Gather ’round, children, and let me tell you what it was like in ancient times before the invention of the internet.
People told stories. And some of those stories went “viral” almost solely from word of mouth.
No one seemed to have any proof as to whether or not they were true, but it didn’t stop people from believing them. And the tales would continue to spread and usually mutate, taking on a life of their own.
My sister Marybeth told my little sister Elise and I many of these, and we listened, wide-eyed, believing every word.
Funny thing is, what we often refer to as urban legends continue to proliferate. Lots of people continue to assume they’re true, without any credible evidence, even though it should be so much easier to find the truth nowadays with a research tool at our literal fingertips. “Should” is the operative word there.
I started thinking about a number of music-related stories I have heard over the years and decided to look into a bunch of them and give a report of my findings as to their veracity.
Maybe you’ve heard some of these same stories or variations of them. I already knew the answer to some of them, but others not so much.
“Love Rollercoaster”
The story:
At one point on the song “Love Rollercoaster” by The Ohio Players: (1:24 on the single version, 2:32 on the album version) a bloodcurdling scream can be heard in the background of the song.
There are several versions of the legend, but a common one is that it is the scream of a woman, possibly the model featured on the album cover, being murdered in the studio while the song was being recorded.
The verdict – FALSE
The scream came from singer Billy Beck to prepare his voice to hit the high notes.
The murder story seemed to originate from a joke a DJ in Berkeley, CA made at the time of the song’s popularity. As bandmember Jimmy “Diamond” Williams tells it in the Fred Bronson/Adam White book The Billboard Book of Number One Rhythm & Blues Hits, “There is a part in the song where there’s a breakdown. It’s guitars and it’s right before the second verse.
Billy Beck does one of those inhaling-type screeches like Minnie Riperton did to reach her high note, or Mariah Carey does to go octaves above.
“The DJ made this crack and it swept the country. People were asking us, “Did you kill this girl in the studio?” The band took a vow of silence because you sell more records that way.”
In the Air Tonight
The story:
The original meaning of “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins centered around a guy who could have saved a drowning man but didn’t do it and is now haunted by the memory.
The full version of the story usually involves Collins calling the man onstage and publicly shaming him for letting someone drown.
The verdict– FALSE
Phil Collins has stated that he wrote the song to work out his anger over his recent divorce.
And that a drowning man had nothing to do with it.
How David Bowie Met His First Wife
The story:
David Bowie said he met his first wife, Angie, because they were both dating the same man.
The verdict– TRUE
Bowie states this in a 1976 interview with Cameron Crowe for Playboy.
The evidence– Here is a link to the full interview (not the magazine).
The KISS Acronym
The story:
The band name KISS is an acronym for “Knights In Satan’s Service”.
The verdict– FALSE
According to Gene Simmons in his autobiography:
“[M]isinformation about the band began to spread in the southern Bible Belt states, including a rumor that the name KISS stood for Knights in Satan’s Service, and that the four of us were devil worshipers.”
“Ironically, this rumor started as a result of an interview I gave in Circus magazine after our first album; in response to a question, I said that I sometimes wondered what human flesh tastes like.”
“I never wanted to really find out, but I was curious intellectually. Later on, this comment seemed to ignite the whole idea that in some way KISS was aligned with devil worship.”
He later explains how the name actually did come about:
“One day Paul [Stanley] and Peter [Criss] and I were driving around, brainstorming for new names. I had thought of a few, like Albatross, but I wasn’t happy with any of them. At one point — we were stopped at a red light — Paul said, “How about KISS?” Peter and I nodded, and that was it.”
Wow. The real story is a lot more boring, which is usually the case.
“Stairway To Heaven”
The story:
In the song “Stairway to Heaven,” there are hidden devil worshipping phrases such as “Here’s to my sweet Satan” that were recorded backwards (called backmasking).
The verdict – FALSE
In 1981, a host on Christian radio, Michael Mills, made claims that “Stairway to Heaven” contained hidden, backward Satanic messages that can be heard by the unconscious.
The outrage against backmasking picked up steam from there, and even led to anti-backmasking legislation in two states.
When asked if there was any truth to the backmasking accusations against his band’s song, Robert Plant in an interview with Musician magazine in 1983 responded:
“To me it’s very sad, because “Stairway to Heaven” was written with every best intention, and as far as reversing tapes and putting messages on the end, that’s not my idea of making music. It’s really sad.”
“The first time I heard it was early in the morning when I was living at home, and I heard it on a news program. I was absolutely drained all day. I walked around, and I couldn’t actually believe, I couldn’t take people seriously who could come up with sketches like that.”
Ozzy And The Bat
The story:
Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off of a bat while on stage.
The verdict – TRUE… with some clarifications:
– It wasn’t alive and he didn’t realize it was a real bat, so it wasn’t as crazy and vicious of an act as it was commonly portrayed.
This happened at a concert in Des Moines, Iowa, on January 20, 1982:
A 17-year-old fan named Mark Neal snuck a bat into the show, one that had been dead for some time, and threw it onto the stage. Ozzy has said repeatedly that he thought the bat was a toy and didn’t realize it was real until he bit into it. He was rushed to the hospital after the show and had to undergo three weeks of rabies shots.
Cass Elliots’ Cause Of Death
The story:
Mama Cass died from choking on a ham sandwich.
The verdict – FALSE
The coroner’s report showed that she had died of a heart attack, with no drugs or alcohol in her system.
“There was left-sided heart failure,” wrote pathologist Professor Keith Simpson. “She had a heart attack which developed rapidly.”
The ham sandwich myth reportedly began because the first doctor who examined her after her death, Dr Anthony Greenburg, in a late-night press conference, said, “She was lying in bed eating and drinking a Coca-Cola while watching television. She was half propped up by pillows and it seems that she choked on her sandwich and inhaled her own vomit.”
In reality, the ham sandwich was found untouched. In her recent memoir, Cass’ daughter makes the claim that in the immediate aftermath, her mother’s manager asked a reporter to say that Cass died choking on a ham sandwich, because he was worried that the real reason may have been an overdose.
Van Halen And The Brown M&Ms
The story:
Van Halen had it stipulated in their contract that there were to be no brown M&Ms anywhere backstage.
The verdict – TRUE
It wasn’t a frivolous rock star request, as one might think. It was for safety reasons.
From David Lee Roth’s book Crazy from the Heat:
“Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets.”
“We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max.”
“And there were many, many technical errors, whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through.”
“The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function. So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say, “Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes’ “
“And article number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was: There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.’ “
“So I would walk backstage, if I saw brown M&M’s in that bowl.. .well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error. They didn’t read the contract. Guaranteed you’d run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.”
“Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds”
The story:
The title of the song is a veiled reference to LSD.
The verdict – FALSE
Both Paul McCartney and John Lennon stated that the initials were purely coincidental.
So where did the title and the inspiration for the song originate? This is from David Sheff’s September, 1980 interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono:
Sheff: “Where did ‘Lucy in the Sky’ come from?”
Lennon: “My son Julian came in one day with a picture he painted about a school friend of his named Lucy.”
“He had sketched in some stars in the sky and called it ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,’ Simple.”
Sheff: “The other images in the song weren’t drug-inspired?”
Lennon: “The images were from ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ It was Alice in the boat. She is buying an egg and it turns into Humpty Dumpty. The woman serving in the shop turns into a sheep and the next minute they are rowing in a rowing boat somewhere and I was visualizing that.”
“There was also the image of the female who would someday come save me… a ‘girl with kaleidoscope eyes’ who would come out of the sky. It turned out to be Yoko, though I hadn’t met Yoko yet.”
“So maybe it should be ‘Yoko in the Sky with Diamonds.'”
“Turning Japanese”
The Story:
The song “Turning Japanese” by The Vapors was written about well, pleasuring oneself.
The verdict – FALSE
The writer of the song, David Fenton, in an interview with The Guardian in 2023 stated:
“…the words and the song’s title didn’t really mean much. It was intended purely as a love song. The protagonist is sitting in his bedroom, which has become like a prison cell, pining over a photograph of his ex-girlfriend.”
“I drew on my own experiences of being dumped.”
In response to the rumors about the song being about self-gratification, he stated in an interview with Songwriting Magazine in 2021:
“I can’t claim that one!…I thought that was quite interesting, and it made people talk about the song and created more interest, so it didn’t hurt I don’t think, but that wasn’t the intention.”
“It was just a love song.“
Next up:
Urban Legends About Children’s Television Shows:
“Let’s Talk About Tinky Winky”
Just kidding.
I am not doing that.
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Great job! You hit all the big ones. I’ve always been amused that anyone believed the Phil Collins one.
The bat had been dead, but unfortunately the dove from the previous year had not been. Pre-bite, at least.
The ham sandwich detail seems like a cruel way to enforce that Mama Cass was on the larger side.
Not unlike the story I heard in high school about David Bowie having to get his stomach pumped due to his sexual proclivities. A few years later, I heard the same story told for Marilyn Manson and then Lil Kim. The people telling the stories seemed to think they were passing on strange but true trivia, but really they were just pushing their own discomfort with people who violated their sex and gender expectations.
Now, “Turning Japanese,” I think the denial is BS. At least the self pleasure theory actually explains the role of the turning Japanese line, albeit in a racially insensitive fashion (which, by the way, was quite on brand for the 1980s. Stranger Things this was not).
So, sitting in your room thinking of someone you love…and then…what?
I remain dubious.
According to Ozzy’s own words, the dove was already dead.
Add Jordan Knight from New Kids on the Block to that list of people associated with the stomach pump rumor. That one just never seemed to die.
Regarding Turning Japanese, he’s not so much denying the rumors in the interview but saying that he can’t take the credit for that subject matter because it simply wasn’t his intent. Writing about it in the early 80s wasn’t exactly scandalous, so I don’t know what the motivation would be for denying it.
Hmm..other witnesses seem to recall that the dove was alive. Certainly the second dove that was flying around the room was alive.
I am not sure if I would trust Ozzy’s mental state at the time, given that he was incredibly drunk at the meeting. His actions were also hasty: sitting on a woman’s lap, taking the dove out and biting it. The notion that he was examining it to confirm that it was in fact dead before him biting it is a lot to…swallow. But I didn’t realize that he has claimed it was dead. An interesting detail.
First time I heard the story about a pop star having his stomach pumped it was Marc Almond. Marilyn Manson was also the subject of the same rumour I’d previously heard about Prince – they’d had a rib removed so that they could orally pleasure themselves.
Ah yes, I had forgotten that rib story.
The stomach pump rumor at my middle-school was Rod Stewart.(Early ’80s)
I’ve heard the stomach pump story about Rod Stewart and Elton John, too. I won’t go into the technical aspects of it but they all seem seriously unlikely.
Good job, rollerboogie! And thanks for not bringing up the Led Zeppelin mud shark myth, even though Frank Zappa got a lyric out of it.
I wasn’t aware of the Zeppelin mud shark rumor. I can only imagine what that’s about. It put a smile on my face nonetheless.
Great stuff. Another Phil Collins story was that he divorced his second wife by fax. I think that ran as front page news in tabloid The Sun. Phil says its not true.
There’s a rumour here that the sax solo in Baker Street was played by Bob Holness. Not a name that will mean anything to America. He was a daytime quiz show host who would have been in his early 50s when it was recorded. Stuart Maconie an NME journalist claims he came up with it as a joke. I’ve seen it a number of times over the years so it took on a life of its own.
Couple of claims of songs being about heroin. There She Goes by The La’s with its lyrics about racing through my veins was pretty much taken as fact here as bring about heroin. Helped by the fact that Lee Mavers developed a heroin habit but he has denied it and said he got into it after the song came out.
Then there’s Golden Brown, The Stanglers biggest hit; #2 in 1982. Hugh Cornwell confirmed its about the pleasure that heroin and a woman gave him. Doesn’t seem as overt as There She Goes in the lyrics but it’s got a very hazy drugged up feel to it.
I love Golden Brown. I had not heard it until I started digging into harpsichord songs recently, and immediately read that it was about heroin. I didn’t care.
The first one that comes to mind that you didn’t post here (besides the stomach pumping one) is the legend that “Purple People Eater” singer Sheb Wooley was the original voice of the Wilhelm scream, that “ah-AHHH” stock scream you hear in so many movies.
It’s never actually been confirmed, but it’s most likely true – and alternate takes were found last year.
https://kotaku.com/wilhelm-scream-star-wars-video-games-movies-sound-1850321598
Great one. I think I may have heard that somewhere more recently.
Super fun article – more, please!
Thank you, blu!
I remember my friends telling me the KISS origin story and my cousin telling me the Love Rollercoaster one back in the 1970s and all of us believed it. Hey, there was no internet then, you young ones!
According to William Poundstone in his book Big Secrets, his official playback of Stairway to Heaven in reverse at a recording studio (along with many other songs with reputed “hidden messages” when played backwards) did find “Satan” coming in loud and clear but nothing else. He believed it to be a coincidence, and so do I.
I wanted to believe the lurid story about Michael Hutchence’s death. It had to be an accident, I thought. 37, geez. I couldn’t make sense of it. The false story made more sense to me. “Listen Like Thieves” has such a great chorus. I can’t help but sing along. I saw them live. It was a consolation prize. My cousin, his aunt, and I were supposed to see a Lakers exhibition game, but it fell on a weekday. Hutchence was a great frontman.
You were not alone. I remember reading a review of his posthumously released solo album that was skeptical that his death was a suicide, and basically asked “does this music sound like a man who had given up hope?”
But song lyrics don’t tell the whole story of someone’s life, and when a person is struggling, even those closest to them may not know what is really going on inside. I recently played for a funeral for a man who sang in a rock band and whose idol was Michael Hutchence. I sang “Never Tear Us Apart” before the funeral started. I couldn’t think of a better tribute. It just felt right.
Very true. I worked for a man who later died by suicide, and he was known at the office as always in good spirits, famous for saying he was “tippy tappy, with a song in my heart.” It seems that he sang a different song as well, and I wish that I could have been there for him in his time of need.
Pete Townsend considering leaving the Who to join Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich?
The Mahogany Rush guy getting possessed by the ghost of Jimi Hendrix?
Klaatu were actually the reassembled Beatles?
Had not heard any of those! I am intrigued by the second one.
The story goes that Frank Marino was in the same hospital as Hendrix when the latter died and he was somehow endowed with a soupcon of Hendrix’s talent. When he left the hospital he founded the band, Mahogany Rush, and started playing guitar in a completely different way than he had before, a style reminiscent of the deceased master.
I may have believed that had I heard it.
I remember Casey telling the Klaatu/Beatles story before playing the Carpenters’ remake of “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” (one of my favorites of theirs, although I’m sure there are fans of the original who consider it a sacrilege).
I like it too. It’s fun to see the Carpenters’ quirky side, like this short little gem-
https://youtu.be/Q41xZF3EOIQ?si=cnZQBOyk4Xujg9v0