The music industry is filled with larger-than-life figures and tales of debauchery and eccentricity, and the public is usually ready to lap up every juicy detail that they can find in tabloid magazines, interviews, autobiographies, and, more recently, social media.
It’s not really surprising, then, that the secretive and scandalous nature of the music world has given rise to loads of outlandish myths and urban legends. And today, we’re taking a look at ten of them.
10. John Denver the Sniper
John Denver built an image for himself as a friendly, lovable, and harmless folk musician who cared about nature and his fellow man. But was it all a lie? Was John Denver actually a cold-blooded killer who once served as a sniper for the US Army?
Well, no, but that hasn’t stopped the story from spreading online. It’s true that he came from a military family and his father was an officer with the US Air Force. Denver might have wanted to follow in his footsteps, but that was never in the cards – his eyesight was too poor for him to become a pilot. He was also missing two toes, having lost them in a lawnmower accident when he was a teenager. So even though John Denver did receive an Army induction notice in 1964, his health problems got him classified as 1-Y, meaning that he was only qualified for service in times of war or national emergency. So John Denver never served in any branch of the military. And even if he had, the fact that he was blind as a bat meant that the one position he would never, ever fill was that of a sniper.
9. In the Air Tonight
Fans often argue over the true meaning behind some of their favorite songs, especially when that meaning is not made apparent either by the lyrics or by the artist. Take that overenthusiasm and uncertainty, mix them together, and you get a foolproof recipe for rumors to appear. Take, for example, the song In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins. It was his first single as a solo artist and became one of his signature songs, but some of his fans are still unclear on what the song is actually about.
There are a few variations on the story, but the most common version claims that Collins once witnessed a man drown while a third man watched on impassively, refusing to help the dying person. Phil himself was either too far away, too drunk, or too young to help, depending on which version you prefer. But that’s not all, because the most outlandish retellings go a step further and claim that Collins hired a detective to track down the mysterious man who callously let another person drown. The musician then sent him tickets to one of his shows and, during the concert, put the spotlight on him and exposed him to the world at large.
All of this is nonsense, of course, as made clear by Phil Collins himself years ago. He wrote the song following the collapse of his first marriage, but here is what Phil had to say:
“When I was writing this I was going through a divorce. And the only thing I can say about it is that it’s obviously in anger. It’s the angry side or the bitter side of a separation. So what makes it even more comical is when I hear these stories which started many years ago, particularly in America, of someone come up to me and say, ‘Did you really see someone drowning?’ I said, ‘No, wrong’.”
8. Avril Is Dead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAKrBCFYTh0
You’ve probably heard of the “Paul Is Dead” myth – the idea that the real Paul McCartney died decades ago and was replaced by a lookalike and, for whatever reason, the Beatles decided to leave clues to their little switcheroo in the album cover for Abbey Road. That urban legend is too well-known, so we decided to focus on a different celebrity doppelgänger story – that of Canadian pop rocker Avril Lavigne.
According to this particular conspiracy theory, the real Avril died all the way back in 2003, not long after she struck it big with her debut album Let Go. But even before her demise, Lavigne wasn’t a fan of her newfound fame, so she sometimes used a body double named Melissa Vandella for various events. Then, after the singer died, her record company didn’t want to let go of a good thing, so they “upgraded” Melissa to a full-time Avril Lavigne. And, of course, the new Avril started leaving clues to her true identity in her songs and even wrote the word “Melissa” on her hand once in a publicity shot.
Confronted with this “irrefutable proof,” the singer had no choice but to come clean and admit that she was not the real Avril Lavigne…Just kidding. No, for the most part, she ignored the story, although she has acknowledged it more in recent years, dismissing it as a “dumb internet rumor” made up by bored people needing something new to talk about.
7. Jim Is Alive
This one is pretty much the exact opposite of the previous entry – a rumor that claims that a dead musician is, in fact, still alive after faking their own death. Undoubtedly, Elvis is the king of this particular urban legend, with dozens, possibly even hundreds of sightings over the years. Once again, we are not going to focus on the most obvious choice and, instead, examine the idea that Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, faked his death and started a new life.
The unclear circumstances surrounding Morrison’s death made it ripe for rumors and conspiracies. The musician died unexpectedly in his apartment in Paris in 1971, joining the dreaded 27 Club, but more on that later. The likely cause of death was a drug overdose, but his partner, Pamela Courson, fearing that she might be arrested and charged, gave a false statement to the French police, telling them that Morrison died of a heart attack. With no signs of foul play, the authorities dismissed the need for an autopsy, and Jim Morrison was hastily buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery, with his fans informed of the singer’s death after the funeral.
Over the years, conspiracy theories claimed that Morrison had been the victim of various assassination plots, or that he actually OD’d in a trendy Parisian nightclub and his body was brought home to avoid unwanted publicity. And then, of course, there was the idea that Jim faked the whole thing and started fresh, leaving his old life behind. Oddly enough, some of his close friends also believed this, including Ray Manzarek, the keyboard player of The Doors who co-founded the band alongside Morrison.
6. Monkees > Beatles & Stones
If you ever dare to besmirch the good name of the Monkees, you will probably find at least one fan who will huffily inform you that actually, in 1967 the Monkees sold more records than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined. So there… what do you have to say to that? Well, you could tell them that, although their passion is commendable, they are slightly misinformed. Although this “fact” has often been repeated over the decades, it was completely made up by Monkees member Mike Nesmith, who later referred to it as a “complete fabrication, totally bogus, class-A mendacity lie.
It wasn’t until 2015 that Nesmith set the record straight in a podcast, and then again in his own autobiography. It all went back to 1977, to an interview in Australia. Bored with media appearances and a bit weary of the press, Nesmith flat-out warned his interviewer that he would tell him lies and that he would have to do some research to separate the fact from the fiction. But here it is in Nesmith’s own words:
“Then came a point where he asked me about the sales of the Monkees records, and I saw the chance. It isn’t too well known, I said flatly, that we sold over thirty-five million records in 1967. More than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined … he diligently wrote all this down, and I wondered for a moment if I had chosen too outrageous a lie to tell, but it turned out it had been just right.
The next day in the paper, there it was, printed as fact.”
5. Jimi’s Parakeets
You might not be aware of this, but Great Britain has a feral parakeet problem, particularly the ring-necked variety. They are a non-native species and they’re also a non-migratory species. This means that they didn’t just fly from Africa or India on their own. Someone brought them to Britain and released them into the wild where they thrived and multiplied. And if the story is to be believed, then the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of one man… Jimi Hendrix.
Why was it his fault? Because, apparently, in 1968, while on a trip to London, he released a pair in Carnaby Street. This may or may not have happened, nobody knows for sure, but even if it did, Hendrix would still not be responsible for their introduction as a non-native species. Occasional parakeet sightings in Britain date back to the 19th century, and the first large-scale release of these birds might have occurred in the early 1930s, during an outbreak of “parrot fever” which prompted many parrot owners to release their feathered friends into the wild.
Experts believe there were several such instances where parakeets were released in large numbers that ultimately led to them becoming a feral species in Britain, with the most significant one possibly being the Great Storm of 1987, which saw birdhouses being damaged throughout the country.
4. Getting High at Buckingham Palace
The Beatles were a quintessential part of the counterculture movement of the 1960s and, according to legend, they enacted one of their most infamous acts of rebellion in 1965 when they got high at Buckingham Palace.
Like the aforementioned claim made by Mike Nesmith, this was a rumor started by one of the band members. In 1965, the Beatles went to Buckingham Palace where Queen Elizabeth II presented them all with MBEs, which stands for Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. However, according to John Lennon, the Fab Four got ready to meet the queen by sneaking into the bathroom and smoking a joint to steady their nerves.
So were the Beatles high when they met the queen? The other bandmates dismissed Lennon’s claim, with both McCartney and Harrison pointing out that they just smoked regular cigarettes. And, eventually, Lennon himself walked back his statement, so it seems that this controversial moment in their careers was only a fanciful story.
3. The Rollercoaster Scream
It all started with a scream. There are innumerable songs that have screams in them but, for whatever reason, the Ohio Players’ 1975 hit Love Rollercoaster proved to be different. A rumor started going around that the funk band had unwittingly captured the last cry of a woman being murdered.
How could this even happen? Well, apparently, the woman was killed just outside the studio, or maybe in a different room, or even in the neighboring apartment, just as the band was recording Love Rollercoaster. The scream appears around the halfway point of the song and it is barely audible and quite easy to miss, which further convinced people that it had been recorded accidentally.
In other variations on the urban legend, the woman wasn’t killed, just badly scalded by hot honey. In this instance, the scream belonged to model Ester Cordet who posed for the album cover naked while dripping honey over herself. It’s a bit unclear how it ended up on the recording, though.
The truth was far more obvious and mundane. The scream wasn’t unintentional and it didn’t even belong to a woman. It was made by Ohio Players keyboardist Billy Beck who just wanted to add a little something extra to the track. And, to give him credit, he did, just not what he intended.
2. Let Him Bleed
Even in a world filled with excesses, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards is in a league of his own as his decades of drug abuse have been well-documented. But how come Keith Richards is still alive and kicking while so many of his contemporaries are long gone after partaking in the exact same lifestyle? Is he simply immortal or does he have a different ace up his sleeve? Well, if rumors are to be believed, then Keith Richards’ secret to long-lasting life is replacing all the blood in his body with fresh blood.
Yes, the claim is that the musician went to one of those super expensive, super secret medical clinics somewhere in the Swiss Alps and had a full-body blood transfusion to help him kick his heroin addiction. This is a weird situation because several people close to Richards confirmed the veracity of the rumor, only for Richards himself to eventually admit that he made up the whole thing out of boredom. Here’s what he said:
“Someone asked me how I cleaned up, so I told them I went to Switzerland and had my blood completely changed…I was just fooling around. I opened my jacket and said, ‘How do you like my blood change?
That’s all it was, a joke. I was f***ing sick of answering that question. So I gave them a story.”
1. The 27 Club
What do Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse have in common? They are all part of the accursed 27 Club, the mysterious “statistical spike” that has claimed the lives of famous musicians at the tender age of 27 in far greater numbers than any other age.
Jimi, Janis, and Jim all died within two years of each other. They were all highly successful and influential, and they were all 27 years old so people did notice the eerie similarities between them, but it wasn’t really until the 90s when Kurt Cobain died that the idea of the 27 Club became a well-defined concept, and people were reminded of it again in 2011 when Amy Winehouse died. These are just the biggest names mentioned whenever the 27 Club is brought up, but there are others such as Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones, blues pioneer Robert Johnson, Canned Heat singer Alan “Blind Owl” Wilson, Grateful Dead member Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, and scores of others.
So is there any truth to the idea that musicians are more likely to die when they are 27? Not according to science. One study examined the deaths of over 11,000 musicians over 60 years and only 1.3 percent of them died at that age. More died at 28, in fact, and, unsurprisingly, the percentage went up with age, with the 55-to-65 range proving to be the highest risk. The deadliest year of all was 56, which claimed 2.3 percent of lives. Even so, it was only slightly higher than its neighboring years, not enough to constitute a spike of any significance.