Surprising Musical Facts

[BigBombB]

I'll start with the one that inspired this thread...

Larry LaLonde, the guitarist for Primus since their debut album, was also the guitarist for a band widely regarded as the 'fathers of extreme metal', Possessed. If you're not experienced with Possessed, look up their Seven Churches album and see if you have the same mind blowing experience that I did. The guitarist of THAT band is the guitarist for freaking Primus!?

Share some music facts that blew your mind!

 

[Meth Head]

Brian May is an astrophysicist.

As if being the lead guitarist for motherlovin' Queen wasn't badass enough...

 

[Jack-Hammer]

Johnny Cash was arrested a total of seven times in his life. During one of his arrests, which was for trespassing, in Starkville, Mississippi, he broke his toes while trying to kick the steel bars out of the window of his jail cell.

Cash is reported to be the first person to be sued by the United States for starting a forest fire. During the mid 60s, while doped up on enough pills to cause Stephen Hawking to get up and do the Moonwalk, took a camping trip and happened to pass through the Los Padres National Wildlife Refuge. His camper had an oil leak, unbeknownst to Cash, and he threw a cigarette butt out of his car window and it ignited the oil. The blaze killed almost every endangered condor in the refuge, to which Cash replied while still heavily doped up, “I don’t give a damn about your yellow buzzards.”

 

[THTRobtaylor]

Remember that period where EVERY Idol winner would release Unchained Melody? The real reason is not cos it's a "popular song" but because Simon Cowell owns the rights to it, so he was getting paid! add to this that he played a triangle on every version so he could also pick up a performance royalty.

Slash famously hates the riff to "Sweet Child O' Mine" and came up the riff as part of a "Worst Riff You Can Come Up With" game... Axl heard it, had the lyrics already and the rest is history...

Sharon Osbourne's father (the 2nd doddery old guy on the TV show) was fabled 60's Pop manager Don Arden, who managed bands such as The Small Faces. He once held someone outside a window in order to make them sign a deal... now you know where Sharon gets her "side" from...

On the same theme, what do The Who, The Kinks and Superman Have in common?
The Who have been managed by Chris Stamp, brother of Terence "Zod" Stamp for nearly their entire careers...over 50 years... Meanwhile the Kink's "Waterloo Sunset" refers to Terry and Julie, the loved up couple of the song... again Terence Stamp and his then girl, Julie Christie! So all in all he's quite ubiquitous in 60's music culture... when he says "Kneel Before Zod" you probably should...

 

[Torgo]

The inspiration for Iron Maiden's mascot, Eddy, came from a story Steve Harris once heard:

Once, a nice couple gave birth to a boy....actually not the whole boy, but the head. Just the head. It was healthy, but still...just a head. The doctor said "no problem. Come back in five years or so and we'll have a nice body for him".

The couple took the head home and named it Eddy. The kept him on the mantel and went on with their lives. On Eddy's fifth birthday, the couple came home and called to Eddy, "Son, it's your fifth birthday, and we have a very special surprise for you!".

Eddy responded, "oh no, not another fucking hat!"

 

[Alex]

Crazy Town's one hit Butterfly samples a thirty second riff from the Red Hot Chili Peppers song Pretty Little Ditty for their entire song


[YOUTUBE]6FEDrU85FLE[/YOUTUBE]


Skip to 0:50
[YOUTUBE]ERy0CMpyMwY[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Bagpipes]

Although they acknowledged it in the album leaflet of "Divine Intervention", a fan actually developed the following acronym for SLAYER.

Satan
Laughs
As
You
Eternally
Rot

Vocalist Tom Araya said the band used the acronym as a tongue-in-cheek tribute to their fans, who are widely regarded as one of the most dedicated and passionate fanbases in all of heavy metal. Araya also noted that the acronym had no influence on the original naming of the band and wasn't developed until many years later.

 

[Dirk]

GnR - Rocket Queen
[YOUTUBE]8B6vnJgFDe4[/YOUTUBE]
I don't know how "surprising" this is, but fuck it: If you listen closely, you'll hear a few gasps and groans in the background. According to numerous sources (including the frontman himself), that is Axl Rose having sex with (drummer) Steven Adler's then-girlfriend. Rose decided the song needed more oomph and wanted to do something bizarre.

Now, swinging aside, the song was apparently written for this other girl Axl had a huge crush on and she wanted to start a band called "Rocket Queen", which makes it even creepier.

Think about it - Axl wrote and dedicated a song to a woman he liked, fucked his bandmate's girlfriend instead, recorded that and put it on the album.

 

[Daggdag]

Not a musical fact, but still funny as hell, Slash once ran through a hotel naked claiming he was being chased by tiny versions of the Predator aliens during a really bad acid trip. In his autobiography he claimed that he took acid and watched a marathon of Predator movies before the incident.







John Lennon claimed that he wrote I AM the Walrus in order to mess with the minds of fans who try to find meaning in all his songs. The song was specifically written to sound coded, but was actually just a series of obscure references and gibberish.

 

[Alex]

DJ Ashba, current Guns n Roses guitarist wears a top hat on stage

However contrary to what people believe that he's trying to imitate Slash he's been wearing the hat (or a variation of it) since about 2007 (two years before he joined Guns N Roses). He found an old leather jacket and covered a guitar in it and decided to make a hat to match. If you watch Sixx AM play live in 2007 you'll see.