Rock/Pop Tidbits

Here is our last installment of this interesting feature, I hope that you have enjoyed the trivia and have learned something about our wonderful musicians and bands!


Ray Davies of the Kinks once tried to be like Keith Moon (the Who) and destroy his hotel room. “I threw a Guinness bottle against the wall,” he explained. “It bounced back and hit me in the head and knocked me out.” That plan failed.

At a Monkees’ concert in 1968, Keith Moon jumped up in the crowd just before the show started and started chanting “We Want the Who!”

Alice Cooper is famous for his stage antics. In 1988, while he was rehearsing for his onstage hanging routine, the safety rope broke and Cooper would have hung himself if not for the quick thinking of a roadie; who cut the dangling rock star down.

Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue fame once claimed he shot whiskey into his arm when he ran out of heroin.

In a related story, Sixx shot up too much heroin in 1987, in addition to consuming Valium, Cocaine, whiskey, and beer. Sixx stated, “I kinda remember waking up and a paramedic telling me that I had died, and had to be revived.” He got that part right, as paramedics did indeed have to administer two shots of adrenaline to restart his heart. Upon his release from the hospital, he hitchhiked back home, shot up more heroin, later writing the song, “Kickstart My Heart.” How appropriate.

In the early days of Queen, rocker Freddie Mercury would hit himself so hard with the tambourine that he suffered a severely bruised leg.

Frank Zappa booked the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to play a concert of his music at the Royal Albert hall. But the show was canceled due to “lyrical obscenity.” Zappa sued, but lost the case when he couldn’t convince the British judge that the song “Shove It Right In” was not obscene.

Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys spent 1971-1975 in bed.

Mamas and the Papas founder John Phillips was kind of careless with his drugs. His dog, Trelawny (a.k.a Mr. T) once gobbled up a whole bag of mescaline capsules. The poor pooch ran in circles for three days. Then he stared at himself in the mirror for over twelve hours. “He was more human than anything else after swallowing all that mescaline,” mused Phillips.

In the 60’s, the Who made instrument smashing a part of every show that they did. Trouble was, the band was destroying 700 pounds of equipment per night and only earning about 500 pounds per show. Bass player John Entwistle screamed: “We’d come out ahead just by not showing up!”

Ex-Boomtown Rats member Bob Geldof once lost his job at a photo-processing plant because he had smoked a few joints in the darkroom, ruining a batch of film.

Jim Morrison was a freak’s freak. In March of 1969, he was arrested for exposing himself during a Miami concert. The ‘flashing’ rocker eventually had to go to court with a long list of charges that included: profanity, indecent exposure, lewd behavior, and public drunkenness. While in court the prosecutor asked Morrison if he had exposed himself, to which Morrison replied: “I don’t remember. I was too drunk.” He was later found guilty of exposing himself but actually found not guilty of public drunkenness. Oh, our lovely legal system at work.

After the very public trail, a friend asked Morrison what compelled him to expose himself onstage. “I wanted to see what it looked like in the spotlight,” explained the Lizard King. I guess he remembered that part!

While out and about, Jim Morrison spotted one of his friend’s sister standing in a boutique. “Whooopppeee, look at those tits!” he hollered. An elderly lady thought that Morrison was yelling at her. The feisty senior proceeded to chase the stunned rocker around the store, hitting him with her purse.

For their tour to promote the “Rumours” album, Fleetwood Mac spent thousands of dollars on a giant inflatable penguin. They only used it once.

In 1997, Mick Fleetwood estimated that he had spent the staggering total of 8 million dollars on the drug of choice: Cocaine.

At an Alice Cooper concert, he was chopping and smashing a watermelon onstage and when someone handed him a crutch, he continued his onslaught. Then he threw the disgusting mess out into the audience, followed quickly by a mass of feathers. He thought ‘This group of dummies just sat there and took it.” It was later that the shock-rocker learned that the first five rows of the audience were filled with disabled fans, they couldn’t move.



Danny Bonaduce of Partridge Family fame was a hazard to his own health. While in Florida in 1990, he was arrested on a drug charge. In 1991, he was arrested for assaulting a transvestite prostitute in Phoenix, Arizona. Seems he had paid for his/her services and then tried to get a refund when he discovered the truth. He left the scene traveling over 125 miles per hour in a 25 miles per hour zone.

After Ringo Starr joined up with the Beatles, his band mates didn’t think too much of Starr’s mental abilities. “If anything goes wrong, we can all blame it on Ringo,” explained John Lennon. “That’s what he’s here for.”

While playing a gig in Buffalo, New York, the Allman Brothers Band showed up fifteen minutes late and the club owner refused to pay them. Roadie Twiggs Lyndon wasn’t amused so he stabbed the man three times with a fishing knife. The club owner died and Lyndon was arrested for first-degree murder. The band then continued their tour.