1. Behind every rock band or song is some sort of history, whether it’s the inspiration for the song , the circumstances under which a song is made, or events that brought band members together. Some are quite humorous (“Big Log” by Robert Plant was written while he sat on a toilet) to downright bizarre (Spandau Ballet, best known for the 80’s hit “True”, derives their name from what the guards at Spandau prison in WWII knicknamed the thrashing of legs as a prisoner was hanged).

Here are 15 of the most unusual, controversial, or just plain weird examples:

1. Alan Parsons of the Alan Parson’s Project, produced Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album, which set a record for being on Billboard’s yearly Top 100 album sales for over 20 years. What makes this fact more interesting is that both groups had their own hit with a song named “Time”.
2. Jimi Hendrix’s “The Wind Cries Mary” is attributed to Marianne Faithful, who left Jimi for Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones. Later in the Stone’s “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, Mick sings, “I sang my song to Mr. Jimi. Yeah, and he said one word to me, and that was ‘dead’”. Coincidence, or purposeful dig? Marianne wound up performing the incredible backing vocals for the Stone’s “Gimme Shelter” before falling into heroin addiction after being dumped by Mick for Bianca Jagger.
3. “Your So Vain” by Carly Simon was written after Mick dumped Carly. Carly sings about how her hopes for a future with Mick were dashed as well as Mick’s affinity for looking at himself in a mirror wherever he went.
4. Pink Floyd’s follow up album to Dark Side of the Moon, “Wish You Were Here”, was a tribute album to Syd Barrett, one of the founders of the band who is attributed to be the father of psychedelic rock. Earlier in their career, Syd mysteriously vanished over a weekend, and never told anyone what happened. Everyone suspected that he basically fried his brain on a binge of psychedelic drugs, as he was never the same after. At times, he would stop in the middle of a concert and simply walk off stage, which is why David Gilmour was brought into the band. On one of the album’s songs, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, Roger Waters’ lyrics address Syd’s change with the lines, “Now there’s a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.”
5. Stranger still was the fact that on the very day when Pink Floyd recorded the album’s title track, “Wish You Were Here”, years had passed since anyone had seen or heard from Syd. In the midst of recording the song, a fat man, completely shaved of all hair, including his eyebrows, was seen jumping up and down in the back of the studio all the while brushing his teeth. It was Syd.
6. A case that is in virtually every Intellectual Property Law course book involves The Shirelles, who in the 1950s had a hit song entitled, “He’s So Fine”. They sued George Harrison of the Beatle’s for copyright infringement for his hit song, “My Sweet Lord” and won. Playing the two songs back to back, you can hear the remarkable similarities between the melody, backing vocals, and even the chord progression.
7. One of the most referenced books in rock and roll lyrics is The Lord of the Rings, with everything from straight out homage, “The Lord of the Ring” by Styx, to obscure references, like Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On”, with the lyrics, “And in the darkest depths of Mordor, I met a girl so fair. But Gollum and the Evil One crept up and slipped away with her.”
8. While backward masking (a technique in which a word or phrase is heard when a record is played backwards) is often done purposefully as an effect, and sometimes as a joke or gimmick. But one of the most bizarre examples of unintentional backward masking occurs in “Stairway to Heaven”. When playing backwards the specific lines, “Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there’s still time to change the road you’re on”, the lines “Here’s to my sweet Satan. There was a little child, born to make me sad, whose power is Satan” can be eerily heard. Much has been written about this, including several theses. While Robert Plant swears there was no intent, and the words are purely coincidental, the mysteriousness was intensified by Plant’s own recollections of penning the song, when he stated in one interview that as Jimmy Page strummed the chords for him, he suddenly looked down to find that he (Robert) had penned the signature opening lyrics. In another interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, Plant stated in another recollection that he penned the entire song in 15 minutes, as if someone else was writing the words through him.
   
9. The song used by UPS in their current advertising campaign is a version of Blood and Wine’s “Come Down Now”, performed, ironically enough, by the group The Postal Service. The original “Come Down Now” was used in an M&M’s commercial.
10. In another interesting piece of Rolling Stones lore, the “Hooo Hoooooooo!” backing vocals in the song “Sympathy for the Devil” came about from Mick’s girlfriend at the time, who proclaimed to practice witchcraft. She was present in the sound booth with two of her “coven” grooving to the music as it was being recorded, and they spontaneously started the “Hooo Hooooooo!” which the sound engineer liked, so it was added to the track.
11. To anyone who knows the history of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home, Alabama”, the choice of the song as Kentucky Fried Chicken’s theme song seems rather bizarre. The song is one of the most racially charged songs ever recorded, and was written as a response to Neil Young’s “Southern Man” where Neil railed against the continued pervasiveness of racism in the South. Besides the fact that Lynyrd Skynyrd proclaimed their support of the governor of Alabama opposing school integration (“In Birmingham they loved the Governor. We all did what we could do.”) they also address Neil specifically with the lines, “I heard Neil Young sing about her. I heard old Neil put her down. I hope Neil Young will remember. Southern Man don’t need him around anyhow”. Nice campaign there KFC…
12. Royal Carribean Cruise Line’s use of Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” is also pretty strange, considering that the song is actually about getting up early to go out and score drugs…
13. The most hated song in the world is “The Pina Colada Song”. ‘Nuff said.
14. The surviving members of Nirvana all believe that Courtney Love actually either staged Kurt Cobain’s suicide, or induced him to do so while he was in a drugged state, claiming that Kurt was about to break up with Courtney and deny her beneficiary rights to the band’s songs, royalties, and his own personal writings. Their private investigators have turned up several inconsistencies and new evidence that directly challenges her statements to the police, and they claim to have a strong case. They are planning on a film detailing their findings.
15. The Rolling Stones are a goldmine of stories, and this last one is a doozy. Mick Jagger starred in a bizarre, poorly received 1920’s style gangster film, opposite Anita Pallenberg (then Keith Richard’s girlfriend). In one love scene, Mick and Anita went at it for real, and the director kept the cameras rolling. This “extra footage” won an award at a famous Danish pornography film festival, and the incident started the long-time rift between Richards and Jagger that would last for decades.

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