The five most extravagant rock ‘n’ roll antics
“The rock star is dying,” Nick Cave proclaimed, “and it’s a small tragedy.” Along with the waning status of the rocker, the days of opulent excesses have gone into hiding, and that is actually a small victory. The swaggering enigma of mystic stars who seem bigger than themselves is a loss, but some of the wasteful, dangerous and troubling stunts that they engaged in are gladly gone with the wind.
Nevertheless, for a period when things were booming, the Rolls Royce in the swimming pool was a symbol of rock ‘n’ roll—it was a singular extravagant madness that defined how we viewed rock stars. Fact, fable or something in between, Keith Moon’s revving manic moment had a lasting impact on the industry as they wondered whether these nutters really were reliable engines of income.
Today, the industry might be a more sedate place when it comes to antics in the traditional sense, but the history of music is strewn with enough swimming supercars to fill a parking lot. Below we have collated the wildest moments in rock history for your consideration. From the truth regarding Moon’s famously bad parking to a Queen album launch a stretch beyond fiction, these are five of the wildest rock star tales you will ever read.
The five most extravagant rock ‘n’ roll antics:
Queen
For the launch party of Jazz, Freddie Mercury descended into decadent oblivion with an event that belongs in the realm of fiction, not fact. The night was one of the wildest that the world has ever seen. To give you a flavour, at one point in the evening the line ‘Oh Freddie Mercury is sniffing cocaine off of a hermaphrodite dwarf’s head again’ was auspiciously uttered.
With a coterie of socialites, celebrities and journalists in attendance, guests were greeted at New Orleans Fairmont Hotel not with a handshake or a friendly nod of the head but with a blowjob or cunnilingus sex from the gender of their choosing (which I suppose you could argue is actually the friendliest head nod of them all). “Most hotels offer guests room service,” Freddie Mercury famously quipped to UNCUT journalist Jon Wilde, “This one offers them lip service.”
As far as entertainment goes, the famed publicist Bob Gibson used his £200,000+ budget to hire a man who specialised, for want of a better word, in biting the heads off of live chickens. Alongside that fowl defacer there were Zulu tribesmen, fire-eaters and drag queens were naked models writhing in baths of uncooked liver, which no doubt absolutely stunk. There were also magicians in attendance to hold up the rather more wholesome side of things. All while a handful of 300lb+ Samoan women lounged on banquet tables, in the nude, smoking cigarettes… out of various orifices.
Keith Moon
It was at the Holliday Inn in Flint, Michigan where this all began. After a food fight and a bit of a fire extinguisher duel, the daring drummer got behind the wheel of his Lincoln Continental and plunged it into the swimming pool while attempting to flee the attending officers. It was his 21st birthday and he wanted to celebrate in fitting style.
As he would later explain: “I ran out, jumped into the first car I came to, which was a brand new Lincoln Continental. It was parked on a slight hill and when I took the handbrake off, it started to roll and it smashed straight through this pool surround [fence] and the whole Lincoln Continental went into the ‘Oliday Inn swimming pool, with me in it.”
The fact that the Lincoln has transmuted into a Rolls over the years tells you a lot about the legacy of this case. Barry Whitwarm, the drummer for Heman’s Hermits with whom Moon had been partying, remembers it differently, stating: “There was no car in the pool, only all the pool tables and chairs, and Keith never came back dripping water.” And frontman Peter Noone agreed that whole they faced a $25,000 bill, none of the charges involved a flooded vehicle. That never happened,” Noone said. “He would tell stories. He just forgot what happened.”
Nevertheless, Roger Daltrey claims: “I saw it. We paid the bill [for the damages]. It was $50,000. It’s vague now, but I just remember the car in the pool. But then I read in the biography [Dear Boy by Tony Fletcher] that never happened, so maybe I’ve been living someone else’s life, I don’t know.”
Billy Idol
The measure of the opulence in this tale resides in the fact that the army had to come and sort it. In 1989, when Idol arrived at the Oriental hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, he seemed hellbent on pushing things as far as his bombastic fame would allow. “I was very lucky,” Idol once said in reflection. “I expect they could’ve put me in prison.”
When Idol arrived at the hotel, he decided that check-outs didn’t apply to his party and he refused to vacate the room during a three-week rabbit hole of hedonism. What happened during these wild weeks of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll is a mystery to even the star himself.
However, what is known during that time, is that he caused nearly $250,000 worth of damage and the hotel trustees decided they could no longer deal with the problem alone. Instead, they called in the local military who forcibly escorted Idol out of the hotel, strapped to a stretcher, after allegedly being shot with a tranquilliser dart to sedate the vagrant star.
Iggy Pop, David Bowie & Dennis Hopper
When Iggy Pop involuntarily entered himself into a psych ward in 1975, you might think that his fellows thought it was hightide they hid their drugs away from him. However, David Bowie, Dean Stockwell and Dennis Hopper engaged in just the opposite: they decided to smuggle him some cocaine while dressed up in space suits.
“If I remember it right, it was me and Dennis Hopper. We trooped into the hospital with a load of drugs for (Iggy) him,” Bowie recalled. “This was very much a leave-your-drugs-at-the-door hospital. We were out of our minds, all of us. He wasn’t well; that’s all we knew. We thought we should bring him some drugs because he probably hadn’t had any for days!” It caught Bowie in a time in his life where cocaine was beyond a joy, it was a necessity.
It says a lot about the story that Iggy remembers it as being Bowie and Dean Stockwell who rampaged the hospital. And he says the only reason the spacemen were let in is because the staff present were simply too starstruck to stop them. In the end, however, such escapades turned towards sobriety as Iggy concludes: “I survived with willpower and a lot of help from David Bowie. I survived because I wanted to.”
Led Zeppelin
This crazy tale of Led Zeppelin, a mudshark, and a groupie begins with the Seattle Pop Festival, July 27th 1969. After a manic show, the band retired to Edgewater Inn. This particular inn was famed for how close to the waterfront it proved to be. It was so close, in fact, that Led Zep figured they could fish from their hotel windows. And that is how a fresh catch of mudshark enters our decrepit story.
Then, as the band’s road manager Richard Cole recalled according to Stephen Davis’ book Hammer of the Gods, “A pretty young groupie with red hair was disrobed and tied to the bed.” With a fresh catch at hand, something truly despicable happened thereafter. “Led Zeppelin then proceeded to stuff pieces of shark into her vagina and rectum,” Davis claims.
The authenticity of the story is heavily disputed, and it would seem there aren’t many corroborated ties to the members themselves aside from allegations that John Bonham was involved. The only things that are certain are: you could fish from the hotel windows, Led Zeppelin were staying there, and they had a coterie of groupies following them during the period. The rest is a condemnable tale we can only hope isn’t true.
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