That Puff the Magic Dragon or Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds are about drugs. They are not. The Beatles did write some songs about drugs, that wasnt one of them.
Also, the one about jam made by Eddie Vedder’s grandmother, Pearl, being the origin of that band’s name.
I remember being told by classmates back in elementary school of a woman getting murdered in a recording studio and the scream could be heard on the song “Love Rollercoaster”, and my mother telling me not to belief everything I am told.
Which in turn ended up as a horrible joke. Really. It’s horrible:
If Mama Cass had given that sammich to Karen Carpenter, maybe both would’ve been alive.
Ice Age movies, mostly.
I heard that joke as a kid.
Interestingly, I found this…
Her memoir also reveals how Elliot-Kugell did finally find out, decades later, the true origin of the ham sandwich myth.
She was having lunch with her mum’s friend the journalist Sue Cameron and talk turned to Cass’s death.
“I said, ‘I really just wish I knew where that story came from’. She stopped eating, put her knife and fork down, looked me in the eye and said: ‘I did it’.”
Cameron went on to explain how back in 1974, when she heard the news, she called Cass’s manager Allan Carr in London to find out what had happened.
Elliot-Kugell picks up the story: “So many of her peers had passed away due to drug overdoses that Carr really wanted to protect her. And there was a sandwich that was found there.”
On the spot, Carr concocted the choking on a ham sandwich story and asked Cameron to write it up in the Hollywood Reporter to quell speculation until there was more information.
For Elliot-Kugell knowing the truth was a huge relief: “Allan Carr wanted to protect his client’s legacy and in a weird way it did. So now I understand, and it makes sense.”
She just wishes that everyone knew the truth.
C’mon now, have you heard the lyrics to Lucy in the Sky? I know what Lennon said in an interview, that the song is based on a drawing his son made. But here’s a little tip: musicians don’t always tell the truth about themselves and their music. Especially Lennon, who famously liked to mess with the beliefs and expectations of reporters and his own fans.
The song is clearly and unequivocally about the rising epidemic of IBS among the female population.
A girl with colitis goes by…
Here’s a timely one: 10cc’s Graham Gouldman confirmed in a February 2025 interview that the band did not, in fact, get its name from the volume of an average male ejaculation:
We got bored with giving the long-winded reason for how we got the name, then someone told us the average male ejaculation was 9cc [cubic centimetres]. Since we were 1cc more, we started saying it was the average male ejaculation. Is it a real fact? I have no idea! But it is now.
(The “long-winded answer” is that their producer, Jonathan King, had a dream where he saw a billboard with the words “10cc The Best Band in the World.”)
Indeed. I do not for a second believe Lennon there.
The warm smell of colitis rising up through the air?
Two myths in one? You decide:
In 1977, The members of KISS had blood drawn and mixed into the red ink for their Marvel comic super special. There’s an “official” notarized statement documenting it.
But wait! According to the band’s manager, the ink did not end up being used for the KISS comic, but for an issue of Sports Illustrated instead.
Stan Lee said it’s true…so it might not be.
There’s the rumor that [insert celebrity name here - I heard it as George Michael and Rod Stewart ] had to have about a quart of semen pumped from their stomach.
I heard it was Rod Stewart long before anyone ever heard of George Michael.
Cecil sets the record straight on “Louie Louie”:
I grew up in Des Moines, and this happened the year after I graduated from high school. I was not there, but I knew a lot of people who were, and the story is totally true.
As for Van Halen and the M&Ms, I read somewhere that there was a band playing at a venue a few days after a Van Halen show that requested ONLY brown M&Ms, so the promoters put those in the refrigerator and set them out in the backstage area when that band showed up.
Anybody remember the rumour that the band Klaatu (“Calling Occupants,” “Sub Rosa Subway”) was actually a reunified Beatles?
They weren’t, but the rumour grew, fueled by the fact that their first album named nobody in the band, there were no photos of the band, and all songs were written and produced by Klaatu—no names in that regard either. Plus, it was prog rock, much like the Beatles made towards the end of their time together, and “Sub Rosa Subway,” in particular, could have fit seamlessly into the White Album.
The band was happy to ride the publicity, not to mention the record sales. They didn’t show themselves until their third album, and even then, they were only sketched into the crowd on the cover. Only on their fourth album were names revealed and photos shown.
Ringo fed the rumor soon after with his cover for Goodnight Vienna.
Blue Oyster Cult used to claim they got their name as an anagram of their preferred brew Cully Stout Beer.
While it is a perfect anagram, there is no such beer (AFAIK); the name actually comes from Sandy Pearlman’s mythos that infuses many of the songs he wrote for them, including Subhuman (tellingly re-titled Blue Oyster Cult when re-recorded for the Imaginos album). Lyrics include:
Oyster boys are swimming now
Hear them chatter on the tide
We understand, we understand
But fear is read and so do ISo ladies fish and gentlemen
Here’s my angled dream
See me in my blue sky bag
And meet me by the seaOyster boys are swimming for me
Just one deal is what we made now