In the world of rock ‘n’ roll, however, there have been a plethora of individuals whose actions, while immensely entertaining, have not been quite so, shall we say, brilliant.
Your job? Match the rock ‘n’ roll legend with the outrageous activity that helped him achieve legendary status.
- Keith Moon – Blew up hotel toilets with explosives. Moon, the notoriously outrageous and hard-living drummer for the Who, started with cherry bombs, then graduated to stronger stuff—first M80s, then actual dynamite. Perhaps his most infamous porcelain-kablooie-ing incident involved driving an American luxury car (accounts differ as to whether it was a Cadillac® or a Lincoln® Continental®) into a Midwestern hotel pool, blowing up the toilet in his room, and then jumping out the window to avoid the ceramic shrapnel. Mind you, this was when he was only 21.
- Ozzy Osbourne – Bit the head off a dove in his record company’s office. Was it just another in a series of drunken misbehaviors? Was it an attempt to get the record company to take him “seriously” as a solo artist after he left Black Sabbath? Mostly, it was icky. And somebody took pictures, which I wish they hadn’t.
- John Bonham – Relieved himself in his airplane seat and made a roadie switch seats with him for the rest of the flight. Really, what more is there to say? The Led Zeppelin drummer was in a class by himself. (First class, actually . . . then he moved to coach.)
- Peter Buck – Wrestled with a flight attendant on a plane until both were covered with yogurt. Yes, Peter Buck. Yes, R.E.M. Yes, sensitive alterna-rock. Yes, the guy who plays the groovy Rickenbacker guitars and the mandolin. Such are the evil powers of too much . . . red wine? At one point, Buck was so soused he tried to put a CD into a food cart, thinking it was a CD player. “Losing My Religion,” indeed.
- John Lennon – Performed entire concert in underwear with toilet seat around neck. The much-loved and much-respected Beatles cofounder, who with Paul McCartney wrote the lion’s share of the hits for the most popular rock band in history, once played an early Beatles show in Hamburg, Germany, sloshed out of his mind, stripped down to his skivvies, and sporting the aforementioned piece of bathroom furniture resting on his shoulders. To give things a little perspective, the show was the band’s fourth in a row—on the same night. And he was still probably more coherent than Ozzy Osbourne sober.
By Valerie Watson
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