Gary Graff - Rock n Roll Myths: The True Stories Behind the Most Infamous Legends

For our parents, Ruthe and Milton Graff and Eric Durchholz, who have passed on, and for Annie Durchholz, who is still with us. They might not care to be associated with some of the stories in this bookor heck, even the titlebut we love them anyway.

: Beatles, Rolls Press/Popperfoto; Lady Gaga, Scott Gries; Michael Jackson, Ron Galella/WireImage; Gene Simmons, Paul Bergen/Redferns; Kurt Cobain, Michel Linssen/Redferns; Keith Richards, Keystone France/Gamma Keystone; Sid Vicious, Daily Express/Hulton Archive; Rod Stewart, Richard E. Aaron/Redferns; Ozzy Osbourne, Time & Life Pictures; White Stripes, Dimitri Hakke/Redferns; Stevie Nicks, Fin Costello/Redferns; Alice Cooper, Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns; Jimmy Page, Mick Gold/Redferns, all Getty Images. Marilyn Manson, TDC Photography/Shutterstock.com.

First published in 2012 by Voyageur Press, an imprint of MBI Publishing Company, 400 First Avenue North, Suite 300, Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

2012 Voyageur Press

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ISBN 978-0-7603-4230-5

Digital Edition: 978-1-61058-571-2
Softcover Edition: 978-0-76034-230-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Graff, Gary.

Rock n roll myths : the true stories behind the most infamous legends / Gary Graff

and Daniel Durchholz.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-7603-4230-5 (softbound w/ flaps)

1. Rock musicMiscellanea. 2. Rock musiciansMiscellanea. I. Durchholz, Daniel.

II. Title.

ML3534.G72 2012

781.6609dc23

2011037351

Editor: Dennis Pernu

Design Manager: Cindy Samargia Laun

Cover and Interior Design: John Barnett/4 Eyes Design

Layout: K. K. Lemone

GARY GRAFF AND DANIEL DURCHHOLZ

D anny & The Juniors once sang that rock n roll is here to stay, that it will never die.

The Philadelphia quartet was right about thatway back in 1958, when rock was still having its diapers changed. But the group could have added that rock n roll will sometimes lie, too.

Oh, there are great truths told in rock and popular music. Think of the songs of Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan and James Brown. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Sly and the Family Stone. Bruce Springsteen and U2 and Pearl Jam. And thats just for starters.

But alongside the earnestness and enlightenment of great rock music is the personality of the movement, the larger-than-life dynamism that made and sustains it as a cultural force. Its a universe unto itself, casting a wider net than just songs on the radio or MP3s in your tablet or on your smart-phone. Its a lifestyle and a life force, a fluid code that unites generations in thoughts, feelings, and philosophies and even creates ties that bind them to their predecessors in a manner that didnt happen with popular culture prior to rock.

Its Big, in other words, and when something makes that kind of footprint, it tends to spawn myths. And legends. And tall tales. It spins off stories of varying degrees of truth, from blatant falsehoods and ill-willed lies to kernels of actuality that are twisted and embellished into something betteror at least more provocative. And it doesnt matter if theyre proven to be complete baloney because the sheer telling gives them a life of their own that exists alongside the real part of the story.

So there are probably people out there who believe that Robert Johnson and Led Zeppelin really did make deals with the devil. That Rod Stewart really did have his stomach purged of male sexual secretion. That Lady Gaga and Ciara are really part (or all, or formerly) male. That Paul McCartney really is dead and that the near-septuagenarian guy running around scoring ballets and playing Beatles songs in concert is the cosmetically altered stand-in who was put in his place in 1967. Or 1968. Or 1969depending on which version of the story you believe.

While some of these and the other tales related in Rock n Roll Myths are mean-spirited, theres a general sense of fun that comes with them as theyre spread through the public. Whether true or not, they knock the artists down a peg or two and mitigate their outsized images with some flesh and blood. And a sly wink. Anyone who gets in the celebrity game, whether theyre musicians, actors, politicians, or athletes, learns they need to have at least a bit of a sense of humor about themselves and embrace the circus and all of the sideshow acts that come with fame. Whos had more fun with Stings reported tantric sexcapades, for instance, than Sting-a-ding-ding himself? And while it likely isnt the nicest thing to have the world believe that you had a candy bar eaten out of one of your lower orifices, when asked about the tale, Marianne Faithfull has always rolled her eyes with a sense of grace, drollery, and ladylike decorum.

The fifty-seven stories in Rock n Roll Myths cover a wide range of artists and topicsbirth and death, sex and murder, drugs and alcohol. There are hundreds more, of course, but weve chosen these fifty-seven for a variety of reasons, among them the notoriety of the artists, the sensationalism of the subjects, the depth of their impact, and their durability over time. Weve also striven to make most of them fit mythic criteria. They are, for the most part, not true but have been spread for so long, and so far, that they continue to pop up and be accepted as fact, even when ample evidence has proven otherwise. Meanwhile, those that are true at their coresuch as the fiery fate of Gram Parsons corpse, Led Zeppelins shark adventure, or Keith Richards snorting his fathers asheshave grown fantastically fanciful in their retelling, to the point where the mythological aspects are more readily accepted than the facts.

Through research and personal contact, weve tried to get to the bottom of each story and not only ascertain the truth but explain how these myths came to be and then came to be spread. Some remain mysteries; were still not sure if John Lennon and Brian Epstein slept together or if Brian Jones was murdered, and Rod Stewart has never figured out how that rumor about his stomach contents started (nor have we). And those kinds of myths are, in some ways, the most fun.