During an Ozzy Osbourne concert in Iowa in the ‘80s, a bat was thrown onstage. Stunned by the light, the bat lay motionless until Ozzy picked it up, thinking it was plastic, and bit off its head. Immediately the bat started flapping its wings and he realised it wasn’t a fake. Ozzy later described this as “one of the most horrible, painful experiences of my life”. According to some, this is one of the many myths in rock ‘n roll trivia that never actually happened. The masked rockabilly frontman of Martin Rocka and the Sick Shop is none other than the guitarist from that other Johannesburg rock band, Wonderboom. Jimi Hendrix was inspired to pen ‘Purple Haze’ after dreaming that he could walk underwater. The ‘you’ Paul McCartney sings about in his song ‘Got to Get You into My Life’ was in fact marijuana.
Keith Moon of The Who gained such notoriety blowing up toilets in hotels that he was banned from all Holiday Inn, Sheraton and Hilton hotels. His destruction bills total an estimated $500 000. During one incident, Moon was asked to turn down his cassette player because The Who were making “too much noise”. Moon asked the manager up to his room, lit a stick of dynamite in the toilet, and shut the bathroom door. Following the explosion, Moon informed the startled manager, “That, dear boy, was noise.” Moon then turned the cassette player back on and proclaimed, “This is The Who.” Boy George is famous for saying he preferred “a nice cup of tea” to sex.
Psychopath Charles Manson wanted to start a global race war, fuelled by ‘hidden meanings’ in The Beatles’ White Album, particularly ‘Helter Skelter’. Eventually these ‘messages’ instructed him to brutally murder actress Sharon Tate and six others in their Hollywood homes. Ironically, the Manson clan wrote the words in blood on the walls, but incorrectly spelt the Beatles hit ‘Healter Skelter’. The Who’s Pete Townshend has smashed more than 90 guitars in his career, including at least 23 Fender Stratocasters, 12 Gibson Les Pauls and 21 Gibson SGs. Since their inception, Guns N’ Roses have had 21 full-time band members… and counting. The story that Marilyn Manson had some of his ribs removed so he could perform auto-fellatio is another high up on the list of rock ‘n roll’s mythical trivia. When Manson was asked about it, he commented: “If I could suck myself, do you really think I’d ever leave my house? Besides, I looked into it after I heard this rumour and it’s just too expensive.” Queen was widely criticised in the ’80s for breaking a United Nations cultural boycott (of Apartheid) by performing a series of shows at Sun City in 1984.
While still performing as
Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids, Manson attempted to “re-
Elton John’s real name is Reginald Dwight. He has had it legally changed to Sir Elton Hercules John. Among the many pseudonyms Elton has worked under are Lord Choc Ice, Rockaday Johnny, Redget Buntovan, Nancy Treadlight and Dinah Card. Elton became renowned for performing in wild costumes, one of the most famous being a Donald Duck suit.
iterate the lesson of Willy Wonka” during their shows. Above the crowd he’d hang a donkey piñata with a sign attached saying: “Please, don’t break this open. I beg you not to.” Human psychology being what it is, kids in the crowd would invariably grab the stick and smash the piñata apart, forcing everyone to suffer the consequence; which in this case was a shower of cow brains, chicken livers and pig intestines. Johnny Cash’s campervan ignited while he was drunkenly camping in Los Padres National Forest in 1965, triggering a fire that burned 2 km of wildlife refuge. Cash defended himself, saying: “I didn’t do it, my truck did, and it’s dead so you can’t question it.” To date he is the only person to be sued by the US government for starting a forest fire.