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Unusual Rock Trivia?

Although it's not true, it makes me laugh every time I think about it -- Buck Owens was buried in a Dracula costume.

Hahahaha... yup, a few years ago, someone added that to Owens' Wikipedia page... and it stayed up there for NINE MONTHS before someone with his team took it down.

Freakin' hysterical.
Thanks, now I want to be cremated in a Dracula costume!
 
After Devo floated their first demo around, there was a feeding frenzy over who would sign them and who would produce them.

(In the end, Brian Eno and Warner Bros won out.)

Bowie even offered to create a brand new record label for them if he could produce.

But during this whirlwind, billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson flew the band to one of his mansions on one of his private islands and (according to one Devo bio penned by Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh of the band) smoked them out on incredible weed which near-incapacitated them, then told them he was prepared to sign them IF they would agree to let John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon (ex-Sex Pistols/pre PiL, who was allegedly waiting in another room) to be their singer and frontman.

According to the story, the band members could do nothing but laugh hysterically in response.

I get the impression the rest of their meeting with Branson was rather awkward.

On a similar sort of note, after Jim Morrison died and after The Stooges imploded, the idea of Iggy Pop fronting The Doors was kicked around, and he spent some time with the surviving members and trying it out. I think it was mutually but amicably decided that it didn't mesh that well.
 
Just mentioned this on another thread, but the cover art for Steely Dan's "The Royal Scam" (which the band themselves would later describe as one of the worst album covers of the 70s) was originally intended to be the cover for a Van Morrison album called "Mechanical Bliss" in 1975, but that album was never released.
 
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Before becoming Marky Ramone in The Ramones in 1978, Marc Bell was a member of the bands Dust with Richie Wise and Kenny Aaronson and Richard Hell and the Voidoids.









Yeah, this is cool. I dig both bands. I'm more of a punk/new wave guy in my background but I love a lot of obscure crunchy 70s heavy rock, and Dust were cool.

I actually spent many moons gathering, collecting and poring over a metric ton of old heavy rock albums from about 1968-1977 (think Blue Cheer and Sabbath ripoff bands, but lester known) and compiled a 4 cd set of the cream of the crop. There are a couple of Dust tracks on there that fit right in the flow perfectly.
 
^^^ On a similar trip, Billy Joel (as William Joel) prior to his solo career, was in a band called Attila who put out one album of heavy oddness.

It was a duo--just Joel on organ and vox, and a drummer. Pretty hilarious.

Here's the album cover in all its glory, and some of the album courtesy YouTube:

attila.jpg


 
Before becoming Marky Ramone in The Ramones in 1978, Marc Bell was a member of the bands Dust with Richie Wise and Kenny Aaronson and Richard Hell and the Voidoids.

I always get Marc Bell (ne Ramone) confused with David Robinson of The Cars: Which one of them played drums with Jonathan Richmond's Modern Lovers before moving on to their more famous gig?

(Related trivia: that Richard Hell Love Comes In Spurts album also featured Robert Quine on guitar.)
 
I always get Marc Bell (ne Ramone) confused with David Robinson of The Cars: Which one of them played drums with Jonathan Richmond's Modern Lovers before moving on to their more famous gig?

That would be David Robinson, later of The Cars. Also in the original Modern Lovers: Jerry Harrison, later of Talking Heads.

(Related trivia: that Richard Hell Love Comes In Spurts album also featured Robert Quine on guitar.)

Yep. Great player. He worked on one of Lou Reed's finest solo albums "The Blue Mask "
 
Current Styx keyboardist and vocalist Lawrence Gowan had a long string of hit songs in Canada during the 1980s and 1990s. Gowan came to the attention of Styx members in 1997 during their tour where he performed as a supporting act at Montreal's Molson Centre and Quebec City's Colisee. Tommy Shaw admired his talent and vibrant stage charisma, and called him in May 1999 asking him to tour with them for 53 dates, replacing their lead singer Dennis DeYoung and he has remained with Styx since then. Gowan's classic hit, "A Criminal Mind", is often played by Styx.



 
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American singer, musician, songwriter, Gloria Jones, had a string of solo hits and was a musician and backing vocalist with T. Rex. Marc Bolan met Gloria when she was touring Europe as a member of the musical Hair. She became Marc Bolan's girlfriend and she driving the car, a Mini 1275 GT, that crashed and killed Bolan at 4:00 am on September 16, 1977 on the way home to Bolan's Richmond property in the U.K. Gloria recorded the original version of "Tainted Love" in 1964 and released solo efforts in the U.S. and the U.K. throughout the 60s and 70s. Gloria has worked as a singer, musician, and songwriter with dozens of acts as diverse as Neil Young, Jackie DeShannon, REO Speedwagon, Little Feat, Ry Cooder, Billy Preston, The Jackson 5, The Supremes, The Four Tops, and many more. She had a son with Marc Bolan named Rolan Bolan in 1975.









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In 1958, a team of current teen idols at the time, Paul Anka, George Hamilton IV (who went on to a big country music career), and Johnny Nash (who had a string of dop wop and later reggae hits such as "I Can See Clearly Now" had an unusual Top 30 U.S. hit with a short song called "The Teen Commandments (Of Love)".

The song was a list of things that teenagers should do to be good kids.

 
Not rock history, but gershwin was hanging out with shoenberg and dabbled with 12 tone rows at home.

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I'll add that apparently (i dont have the source, only tge annecdote), Ira once asked George what these crossword looking things were on the table and he responded, "just something I've been experimenting with" or something similar.
 
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