Mine is the content of the ad Black Francis and Joey Santiago placed when forming Pixies:
“Looking for female bassist, high harmony, must like Hüsker Dü, Peter Paul & Mary, no chops.”
There was one reply: Kim Deal.
The Ramones just wanted to be a cover band and play hard rock standards. But it turns out the songs they wanted to cover were too complicated and difficult to play, so they had to write their own songs to find ones that were simple enough for them to perform.
Berlioz once escaped from a city, where he was being hunted by a jealous husband, by dressing as a woman.
At the first performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the audience thought the music was so shocking and untoward that they rioted.
I’m a preschool teacher, so of course I know this one, and I’m always surprised at how many people don’t know it:
“Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” “Baa, Baa Black Sheep” and “The ABC Song” all are sung to the same tune.
Try it.
In order to get the music to “Jesus Christ Superstar” to play in the Soviet Union, the songs were re-written with pro-Soviet lyrics and the show was retitled “Rock and Roll at Dawn.”
And i would KILL for anything from this show.
Paul McCartney produced the Bonzo Dog Band single “I’m the Urban Spaceman” using the pseudonym “Apollo C. Vermouth.” He also played banjo.
The first US stage production of Jesus Christ Superstar was in my old high school, six months before the shoe premiered on Broadway.
The album Delaney and Bonnie and Friends on Tour With Eric Clapton has the feet of a rock legend on the cover – who had no connection whatsoever with the album. The picture had not been used for anything and the group decided it would fit.
It’s Bob Dylan’s bootheels that are wandering
Soft White Underbelly later became known as what group?
Blue Oyster Cult
But did you know the tune was written by Mozart?
That Ringo Starr is married to Daisy D… what? Oh, sorry. Never mind.
In that case… hmmm…
That Cat Stevens (aka Yusuf Islam) wrote one of my favorite ever ballads, My Lady D’Arbanville, for his girlfriend, actress Patty D’Arbanville, one night while watching her sleep and thinking she looked dead.
Or that the song Picasso’s Last Words by Paul McCartney was the result of a bet made with Dustin Hoffmann while having dinner that Paul couldn’t write a song in one hour about whatever the day’s headlines were. The headline was about the death of Picasso and of course Paul did.
Or that Paul’s single Mull of Kintyre was a runaway superhit in the U.K. but didn’t even chart in the U.S…
William Saroyan, author and playwright, co-wrote “Come On-a My House” with his cousin Ross Bagdasarian, a/k/a “Dave” of Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Not exactly. Here’s Cecil’s article about this perennial favorite.
I love all these so far, but this one made me feel like I just got my fifteen bucks’ worth.
A Hall-of-Fame NY Yankee ballplayer (and later, broadcaster) is heard on a hit song by Meat Loaf.
Phil “Scooter” Rizutto’s voice is the “play-by-play” announcer on "Paradise By The Dashboard Light. Scooter said he wasn’t told the song was about seduction.
I hope this is still true:
Elton John’s version of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is the only Beatles cover song to hit #1 in the U.S.
1980s British pub rock band, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. Alex was seriously injured for a year and couldn’t record. The remaining four members of the group made an album anyway, called Fourplay. It was officially credited to ‘The Sensational Alex Harvey Band without Alex’. This is the only album title that refers to a named individual twice who isn’t on the album and played no part in its recording.
This is true. Bagdasarian is the “songwriter over there in the studio apartment” in Rear Window. When he did his Chipmunks stuff he went by the name David Seville.
Two more cool music facts:
• “It’s All In The Game,” a huge #1 hit for Tommy Edwards in 1958, was co-written by Charles G. Dawes, who was US Vice President under Calvin Coolidge.
• “Go West,” made famous by the Pet Shop Boys but written by some of the Village People, is set to the chord progressions of Pachelbel’s “Canon.” I’ll wager next time you hear “Go West” you won’t believe you never noticed that before. 
In addition, this makes Saroyan the only Pulitzer Prize winner to have a #1 single.
The only musician to share billing with the Beatles on a single was Billy Preston for “Get Back.” (Others – like Eric Clapton – played on their songs, but were not listed at the time.)
The cover of the US edition of Pink Floyd’s “Ummagumma” was originally censored – because there was a copy of the album “Gigi” on it (it was airbrushed into a white square).
“It’s raining men” was composed by no less than Paul Shaffer.
I also believe it to be the only Beatle cover worked on and endorsed by a Beatle (John Lennon)