10 Mystifying Myths About Rock Stars… That Are Actually True

Sometimes, the truth is stranger than fiction. That’s especially true in the world of rock music. For decades, rock stars have lived wild and insane lives in the public eye. They pretty much do as they please, with sycophants and adoring fans all around them—and none of them ever say no to the star. That dynamic creates a truly insane world full of hard-to-believe tales and incredible, outsized legends.

But here’s the thing: many of those wild, seemingly unrealistic myths and tall tales are actually true! In this list, we’ll go over ten absolutely insane urban legends about rock stars that aren’t actually urban legends at all. Instead, the rockers listed here really did live out these crazy tales in their actual lives. They may be hard to believe, but they are all true. Every last one of ’em…

Related: 10 Weirdest Albums Released by Iconic Rock Musicians

10 The Real Vampire Diaries

While the iconic ’80s group Depeche Mode went out on their “Devotional” tour, lead singer Dave Gahan was really into vampires. Some figured it was just a phase, and he’d grow out of it and move on to the next thing soon enough. Others realized he was way more into it than any temporary phase or fad. Some people in that latter group started a rumor that a coffin had been delivered to him on tour, and he slept in it before shows. You know, exactly like what a real-life vampire might do!

The crazy part is that the coffin story actually wasn’t false! Gahan did have a coffin delivered to the band while they were touring South America. Initially, the coffin had been sent to Depeche Mode as a joke. But then Gahan leaned into it—and lowered himself into it to sleep! When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. And when life hands you coffins, uh, turn into a full-fledged vampire and sleep in it every night?

Amazingly, the vampire stories don’t just end there. A British journalist later claimed that Gahan once tried to “put a curse” on him by biting the poor media member in the neck. That’s something a real vampire would do! And when Gahan himself was asked about his vampiric ways a few years after the fact, he owned up to it: “I definitely could have been a vampire, in my own head. Even the bed I slept in in Los Angeles was in the shape of a coffin—a huge double bed shaped like a coffin! My whole life was Spinal Tap at that time.” Hey, at least he owned up to it, right?^[1]

9 Pay for That Secret

For roughly fifty years now, the music world has wondered about who might be the subject of Carly Simon’s iconic song “You’re So Vain.” And for years, an urban legend was going around that one person (other than Simon, of course) did actually know who that song was about. For years, listeners have pondered whether it could be about James Taylor, Mick Jagger (who provided backing vocals for the song), Kris Kristofferson, Warren Beatty, or somebody else entirely.

As the story goes, Simon kept quiet about the supposedly famous subject of the well-known track, only to tell one single soul after that person purchased the knowledge of the song’s subject as part of a charity auction. Well, guess what? That urban legend isn’t a legend at all—it’s dead true!

According to multiple media reports, Simon was at a charity benefit auction near her home on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, in 2003. As part of the charity gala, she decided to auction off the super-secret knowledge of the subject of the song to the highest bidder. And just like that, a well-heeled audience member ponied up the winning bid of $50,000. So Carly went over and told the man—who turned out to be NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol—about the real-life subject of the song. And now two people know who it’s really about!^[2]

8 Manson’s Music

It’s no secret that the Beach Boys (and specifically Dennis Wilson) befriended Charles Manson before the latter man went on to be involved in the notorious Tate-LaBianca murders. Long before Manson was a convicted killer, though, he was just a wannabe musician. And when he hooked up with Wilson and the Beach Boys in the summer of 1968, he simply wanted to be a successful rock-and-roll star himself.

Manson desired that so much, in fact, that an urban legend later popped up that Manson tried hard to get his music produced by Wilson’s Beach Boys connections. Some have even claimed that Charles actually sold a song to Dennis! As it turns out, though, that song sale rumor is true!

At one point, Wilson managed to get Manson some recording time in his brother Brian’s recording studio. That didn’t go well for Manson, who simply couldn’t hack it as a musician. Fortunately for him, Wilson decided to buy one of his songs. The track, chillingly, was entitled “Cease To Exist.” As the real story goes, Charles only sold it to Dennis (and his brother Brian) because he wanted to spend a little bit of cash and funds to buy a motorcycle. Sure. Why not?

In the end, Wilson ended up changing a bunch of the lyrics to better suit the Beach Boys’ sound. Manson didn’t really like that Wilson made those editorial changes, though. In response to the lyrical switch, the future killer mailed a single bullet to Wilson as a warning. Creepy! As for the song, the Beach Boys eventually changed its name to “Never Learn Not to Love.” And they didn’t actually give Manson a songwriting credit, even though it was based on his original lyrics.

Less than a decade later, in 1976, Wilson was asked by Rolling Stone about Manson penning the foundation of that track. The musician dryly replied: “As long as I live, I’ll never talk about that.”^[3]

7 Be Careful What You Wish For

For the last six decades, the rock-and-roll world has considered February 3, 1959, “the day the music died.” Of course, that was the day that Buddy Holly was killed in a plane crash traveling from Mason City, Iowa, to Fargo, North Dakota, along with fellow rock star JP Richardson—also known as The Big Bopper.

Not long after the terrible plane crash that claimed the lives of the two young stars and others, including rocker Ritchie Valens, it came out that Waylon Jennings was also meant to be on that flight. But at the last minute, he gave up his seat to Richardson. According to a well-known myth, Jennings supposedly wished death upon Holly right before the plane went down.

Amazingly and chillingly, that myth is true. On the day the plane was to take off from Mason City and head to Fargo, Jennings did indeed decide to give up his seat to Richardson. Instead, Jennings told Holly he’d take the bus to the next venue along with the rest of the band. As he was preparing to board, Holly joked with Jennings that the bus ride would be awfully cold—and that it wasn’t too late to change his mind. But Waylon held firm. And while the two were ribbing each other, Jennings said those fateful (joking) words: that he hoped Buddy’s plane would crash.

Years later, Jennings confirmed the conversation going down like this: “[Holly] said, ‘so, you’re not going with us tonight on the plane, huh? Well, I hope your ol’ bus freezes up. It’s 40 below out there, and you’re gonna get awful cold.’ So, I said, ‘Well, I hope your ol’ plane crashes.’” Considering what happened hours later, those words undoubtedly haunted poor Waylon Jennings for the rest of his life.^[4]

6 Lennon’s FBI Files

Rumor has it that the FBI took some time to investigate the Beatles’ John Lennon after he came to New York in 1971 and met up with some anti-war activists. It’s a popular myth that has flown around the music world for half a century now: that the most legendary member of the Beatles could somehow be the target of a very deep, dark, shadowy FBI investigation.

In actuality, there’s no “somehow” about it. The investigation really did happen. Things went so deep that the FBI reached out to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which then attempted to deport Lennon from the United States for good in 1972! According to a professor and author named Jon Wiener, who wrote a book on Lennon’s FBI file, the rock star was under a “60-day order to leave the country” for an entire two-year period after the FBI first began looking into his anti-war activism.

Thankfully, Lennon had a very good team of high-priced lawyers on his side. They made sure that he was never kicked out of the country over those two years. And then, after Richard Nixon became President, the saga ended well enough for Lennon: He got his green card. But for a while there, it was dicey!^[5]

5 The $500 Platinum Hit

It’s hard to believe that “Just a Song Before I Go” was Crosby, Stills, & Nash’s biggest hit. The band has many well-known singles and has been a force in music for decades. But this single, first released in 1977, is bigger than any other song the band ever created. It’s doubly hard to believe that the song was written in just a few minutes—and that it only came around thanks to a $500 bet! Myths in the music industry have held for years that the song was the byproduct of a $500 bet and a throwaway challenge from a marijuana dealer to singer-songwriter Graham Nash. But guess what? It’s true!

Speaking to the Daily Press years later about how the song came to be, Nash confirmed that it all came about thanks to an off-the-cuff remark from a drug dealer buddy. “I was in Maui, and I had an hour to kill before I had to catch my plane,” Nash recalled. “I was staying with a friend who was a low-level drug dealer—marijuana, nothing too dark—and he said to me, ‘you’re supposed to be a big shot songwriter. Bet you can’t write a song just before you go.’ I asked him how much he wanted to bet. He said, ‘Five hundred dollars.’”

And just like that, the song was crafted! In less than an hour, Nash wrote the two-minute-long song. It came to him as a stream-of-consciousness push. And once he started it, he simply couldn’t stop. Not long thereafter, he liked the song so much that he demanded the band record it. And the rest is history!

Oh, that just leaves one question: Did the drug dealer pay up on his end of the bet? You bet he did! And to this day, Nash hasn’t spent the money he earned writing “Just a Song Before I Go.” He told that newspaper: “I still have his $500.” That’s a heck of a (true!) story.^[6]

4 Knock ‘Em Out ASAP

Van Morrison is very well-known for his solo work with Warner Bros. Records. But according to the stuff of music biz legend, he supposedly only started with them at the very end of 1967 after recording nearly three dozen songs in a single day (!) for his old recording company to get out of his contract. Surely, that can’t be true, can it? That sounds like the stuff of legend and a phony story that has only grown over time, right?

Well, just like everything else on this list, that story is actually true! Earlier in 1967, Van Morrison kicked off his solo career with legendary producer Bert Berns under the Bang Records label. It was under that Bang label that Morrison recorded his legendary single “Brown Eyed Girl.” The only problem from there was that Berns died unexpectedly at the end of 1967. After his passing, Morrison didn’t want to stick around with Bang and go at it alone. Instead, he wanted to jump ship for a more lucrative and promising contract with Warner Bros.

The only problem was that Morrison still had to fulfill a 31-song recording contract with Bang Records before he could get out of it. So he made haste, and both wrote and recorded 31 songs as quickly as humanly possible to fulfill his contract. The sound quality of the songs is wildly poor, too; you can hear Morrison get progressively more bored and agitated as he strummed an increasingly mistuned guitar through the interminable tracks.

In the end, Morrison’s awful songs have come to be known colloquially as his “Contractual Obligation” album by some fans. Others have simply called it “Payin’ Dues.” Even though he technically fulfilled the contract by writing and recording terrible songs, the executives at Bang Records weren’t happy. Eventually, Warner Bros. Records execs had to pay Bang $20,000 in cash (supposedly via some underworld henchmen in a New York City warehouse) to get Morrison out of the contract. Yikes!^[7]

3 Aerosmith’s Skynyrd Scare

If you’re a fan of rock-and-roll music, the date October 20, 1977, certainly means something to you. That was the day that a Convair 240 airplane crashed outside the tiny town of Gillsburg, Mississippi, after trying to make an emergency landing. Nearly two dozen of the plane’s passengers survived, but tragically, many others were dead. Among those killed were the plane’s two pilots and three members of the iconic rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd: Steve Gaines, Cassie Gaines, and Ronnie Van Zant.

For years afterward, there was a rumor flying around the music world that Aerosmith had nearly been on that very same airplane along with Skynyrd on that fateful day. As legend has it, Aerosmith’s managers supposedly hired someone to inspect the exact same plane that Skynyrd later flew on, only to turn down its use. Citing the plane as defective and unsafe, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry’s iconic rock band supposedly turned it down. And that rumor is… true!

The real story, according to an interview Perry held years later with the outlet Crave Online, is that the band refused to fly on the Skynyrd plane. “Fortunately, we had someone looking at the plane that we would be taking,” Perry cryptically told the outlet, “and he put his foot down.” It’s unknown exactly what issue kept Aersomith from wanting to use the eventual Skynyrd plane for themselves, but the myth that Perry and Tyler’s rock group just barely sidestepped their own possible fatal fate is very much true.^[8]

2 You’re Fired!

Before becoming famous on his own, Jimi Hendrix worked as a guitarist for various other rock stars. That included the Isley Brothers and multiple R&B acts like Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, and even the legendary BB King. There was a brief time, too, when Hendrix toured with the iconic Little Richard as part of both backing bands who worked behind the star over the years—the Upsetters and the Royal Company.

But a disturbing rumor has been flying around for a while now: that Hendrix was fired by Little Richard because he supposedly (a) showed up late and (b) upstaged the superstar he was supposed to back! As talented as Hendrix was, Little Richard apparently couldn’t abide by the idea that his backing guitarist would outshine him. So Little Richard decided to fire the legendary Jimi Hendrix rather than keep him on—so goes the legend, at least.

As it turns out, that rumor is very true> Little Richard’s brother Robert Penniman once confirmed the claim of Hendrix being fired by noting that he “had a habit of being late and upstaging the main act, two things that no session guitarist should ever do.” Even Little Richard himself admitted to Hendrix’s issue with overshadowing him on stage, saying this during an episode of VH1’s Legends: “On the stage, he would actually take the show. People would scream, and I thought they were screaming for me. I look over, and they’re screaming for Jimi!”

To Hendrix’s credit, he was obviously a damn good guitarist. But according to Penniman, it wasn’t just the showboating on stage that caused Little Richard’s crew to give Jimi the heave-ho. It also came down to timeliness—or a lack thereof. “He was a damn good guitar player, but the guy was never on time,” Penniman added. “He was always late for the bus and flirting with the girls and stuff like that. It came to a head in New York, where we had been playing the Apollo, and Hendrix missed the bus for Washington, DC. I finally got Richard to cut him loose.” And that was that!^[9]

1 Billy Joel’s Concert Tickets

Billy Joel hates it when scalpers swipe up all the best tickets to his concerts and resell them to rich people. He also hates the super-rich people who buy the tickets, no matter the cost, without concern for the music. So, at nearly every concert he holds, there’s been a rumor that he doesn’t offer the first few rows of tickets for sale. Instead, as legend goes, he is said to keep them for himself, and he’ll give them away to “real” fans on the day of the show. And that rumor is… true!

In a 2014 interview with Billboard Magazine, Joel explained his reasoning: “We never sell front rows; we hold those tickets at just about every concert. For years, the scalpers got the tickets and would scalp the front row for ridiculous amounts of money… I’d look down and see rich people sitting there; I call ’em ‘gold chainers.’ Sitting there puffing on a cigar, ‘entertain me, piano man.’”

That sounds awful, right? And it’s doubly awful that those rich “fans” don’t do anything when it’s time to sing, yell, scream, and dance. “They don’t stand up and make noise,” Joel added. “[They] sit there with their bouffant-haired girlfriend lookin’ like a big shot. I kinda got sick of that. Who the hell are these people? Where are the real fans? It turns out the real fans were always in the back of the room in the worst seats. We now hold those tickets, and I send my road crew out to the back of the room when the audience comes in, and they get people from the worst seats and bring ’em in to the front rows. This way, you’ve got people in the front row that are really happy to be there, real fans.” Honestly, we love that idea!^[10]