[Article] Pebbles from the world of rock

[busybeeburns]

 

Delicacy sometimes gets misplaced in the world of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. It just does.

 

So in our quest to illuminate some of music's most enduring mysteries, permit us to just quickly note the title of a new book that claims to have all the answers, and we'll move on. Gavin Edwards, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and a proven one-man encyclopedia of music trivia, has a new reference work out, titled Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton's Little John?

 

As the publishers note, this new book might not tell you who shot Tupac or why Celine Dion is still allowed to make records, but it will help you become a music geek extraordinaire.

 

Predictably, there is quite a bit of lurid "get ur freak on" mythology probed here concerning the sex lives of the stars and their groupies. You'll have to purchase the book, set for an August release, for those details. But there is plenty of titillation concerning the likes of the aforementioned Elton John, Rod Stewart, Mick Jagger, Marvin Gaye and, yes, even Bryan Adams.

 

It's not all on the seamy side. Edwards serves up some compelling answers to some pretty fascinating questions. For example: Where did Pearl Jam get their name? (It's a long story but basketball is definitely involved.) Is Coldplay's song Yellow about cocaine? (Apparently not.) Did Gregg Allman of The Allman Brothers Band shoot himself to avoid serving in Vietnam? (Yes.) And did Neil Young really buy 150,000 copies of his own Comes a Time just so he could destroy them? (No. He actually bought 200,000 copies.)

 

There's material here for all tastes and all generations. Edwards goes to bat for all of us still wondering what the heck Billie Joe McAllister threw off the Tallahatchee Bridge. On one page he'll tell you how Dr. Dre and Eminem met, and on the next he'll reveal what address Crosby, Stills and Nash were singing about when they recorded Our House back in 1970. Turns out it was the place Graham Nash shared with Joni Mitchell.

 

Did Mama Cass Elliott really die from choking on a ham sandwich? No. But both she and the Who drummer Keith Moon died in the same apartment, four years apart, lent to them by mutual friend, singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson. (Creeped out, Nilsson divested himself of the place pretty quickly, selling it to the Who's Pete Townshend.)

 

Edwards, who once won a trip to France as a second-place finalist on Jeopardy!, settles once and for all whether those two crazy kids of the White Stripes, Jack and Meg White, are related by blood or marriage. He reveals that Jagger got straight Cs while at the London School of Economics. He wades into the possibilities of what Jimi Hendrix had stuffed inside his headband.

 

He even clears up some lyrical puzzlers. A big Rickie Lee Jones fan, I've always wondered what she meant by "P.L.P." in the opening line of Chuck E.'s in Love off her debut album in 1979: "How come he don't come and P.L.P. with me, down at the meter no more?" It stands for "public leaning post," old American slang used when one friend leans on another.

 

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/arts/story.html?id=7a87e325-3e22-48cb-8e06-bdd1a2b1874d