...off their rockers
Nominated for the 2010 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, KISS rose to prominence in the mid-‘70s, famed for their face-paint, wild outfits and elaborate live performances involving fire-breathing, blood-spitting, smoking guitars and pyrotechnics. According to frontman Gene Simmons, he has “never been high, drunk, or smoked in [his] life”. For a legend of rock ‘n roll, that’s almost the hardest piece of rock trivia to swallow!
When The Rolling Stones played the Altamont Speedway outside San Francisco in 1969, Meredith Hunter, a young black teenager in the crowd, was set upon by the Hells Angels who attacked him with a knife, and when he drew a gun, he was hacked and stomped to death. In 1975 the Hells Angels plotted to murder frontman Mick Jagger for publicly blaming them for the violent incident. The conspirators reportedly used a boat to approach a residence where Jagger was staying on Long Island, New York. The plot failed when the boat was nearly sunk by a storm.
During Mick Jagger’s intermittent acting career, he auditioned for the part of Dr. Frank N. Furter in the 1975 film adaptation of The Rocky Horror Show, a now iconic role eventually played by the original performer from its West End run, Tim Curry. The film was banned in South Africa, but not before some 250 000 viewers had seen it, starting a strong cult following. At age 47, The Rolling Stones’ bassist Bill Wyman began dating Mandy Smith, aged 13. Six years later they married, but divorced a year later. Not long after, Bill’s 30-year-old son, Stephen, married Mandy’s mother, aged 46. That made Stephen a stepfather to his former stepmother. If Bill and Mandy had remained married, Stephen would have been his father’s father-in-law and his own grandpa. one small seed
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