True or false? Extreme stories from rock 'n' roll history

The title 'rock legend' is reserved for the royalty of music, with people like Mick Jagger, Gene Simmons, Elvis Presley or Marilyn Manson. Once they reach the top, extreme stories can start to circulate about these rockers. Some of them are pure myth, but others are true.

Over the years, from generation to generation, the stories and adventures of certain rock figures have been considered true while, sometimes, they were not. Let's review some of these shocking rock stories and see if they are real events or myths.

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No one is going to deny that Kiss, in addition to being a band with overflowing talent, aims to provoke and attract attention. Gene Simmons, their leader, has always shown off his extremely long tongue at concerts and photo shoots. So much so, that there's a rumor around his persona that a cow's tongue was used as a transplant to lengthen his tongue. True or false?

Gene Simmons himself considers this story as his favourite Kiss legend. It is logical that a longue of (allegedly) 14 centimeters (5.5 inch) leads to confusion. Moreover, the band has never bothered to deny it, which added to its even bigger mystery and fame

Ozzy Osbourne's time of greatest musical splendour coincided with that of his greatest use of prohibited substances. They say that one day, in the middle of a concert, a fan threw a bat on the stage, and Ozzy, thinking it was a toy vampire, took a bite off of it and severed the animal's head. But is this a real story, or a fake?

It happened - though not quite as people think - on January 20, 1982, in Des Moines, Iowa (USA). Ozzy Osbourne bit the bat and the bat fought back (bravo!)  with another bite. It didn't lose its head. Ozzy had to go to the hospital to get treated and vaccinated for rabies, as he later revealed in his biography 'Diary of a Madman' (2002).

Keith Richards's relationship with banned substances has always been well-known and sometimes alarming. The story goes that in 1973, while the Rolling Stones were was touring Europe, Richards went to a Swiss clinic to get his intoxicated blood replaced with clean blood. Why did he do that? To get clean. Or at least, to try and get clean.

Keith Richards says he invented the story himself to avoid constant and indiscreet questions from the press. His close circle confirms that there was no blood transfusion, but that he did have a hemodialysis to clean toxins from his blood. It's a remarkable procedure but not as extreme as a full transfusion.

There's a recurrent urban myth that Marilyn Manson played the best friend of Kevin Arnold, the protagonist of the popular 80s' series 'The Wonder Years'. But was he really the young and geeky Paul in the show?

The myopic nerd from 'The Wonder Years' now looks like this. His name is Josh Saviano and he abandoned acting to become a lawyer. Saviano is not related to Marilyn Manson.

This story takes us to February 1967, at the home of Keith Richards. A group of police officers enters the house in search of narcotics. In the living room, they find Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, along with some other people, and the Rolling Stones singer is eating a Mars bar directly from a very specific area of Marianne Faithfull's body. True or false?

Marianne Faithfull herself has debunked this legend. She didn't just deny the story in her autobiography, but she also called it a "dirty old man's fantasy." Mick Jagger, meanwhile, remembers that when the police entered the house, Faithfull had just taken a bath and was dressed in a simple towel, without any chocolate bars or other snacks.

Kiss's aesthetic caused them to appear in countless comics, which they loved. In 1977, Marvel decided to dedicate a Super Special exclusively to Kiss. To make their first edition unforgettable, the four members of the band drew blood and gave it to the illustrators, so that they could mix it with the red color of the drawings. True or false?

Bill Aucoin, Kiss's manager, was a marketing genius. He came up with the idea of the blood. The band had it extracted in February 1977 and the comic was released in June that year.

Well, for one, Gene Simmons told about it in his autobiography, 'Kiss and Make Up'. But what's most convincing, is that a notary certified the extraction. And that's how a legend reveals itself as reality.

There's a legend that, on the day Keith Richards's father died, the guitarist of the Rolling Stones decided to inhale his father - or in other words, to breathe in his father's ashes. Is that true or false?

In 2007, Keith Richards confessed to the music magazine NME that he had inhaled his father's ashes. He did so after the following question from the journalist: "What is the strangest thing you have inhaled?" Of course, the reporter had alluded to prohibited substances, not to ashes. On the day after the interview was published, Richards had to post a statement on the band's website, denying the whole story.

However, in 2010, Keith Richards' autobiography 'Life' came out, and he admitted in the book that he had, in fact, inhaled some of his father's ashes. It happened on the day he scattered the ashes next to an English oak he had planted in his father's memory.

“After keeping my father's ashes in a black urn for six years, I didn't have the strength to spread them to the wind," he recounts in the autobiography. "So I planted an English oak to throw them around. When I removed the lid, a string of ash flew onto the table. I couldn't just clean it so I ran my finger over it and inhaled the residue. Ashes to ashes, from father to son."

There are all kinds of theories about 'Hotel California', the classic Eagles song with ambiguous lyrics. One of the theories is that the song has a hidden sa ta nic message. In San Francisco were the headquarters of the Sa ta nic Churches at the time the song was written. In addition, the cover illustration of the Eagles album shows a man without hair and with a sinister-looking beard. He may be the devil, although he remains kind of hidden.

The Eagles have had to explain several times that 'Hotel California' is a song about the excesses of hedonism. The lyrics describe how these excesses can sometimes feel like a prison: a beautiful hotel from which you cannot escape. It's something to do with addiction - but nothing with Sat an ism.

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