, of course, gave me an early lesson in distortion, and
how what you see isn't what you get."
According to Vice, Casale was an art student who already had a bleak worldview at the time.
In fact, he'd already been using the term "devolution," and its abbreviated form, "devo,"
to describe what he saw as a decline in American values.
However, the Kent State shooting created a sense of urgency that ultimately inspired
the formation of Devo, a rock band that used Dadaist humor to sharply criticize modern
society.
Dave Matthews Band has given the world plenty of hits, including "Crash Into Me" and the
Grammy Award-winning "So Much To Say," which shouldn't be confused with that other hit,
"What Would You Say."
As for the secret of his success, Matthews told CBS This Morning in 2019:
"I have been incredibly lucky."
Well, some of his luck ran out in the summer of 2004.
According to NBC Universal, the musician was traveling by plane when he first learned that,
"[A tour bus had] dumped 800 pounds of human waste into the Chicago River."
What's worse, a lot of that waste reportedly landed on a tour boat carrying over 100 sightseers
and splashed horrified passengers.
For his part, Matthews said he initially laughed at the news, totally unaware that the bus
belonged to his band.
So how did this happen?
According to court records, the bus driver stopped at a bridge and unloaded the liquid
ickiness while on his way to pick up a band member.
In 2009, Matthews opened up about "Poopgate," telling the Cara's Basement podcast:
"I regret that enormously, and I know that some people there accept my apology."
As part of an out-of-court settlement, the Dave Matthews Band reportedly paid $100,000
to Chicago-based organizations and agreed to pay $200,000 to an environmental fund.
As frontman of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Jimi Hendrix set the world and his guitar
on fire.
His breathtaking rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock is inarguably one of
the defining moments of the '60s.
But here's a little known fact: Shortly after that concert, Hendrix was reportedly abducted
and went missing for about two days.
Inexplicably, nobody called the police.
According to Rolling Stone, people close to Hendrix claimed that,
"[Hendrix was] abducted by Mafia gunmen and held in upstate New York in a dispute involving
a recording deal."
Infamous cocaine trafficker Jon Roberts was accused of assisting in the kidnapping...but
he insists he helped rescue Hendrix from two, quote, "wiseguy wannabes."
Supposedly, these "wannabes" abducted Hendrix after spotting him at a Mafia-run club while
he was trying to score drugs.
They demanded an unspecified ransom from Hendrix's manager, but released the musician after being
threatened by some genuine gangsters.
Some people believe Hendrix's manager Michael Jeffery staged the abduction.
Musician Buddy Miles, who performed in Hendrix's trio, Band of Gypsys, accused Jeffery of drugging
Hendrix with LSD in a scheme to ruin the group.
Why?
According to the book The Essential Jimi Hendrix, Miles believed:
"[Jeffery wanted to] bring about the return of the Experience lineup."
We may never know what really happened here.
Formed in Melbourne in 1979, Men at Work landed their first record deal in 1981 and quickly
became hugely popular, even nabbing a Best New Artist Grammy Award in 1983.
That same year, The New York Times wrote:
"This year's music business success story has been Men at Work, who came out of nowhere,
also known as Australia."
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, their 1981 hit "Down Under" also became, quote,
"an unofficial Australian anthem."
It's an impressive rock n' roll resumé, for sure.
But in 2007, a joke question on the music quiz show Spicks and Specks spelled serious
trouble for Men at Work.
Contestants were asked what Australian children's song featured prominently in "Down Under."
"Kookaburra sitting in the old gum tree?"
"That's exactly right."
Apparently, the catchy flute section in "Down Under" lifts portions of the 1934 song "Kookaburra
Sits in the Old Gum Tree."
To be clear, the "Kookaburra" song only has four bars, and "Down Under" contains two of
them.
After the episode of Spicks and Specks aired, the company that owns the rights to the children's
song sued for royalties and won.
Many people were displeased with the outcome.
"Copyright law lasts for life plus seventy years.
And I think that is an excessive period of time."
Here's Trevor Conomy, author of Down Under, a book that delved deeply into the bizarre
lawsuit:
"Most people seem to consider that the outcome was wrong."
"And I share your view, Trevor, I think it's absolutely outrageous."
Following the lawsuit, things took a heartbreaking turn for Men at Work's Greg Ham.
He reportedly had to sell his home and allegedly began drinking and taking heroin.
He passed away in 2012.
"After the ruling, Ham said he was 'terribly disappointed that that's the way I'm going
to be remembered, for copying something.'"
Pink Floyd's otherworldly albums explored the dark side of the moon and the dark side
of mankind.
And their 1977 album Animals painted humanity in a particularly negative light.
Described by Guitar World as a "bitter masterpiece," the album skewered British society in sprawling
songs that were seemingly about pigs, dogs, and sheep, but were actually about politicians,
businessmen, and the complacent masses.
It's an iconic album…and it's also the reason a large inflatable pig wound up drifting through
the London sky, causing a whole bunch of drama.
For the album cover, bassist and singer-songwriter Roger Waters wanted to photograph an inflatable
pig hovering between the smokestacks of London's Battersea Power Station.
But all hell broke loose when it was finally time to photograph the 40-foot long monstrosity.
As graphic designer Aubrey Powell told the website Sew Your Soul:
"The chain broke and the pig sailed up 20,000 feet, ending up right in the center of Heathrow
air traffic."
According to Powell, airport flights were grounded while the Royal Air Force searched
high and low for the missing inflatable creature.
According to Guitar World, a pilot reported seeing a flying pig, and was subsequently
forced to take a breathalyzer test.
Fittingly, the pig eventually landed in the fields of a farm, where its brief taste of
freedom ended.
That'll do, pig.
"That'll do."
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