When the Rolling Stones asked bassist Bill Wyman to join the group, it wasn’t because he had dazzled them with his musical prowess. It was because he actually owned an amplifier.
It’s hard to imagine today but Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, the poster child for sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, spent two years in the Boy Scouts.
Those of you who are concerned that this might tarnish his debauched image shouldn’t worry – he was kicked out for fighting.
Photo: Michael Borkson / Wikimedia Commons
Rock and roll pioneer Chuck Berry did not take kindly to people touching his guitar, even if the person touching it was a world-class guitarist.
Richards was once left alone backstage with Berry’s guitar for a moment and as a fan, he couldn’t resist picking it up and giving it a strum.
Berry suddenly reappeared, yelled “Nobody touches my guitar,” and punched Richards in the face. Duly noted.
Photo: Bert Verhoeff (ANEFO) / Wikimedia Commons
As long as we’re happily destroying the Rolling Stones’ reputations as scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells, we might as well take this opportunity to reveal that Mick Jagger said he enjoys changing babies’ diapers or, as the Brits say, nappies.
"I've always changed nappies, for other people's children as well as my own," he said.
"I'm relatively experienced and I quite enjoy it."
It’s hard to imagine the 1971 movie A Clockwork Orange with anyone besides Malcolm McDowell in the lead, but before that version of the movie got made, novelist and screenwriter Terry Southern wanted to make an adaptation of the book and cast Jagger as the lead.
That version never got made, but it’s fun to imagine what could have been.
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For many years, a lot of people believed that Keith Richards was staying alive despite being addicted to heroin because he had regular, full blood transfusions.
In 2010 he put the urban legend to rest by revealing to CBS News that he had made the whole thing up.
Before dedicating himself to music full-time, Charlie Watts worked as a graphic designer in Denmark and England.
He put those skills to work designing some of the band’s sets and even some of the early album covers.
Photo: Jac. de Nijs (ANEFO) / Wikimedia Commons
While the band was on tour in the United States in 1966, they were turned away by 14 different New York City hotels.
While their reputation as a bunch of bad boys no doubt preceded them, one of the reasons the hotels turned them away was that they didn’t want to deal with throngs of hysterical fans.
Keith Richards failed his driving test not once, not twice, but a staggering three times.
Rather than go for four, he sent his personal minder to take the test for him. He passed!