Random Most Infamous Rock and Roll Urban Legends (17 items)

• 

  (#6) Aerosmith

  • Band/Musician

  Various stories have swirled about Aerosmith almost buying the plane that later crashed and nearly killed everyone in Lynyrd Skynyrd. What actually happened is a lot less mystical, and is based on good observation and strong human resources. Right before the Skynyrd crash, Aerosmith’s assistant chief of flight operations (yes, that’s a job) checked out the Convair CV-300 that Skynyrd later chartered and deemed it unworthy of the Boston band, either because he saw the crew drinking or the engine caught on fire in his presence. Unfortunately, for Skynyrd, they had no such luck, and spent years trying to pick up the pieces from the incident. Note to future rock stars: your assistant chief of flight operations might save your life one day, so check references.
• 

  (#17) Debbie Harry

  • Band/Musician

  Was the Blondie lead singer a potential victim of serial killer Ted Bundy in New York City? According to Harry, yes. She said he kidnapped her in the early '70s while she was trying to hail a cab, and she was held hostage in a car, only narrowly escaping with her life.

  In reality, while Harry might have had a scary encounter with a creep in a battered car, there’s no way it could have been Ted Bundy. The serial killer never spent any time in New York during his murder spree, and so couldn’t have almost killed Debbie Harry, or anyone else living there at the time. What's more likely is a simple case of confirmation bias.
• 

  (#16) Judas Priest

  • Band/Musician

  Virtually every popular band of the '60s and '70s was accused by fundamentalist Christians of including backwards Satanic or drug messages in their music. But few bands got as raw of a deal as metal gods Judas Priest. In 1990, the band was sued by the parents of two boys who committed suicide after listening to their music. They claimed that subliminal messages in the song “Better by You, Better than Me” urged listeners to “do it” with “it” referring to self-harm.

  The trial dragged on for a month before the judge ultimately dismissed the case, and subsequent research has shown that backmasking is ineffective at delivering subliminal messages. However, the judge bizarrely ruled that Priest HAD included backmasked messages in their music – you just had to know exactly what they were for them to work. Unasked was the question of what band wants their fans to kill themselves, rather than buy more records?
• 

  (#4) Van Morrison

  • Band/Musician

  Why would someone record three dozen intentionally bad gibberish songs? In 1967, Irish troubadour Van Morrison was stuck in a brutally unfair record deal, and tangled in a dispute with his manager’s widow. Finally, he managed to get his contract bought out by Warner Brothers, but was still bound to the terms of his old deal, which required him to write and record 36 more songs.

  But Morrison got the last laugh. Knocking out over 30 songs in one day, Morrison fulfilled his end of the deal, recording short, out-of-tune, nonsensical tracks about ring worms, Danishes, and overdue royalty checks. These so-called “revenge songs” were useless to his old record company, but they did the trick, freeing Morrison up to start a run of albums that are hardly surpassed in rock greatness.  
• 

  (#12) Lou Reed

  Lou Reed’s album Berlin is widely hailed as one of the bleakest records of all time. Capping off the horrific tale of a marriage gone wrong is the song “The Kids” which actually features album producer Bob Ezrin’s kids crying and wailing. Legend has it Ezrin and Reed got this effect by telling them their mother was dead and recording the horrifying aftermath.

  In reality though, Ezrin got his kids to cry on tape in a more old fashioned way – recording them refusing to go to bed.
• 

  (#15) Phil Collins

  • Band/Musician

  Maybe the best known of all rock urban legends is a persistent story that has Phil Collins writing his hit song “In the Air Tonight” after he was on a night drive and witnessed a man drowning, while another man stood on the beach watching the victim go under. The story goes even further, with Collins premiering the song live in concert, having sent tickets to the man who witnessed the drowning. He then ordered a spotlight onto the man, telling the audience that this new song was dedicated to him. The witness, publicly shamed by a rock star, goes home and kills himself.

  The problem is that absolutely none of this happened, nor is it even plausible. How would Collins be able to see any of this without being so close that he couldn’t just save the drowning man? How did he know who the witness was? Why would a man be randomly invited to a Phil Collins concert *by Phil Collins* and think that’s normal?

  Furthermore, the legend itself has a number of different versions, with some saying Collins actually witnessed a rape, or tried to prevent the drowning and couldn’t, or couldn’t find the man and sings the song to a spot-lit empty chair. It’s all nonsense, as Collins himself has confirmed many times.

New Random Displays    Display All By Ranking