Urban Myths/bull-crap passed around at school? (Musical Edition)

[Egyptian Feast]

Debbie Harry was Marilyn Monroe's illegitimate daughter. Also she didn't wear knickers on stage and used to flash at the dirty old men in the front row at Blondie gigs.

That might not be true, but Mojo did print a pic of her standing bottomless on stage in a special excess-themed issue with Iggy Pop in scratchcard underpants on the front cover that caused loads of complaints about 20 years back (kids were scratching off the undies in WH Smiths).

Edit: here's the massively NSFW pic they used. On further inspection this appears to be a case of blatant cameltoe and she isn't actually nude below the waist. Ignore!

[Chicory]

The one about Alan Partridge shagging Kurt Cobain's wife.

[Better Midlands]

Kid, Play, Salt and Peppa all worked in the same call centre at the same time after falling on hard times post fame.

There's some truth to that, but it was pre-fame

The ladies meet at Queensbourgh Community College in 1985, playing spades in the lunch room. (When Pepa needs a partner, she calls out, "Hey, light-skin!") Salt gets Pepa a job working the phones at the local Sears — their office-mates include Kid and Play (Kid's already got the high-top fade) as well as a guy who wants to be a comedian. Cheryl clucks, "He thinks he's gonna be the next Richard Pryor." His name? Martin Lawrence.

[jenna appleseed]

Thought that one was true (or was it Ed Gein?)

She claimed it herself but snopes debunked her I think

fake edit:
snopes 21 years ago (I feel old)
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/call-me-disbelieving-blondie/

[Brundle-Fly]

We did get Robert Williams's art piece, Debbie Harry's Fears out of all this though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3Iha7d0g-Y

[PaulTMA]

A friend of mine at school got the Morrissey Finsbury Park incident a bit wrong and said "didn't he come on stage dressed as Hitler?" and of course I mocked his preposterous mistake

[flotemysost]

Not at school, but in my office maybe 6 or 7 years ago, there was a rumour/prank going around that a generically handsome bloke on the team (who was known to have musical leanings) used to be in the band East 17. Which I knew was total shite, as a) this guy was from Kent and b) I saw East 17 switching on the Christmas lights in Walthamstow a couple of years after that, and he wasn't there.

Oh and I remember one going round my school about Marilyn Manson (CW: animal cruelty, even if almost definitely fictitious)

Spoiler alert

chucking a pregnant dog into the audience at one of his shows and refusing to continue playing until the crowd had killed it and its unborn puppies

[close]

. Which I imagine was probably bollocks and some sort of Chinese Whispers permutation of the infamous Ozzy Osborne tale.

[non capisco]

The Pet Shop Boys name relates to an unsavoury practice involving pet hamsters.

This was the main one I can remember from school. It extended to the "fact" that neither of them were capable of going on TV or on stage without their anuses chock a block with guinea pigs. Every time you saw them on Top Of The Pops they were supposedly filled to the brim. The minimal kinetics of Neil and Chris were testament to the years of practice they'd notched up jamming shitloads of rodents up their hoops. Which do you choose, the hard or soft option? (Can I also point out that I never at any point actually believed that they did this. They were my mum's favourite band.)

[willbo]

Manson talks about the "pregnant puppy" rumor in his late 90s book IIRC

[Egyptian Feast]

Oh and I remember one going round my school about Marilyn Manson (CW: animal cruelty, even if almost definitely fictitious)

Spoiler alert

chucking a pregnant dog into the audience at one of his shows and refusing to continue playing until the crowd had killed it and its unborn puppies

[close]

. Which I imagine was probably bollocks and some sort of Chinese Whispers permutation of the infamous Ozzy Osborne tale.

Wow, I hadn't heard that one. It's horrible, but imagining Manson petulantly telling the crowd he wouldn't play another note until they eviscerated a pregnant dog did make me laugh.

I'm not sure if the Ozzy story you reference is the same one I heard at school, so I'll repeat it here: During a show in the 80s he passed around a bucket for the audience to gob into. When it was full and handed back to Ozzy, he downed the lot, the dirty bastard.

[JaDanketies]

The Ozzy story is the true one. Someone threw a bat on stage, he naturally assumed it was a toy and bit its head off. Turns out that some weirdo literally brought a bat with them. Ozzy ended up getting rabies shots

[Sebastian Cobb]

I'm not sure if the Ozzy story you reference is the same one I heard at school, so I'll repeat it here: During a show in the 80s he passed around a bucket for the audience to gob into. When it was full and handed back to Ozzy, he downed the lot, the dirty bastard.

There's videos on Youtube of Mike Patton getting audience members to gob in his mouth seeing as it's relevant.

[sutin]

Did Patton really put his shit in hotel handryers? I love a lot of his records (ie - the '90s ones) but that stuff was all a bit legend gary for me. I remember when I saw Tomahawk in the early '00s, he forced whiskey down the neck of a kid at the front because he was wearing a Slipknot shirt.

[sevendaughters]

I have one that is so stupid that it is scarcely believable. Me and my friends Mike and Dan were playing hangman and I set 'D'Yer Wanna Be A Spaceman' (Oasis b-side) and after a few letters Dan guessed it. I said no, it wasn't, because I was a twat, and said it was a song called 'Trees Wanna Be A Fateeda' and added in letters into the blank spaces left. Out of nothing Mike backed me up and said it was a rare Noel solo song and I claimed I had it on a CD-R and very quickly I was the person who had Oasis rarities and wasn't sharing them out. Absolutely fucking stupid scenes but it was around the height of Oasismania.

[willbo]

I have a true one that I was unfairly blamed for. Nirvana had an un-used song from the In Utero sessions called "I hate myself and want to die", which Geffen records eventually put on a Beavis and Butthead themed alt-rock compilation called "The B&B experience". A big Nirvana fan at school loudly mocked me for thinking there was a song of that name and that it would be on a Beavis and Butthead album. He smugly told me that it was simply a rejected title for the album (which is also true), and that it was probably a parody of B&B pretending to sound like Nirvana which I had stupidly taken as real. I assure you the song is real and on that compilation.

from wiki -

"I Hate Myself and Want to Die" is a song by the American grunge band Nirvana, written by vocalist and guitarist Kurt Cobain. It was first released in November 1993 on the compilation album The Beavis and Butt-Head Experience.

The song was also sanctioned to be released as a B-side to the band's "Pennyroyal Tea" single, but the single's original release was cancelled after Cobain's death in April 1994. In April 2014, the single was finally released on limited edition 7-inch vinyl for Record Store Day, and reached number one on the Billboard Hot Singles Sales chart.

[drummersaredeaf]

Did Patton really put his shit in hotel handryers? I love a lot of his records (ie - the '90s ones) but that stuff was all a bit legend gary for me. I remember when I saw Tomahawk in the early '00s, he forced whiskey down the neck of a kid at the front because he was wearing a Slipknot shirt.

I was about to post the story about him shitting in Axl's orange juice but looked it up to see it was falsely circulated by the band themselves: https://www.loudersound.com/news/did-mike-patton-really-poop-in-axl-roses-orange-juice

[Egyptian Feast]

Slipknot dumped a bunch of live chickens into the moshpit and they were torn apart by the bloodthirsty audience (of 14-year-olds with wallet chains and their mums)

This is probably based on the Alice Cooper chicken incident:

After an unrehearsed stage routine involving Cooper and a live chicken garnered attention from the press, the band decided to capitalize on tabloid sensationalism, creating in the process a new subgenre, shock rock. Cooper claims that the infamous 'Chicken Incident', which took place at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival concert in September 1969, was in fact an accident. A chicken somehow made its way on stage during Alice Cooper's performance; not having any experience around farm animals, Cooper presumed that, since the chicken had wings, it would be able to fly. He picked it up and threw it out over the crowd, expecting it to fly away; the bird instead plummeted into the first few rows of the crowd occupied by disabled people in wheelchairs, who reportedly proceeded to tear the animal to pieces.

The next day, the incident made the front page of many national newspapers, and Zappa phoned him to ask if the story, which reported that Cooper had bit the head off the chicken and drunk its blood on stage, was true. Cooper denied the rumor, whereupon Zappa told him, "Well, whatever you do, don't tell anyone you didn't do it", obviously recognising that such kind of publicity would be priceless for the band.

Pete Townshend was not impressed and referenced the incident in 'Put The Money Down', but appears to have got the wrong end of the stick:

[Rock music is] a very, very powerful and potent force, and it can be used for fairly distasteful purposes. I remember being horrified seeing Alice Cooper beheading live chickens on stage. And it didn't really redeem him that I had smashed guitars, you know? Somewhere, there was a line. I don't know whether it was just because it was live, or because it was real blood. But the fact that he later went on to make some great records didn't redeem him, either. He's sick, tragic, pathetic -- and will always be that way. I'll say hello to him in the street, but I'll never tip my hat to him.

[willbo]

The stupid thing about all that is, is that Alice Cooper is the most strait laced, sweet, calm, wholesome guy imaginable in real life. He's nothing like GG Allin or whatever that makes him sound like.

[Egyptian Feast]

Somebody on here recently said he was known to be one of the rudest, most unpleasant people in the business and it took me aback as I'd always had the opposite impression. I'd never heard anybody else make that claim, so maybe that counts for this thread.

[Dirty Boy]

Manson talks about the "pregnant puppy" rumor in his late 90s book IIRC

It was a chicken, not a dog and apparently the audience tossed it around then returned it to the stage unharmed. Think so anyway i'm not reading that cunts book again to find out.
*just read the above post. Manson likely nicked the story from Cooper (along with virtually everything else he ever did)*

People i know were at the Brixton show in 1992 where Mike Patton peed in a shoe and drank it. You can see it briefly in the video for Easy. No onstage pooping i don't think, but there's an article that mentions him dropping a log on a bench outside Buckingham Palace.

Why do i know these things?

[JaDanketies]

Peter Andre's abs are all plastic surgery. Still not sure if this is true or not tbh

[Gulftastic]

Peter Andre's abs are all plastic surgery. Still not sure if this is true or not tbh

That one I can believe, because they look like tupperware in that video that Mark Lamarr spoofed.

[Mr Farenheit]

There's some truth to that, but it was pre-fame

Ha! Cheers for that.

[willbo]

Somebody on here recently said he was known to be one of the rudest, most unpleasant people in the business and it took me aback as I'd always had the opposite impression. I'd never heard anybody else make that claim, so maybe that counts for this thread.

he may be. But I think he's a lot more conservative and strait laced than his image suggests.

[Egyptian Feast]

he may be. But I think he's a lot more conservative and strait laced than his image suggests.

Definitely. I'd always heard he was very friendly and approachable though, so I was surprised to hear of this supposed reputation for unpleasantness.

[idunnosomename]

It was a chicken, not a dog and apparently the audience tossed it around then returned it to the stage unharmed. Think so anyway i'm not reading that cunts book again to find out.
*just read the above post. Manson likely nicked the story from Cooper (along with virtually everything else he ever did)*

a pregnant chicken?!?!

[chveik]

a pregnant chicken?!?!

you couldn't make it up!!

[Dirty Boy]

a pregnant chicken?!?!

Egg bound i think.

[willbo]

Definitely. I'd always heard he was very friendly and approachable though, so I was surprised to hear of this supposed reputation for unpleasantness.

I borrowed his book from the library a few years ago. I always remember the part where he first meets Zappa, he tells Zappa that him and the group are from Phoenix Arizona, and Zappa is aghast and had to sit down and pour himself a whiskey - saying "Phoenix? I could understand if you were from England or New York, but ..people like you are coming from Phoenix now?" apparently shaking in shock.

[idunnosomename]

i looked after some hens once and they popped out eggs every day, so I reckon the story checks out.