Fact or Fiction: Rock's Greatest Urban Legends | Get To The Hook

Welcome to Get to the Hook. I am your co-host, Charles Latibaudiere. And I am your co-host, Eric Colley. And we are gonna dive into some huge urban myths, legends, stories you have heard in the music world, and some maybe you haven't, that will definitely raise some eyebrows. And yes, because we said they are urban myths, some of them are not true, but guess what? Some of them are. Some of them actually are, and they're not just some stories that have been passed down over time. Was Debbie Harry from Blondie almost a Ted Bundy victim? Did Van Halen really forbid brown M&Ms from the dressing room? Did Gene Simmons have a cow tongue grafted onto his own after a car accident? Everybody, you've heard these things. I'm gonna go out on a limb on that one and just say it didn't happen, but we're gonna get into it. We're gonna get into whether they're true or not. Some are partially true. Some, who knows? But also, even the ones that aren't true, where the stories came from a lot of the time or why they spread the way they did is as interesting as the urban legend itself. Absolutely, and the reason here, the hook this week is Rick Springfield, who dropped some knowledge on us about his connection to the Vietnam War. Yeah, who would think? By the way, he's got a certified kill on his record, apparently. Yeah, that is like an urban legend. Did Rick Springfield kill a man in Vietnam? Yes. What baffles me about this one, and Rick recently, he just spoke about this when he was on Joe Rogan's show. I just never think of Rick Springfield as being old enough for this to even have been true. I mean, the reality is Rick Springfield is, what, 77? He was born in August of 1949. I just don't think of him as being that old. So when I first heard this, I was like, oh, I'm sure he went on and he told Rogan. I was like, no, that's just urban legend. It never actually happened. No, no, he was really in Vietnam. And the other shocking thing is he was there, he wasn't enlisted, he wasn't fighting in Vietnam. He's Australian. He's an Australian, right. He wasn't serving in Vietnam. He was there performing for troops because he had a music career over a decade before Jessie's Girl. He had a hit. A lot of people don't know this. So Jessie's Girl, of course. Wait, he had a hit before Jessie's Girl? A decade before. So Jessie's Girl, hit number one in 1981. I'm learning so much about Rick Springfield. He was a big pop star throughout the 80s, had a lot of other hits. But in 1971, 10 years before, he released a song that the following year in 72 would hit the top 20 in the US. It was a legit hit song. If you've never heard it, this is Rick Springfield's Speak to the Sky. ♪ I always try to find some time to speak to the sky ♪ ♪ And tell you how I feel ♪ Dude, that's a drug use song, right? That is 100% dropping some LSD and he's just speaking to the sky. That's that era of Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum and those kind of songs. They were trying to meld spirituality with a lot of drugs. So speaking of speaking to the sky, in Vietnam, he kind of did with some live ammo. He did, so he was performing in 68 or 69, he says he would have been in his teens, probably 18, 19 years old. He was on a promo tour in Vietnam because Australia was geographically a lot closer than the US and they were booking a lot of Australian artists. So he was there and while he was performing for the troops, the base came under attack. And so he said he was in a radio shack, he was with the troops there, and he helped them. An actual military radio shack, not a store. There wasn't a radio, not that anybody remembers radio shacks. No, those are gone now. He was in an actual, yeah, radio shack with some troops and they were like, do you want to help? And he said, it was just kind of like a John Wayne moment. And you're like, yeah. And he was helping them load mortars and fire at the enemy troops. So he was like five or six mortars. And then after the attack was repelled and the base was secure again, they came to him and was like, hey, you got one. And he had a confirmed kill. One of the mortars he loaded killed an enemy soldier. And he told Joe Rogan that it haunts him to this day. He said that it's hard for me to face that I was responsible for the end of a life. So he is this young guy who's over there as a musician. It's weird that they turn to the entertainers and be like, hey, you want to get in on this? He said it was a very different time. Yeah, I guess. But yeah, I could see why that would haunt him. Because he probably just thought of it as like a lark, right? Like, oh, I'm here and this is going on. How do I do this? Just drop it in there? Because we know it haunts the actual soldiers who served in Vietnam. It still haunts them to this day. But even that, you know that's gonna happen when you go there. When you are drafted or enlisted, you know that something's gonna happen. I'm sure the reality of it happening is very different. And that's what I think gave a lot of them PTSD. But when you go to sing a couple pop songs, you don't think I'm gonna wind up killing somebody before I leave here. Especially Rick Springfield. Right. Like not a dangerous kind of artist or somebody that you think would be. Just the lesson here is there are layers to people. And Rick Springfield, I didn't, I thought I kind of knew everything about him, about his acting career. What if he was this teen pop star who had a hit and then his career cooled off and then a decade later he got a role in a soap opera and became a heartthrob, revived his music career and became one of the biggest acts of the 80s. And people forget, he had a run of hits. Yeah, sure did. For most of the decade. Very consistent, very quietly, but like Rick Springfield always had songs out there. 17 top 40 hits. Well, he's got more hits than casualties of war. Fortunately. Thankfully, yes. But yeah, that is something to live with. What a, wow. And now at 77, he's on tour talking about it with Joe Rogan on a podcast. 77, still out there doing it. If you haven't seen the like clips of him on tour recently, guy is like shredded. Jack. He's in incredible shape. How do you have act like that at any age, but certainly. Yeah, at 77. I saw him about 10 years ago. So he would have been in his late 60s then. And same thing, like just shredded, but his voice was still strong. The songs were good. It was a good show. And the ladies still wait for that moment for him when he takes off his shirt. And he still does it. He still does it. And they squealed. All these 50 something ladies were just like, woo. Good for him. Yeah. Good for him. But yeah, that's something he's dealt with for. That's one urban legend. That was true. So here's one that's gonna give us both. I mean, this person, not only are there lots of urban legends about this guy, at this point, he himself just seems like an urban legend. How is Keith Richards a real human being at this point? He just, he seems so larger than life. And talk about somebody that's still going, he's into his 80s. Also weird that Keith Richards is only a few years older than Rick Springfield. Yeah, they definitely play much different ages. But let's do two big Keith Richards urban legends. One is true. One is not. Ooh, okay. And the source of both of these legends is Keith Richards himself. So the one that is not true, people have told this story about him for many decades. Did Keith Richards have a total body blood transfusion to kick heroin in the 70s? And multiple, the way the legend is that. He goes in as a tune-up and just has all of his blood transfused and that's how he stays alive. That is not true. I don't think that's even medically possible to swap somebody's entire blood out. He did go to Switzerland in 1973 when he was struggling with his heroin addiction. He had a blood replacement to clean out toxins in his kidney. Not a full body blood transfusion. And he did not wind up kicking heroin for several years after that. But the reason this story came out that he went to Switzerland to get his blood replaced was because he himself told reporters he had done that. And he said he did it so they would stop asking him if he was gonna go to rehab. Oh, he's like, I don't need to go to rehab. I swapped my blood out. So he just started, okay. And people believed it. Yeah, well, when you say that and you live your life like Keith Richards and most of the Stones did, people are gonna believe that. They will absolutely believe it. He did eventually quit heroin, but not because he got a blood transfusion in his entire body. I love reading his memoir. When he explained, he talked about that, and he said, no, the real reason that we survived is we could afford the better drugs. Like, we had money, so we didn't get drugs that were stepped on with any other, blah, blah, blah. We just got pure cocaine, pure heroin. We got the best stuff, right. Right. Well, one of the- Not a goal for young folks. Well, according to him, one time his drugs were laced was in the 2000s when they were laced with the ashes of his father. Did Keith Richards snort his father's ashes? According to Keith Richards, yes. And I know, according to Keith Richards, he also had his blood swapped out. Right. He eventually was like, no, of course I didn't. This one he has never backed off of, and it's been 20 years at this point. He said that he was, after five or six years after his father died, he was opening the urn, and the vacuum seal just caused some of the ashes to shoot out on the table. And he just gave him a little taste. And then, according to him, this is what he said in his memoir, he said, I snorted my father, he was cremated, and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared. And he has never recanted that story. All right. So that was true. So now we know Keith Richards and Tupac's mom had something in common. Yeah. Because Tupac's mom, and several of his friends- Suge Knight said they smoked Tupac's ashes. Smoked some of his ashes. I'm not gonna, I was about to launch into a, which is better, smoking it or snorting it? But let's not do that. Let's not do that. Just leave your loved one's ashes out of your- Out of your body. Body, yes. Yeah, don't consume the remains of your loved ones. In any way. In any form. All right. Ooh, Lord. Also, if you're Van Halen, don't consume brown M&Ms. Well, of course not. No. Now this is a story that's gone around for many years, that Van Halen had it in the rider, in their contract back in the 80s, that they needed a bowl of M&Ms in their dressing room, but all the brown M&Ms had to be picked out. This has just always been held up as this, this is the example of rockstar excess that you could make a demand like this, and- Because it's a stupid thing. All M&Ms taste the same, first of all. It's just the coloring in the shell. Right. And even if you have an issue now with the red dye- It's very colorist. Very, very colorist. Why, it gotta be the brown ones, Van Halen. Yeah, exactly. This is actually true. It's always the brown. They did have this in their rider, and why? Because M&Ms, everybody wants some. Like you said, everybody thought this was just the most extreme, egregious, diva, rockstar behavior. There is a very good reason why that was in the contract. So it's actually true. It is 100% true. This urban myth is true. It actually has its own wiki page, it's called the Van Halen Test, and it is about removing the brown M&Ms. So when they were on tour, of course, Van Halen had a very elaborate stage setup. A lot of lighting rigs, pyrotechnics, a lot of issues with voltage for all the different electrical instruments. And so the contract had a very dense technical section about what you did and did not have to do for that stage. They needed to make sure that everything was safe, everything was done correctly. So buried in all of that was, we need a bowl of M&Ms and no brown ones. So that way, when they walked into a dressing room at a venue, if they see a bowl of M&Ms on the table with no brown, they know they've read it. They set up their stage correctly, and they actually did pay attention. But if they walk in and there are no M&Ms or the brown ones are in the bowl, that means they didn't read it or just skimmed over it and they couldn't be sure that the stage would be safe. Now they can't get on stage. See, because y'all went and screwed up with the M&Ms. It's actually very smart. It's really, really smart. Because if you ask them if they did it, of course they're going to say yes. But if you can see, okay, you followed the instructions, and it wasn't just about being divas. It was just to know, is this venue safe? Is it safe for us? Is it safe for the audience? Is it safe for the crew? Now they know. There you go. So that one's true and with a good reason. Yes. You know what? Good for them. Especially because, I mean, what they were really concerned about is dangerous. That if their stage isn't set up correctly, they're screwed. So I get it. Yeah, that one makes sense. I'm sure a lot of other artists have done something similar. I wonder if David Lee Roth still does that. Because he's still doing some shows. Or maybe he just hates brown M&Ms. I don't know. Maybe he never knew the reason for it. I want them in, and it has nothing to do with the stage. I don't love them. They taste weird. Oh, this next one, let's just get into it. One of the most famous urban legends about Rod Stewart, who we just talked about recently. You know the urban legend about Rod Stewart. About Rod Stewart. That one night, I'll be as tactful as I can with this, that one night in the 70s, he entertained a lot of gentlemen physically and had to be rushed to the hospital to have his stomach punched. Oh, gosh. I don't, come on. No, there's a reason I'm bringing this one up. Because, of course, that's not true. Even when I was a teenager and I first heard that one, I was like, oh, come on. And I've heard that repeated over the years about other artists. Every time a new generation of guy comes along that women love, that guys think is kind of cheesy, they'll make the, I heard they had to go to the hospital to get their stomach pumped because they were so full of certain bodily fluids. So, no, obviously it's not true, but there is an origin to that story and why that rumor started. If you tell me that Keith Richards started it. No, even worse. Rod Stewart's publicist started it. Oh, God. So, what happened was. Money not well spent on a publicist. No, well, what happened was, in the 70s, Rod Stewart was on vacation and had his family with him, had his publicist, had people with him, a lot of friends. I'm sure Rod Stewart traveled with a large entourage. Even now, but especially in the 70s. The hotel they were staying at was overbooked. Rod Stewart's seven-year-old stepson had his own room. His publicist, a guy named Tony Toon, did not have a room. So, he wound up staying with Rod's seven-year-old stepson. No big deal. Yeah. And, of course, it's a giant. Publicist slash babysitter. It's a gigantic hotel room. The problem was Tony Toon went out that night and hooked up with a guy and brought him back to the hotel room that the seven-year-old stepson was in. Rod Stewart, the next day, was furious about this. Understandably. Don't go out and meet somebody and bring them back to the hotel when my kid is there. Right, can't be hooking up in front of my seven-year-old. So, he fired Tony Toon on the spot. And, in retaliation, Tony Toon released a press release saying that Rod Stewart had to have his stomach pumped after a night out with a bunch of guys. So, wait, that's where that started. Yes. Please tell me that Rod Stewart shut this guy down. He didn't. He never addressed it. I think he realized it was so ridiculous, there's no reason to have to bring it up. But, in 2012, in his autobiography, Rod did address it. He explained that was the origin of it. And, you know, Rod Stewart is probably not somebody who gets too angry too easily, especially all these years after that had happened. He just said, say what you like about Tony Toon, but he was good at his job. He was creative. Because this story, this publicity release, people still know it 50 years later. Yeah. Tony Toon has passed at this point. He was dead before the book came out. I mean, I don't know how much I would credit him for being good at his job because he made up a story wholesale and just said, here, this is what happened. Especially because he did it out of revenge. Yeah. For being fired for something he was in the wrong about anyway. Don't bring somebody back to hook up with at a hotel room where somebody else's seven-year-old kid is there. I feel like Rod's giving him a pass, way more than he should. I feel like Rod Stewart's pretty easygoing about a lot of things. He probably thought it was funny. Yeah. Because it's such a ridiculous story. I mean, I'm sure, you know, in the 70s, it was also the implication that he was gay, which he is not. Right. But, physically, I don't think you could do that enough to have to have your stomach pumped. Yeah, I mean. I'm trying not to think of the mechanics of it. Let's move on, shall we? Okay. This one's a very famous one for a lot of people. One of the greatest funk songs of the 70s. I love this song. Everybody knows this one. It's Love Rollercoaster. And before we play it, I'm gonna play a very specific section. So listen to this. The section that is the source. The urban legend. Do you hear a woman being murdered on the song? Was it either the model from their album cover? They always had sexy women on their album covers. Was it one of the band members' girlfriends? There's also a story that it was just a random woman in an alleyway outside of the recording studio, and as they were recording Love Rollercoaster, she was murdered, screamed, and it picked up on the microphone. Listen to it and see what you think. Totally. Have you never listened to that? Oh, I thought surely you've heard that before. I've heard it before. Ohio Players, come on, man. Yeah. Love the Ohio Players. It's a great song, but also that song every time. I don't know if I've ever been. Someone in the room always goes, you know what happened in there, right? There's always one person, and I just go, hmm, you're new, aren't you? You should tell them, I know exactly what happened there. Keyboard player Billy Beck did a little scream, because that's what it is. What I've never understood about this urban, so the urban legend is that this woman is. How did she scream to the beat and in key? You know, that was really considered of her as she was being murdered. I mean, why no one ever just considered, well, the song's called Rollercoaster, so it's supposed to be someone screaming on a rollercoaster. That's it. Of course. The most obvious thing is usually the answer, and not the conspiracy theory that spreads for decades. This one spread because a DJ at the time played the song and just sort of made that joke, like, oh, it sounds like this woman's being killed, and it became a, you know, before the internet, it was a viral moment in that market, and it became such a big thing that then Casey Kasem told the story about the DJ telling that joke on American Top 40 nationally. People heard that and missed the part that it was just an offhand comment. They're like, oh my God, that woman's being murdered. This is the thing that happens now when someone just reads a headline that they get an alert and they never read the story, and they don't get the full context of that headline. Yeah, this was the 70s version of clickbait. Yeah. And the Ohio players themselves never debunked it. Yeah, because- Not because it was really good for record sales, because then people wanted to rush out and buy the record and listen to it, and like, is that a woman being killed? No, it's the keyboard player just making a little squeal because it sounded good in the song. Little did he know when he made the little sound, he was like, yeah, this will be cool. It's a song about roller coasters. He didn't realize what it would turn into. They're still talking about it 50 years later. Now that's great marketing. That guy's not only a keyboardist, keyboardist slash publicist, way to go. Now, along those lines, things buried into songs. Is it real, is it not? Guns N' Roses, their debut album, Appetite for Destruction, won with Sweet Child O' Mine, Welcome to the Jungle, Paradise City, one of the best-selling, biggest debut albums in history. The final track on that album is a song called Rocket Queen, and there's the sounds of a woman in the throes of ecstasy. Was this real? Was Axl Rose actually having sex with a woman who might have been his drummer's girlfriend? Was it just an actress who was there recording it? Was it a stock sound? Was it from a porno film? Listen to it and see what you think. Who is that woman, and what is the situation there? I don't know the answer to this one. I'm gonna guess, though, that that is actual sex sounds. As for who is making the sound, I don't know, but I believe it is definitely. It is real sex sounds that were recorded for the song, and it is Axl Rose banging his drummer, Stephen Adler's girlfriend. This is true. Boy, you really ask a lot of your drummer sometimes. I mean, one, I need you to keep the beat. Also, I'm gonna need to bang your girlfriend. It's all for art, it's all for art, Stephen. Don't worry about it. Her name is Adriana Smith. She is the one who has told this story. She said that she was seeing Stephen Adler at the time. They weren't exclusive, but they were hanging out a lot, and then he started dating another girl, and she got a little jealous of that and wanted to get back at him. Around that time, Axl, who was dating Erin Everly, daughter of Don Everly of the Everly Brothers. Oh, really? Yeah, they were married for a little bit. Didn't know that. So Axl decided the bridge of the song, that big instrumental breakdown of the song, needed something sexy. He wanted the sounds, but he didn't want to use stock sounds, and he didn't want to have somebody fake it. Yeah, you gotta keep it real. His girlfriend was like, absolutely not. I am not gonna do that with you. So he asked Adriana, his drummer's girlfriend, and she said, for the band, dude. That's her quote of what she said, is for the band, dude. So she said they hung up some sheets, put some rugs down in the studio. She and Axl went at it, and she said it took a while to get the sound they wanted, and she was sort of starting to fake it, and Axl was like, no, stop it, stop faking it. We're gonna get this real. And they did, and we have all listened to that woman have sex many, many times over the decades. I wanna know, were the engineers, or did they just record it themselves, and then? There were minimal people in the studio, and like I said, they put sheets up so nobody could see anything but the two of them. They had the lights down. They had to have one or two people there to actually roll the tape, but everybody else had to leave. Nobody saw anything but the two of them. But she said, yes, that is me having sex with Axl Rose on the record. I mean, I guess Steven had moved on to someone else, but still, you run the risk of, yeah. because they weren't broken up. These were 80s rock stars. Oh, yeah, they were. You know, he's seeing other people, she's seeing other people. It just happens to be the singer in his band. Listen. It's amazing Guns N' Roses never had any messy relationships within the band. I know. How did they avoid that? Such a clean, yeah, such a clean track record for them. That seems, actually, that seems pretty minor in all the Guns N' Roses drama. That would tear apart other bands, but then it was like, ah, well, that was Tuesday. Make love, not war. They did, they did. All right, this next one. Debbie Harry of Blondie. Was she possibly, maybe almost, a victim of serial killer Ted Bundy? That's the story that she herself put out there. She has told that, and this is the perfect song to play for it, which is really creepy in this context. Here's Blondie, One Way or Another. I get it. She was inspired after a run-in with Ted Bundy. Now, was it Ted Bundy? She says yes, probably it was not, but something very creepy did happen. So in the early 70s, before Blondie had even formed, she was in New York City trying to get a cab, which, you know, can be very difficult, even for a beautiful woman like Debbie Harry. Not always for a beautiful blonde woman in New York. You can usually get a cab, but all right. But she was having trouble, and so this guy in this small car kept pulling over and asking her if she needed a ride. And she was like, no, I'm good, I'm good. But back then, also, people did hitchhike a lot. So it wasn't as creepy as it seems today, but still kind of weird. And she said he swooped by a couple times and asked, do you want a ride? Now, that part does make it, that's red flag flying. The guy keeps coming back, and he's not an actual cab driver, but okay. But so she decides, you know what? I need the ride. I'm gonna do it. So she gets in the car and immediately notices on the passenger door where she's sitting, the door handle and the roller for the window have been stripped. There is no way for her to get out of the car. And she said the guy was acting weird and had a very weird, bad odor. Okay. So she's riding with him for a little bit. That's also not necessarily weird in New York City time. The whole thing was giving her bad vibes. And this guy was being really weird. So she decides she needs to get out of the situation. But how? Because there's no door handle. Yeah, how do you get out? The window, she couldn't roll the window down, and this was before power windows, when you actually had the crank to roll a window down. Kids, that's how cars used to be. But the window was cracked enough that she could reach her arm out of it and she opened the door from the outside. And once she got the door open and got her arm back in, the guy swung around a corner. She rolled out of the car into the street and took off. And then she says, years later, she sees a guy in the news and she goes, oh my God, that's the guy that picked me up. And it was Ted Bundy. Now, Ted Bundy was a very specific looking serial killer. He was. Yeah, a lot of women found him charming. Handsome as serial killers go is how he's sort of famously regarded. Yes, he would definitely stand out. She swears it was him. There isn't a lot of historical evidence to back that up. No, there's actually historical evidence to prove that it was not. Because historians who have studied Ted Bundy and know his moves from the Pacific Northwest to Florida did not ever involve him being in New York City, certainly not in the early 70s. And that was not his MO. I mean, he was famous for his little tan Volkswagen. And she said it was like a small white car. But stripping the inside out, he would usually pretend to have his hand in a cast and ask women for help. Sort of the luring them in that way was his thing. So probably not him. Probably, I don't think he would have been in New York in the early 70s. Because his moves through that time are pretty well documented. But also, absolutely a creepy story. Horrifying, I don't think she made the story up. Right. And maybe it was Ted Bundy, maybe he had some reason to veer into New York. Tried it, didn't work out. I don't know, I always want to believe Debbie Harry just because I love her so much. Even if you take the Ted Bundy part out of it, the story itself is freaking creepy. It's terrifying. Not a lot of people actually have done the drop and roll out of a moving car. Well, she said she kind of got ejected when he went around a corner. It's sort of the, I guess the centrifugal force pushed her out before she had a chance to roll. But I'm just glad she's okay. The fact that she survived it, whether it was Ted Bundy or not. Whoever it was, that is creepy. Super creepy. All right. You know, you remember that reminds me of, and this is just a complete aside, but some people used to have, leave pliers in their car because if your handle broke off the crank, you just grab the pliers and you turn it that way to open the window. I'm not speaking for anyone in this room who may or may not have had to do that. Well, I'm almost sure Tony and Darius haven't because they've probably never been in a car where they didn't have power. Look at them shaking their heads. They're like, we have no idea what you guys are talking about. You used to actually crank, you have to roll a window down physically. I remember that when I was a kid. But the good news about that is because you didn't have power windows, it was easier to sort of push the window down. Oh yeah, if you locked your keys inside. Yeah, you could actually. But now you don't even lock your keys inside because you have key fobs and they won't let you do that. Some things have improved. Some things have definitely improved. But still, do not get into a car with someone where the inside of the door is completely stripped away. Just don't get into a car with a stranger unless it's an Uber. Power windows or not. Yeah, Uber, Lyft, okay, Waymo. There's nobody in there anyway. Oh, this next one, Lady Gaga. Was she born a man? Well, as she told us, let's play it. She was born this way. Well, Eric, what do you got on this one? Was she born a man? No. But there's a reason this started. By the way, congrats to Lady Gaga who just had a baby. Yeah, baby Gaga. Yeah, congratulations to her. Baby Gaga, Lady Gaga. 2009 is where this comes from. And 2009 is the year when she really blew up. When Just Dance and Poker Face and Bad Romance were all just dominating. And when you get that famous that fast, and she is a very in-your-face kind of artist, especially at that point in time, you're gonna get backlash. She played the Glastonbury Festival, which is one of the biggest festivals in the world. And someone on the internet in 2009 took a photo of her on stage and Photoshopped kind of a bulge into her crotch and posted it and said, look, she's a dude. So that photo went around and it became a belief. Oh, okay, she was born male. And Lady Gaga always loved to play with androgyny and that sort of thing. So it was easier for people to kind of buy into that. And it seems like the kind of thing she's not gonna talk about. She'd just be like, well, that's fine. She did not. She was asked about it specifically by Anderson Cooper. That's how serious the story got. Anderson Cooper asked her, were you born a male? And what she said was, would it be so terrible? And that was all she said. She did not debunk it, dismiss it, which of course caused it just to grow. And this is not like the Ohio players where it was just good press and good for record sales. She had a very altruistic reason for not denying it. Because she said, I didn't want anybody who was born intersex to feel shame. Because if she came out so aggressively saying, no, no, no, that's not true, then she's saying it's a bad thing. And especially Gaga, who has a very diverse fan base. Why be hurtful to the people that made you who you are? And that's not what she believes in. So she said, why would I say that it's something that needed to be fixed or was bad when I don't think it is? And if people say that about me, I'm not gonna be defensive because I don't think it's an insult. That's allyship right there. That really is. Yeah, that's the way you do it. And you don't address it at all. So wait, what did she say? That's all she said to Anderson and then he got it. She just kind of danced around it. And she just said, would it be so terrible? Which then puts it back on him. Would it? All right. You have to say. You brought it up, Anderson. Yeah, no, no, I wouldn't. If that's how you're born, that's how you're born. That's who you are. So kudos to her for standing what she believes in. And that would have been, what year was that? 2009, when she first was really blowing up. And sadly, that's the kind of dumb thing that could have derailed someone's career. If enough people were like put off by that. I mean, people thought she was weird anyway, and she is weird in a good way. So was the born this way, was it sort of partially leaning into that? I don't know. I know what the song's really about. Yeah, it's a gay pride anthem, but it can mean a lot of things. And I think she meant it to mean a lot of things to a lot of people. And maybe that inspired it. Maybe if she thought, if I was born this way, would it be a bad thing? No. So why be ashamed of how you're born? So good for you, Gaga. Congratulations on your baby. Exactly. All right, let's run through a couple. I'm gonna do a couple false ones, a couple true ones. First false one, I always like to bring this one up because I think it's not just that it's wrong. There's a malicious intent. It started fairly innocently, but it has turned the death, I mean, which is sad enough anyway, of a very talented person into a punchline for decades. We're talking about Mama Cass Elliot from the Mamas and the Papas. Here's a little bit of her biggest solo hit. This is Dream a Little Dream. ♪ While I'm alone and blue as can be ♪ ♪ Dream a little dream of me ♪ Of course, she died in the early 70s at a very young age, and the story has always been, the urban legend is that she choked to death on a ham sandwich. And a lot of people use that to make it a joke because she was a larger woman, and they're like, oh, she just ate, and she ate so fast she choked to death. No, she died of heart failure in her sleep. But where this story came from was actually a doctor at the scene, not somebody who examined her. He was the first doctor on the scene and came in the room and saw there was a ham sandwich in the room. So he- Half-eaten ham sandwich. Half-eaten. So he said that to reporters, and obviously it did not take long for the story to become, she choked to death on a sandwich. And people still believe this 50 years later. No, no, she did not. She died in her sleep. Yes, there was a sandwich in the room, but she did not in any way choke. No. Leading to her death. No, so I think it's a way that people sort of take dignity from her. Yes. So justice for- Very mean. It's a very mean-spirited urban legend. Right. There's only one reason to make that comment. Right. Because even if she had, it wouldn't matter. It's still just a sad accident. But yeah, it's been used as sort of ammunition against her. But she's dead. Right. Leave the woman alone. Let it go. Gene Simmons, did he have a cow tongue? No, of course not. It's cow-ish. So Gene Simmons- It's definitely cow-ish. Is famous for his seven-inch long tongue. And the story in the 70s was that he had been in a car accident, bit the end of his tongue off, and had it surgically replaced, like having a cow tongue grafted onto what was left of his tongue. That is, again, like the blood transfusion thing, not possible. Like the musculature doesn't work. Is it not possible? No, your body would reject cow tissue in your tongue. What do you know about cow tongues? I looked it up this weekend. I learned about it for this episode. There's no similarity between, I mean, we're both mammals. You cannot have, also think how a cow's tongue is so much bigger than a human. It was a baby. I don't know. It was a calf. A veal tongue? Yeah. No. Wait, no veals? Yeah. Anyway. No, no, Gene Simmons did not bite his tongue off and did not have a cow's tongue sewn on, except how would you attach the muscle to make it work that way? I don't think that would work either. But it's just genetics. He has a seven-inch long tongue, which of course he was happy to exploit in the 70s, flicking the tongue out, usually dripping with blood, because he would put fake stage blood in his mouth. And like the Ohio players, and unlike Lady Gaga, Gene Simmons was happy to let people think this because it sold records. It just was part of the mystique of Kiss. Also the urban legend that the band's name stood for knights in Satan's service, or kids in Satan's service. No, no, none of that was ever true. So you mean to tell me that his seven-inch long tongue is not real? No, it is real. Oh, I mean, it is not, it's really his tongue. It is really his tongue. It is a genetic prodigy. Seven inches, okay. That's a lot of tongue. And another false one, real quick. Phil Collins, did he write In the Air Tonight after seeing a man watch another man drown, and then he, did he then invite that man to his concert, perform the song on stage, and accuse him on, I know what you did, I saw it? Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no. This one I've never, I like. I think people just listened to the lyrics of the song and made up a narrative around it. When he says, I was there, I know what you did, I saw it with my own eyes. If you were drowning, I wouldn't help you. People thought it was him saying he witnessed somebody watch someone else die and not help them. No, he was going through a very, very, very bitter divorce from his first wife at the time. Yeah, this is just about. And it's like, if you were drowning, I wouldn't help you. Yeah, he said that there's no narrative to the song whatsoever. It was just him gushing out words to that melancholy drum machine beat. And people just invented a story around it, and it created this urban legend around the song, which is an amazing song. It doesn't need that. But it does kind of make it seem a little darker and a little cooler. I will say, I've known him for a long time, it's not real, but it does make the song, I don't wanna say it makes the song better, but yeah, no, I'm gonna say that. It does make the song better. If it were true, it then adds a whole other layer to it. Then you're listening to an account of a murder, basically. I mean, maybe not a murder, but. No, but he's calling out that, really, he's the hero. Well, he didn't help the person, he just saw it. He was a witness to a crime. But then he invited them to the show, and I'm sure he called the authorities after pointing them out. He finishes the song, and then the cops come in, they whisk the guy away. How do you even have invited the guy to the show? You pull over and go, hey, hey. It's Bill Collins, he could get stuff done in these, man. How do you know who he is? Find the guy that let a guy die? He knows people, call an assistant, hey, find that guy. When you think about it, it really makes no sense. It makes zero sense. There's zero logic to this, but it's just a fun story. All right, these next ones, these are all insane. They are all true. The Who, their infamous, amazing drummer Keith Moon. Keith Moon did pass out during a Who concert in 1973, and the band asked if anybody in the audience could play drums, and a kid did, and came up and got to be the Who's drummer for a couple minutes on stage in 1973. While their actual drummer was passed out. Yeah, so the story is, and this is true, Keith Moon was taking ketamine and brandy, and about 70 minutes into the show, he got through most of it, but he was not on his game that night, and then he just slumped over at one point. So the band stopped the show for about half an hour. Roadies took Keith backstage, gave him a cold shower, gave him some coffee, tried to revive him. He came back out, played for like another 20 minutes or so, 30 minutes, slumped over again. They just had to take him off the stage at that point, because he could not perform. The other three members of the Who tried to keep going with no percussion. Roger Daltrey, lead singer, had a tambourine, and then finally Pete Townshend was like, can anybody play drums? And I mean, play them well. This kid named Scott Halpin, he was 19 at the time, his friend goes, my friend can. He said, I hadn't played drums in like a year at that point, but okay, suddenly, on stage with the Who, and plays three songs with them. And he said, it was a little rough in places, but it was pretty good. Pete Townshend was super nice to him, shook his hand, said, you'll be fine, I'll lead you through this. Afterwards, they got to hang out backstage with the band. They did a shot of brandy, which is probably the thing that took Keith Moon down. Would you feel comfortable ingesting anything backstage with a band like the Who? In 1973, no, I don't think so. I mean, unless you just wanted that sort of experience. Yeah. They allegedly said they would send him a check for $1,000, that never happened. But Pete Townshend, about a year later, did send him a very nice letter, and Scott Halpin went on to be a music teacher, and owned a punk nightclub, and worked in the visual arts. He died in 2008 of a brain tumor, sadly, but the year after he died, the Who's website congratulated him for his part in their history. Wow. So that really did happen. That's really cool, then. He got to be the Who's drummer for about 20 minutes. Thanks, Keith Moon. That's like, you know, is there a doctor on board, or something, on a plane? Is there a drummer? Is there a drummer anywhere? Was David Bowie stalked by a five-foot-three pink bunny? Yes, he was. This happened, and this is not from the 70s. This is 2004. This century, this happened. David Bowie was touring in 2004, and started noticing a fan dressed head-to-toe in a pink bunny costume in all of his concerts, and that's a hard thing to miss. You keep seeing it. The second time that I see that, like one show, you go like, okay, this is somebody weird. Bowie's gonna have some odd fans, because he himself was an odd person, and again, I mean that as a compliment, but the pink bunny started showing up to multiple shows. Where it got weird was Bowie was taking a private jet to New York, and when he got on the plane, the pink bunny was sitting on the jet in the costume. Nope, gotta go. You know what, I'll take the bus. It's fine. Bowie just laughed it off. He said, eh, it's rock and roll. That was his quote on it. Eventually, it turned out it was pretty harmless. There's no 100% identification, but Bowie's fans got together online, did some investigating, and they're pretty sure it's a woman from Vancouver who was just a big Bowie fan, and she just wanted to be weird and stand out and get noticed, and it worked. And a bunny fan, obviously, too. Apparently, apparently. Did a Beatles fan during the height of Beatlemania try to mail herself to the band in a crate? Yep. Yes, she did. 1,000%. Yeah, in the mid-60s, or early 60s, I guess, she had a crate, packed it with a pillow, snacks, and Beatles memorabilia, had her friend seal her up, take her to the train station, and get shipped off. Fortunately for her, because I'm not sure she would have survived this. I hope they pull poles in the... Yeah, an employee at the train station caught on to what was going on and ruined the whole plot. So she never got to mail herself to London from the States. That's a long trip in a crate. But she tried it. She's lucky that that person stepped in, because she's likely to get... Imagine the Beatles get this crate and open it, and there's a dead woman inside. A dead teenager. The thing is, she wouldn't have... I mean, not funny, but... She would not have made it, because they don't necessarily put the cargo in a compressed, the cabin isn't pressurized. Unless she was going by ship. But how long is that gonna take? If she went by ship? How many snacks could you pack? How big was that crate? So fortunately for her, yes, she got discovered. I don't think she ever got to meet the Beatles, but she lived, so that's a bonus. That is dedication. Way too much dedication to your favorite band. Yeah. All right, one last one, and this one is sad, but also hilarious, and like Keith Richards, somebody who is basically an urban legend themselves at this point, Willie Nelson. Uh-huh. We know that Willie Nelson did smoke weed on the roof of the White House when Jimmy Carter was president. He's done a lot of crazy things. He smoked weed a lot of places, I'm sure. But this is a story that's been around about Willie for a long time, and it is true. He got married at 19 years old to his first wife in 1952. Also, Willie Nelson was 19 in 1952, and is still touring, by the way, in his 90s. His first wife, Martha, they were both very young teenagers. They both had drinking problems. It was a very volatile marriage that somehow lasted 10 years. They made it till 1962. And I'm gonna play, Willie has a lot of iconic hits. I'm gonna play a song not as well-known from that period, before he got famous, from 1960, I think. This is called, What a Way to Live. ♪ I'd rather lay me down tonight ♪ ♪ And never wake again ♪ ♪ Than to face another day the shape my life is in ♪ So what might have inspired that song? I don't know, I'm just guessing. But when you think of What a Way to Live, one night he and Martha had a really bad argument. I think he was drunk, passed out in the bed. She was mad at him, so what do you do? You fold the sheet over, sew it closed, and then beat him with a broom. Wait, what? I mean, this is domestic violence. It's not funny, but I'm sorry, I can't help but laugh at this. Yeah, I mean, what's a broom? He passed out, she sewed him up in the sheets so he couldn't get out, and then beat him with a broom. This is what their relationship was. I mean, the broom end of the broom, not the stick end of the broom. I don't know. I've never seen it specified which end she beat him with. I would think the broom end. Yeah. Still, that's gonna hurt, and you can't get out of it. You're trapped in the sheet. Yeah, that's it, you're stuck. He said it was another time they were having dinner, and she got mad at him and threw a fork at him, and it stabbed him in the side, and he flicked it, and it vibrated like a tuning fork. What? And they made it 10 years. And he's still kicking. It's a different time, man. It was a different time. It was. Yeah. Wow, that's a cautionary tale. He has acknowledged that several times. Like, yeah, and you know, now it's just sort of funny. I mean, 60 years later. Yeah, so what? She sewed me up and beat me. And it vibrated like a fork. Of course a musician would notice that. Like, oh, I'm stabbed. Bing, it's in tune. Perfect pitch, though. Oh, I got stabbed with C major. Anyway, so yeah, some of these are true, some of these are not. They're all wild, and who knows what stories we're gonna get in the next couple decades. Oh, yeah, definitely. Some things maybe just haven't come out yet. Now that I feel like the internet, it's easier for these things to spread, but it's also easier to debunk them. Yeah, because it used to be there was no way to debunk it. It would just be out there. You heard from somebody, and they heard it from somebody, and I know somebody who knew somebody. And it just keeps going around. Right, yeah, the number of times and the number of people you've heard connected to some of these stories, it's kind of crazy. It's crazy. We didn't even get to the gerbils, but anyway. I already did the Rod Stewart style comp. There's only so far I'm willing to go, Charles. There's only so far we can make up. Oh, this seems like a good time to get out of here before we get into some other stories we shouldn't. That is gonna do it for us. We'll see you next time on Get to Know It.