Musicians Do the Dumbest Things
 
 
The BeeGees
 
In the late 1960s, riding his first wave of success, Maurice got into booze and cars. He especially enjoyed driving Rolls Royces. One problem: the Bee Gee was so short, he had to sit on a phone book to see over the hood.
After the Bee Gees signed with Stigwood, they told their manager that they wanted to change the name of the band to Rupert's World. Stigwood gave the boys a strange look. The boys didn't understand why. As Barry recalled, "It was like changing your name from Charlie S*** to Fred S***."
The Bee Gees returned to England and auditioned for record executive Robert Stigwood in 1967. As the Bee Gees sang through a set that included "Puff The Magic Dragon," Stigwood walked out. He later signed the band.
The Bee Gees got so desperate to sell records, they actually gave the members of their fan club the money to go out and buy them. Luckily, there were only six members.
According to mother Barbara, "Robin was a firebug. He would light fires anywhere...." Robin set fire to golf courses and abandoned houses. Confessed Bee Gee, "I was a little swine actually."
 
James Brown
 
As a fifteen-year-old, "Little Junior" Brown was arrested and served time for stealing clothes from parked cars. Claimed Brown, "They sent me to prison for being dumb."
In 1959, 'The Please Please Please' man bought a brand new red Cadillac for the band. Brown and his band, the Famous Flames, kept the windows rolled up in order to pretend that the Cadillac had air conditioning. On one tour through the desert, Brown and the band stopped the Cadillac at a gas station. They kept the windows rolled up while the attendant slowly serviced the vehicle. A little old lady in her car at the next pump watched Brown and the Flames as they smiled and sweated.... and smiled and sweated.... and smiled and sweated. Finally the little old lady jerked open the Cadillac door shouting, "Get out quick before you.... die in there."
In the 1980s, Brown allegedly threw his wife Adrienne's fur coats out on the lawn and blasted them with a shotgun. Adrienne later set fire to all of her husband's clothes.
Brown's gun play got him into serious trouble in 1988. After allegedly shooting the walls of his bedroom, Brown pulled out a shotgun at an insurance seminar in Augusta, Georgia, and threatened people because someone had used the bathroom in his trailer. Brown then jumped into his car and led police on a high-speed chase through two states. Brown finally stopped when police blasted the tires out from under his bullet-riddled vehicle. Brown was arrested.
Brown's wife Adrienne passed away in 1996 of "P.C.P. intake and atherosclerotic heart disease." A year later, 'Mr. Dynamite' proposed on the air to television talk show hostess Rolonda Watts. Responded Rolonda, "We're going to continue this discussion on the phone later, James."
 
DAVID CROSBY
The portly, harmonising David Crosby chased women and drugs into the booming 1960s Southern California folk rock scene. A founding member of the Byrds, Crosby sported green leather capes and earned a reputation as the bad byrd. After contributing to the success of the Jefferson Airplane and others, he settled down to record with friends Graham Nash and Stephen Stills. Crosby, Stills and Nash (later joined by Neil Young) played their first live gig at 'Woodstock' and spent the next thirty years singing about it. Crosby's appetite for drugs led to numerous arrests and eventual jail time. Crosby's conviction was eventually overturned, allowing him to take his proper place in the pantheon of wheezing rock geezers.
Crosby snorted so much cocaine, he wore a hole through the septum in his nose. "That was me," remembered Crosby, "'Ol' Crusting and Bleeding.'"
Crosby wrote the song "Triad" about a guy who liked to mate with two women at the same time. According to one of Crosby's girlfriends, the triad concept wasn't that interesting. Said the girlfriend, "It basically came down to "Whose turn is it?"
In 1977, Crosby, Stills and Nash performed for Jimmy Carter at the White House. When the band was left alone for a few minutes in the Oval Office, they lit up a joint.
When Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash first began singing together, they were known as the Frozen Noses — for their unique harmonies and their drug habits.
As a young folk singer, David Crosby was so obsessed with sex, his friends called him Old Tripod.
 
DEPECHE MODE
For their third album, Depeche Mode relied heavily on a Synclavier. Unfortunately, no one in the band knew how to operate the instrument. Explained Gore, "The manual's very thick."
During one performance, the effects screwed up and Depeche Mode had to play with half the stage hidden behind a curtain. "When you're on the road," sighed Wilder, "there are so many things that remind you of Spinal Tap."
"It's great fun!" said David Gahan, describing dancing on stage. "You get to grab your dick in front of twenty thousand people and they all scream!" Others described Gahan's dance moves as the missing link between Michael Jackson and Howard the Duck.
German rockers didn't think too much of the synth-poppers. When the German band K.M.F.D.M. asked fans to add words to the band's initials, the fans responded, "Kill Mother F****** Depeche Mode."
Axl Rose said he was a big fan of Depeche Mode. He invited the band out to a Beverly Hills barbecue, where he shot a pig. Depeche Mode was shocked. The strict vegetarians sent out a press release saying that the band members "do not wish to associate themselves with anyone who goes round shooting pigs for fun."
 
NEIL DIAMOND
Diamond's first album was The Feel Of Neil. Nobody got the feeling. The record bombed. His 1968 album Velvet Gloves And Spit sold even worse.
For one tour, Neil and his band travelled in separate limos. Cruising down the road, the boys presented their boss with the "pressed ham," a naked butt pressed against the back window of the limo. Neil returned the gesture.
After failing a screen test for the lead in a film about comic Lenny Bruce, Neil wrote the song "I Am.... I Said." In the song, Neil compared his life to the life of a frog.
In concert, Neil egged on the crowd to request the same song over and over again. During one performance, Neil sang his hit "Forever In Blue Jeans" six times in a row, while wearing sharply creased slacks.
Diamond collaborated for many years with guitarist Robbie Robertson of the Band. In 1976, Robertson invited Diamond and Bob Dylan to perform at 'The Last Waltz,' the Band's final concert. Diamond performed first, went backstage, and smugly said to Dylan, "You'll have to be pretty good to follow me." Dylan snapped back, "What do I have to do, go onstage and fall asleep?"
 
BOB DYLAN
In 1960, Dylan spent time in Colorado, playing folk music at a strip club called the 'Gilded Garter.' "One night I was ready to strip myself," he later confessed. Instead, he stole twenty dollars from the cash register and split.
In 1963, Dylan went to a folk club in London. He stood at the back of the club yelling, "What's going on? Where's the drinks? How do you get a drink in here?" The balladeer on stage shot back, "I don't know if you realise it but we allow the performers to perform, during which time the audience keeps quiet." "I don't f***ing have to keep quiet!" screamed the Yankee. "I'm Bob Dylan!"
In December 1963, the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee presented Dylan with an award for his contribution to the civil rights struggle. Dylan attended the awards dinner but got so drunk he had to puke in the bathroom. When he finally made it back to the podium to accept the award, the righteous folk singer shocked the crowd by saying that he saw something of Lee Harvey Oswald (the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy) in himself. Dylan was booed off the stage. Later, Dylan reflected, "I don't even know what politics are, to tell you the truth."
For his T.V. special 'Eat This Document,' Dylan had himself filmed as he attempted to buy the girlfriend of a young Swedish fan. Dylan later described the special as "miles and miles of garbage."
One of Dylan's biggest fans was A. J. Weberman. Weberman loved Dylan so much that he regularly sifted through the poet's garbage. One day, when Weberman went to get a soda at a New York City corner store, he was attacked by a man who seemed strangely familiar. Weberman thought, "Could Bob Dylan be punching me out? My idol, the guy that wrote all that great poetry?" It was indeed Dylan, who kept slugging Weberman until some hippies broke up the fight.
 
GUNS 'N' ROSES
In 1985 Rose and his bandmates moved into a dinky Los Angeles apartment. To cook dinner, the band members set fire to a set of drumsticks and roasted hamburgers over the flames.
On an early tour, Stradlin grew frustrated with the long lines for the airplane lavatory. So he relieved himself in the kitchen area. Izzy's pee earned him a fine and a new nickname — Whizzy."
Rose got into a fight with Courtney Love backstage at the M.T.V. 'Video Music Awards' in 1992. Rose turned to Love's husband Kurt Cobain and said, "Shut your bitch up or I'm taking you down to the pavement." Courtney later said that Axl Rose "should be exterminated."
Drinking in a Chicago hotel bar, Rose punched a businessman for calling him a "Bon Jovi lookalike." Axl went directly to jail.
Axl's road manager bailed him out, then returned to the hotel bar to find Slash passed out drunk. The exhausted manager hoisted Slash over his shoulder and started to carry him to his room. On the way upstairs, Slash peed all over him.
 
ICE-T
After Ice-T bought a house in L.A., several magazines ran features on his surprising interior-decorating skills. Where did he pick up talent? "Yo, I done broke into enough houses to know what kind of s*** I wanted when I got a f*****' house," he says.
In his book, 'The Ice Opinion,' Ice-T told young males looking for women to "Wash your ass. Do some sit-ups." Ice's advice for getting laid: "Lie. Lie. Lie. Lie."
"K.K.K. Bitch," a song from the 1992 Body Count album, was a romantic fantasy about group sex with Tipper Gore's nieces.
Ice-T once compared the song "Cop Killer" to the national anthem, saying "'The Star Spangled Banner' is about a shootout with the police.... Paul Revere was running around saying the 'The redcoats is coming,' so he was basically saying 'Here come the pigs, and a f****up is going down.'
In 1993, Ice-T, the defender of free speech, outlined his position on the press: "You know what I do with reporters now?" he asked. "I let em know, 'If you write some s*** and I see you, I'm beatin' your f******' ass."
 
MICK JAGGER
To annoy his Rolling Stones bandmate Brian Jones, Mick seduced Pat Andrews, the mother of Jones' second illegitimate kid. Then Mick went ahead and seduced Brian.
Two groupies slept with Brian Jones. When they were finished they said he was "great, but he's no Mick Jagger." Then the enterprising duo had sex with Keith Richards. Again they said he was "great. But he's no Mick Jagger." Finally, the girls managed to sleep with Jagger himself. Their comment: "He's great. But he's no Mick Jagger."
In 1970, Jagger portrayed a retired bisexual rock star in the film 'Performance.' One of his co-stars was Anita Pallenberg who was going out with Keith Richards at the time. During one romantic scene, Pallenberg stuck her tongue in Jagger's nostril and really got the stone rolling. The scene was so hot, that it was cut from the film. But an uncut version of the film later won an award at a porn festival in Amsterdam.
Mick had an emerald inserted into the middle of his upper right incisor. When people mistook it for a bit of spinach, he switched to a ruby. Then he got sick of people talking about a spot of blood on his lip, so he implanted a diamond.
Wife Jerry Hall relied on her mouth to keep Mick in line. "Even if you have only two seconds, drop everything else and give him a blow-job," advised Jerry. "That way he won't really want sex with anyone else." 4 January 1999.
 
ELTON JOHN
Anatomy was the reason Elton John chose his middle name Hercules. "I asked myself "Am I hung like a horse?'" recalled Elton, "And the answer was yes, so I gave myself that name as it seemed very appropriate." Hercules was the name of a horse on the British T.V. comedy series, 'Steptoe And Son.'
While living with his fiancé Linda and Bernie Taupin, Elton became depressed. Bernie and Linda found him in the kitchen with his head in the gas range trying to kill himself. But it was only a half-hearted attempt. "He'd only turned the gas on to 'low,' and left the kitchen window open," Taupin recalled. "And he'd thought to take a cushion to rest his head on."
Elton's least successful costume creation was a pair of wooden pants. Sighed Elton, "Not very good for moving about, I'm afraid."
Elton's temper tantrums, known as "Reggie's Little Moments," were as legendary as his stage shows. "I could be unbelievably horrible and stupid," recalled Elton. "On tours, I'd get on a plane, then get off it, maybe six or eight times. I'd walk out of hotel suite because I didn't like the colour of the bedspread. I remember looking out of my room at the Inn on the Park one day and saying, "It's too windy. Can someone please do something about it?"
In 1975, Elton brought his relatives along to enjoy "Elton John Week" in L.A. Elton reportedly took 60 valium, jumped into the hotel pool and yelled, "I'm going to die!" His grandmother sighed, "I suppose we've all got to go home now."
 
KISS
During Kiss' first big show, with Iggy Pop and Blue Oyster Cult in 1974, Simmons tried to breathe fire. Instead, he set his own hair on fire.
Simmons bragged that he mated with 3,000 women in the 1970s. His dream girl? One that's "got big tits that'll knock you in the face. Someone you can wrap your loins around and swap spit with." Or, a woman with nipples like "coat hangers."
Peter Criss had such a hard time remembering his lines for the 1978 T.V. movie 'Kiss Meet The Phantom Of The Park,' that his entire part had to be redubbed.
In the early '80s, Criss got drunk and shot his revolver at a Christmas tree. Why the tree? Apparently because his wife hadn't let him be the one to put the star on top.
On 1992's album Revenge, Stanley and Simmons penned the line "The bigger the cushion / The better the pushin'." Oops, the line was almost exactly the same as a line from Spinal Tap's 1984 song "Big Bottom." ("The bigger the cushion / The sweeter the pushin'") Stanley and Simmons claimed that they'd never heard of Spinal Tap. Yeah, guys. You never heard of Alice Cooper either.
 
K. D. LANG
In her early days, Lang was a performance artist. During one show, she crawled around on stage in garbage bags and participated in a 12-hour (actual time) re-enactment of Barney Clark's heart transplant surgery. For the show, lang used a heart made from pickled beets.
Lang confessed that she learned a lot about show biz by watching crows. According to K. D. "They sort of teach me how to dance."
Lang picked up politics. She appeared in an ad campaign sponsored by P.E.T.A. (People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals). In the ad, Lang declared, "Meat Stinks."
Ranchers in her hometown of Consort, Canada didn't agree. A sign at the edge of the small town read, "Consort: Home of k. d. lang." After the her anti-meat comments, someone spray painted the sign with words "Eat Beef Dyke." A radio station manager took a more reasoned approach to the meat controversy. "If she thinks meat stinks," said the manager, "she hasn't had the opportunity to smell cauliflower that's been in the refrigerator too long."
When Lang won the 'Grammy' for 'Best Female Vocal Performance' of 1992, she was thrilled. "What can I do to top this?" she asked reporters backstage at the ceremony. 'Best Male Vocalist?'"
 
LITTLE RICHARD
After picking up sex tips from local gay hustlers like Madame Oop, Sis Henry, and Bro Boy, Little Richard began driving around with a woman named Fanny. Richard didn't like the driving as much as he liked watching Fanny have sex in the back of the car with excited pedestrians. Richard and Fanny ran into trouble when they decided to fill 'er up at a local gas station. Richard was arrested for lewd conduct and told to get out of Macon.
When he wasn't busy driving or performing, Richard liked to watch people "take out and urinate" in the restroom of the Trailways Bus Station in Long Beach, California. Richard didn't enjoy it when one of the restroom visitors turned out to be an undercover cop.
Little Richard enjoyed organising after-show orgies even more than hanging out in restrooms. According to Richard, "I would pay a guy who had a big penis to come and have sex with these ladies so I could watch them."
In the morning after an orgy, Little Richard often entertained his guests by reading passages from the Bible.
In 1957, Richard decided that rock music was devilish. He joined the ministry and sold all his future song royalties for $10,000. In the 1980s, Richard decided that rock wasn't so bad after all. He sued (but failed) to regain the royalties.
 
MADONNA
Madonna made a 1994 appearance on David Letterman's T.V. talk show and uttered the f-word thirteen times. She then demanded the host sniff her undies. Letterman politely declined.
Madonna was no slouch at slagging others. The 'Material Girl' who built her career as a Marilyn Monroe knock off, accused rock singer Gwen Stefani of stealing her moves, her look, and even (gasp!) her hair. After Madonna's jabs, Stefani and her band No Doubt was pulled from Madonna's best friend Rosie O'Donnell's show. O'Donnell said it was due to "scheduling difficulties."
Comedian Sandra Bernhard was once romantically linked to Madonna, although the "affair" probably involved more publicity than passion. Still, the couple referred to in the press as "the Snatch Batch" had a very public friendship in the early 1990s — and a very public falling out. Ex-Madonna friend Bernhard acidly commented that "every time Madonna farts, [the press] picks up on it. They want to see how it smells. I hate to break the news, but it smells like everybody else's farts."
"All the men I've stepped over to get to the top...." said Madonna of her many sexual conquests, "Every one of them would have me back because they all still love me and I love them." Yeah, right.
In the early days of her career, Madonna got the attention of record company "suits" by dropping popcorn into her cleavage during business meetings and sassily fishing it out of her boobs.
 
MARILYN MANSON
Marilyn claimed that he took on his anti-Christ personna because he was abused as a child. "I used to get picked on for carrying my Kiss lunch box to school!" explained Marilyn. "It's the kind of abuse that stays with you forever."
Marilyn denied the rumour that he was a child actor who appeared on the show 'Mr. Belvedere.' "I've masturbated during the show when it was on T.V.," Marilyn explained, "but I've never been on it."
While touring with Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor's band, Marilyn performed oral sex on his guitar player on stage for about 30 seconds. Six years earlier a girl had performed oral sex with Marilyn on stage.
Fans have asked Marilyn to cut them and put cigarettes out on their faces. One lucky fan got Marilyn to autograph his testicles. "He used a felt pen," enthused the fan. "It was like a turn-on."
 
SEX PISTOLS
"I don't like your trousers," said Sid Vicious to an interviewer. Vicious then pulled out a bicycle chain and blindsided the scribe.
Vicious was so dumb he couldn't figure out how to get his hair to stand up straight. Among Sid's stupid hairstyling methods: lie upside down with your head in the oven to get the desired look. According to Rotten, "It never occurred to him to use hairspray."
In 1978, the Sex Pistols launched their first U.S. tour. After the premier gig in Atlanta, Rotten finished an interview. Moments later, he began receiving a blow job from a drag queen. After finishing, the queen said, "Ah, you're not so rotten after all." Rotten responded by peeing in his / her mouth.
Later on the tour, Vicious invited a girl to gobble his grapefruit. As the girl gobbled, Sid barfed and had an attack of diarrhoea, coating his love mate.
A 1978 performance in San Francisco turned out to be the band's final performance. A the end of the show, Rotten screamed out the song "No Fun," then laughed and said, "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Good night."
 
RINGO STARR
After Ringo joined the Beatles, his bandmates treated him as a faithful spaniel." John Lennon in particular didn't think too much of Ringo's mental abilities. "If anything goes wrong, we can all blame Ringo," said Lennon. "That's what he's here for."
Ringo was the Beatle least affected by the band's plunge into eastern mysticism. "At the moment I meditate every day," replied Ringo after cutting short his 1968 trip to India. "Well, I might skip the odd day if I get up late or arrive in town late or something."
Ringo enjoyed hanging out with John Lennon's L.A. partying pal Harry Nilsson. When Ringo and Nilsson hit the 'Playboy' club one night, the Beatle drummer tried to impress the girls by sticking cigarettes up his nose.
When the L.A. lifestyle got to Ringo, he decided to stick to wine. Unfortunately, he stuck to sixteen bottles of wine per day.
In 1995, Ringo cut a 'Pizza Hut' commercial in which he appeared as the drummer for the Monkees. Oh, how times change....
 
ROD STEWART
Rod's girlfriend Britt Ekland confessed that Rod, "very often chose to wear my cotton panties on stage." The reason? Rod had to combat visible panty lines. Ekland explained that because Rod "used to take [my] knickers and pull them up real tight and stick the teeny weeny part up his bum, so that all [that] was covered were the parts he wanted covered."
Of the woman who inspired the hit song "Maggie May," Rod noted, "She was one of the first if not the first woman I ever loved." The woman didn't leave much of an impression on the rock star. Said Stewart, "I forget what her name was."
During the last days of his marriage to first wife Alana, Alana pinned a note inside the closet of their Malibu home. The note read, "Attention all sluts. Hands off my clothes." She signed the love note, "A soon-to-be-ex-mistress of this house."
Like the Gallagher brothers from Oasis, Stewart was a major fan of the Manchester United football (soccer) team. In 1973, Stewart had the chance to meet soccer superstar Denis Law. After the meeting, Stewart announced to his bandmates, "I saw Denis Law's cock in the locker-room!"
This statement may have given rise to a rock rumour as disgusting as the one about Stevie Nicks' cocaine application procedures. What was the rumour? Rod Stewart had to have his stomach pumped after a romantic encounter with the members of a sports club.
 
U2
In 1977, Bono was driving with some school chums looking for a friend named Georgie Higgins. When they stopped at a light, Bono jumped out of the car and mooned his fellow motorists. Two elderly female pedestrians pointed at Bono's privates and exclaimed, "Jaysus, look at the size of it." Bono swung over to the women and asked, "Excuse me, can you tell me where Georgie Higgins lives?"
During an early U2 gig, two girls were dancing in front of the stage. Bono thrust his microphone in one of the girl's face and asked, "What's your name?" "F*** off, dickhead," said the girl. "Get on with the bleeding music, who do you think you are, David Bowie?"
At the beginning of the 'October' tour, Bono marched out into the audience waving a white flag. One time, he stepped off a balcony into thin air. His roadie caught him by the belt. The roadie managed to pull the wriggling rock star back up onto the balcony. After that, Bono stopped the flag routine.
Salman Rushdie, the novelist who has made a career out of hiding from Islamic terrorists, appeared on stage with U2 in front of 72,000 fans in London. "Afterwards I suggested that perhaps we could rename the band U2 + 1? ME2?" said Rushdie, "but I don't think they were for it." Rushdie went on to live at Bono's estate for years, and wrote a novel about a rock star.
As part of the 1997 'Pop Mart' tour, a giant, lemon-shaped pod opened onstage during the encore, revealing the band members of U2. In Norway, the pod jammed shut, trapping the band in front of thousands of fans. According to one magazine, "Such a 'Spinal Tap' incident couldn't have been scripted any better."
 
VANILLA ICE
Madonna thought Vanilla Ice was cool. The material girl met the vanilla rapper while he was filming the movie 'Cool As Ice.' Madonna and Ice started going out together. She even convinced him to appear naked in her photo book 'Sex.' "It kind of cheeses me out, makes me look like I'm like all the other people in there, a bunch of freaks," Vanilla Ice said about the experience. "I'm no freak."
The Madonna — Vanilla Ice thing went on for about eight months. Ice claimed that Madonna was jealous and called him up at all hours to ask "Are you in bed with another girl?" "I'm f***ing sleeping!" screamed Vanilla Ice, "All alone!"
The couple finally broke up when, in the words of Vanilla Ice, things got "too serious."
When the rap thing went sour, Vanilla Ice turned to the Lord. "I've been checking out churches, Catholic, Baptist," explained Ice. "I haven't decided on any religion yet. But definitely, God is in my life." To signal his new way of life, Vanilla Ice tattooed a leaf to his stomach.
In 1997, Vanilla Ice failed to show up for his own sold-out comeback show in Austin, Texas.
 
NEIL YOUNG
As a groover on the late 1960s L.A. scene, Young hung out with Charles Manson. Young found the anti-hero to be "mysteriously compelling." Said Young, Manson "would sing a song and just make it up as he went along.... and it all made perfect sense and it shook you up to listen to it."
Soon after scoring major hits with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Young invested in an experimental sound system. To show it off, he rowed out to the middle of a private lake with bandmate Graham Nash. Then Young raised his arms. One of his songs came booming out across the lake from huge speakers hidden in a house and a barn on opposite shores. Young wasn't completely satisfied with the experiment. He rowed back to shore and told his techies, "More barn."
In 1975, Young quit a recording session with Crosby, Stills and Nash after a furious argument with Stephen Stills — over a single harmony note.
In the 1970s, Neil Young teamed up with Dennis Hopper and Sally Kirkland to make a movie entitled 'Human Highway.' When the film cratered during production, co-star Kirkland sued Young, claiming that he and Hopper had taken huge quantities of drugs and cut the tendon of her finger with a knife. Years later, Young had to cancel a concert tour when he cut his own hand while slicing a ham sandwich.
The video for the song "This Note's For You" lampooned corporate rock sponsorship. The video featured a faux Michael Jackson with his hair on fire, a reference to an accident that actually occurred while Jackson was filming a Pepsi commercial. A stunned M.T.V. immediately banned the clip, then declared it 'Best Video Of The Year' at the 1989 'Video Music Awards.'
 
ALLMAN BROTHERS
To get little brother Gregg out of the draft, Duane threw a "foot-shootin' party." Gregg put on a moccasin, marked it with a bull's-eye, called an ambulance and bang! A doctor, who noticed the bull's-eye, put a Band-aid on the hole in the Allman foot and sent the draft dodger home.
A club owner in Buffalo, New York was a little too crabby for the band's taste. When the band showed up fifteen minutes late for a gig, the club owner refused to pay them. Roadie Twiggs Lyndon didn't think that was nice. So he stabbed the club owner three times with a fishing knife. The club owner died. Twiggs went to jail for first-degree murder. And the drug addled band went back on the road.
At Twiggs' murder trial, defense attorneys set out to prove that Twiggs had been temporarily insane when he did the stabbing. Twiggs' lawyers argued that touring with the Allman Brothers would drive anyone insane. To prove this, the lawyer called bass player Berry Oakley to the stand. During his testimony, the drugged-out Oakley ran from the courtroom several times to puke in the bathroom. "Did you take any dope last month?" the attorneys asked Oakley. "Uh, huh." "In the last week? "AOh, yeah." "What about the last hour?" "You bet." Twiggs was found not guilty.
The Allman Brothers didn't have fun with photographers. When one tried to take a photo for the cover of the 1971 album The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East, the band members just glared. Then Duane ran over to meet a friend. He scored a bag of coke and came scooting back to pose. The band cracked up, and the photographer clicked away. In-the-know fans enjoyed pointing out Duane hiding dope in his hands on the album cover.
One parachuting fan decided to make a big impression on the 600,000 fans who gathered to hear the Allman Brothers play at Watkins Glenn, New York in 1973. The fan lit a stick of dynamite, jumped out of a plane, and threw the dynamite. But the fan forgot that dynamite and parachutists fall at the same rate of speed. The dynamite exploded just as he pulled his ripcord, and blew him away.
 
SYD BARRETT
For a time, Syd Barrett roomed with a fellow described as "one of the original acid-in-the-reservoir, change-the-face-of-the-world acid missionaries." Syd's visitors were so afraid of getting dosed with L.S.D. that they refused all drinks in the house, and were even afraid of the tap water.
A triumphant first American Pink Floyd tour in 1967 was cancelled after just eight weeks, mainly because of Syd. When Pink Floyd appeared on 'American Bandstand,' Syd forgot to mouth the words to the songs he was supposed to lip-synch. Instead of answering questions on 'The Pat Boone Show,' Syd just gave the cameras a catatonic stare.
One of Syd's last songs was called "Have You Got It Yet?" Syd played the song over and over for Waters. Each time he played it, he played it differently. Waters couldn't follow, so Syd kept asking him, "Have You Got It Yet?"
When a reporter tried to interview Syd about his religious beliefs, the founder of Pink Floyd said, "Right, right. Now, look up there — can you see the people on the ceiling?"
During the 1980s, Waters and Gilmour waged a war for the Pink Floyd psychedelic franchise. Gilmour said, "Roger is a dog in the manger." Waters reportedly paid an artist to print a roll of toilet paper with Gilmour's face on every sheet. An observer characterised the feud as "Waters' megalomania versus Gilmour's pent-up frustrations, superheated into a rage for simple vengeance."

 

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