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Tales From the Rock N Roll Highway
Category:
Biography
Publisher: Billboard Books
ISBN-10: 082308437X
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 248
Copyright: 2004
Dozens of music artists, from the Fifties to present, share their stories of their touring adventures.
If you love rock and roll, you'll love this hilarious, outrageous, revealing, poignant, bawdy and highly entertaining collection of stories about some of the most famous and infamous names in music. Tales From the Rock N Roll Highway gives you an uncensored, up-close-and-personal look at rock stars. Told by musicians at all levels of experience, and by roadies, radio personalities, music journalists, tour managers, and fans, these stories describe pranks, diversions, and wild behavior; the tedium and loneliness of life on the road; studio experiences; groupies; the excess of drug and alcohol and the lessons learned; tales of tour buses and drivers; and insiders' views and experiences with other rockers.
Over fifty artists contributed their stories including members of BTO, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Meat Puppets, The Tubes, The Motels, Steppenwolf, Insane Clown Posse, Iron Butterfly, The Firm, Chumbawamba, Sha Na Na, Country Joe and the Fish, Golden Earring, Wishbone Ash, Lynyrd Skynyrd, MC5, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Blake Babies, Big Head Todd, Big Country, Marshall Tucker Band, America, Anthrax, The Damned, Atomic Punks, The Cautions, Street Survivor, Zak Daniels and the One-Eyed Snakes, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Metal Shop, Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Slipknot, The Damned, Orleans, Analog Pussy, Herman's Hermits, Poco, as well as solo artists such as Dick Dale, Al Kooper, Graham Parker, Gloria Gaynor, Nigel Olsson, Rory Block, Janis Ian, Neal Casal, Mel Carter, Gary Wright, Lee Underwood, Bobby Berge, Andrew Gold, Brian Hyland Peter Noone, Chris Spedding, Kayte Strong, Donna Frost, Rick Rose and many, many others.
Excerpt
*While on stage one day, the grateful Dead's Mickey Hart was greeted by a fan who proceeded to give Hart his brother's skull. The fan explained that his brother had been a huge fan and would have liked Hart to have it. Looking at the skull, Hart proclaimed it a true "Dead Head."*
*The always outrageous Led Zeppelin held a press conference in an art gallery while in Copenhagen. When asked if he liked the paintings, John Bonham selected one and smashed it over the man's head, asking if there were "other paintings you'd like me to criticixe tonight?"*
*While recording in a studio at Montreux, Switzerland, Deep Purple watched the Montreux Casino burn and the smoke from the fire drift across Lake Geneva. This experience inspired the lyrics to "Smoke On the Water." Coincidentally, Frank Zappa and the MOthers of Invention were playing at the Casino at the time of the fire and had to run out without their equipment, which ended up being destroyed.*
*John Lennon liked to recount that while the Beates were visiting Elvis for the first time, the topic of "The King's" movies came up. Lennon said that when he asked if Elvis were preparing new ideas for his next movie, Elvis replied in his best Southern accent, "I sure am. I play a country boy with a guitar who meets a few gals along the way, and I sing a few songs." The Beatles looked at one another, and Presley and Colonel Parker started to laugh. The they told Lennon that the only time they deviated from that formula, for the film "Wild in the Country", they lost money.*
*Guitarist Steve Rothery of Marillion was once missing in action at a brewery launch party. After searching high and low for the musician as the band prepared to take the stage to perform, Rothery was found wedged into an empty barrel of brew surrounded by half-eaten, party-sized pork pies.*
*Two groupies revealing that they had slept with Rolling Stone Brian Jones vlaimed, "He was no Mick Jagger." After trying Keith Richards, they again claimed, "He was no Mick Jagger." Finally, after going to bed with Jagger himself they declared, guess what? "He was no Mick Jagger."*
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