Celebrating The Return Of Behind The Music

Behind The Music Is Back!

Unarguably the greatest musical show of the 1990s will return to a station that seems to have forgotten they are a music station. Well, at least they still have music videos on their Top 20 weekend show which is more than you can say about MTV. And their reality programming is vastly more entertaining than stupid shit like The Hills. Of course watching dogshit decay into the grass is more entertaining than The Hills.

They’re going to return with a mix of bands with entertaining interpersonal wars (Van Halen), drugs galore (Stone Temple Pilots) and of course the obligatory “let’s get some uninteresting current artists to pop the ratings” (Lil’ Wayne). Sure, it’s probably going to suck, since the show went downhill towards the end of its original run with some really shitty episodes. But let’s be optimistic for once, shall we?

So to celebrate I would like to look at a list of the top 10 greatest and worst BTM episodes. Starting with The Best. Now granted, if you were like me in the 90s (a stranded-at-home teenager with no social life) you’ve seen these episodes 9 million times and even today you recoil at the thought of viewing them again. I could probably put on a One Man Play for you of some of these episodes, actually. So don’t take into account repeat fatigue, and just remember how awesome they were the first 20 times you watched them.

#10: BLIND MELON (Aired September 9th, 2001)
While Shannon Hoon proved that you don’t necessarily become an immortal rock icon if you die young, Blind Melon still had a very compelling story. The episode centers around Hoon and his widow, with the rest of Blind Melon pretty much being an afterthought. Hoon got his big break when fellow Lafayette, IN singer W. Axl Rose had him sing back up on their huge power ballad “Don’t Cry” and appear in the music video. That lead to the band being the subject of a huge bidding war and they released their first album 2 years later. “No Rain” was a huge hit, but like every band that breaks through with a music video better than the song, they were deemed one hit wonders and their follow up album “Soup”, even though it was vastly superior to the self-titled debut, stiffed. In the meantime, Hoon had a major cocaine addiction that derailed his career due to having to go to rehab numerous times, and an incident where he got fucked up before a show and ended up urinating on the audience. He went back to rehab again, but due to “Soup” being a Billboard bomb felt obligated to leave early to tour to try to salvage sales. Unfortunately this ended up being a horrible idea, because he snuck crack-cocaine into his tour bus bunk bed and overdosed at the age of 28.

One thing that gives this episode more weight is that Hoon left behind a ton of home video footage detailing the entire run of his band. His widow also reads some compelling diary entries detailing his attempts to overcome addiction and cope with fame and his wife’s unexpected pregnancy shortly before he died. One downside was the band comes off looking in a bad light because they don’t get enough time to tell their side of the story, as most of the airtime is for Hoon’s family and archival footage. But still one of the more compelling episodes.

#9: MILLI VANILLI (Aired August 17th, 1997)
The debut episode of Behind The Music was able to do the unthinkable: leave you feeling sympathy for two prettyboy German dancers with no talent who swindled the world claiming they were singing some really godawful pop songs. Until then Milli Vanilli were the scum of the earth, nothing more than an outdated punchline. But after hearing them tell their side of the story. They were just two struggling models who took a quick gig miming the awful Euro-pop of “Girl You Know It’s True” for producer Frank Farian not expecting much to come of it. Except that it became a worldwide smash hit, selling millions and millions and million of albums and somehow earning them a “Best New Artist” award at the 1989 Grammys. For unknown reasons, Farian decided to announce to the world Rob & Fab were just models who can’t sing and the real singers were ugly session singers. After that they became two of the most reviled men on the planet and people won Class Action Lawsuits against them for fraud.

About a year after this episode aired, Rob Pilatus was found dead in a hotel room of a drug overdose. I don’t recall if it was proven to be a suicide or not, but the guy seems completely despondent in this episode, so it wouldn’t be surprising if it was. This is a completely compelling hour of television and even though nobody on the planet has respect for them, you can’t help but feel sorry for them. They clearly weren’t trying to put one over on the public to become superstars, it’s clear they were just as surprised it happened as anybody.

#8: MEGADETH (Aired April 25th, 2001)
There was a demand for Dave Mustaine to tell his side of the story after Metallica retelling the event of coldly waking Mustaine up to fire him for being a destructive drunk and putting him on a Greyhound bus from New York City back to California was one of the highlights (or lowlights, really) of the Metallica episode. Of course being terminated like that (even though he did physically assault Hetfield, Burton and even Lil’ Lars) from what winded up being one of the biggest rock bands in history would be hard for anybody to take, so Mustaine has had an inferiority complex through out all of Megadeth’s career. Even though Megadeth got rave reviews and sold millions of albums around the world, he was never happy because Metallica was always bigger and better. Dave writes “Peace Sells....But Who’s Buying?” and Metallica write “Master Of Puppets”. Megadeth breaks through to the mainstream with “Countdown To Extinction” and Metallica release one of the biggest-selling records of the decade with “The Black Album”. The guy just couldn’t win. He also had a nasty drug addiction to crack-cocaine, heroin and alcohol that kept him from concentrating on his band. It took nearly dying from an overdose to finally get sober.

What makes this episode extra special (beyond the crazy stories) is how well photographed Megadeth was in their crazy drug days. There’s pictures of Metallica goofing around with bottles of booze, but there’s nothing goofy about Megadeth’s archival photographs, which show a band clearly living in the darkside. Rock n Roll!

#7: STALKERS (Aired September 21st, 1997)
This episode isn’t focused solely on music itself, but instead the phenomenon of musicians getting the craziest of all celebrity stalkers. Of course a retelling of the Mark David Chapman story is told, but nothing new is in it so that’s not what makes this compelling. The first highlight comes from the crazy tale of the otherwise boring Sarah McLachlan facing a series of stalkers since her breakthrough in the early 1990s. She received hundreds of disturbed “love” letters from deranged fans, which inspired her to write her hit “Possession”, which was written from the perspective of a stalker telling the object of his “affection” about his sense of entitlement to them. One of McLachlan’s stalkers, a Canadian computer programmer named Uwe Vandrei, sued her for plagiarism, claiming she copied his stalking letters for the songs lyrics. As darkly hilarious as that is (and it is pretty obvious he just sued her to get her attention and hopefully see her in civil court) the claims do have some weight to them when you realize McLachlan never wrote anything nearly as interesting lyrically as “Possession”, so maybe he was telling the truth. The Canadian courts had to figure out a way to keep Sarah McLachlan safe when the two were in the same court room, so they planned on issuing more court room security than for any other civil trial in Canadian history. According to his boss, Vandrei disturbed co-workers and clients by talking non-stop about McLachlan and his lawsuit so he was fired. Just days before the civil trial was to begin he shot himself in the head near the recording studio Sarah recorded at.

The second highlight of the episode is the very disturbing tale of Ricardo Lopez, a 21 year old pest exterminator who developed an obsession with singer Bjork. Lopez discovered Bjork was in a relationship with electronic musician Goldie, who is half-black, and insanely decided she deserved to die because of it. Lopez bought a camcorder and chronicled the last days of his life, where he built an acid bomb to mail to Bjork’s British office disguised as a book. After mailing the package on September 12th, 1996, Lopez filmed himself shaving his head and putting on make up (that oddly enough looks almost exactly like the make up Star Wars villain Darth Maul wore in 1999’s “The Phantom Menace”, which makes you wonder if he was an inspiration for George Lucas’s design.) After applying the make up (including some to his man-boobs for some reason) Lopez places a banner behind him reading “The Best Of Me”, which no one has figured out the intentions for, and plays Bjork’s song “I Miss You” before putting a .38 caliber handgun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. Fortunately for Bjork, police found the dead body of Ricardo Lopez and his video tapes (including a scene where he films the package clear enough to see the address its being sent to) so were able to alert Scotland Yard before Bjork or her assistant opened it. Lopez’s tapes became media sensations, popping up every now and then on shows like 20/20, Dateline, and a special on FOX. You can view a lot of Ricardo Lopez’s home videos at YouTube. And one interesting tidbit to this incident is that Bjork accompanied Goldie to a Florida night club that was miles away from Ricardo Lopez’s apartment a few days prior to the mailing of the package and his suicide. Fortunately for them, he had no idea about it.

#6: DEF LEPPARD (Aired June 21st, 1998)
What do you get when you take a band of idiots, mix in non-stop boozing with a bajillion records sold worldwide? One entertaining hour of television. Even if you think Def Leppard sucks (they do) and they were an overproduced studio creation, how can you go wrong with drunken debauchery (including apparently having sex with mother and daughter groupie teams), a vicious car wreck that cost their drummer his arm (but the drummer not giving up and still playing drums to this day), their original guitar player battling alcoholism until he drank himself to death, and a pretty likeable bunch of guys (even if you don’t like their Langeified music) living to tell the tale. They were poor working class kids who felt rock n roll was their only way out of getting a dead-end factory job like their fathers all had.

They were in the right place at the right time, as the “New Wave Of British Heavy Metal” movement was just starting to take effect. They were by far the poppiest band of the sub-genre, and they decided to take a page out of the British Invasion by playing up being British (including singer Joe Elliott wearing a Union Jack tank top constantly) which appealed to Americans. They became one of the first MTV superstars when the network put “Bringing On The Heartbreak” into heavy rotation. But that was nothing compared to the success of the follow up “Pyromania” album, which was only overshadowed by Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” in 1983. But the band never gained the same success they did in America in their home country of England. While nobody believed they could match the 10 million copies “Pyromania” sold in America, they ended up duplicating its success with “Hysteria”, even though recording was delayed for quite some time until drummer Rick Savage could concoct a strategy to play drums with one-arm (he ended up getting an electronic kit that allowed him to simulate drumming with an extra foot pedal.) But the band never reached such heights again, as a young generation of bands like Guns N Roses surpassed them in sales and their follow up to “Hysteria” was delayed for a while due to guitarist Steve Clark dying from alcohol poisoning during recording “Adrenalize“.

The episode was so successful VH1 decided to give the band their (I believe first) Made For TV Movie. Unfortunately that film was absolutely terrible, painfully low budget and made Lifetime TV movies look like Oscar contenders. So stick with the BTM.

#5: RICK JAMES (Aired March 15th, 1998)
Before Dave Chapelle and Charlie Murphy turned him into a complete cartoon character, this episode of Behind The Music tells the crazy tale of Rick James. This was actually the first time Rick James spoke openly about his drug addiction, since it was filmed about a year after he was released from prison. James was AWOL from military duty after fleeing to Canada when he joined his first professional band, The Mynah Birds, in the mid-60s with fellow future music icon Neil Young. The band signed a record deal, but broke up after authorities were alerted James was a draft dodger and he was deported back to America. Throughout the 1970s James attempted various bands but nothing was ever successful, despite James getting notice for his superb bass playing. But fortunately for Rick James, he signed a deal with Motown to be a solo artist in the late 70s, where he got hits with “Mary Jane” and “You And I”. During the next decade he became an even bigger star, with 1981’s “Street Songs”

Of course the man who brought us the immortal catch phrase “Cocaine is a helluva drug” has just one wild party tale after another. The hits kept coming as his life delved more and more into cocaine addiction in the 1980s, where he estimates he was spending $7,000 a week on crack. This climaxed when he and his wife Tanya Hijazi allegedly held a woman who came to the James residence for a cocaine party against her will, she claimed she was forced into performing sexual acts on the couple, burned with hot crack pipes and tied up for a week. Prior to that James and Hijazi were accused of holding a female music executive coming to their hotel room under the belief ot attending a meeting with James for a day where she claims James assaulted her. In 1993 he was sentenced to 2 years in prison for the case, and had to pay $2 million in a civil trial.

Unfortunately for James, any comeback he could have gotten was cut short when before the episode aired he suffered a stroke on stage at a concert, which slurred his speech and left him unable to sing. After the episode James got a deal for an autobiography, but it was held up for quite some time and not released until nearly 3 years after his death.

#4: METALLICA (Aired November 22nd, 1998)
Love them or hate them, Metallica have lived quite a life. Although this episode has been aired probably 1 billion times and nobody wants to ever see it again, it was riveting television the first 900 times you saw it. This was Metallica when fans hated them for “Load” and “Re-Load”, but before they became complete assholes with Lil’ Lars embarrassing himself in the Napster-debacle and they thought it would be a good idea to put out “Some Kind Of Monster”, a cringe inducing look at their lives as millionaire assholes working on a shitty album called “St. Anger” nobody liked. Who part ways with the only likeable member of the band left (Jason Newsted) to further cement their status as rock’s premiere dickheads.

But they were truly great in their prime. It’s funny to hear them talk about how they were out to kill off the hair metal major labels ate up, when a little more than 15 years later they turned into exactly what they hated. Coldly retelling waking Dave Mustaine up to send him on a bus back to California so they could hire Kirk Hammet is defintely cringe-worthy great television. I’m sure this lead to what Mustaine meant by saying “They fuck with me” in his S.K.O.M. cameo. The detailed story of what happened with the European bus accident that killed Cliff Burton (including Hammet talking about living with the guilt that he usually slept in the bunk Burton was thrown from) is harrowing. But then they liven up the mood by retelling how they hazed the living hell out of Jason Newsted (telling groupies he was gay, charging all kinds of room service to his room, although they don’t touch on the long-standing urban legend that Hetfield demanded practically all traces of his bass playing be removed from the final “And Justice For All” mix.) Then “The Black Album” happened and they sold so many records they were dubbed their generation’s Led Zeppelin. But the love died off 5 years later when they stunned fans by cutting their hair and putting out a really awful record that sounded like a tuneless Stone Temple Pilots album. In between that we get another highlight of the band retelling how James Hetfield was nearly burned to a crisp when he accidentally walked into a firework as it was shooting off. They were co-headlining with Guns N Roses, and unfortunately Axl had a sorethroat and walked off so the fans rioted. As the riot was going on Newsted remembers seeing Rose backstage quietly smoking and drinking, which should have irritated his throat, not really giving a shit.

#3: OZZY OSBOURNE (Aired April 19th, 1998)
This was Ozzy on the road to mainstream acceptance, which of course ended with him making a fool of himself for two seasons of MTV’s “The Osbournes”. He of course comes off as he always does, the light-hearted, self deprecating, charming mumblemouth who seems as bewildered as anyone that he’s still alive. Sharon somehow comes off charming and not that the shrieking shrew we all love to hate. But you do have to feel sympathy for her, as Ozzy’s crazy addictions did put her through hell (including one incident in Russia where he tried to strangle her) before she started taking advantage of him by turning him into a reality show clown.

Ozzy was a dirt-poor loser who was doomed to never amount to anything beyond working in a pig slaughterhouse (which he gleefully talks about enjoying) until he discovered he had something special as a rock frontman. So he joined a bunch of guys who didn’t even really like him and called themselves Black Sabbath and revolutionized music forever. So of course a broke-ass kid suddenly becoming a millionaire is going to go wild, and Ozzy’s hard partying ways became legendary. But eventually he split from Black Sabbath and fell into a deep depression. He was living in a hotel, blowing through all of his money on booze and drugs, when his manager’s daughter took pity on him and tried to rally him back to prominence. They ended up falling in love, even though they were both married to other people at the time, and she managed him to solo stardom. He hit it off with his new musical partner, guitar prodigy Randy Rhodes, but unfortunately that was short lived as one day while Rhodes was riding in a plane, the pilot jokingly buzzed Ozzy’s tour bus, but the plane lost control and crashed. Ozzy again fell into a deep depression that his new best friend was dead.

Ozzy became even crazier on all types of narcotics and booze, but kept his place as one of heavy metal’s biggest stars. He also became one of the most controversial, as it seemed even preacher in the 1980s did at least one sermon denouncing him as being a tool of Satan. One of the episode’s highlights come when one of the religious right members who sued him for one of the “Suicide Solution”-blamed suicides comes off looking like a loon whispering supposed subliminal messages (“Get the gun......get the gun.....shoot, shoot, shoot.”) Although Ozzy explains the supposed “Shoot, shoot, shoot” heard was an echo effect people misheard. Although they don’t spend as much time on this as they did for Judas Priest’s suicide lawsuit on their episode years later.

Ozzy is just one of those guys you can’t help but like. Which even though he was a bumbling, mumbling pilled-out wreck on “The Osbournes” he was still televisions favorite dad briefly. Or maybe the world just felt sorry for him with a domineering wife and fat, spoiled brats for children. Your choice.

#2: BADFINGER (Aired November 5th, 2000)
There’s a lot of rock bands some claim are cursed, but this is the one band you cannot deny was cursed. They were handpicked by The Beatles’s shortlived label Apple Records to be their Welsh heirs, and they even had Paul McCartney write them some songs. So with a Beatles stamp of approval they should have been rock icons, right? No. The Beatles split up, Apple Records was a debt pit, and the band never caught on with the public like originally believed.

In 1968 the band, who much like The Beatles in the early 60s made a name for themselves playing live gigs with mostly 50s rock and Motown covers, were the first signed to Apple Records under their original name of The Iveys before renaming themselves Badfinger in 1969. McCartney asked them to do 3 songs for the soundtrack to “The Magic Christian”, including one of his compositions called “Come And Get It” that became a top 10 hit. Their debut album “No Dice” was a top 40 hit around the world, although the biggest hit from the record was their song “Without You”, but it wasn’t their version that gained success, it was a cover by John Lennon’s good friend Harry Nilsson that went to #1 2 years later and most people believed it was his song instead of Badfinger’s. And they never got much respect from critics, even the positive reviews wrote them off as Beatlemania wannabes. George Harrison was going to produce their sophomore album, but passed at the last minute so the duties went to Todd Rundgren and the record, “Straight Up“ was another top 40 hit. But most notably during that time period, Badfinger appeared as backing musicians or back-up singers on every Beatles solo release from that time period (Lennon’s “Imagine” album, Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” album and even Ringo’s “It Don’t Come Easy” single.)

Their follow-up record, 1973’s “Ass” was held up when Apple went through financial turmoil and head honcho Allen Klein wouldn’t let the band out of their contract. Despite prior success, when “Ass” finally got released it didn’t even make the Billboard Top 100. Unfortunately, during this time their manager started to get shady, having the band on a salary instead of paying them what they were earning. When asked about where the money was being put into, the manager told them about a bank fund and some investments that were going to grow the money significantly. Unfortunately, their manager was ripping them off and refused to give them a dime of his own money. Guitarist Peter Ham fell into a deep depression when he came to the realization that he was flat broke despite his success, and couldn’t take that pressure in addition to having a baby on the way, so he hung himself in 1975. The band split up and took real jobs, until Joey Molland moves to America and starts up a new band called Badfinger, convincing Tom Evans to join him. The remaining members re-start their own Badfinger as well and at one time both Badfingers were touring America at the same time. Of course this lead to lawsuits galore and neither Badfinger amounted to anything. In 1983 Tom Evans followed Peter Ham’s fate and hung himself outside of his house (where unfortunately his 6 year old son found his dead body.)

Today Molland continues performing as “Badfinger”, he feels a little ashamed of doing it, but admits he’s doing it because it’s the only way he can get work. Unlike most BTM’s there’s not really a redemption story in there, since their lives all turned so hellish as soon as Apple Records went under. The closest you do get is learning that “Without You” is one of the most covered songs of all-time, and Mariah Carey introduced it to a new generation in the mid-90s when she covered it. Other than that the two song writers committed suicide, everybody is broke and their relationships fractured, and sometimes they slum it on the nostalgia circuit for money. Make sure you take a double dose of your anti-depressants before watching this.

#1: MOTLEY CRUE (Aired December 13th, 1998)
What is it about a bunch of morons with too much money and even more drugs living to tell about it that makes for such entertaining television? This episode is by far the most re-aired Behind The Music ever, with probably only the Metallica, Ozzy and Madonna episodes following behind. You have it all: craziness, wild success, death, a nasty split up, sex with famous people. You want it, it’s here. Although Motley Crue tell their story in much more entertaining fashion in their joint-autobiography “The Dirt”, due to an extended telling and more importantly a lack of censorship, this was the most re-aired BTM for a reason.

Motley Crue were a bunch of dumbasses who decided to cover up the fact that they weren’t that talented by doing a Kiss-lite stage show with make up, pyro and Satanic imagery. It was a hit, as they were one of the first “hair metal” bands from LA to hit it big in the early 80s with “Shout At The Devil”. They lived every single stereotype you can imagine a rock band doing: constant cocaine, constant groupies, taking so much shit they had near-death experiences, all unwisely marrying strippers and nude models in a haze of substance abuse, somehow being able to finish really mediocre albums that sold solely on name value. This continued until singer Vince Neil had a bright idea to go drive drunk during a wild party to grab more alcohol with Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas “Razzle” Dingley in the car with him. Neil lost control of his sports car, and although he came out without a scratch his passenger was killed and both people in the car they hit were left gravely injured. Neil was charged with vehicular manslaughter and DUI, but since he was rich and famous only received 1 month in jail, which he only served 15 days of. He gives the best quote of the episode by admitting “I was like the OJ Simpson of the 80s.” ROCK N ROLL!!!

The band slowly began to sober up through out the 80s. Bassist Nikki Sixx overdosed and nearly died on heroin a few times before they all cleaned up and released their biggest album “Dr. Feelgood” in 1989. After that album, Neil claims he was fired from the band, but Sixx insists he voluntarily quit in a scene reminiscent of the back-and-forth between Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth on MTV in 1986. Nevertheless Neil’s solo albums all tanked and Motley Crue decided they needed to get “serious” in the wake of grunge and released a record with new singer John Corabi that nobody liked. So after that Crue and Neil both dropped off of the face of the earth. Drummer Tommy Lee emerged in 1996 after meeting and quickly marrying Baywatch superstar, and future sex-tape co-star, Pamela Anderson and according to the media changed his name to “Rocker Tommy Lee”. In ’97 Crue and Neil reformed and put out “Generation Swine”, that tried to sound pseudo-industrial and nobody liked that record either. Years later they somehow became a really big nostalgia circuit act, which I guess was partially due to their BTM episode being rerun endlessly in addition to “The Dirt”.

But this is the episode all other episodes are judged against. Vince Neil, pre-plastic surgery (also due to VH1) looking like absolute bloated dogshit. Mick Mars looking like a young Crypt Keeper (which is awesome for a heavy metal guitarist, fortunately) and Nikki Sixx, despite being the biggest druggie in the band still looking like he did in his 30s. How the hell is that possible?

BEHIND THE MUSIC....THAT SUCKS
MADONNA
Madonna is one of those people who, due to having every aspect of their life exposed already, do not need a documentary. Do you need to see a documentary on Princess Diana, or Paris Hilton? It also doesn’t help that Madonna is not a good interview subject in the least. Boringness + Fake British Accents = Awful TV.

GUNS N ROSES
I think this episode being so terrible, despite being on an entertaining band, is what drove Behind The Music to go away for a few years. Of course the lack of Axl hurt it, but the man couldn’t even be bothered to do press for “Chinese Democracy” so what do you expect. Really bad editing and a lack of solid sequencing ruined this.

SHANIA TWAIN
This was the first “let’s profile a current star” episode I can remember, and due to it being such a ratings success it brought a bunch of that kind of episode in through out the years. Shania has absolutely nothing interesting to talk about other than her parents died in a car accident and conservative Nashville thought she was too sexy to be a country singer. Don’t you have to have had a raging drug problem to get approved for a BTM episode? If you can stay awake during this episode, give yourself a pat on the back.

BRITNEY SPEARS
If Britney wanted to be completely honest about how her life entered the downward spiral it did in 2006, I’d definitely be down to watch that. But this episode was from 2003, where she was still ‘not a girl, not yet impregnated by K-Fed.’ Or something. This episode made the snoozefest Matchbox Twenty episode look like the Motley Crue one for entertainment.

CREED
While their lives turned into a tailor-made episode of BTM after this aired, the main thing you learn about these dull idiots is that Scott Stapp had overprotective parents and they had to tour a few years before they got famous. So this is as entertaining as watching paint dry. Of course now, with the band splitting up, Stapp putting out a disastrous solo album in between getting arrested and his former bandmates saying they hated being around him in interviews (only to recently reunite) they’d have a good episode. This is exactly why profiling artists at the height of their fame is a terrible idea. No band gets interesting until they crumble.

LENNY KRAVITZ
Is there a more boring person in music then Lenny Kravitz? At least Rob Thomas had a drug problem in between his dullness. The selling point of the show is that Lenny Kravitz had a lull in sales between “Are You Gonna Go My Way?” and when “Fly Away” became a hit. Only his life was completely uninteresting during that time period. Although it was funny that they explicitly detailed how harsh the reviews were that he has gotten his entire recording career. Usually they sugar coat things like that, but you get a full-on picture of the “ENOUGH OF THIS 60s SHIT!” feeling writers felt about him.

THE OSMONDS
Yeah, they had a “here today, gone tomorrow” story to tell. But they’re just such nice, squeaky clean people it isn’t much of a story. Excess for Donny Osmond is having one glass of wine on New Year’s Eve. After their 70s heyday ended they kept their dignity, close family ties and sobriety. So needless to say there’s no tales of killing friends in drunk driving wrecks or contemplating suicide after being dropped from their label. There’s not much of anything, really.

ALANIS MORRISSETTE
Behind The Music was guilty of going with the artists label-written bio regardless of how glaringly obvious it was that it wasn’t true. That made for some really bad episodes. Here they could have grilled Alanis on how a Nickelodeon child actor, turned teen-pop star can possibly be, as they call her in the show’s opening “music's most immaterial girl”. It’s painfully obvious that Alanis-as-Alternative rock chick was a Maverick Records and Glen Ballard creation. They don’t call her on any of this, or even attempt to get her to explain how she has a right to be on the same angst level as Tori Amos when the worst thing to ever happen in Alanis’s life was learning Uncle Joey from Full House was cheating on her. Nope, they just repeat the Alanis Morissette Maverick Records press package word-for-word.

CELINE DION
Yeah she has a semi-interesting rags to riches story. But how disturbing it is that VH1 treats the love story between Celine and husband Rene Angelil as acceptable? When the two met, Rene was nearly 40 and Celine was 12 years old. If that doesn’t make you want to puke then something is wrong with you, Gary Glitter. Exploring that honestly, and looking at how Celine has never really had a life beyond performing, since her parents were trying to get her famous since she was a young singing prodigy, would make for interesting television. The problem is it appears this was written, produced, and edited by Team Celine at Sony Music. Fluff pieces suck.

THOSE YEAR EPISODES
I’ll lump these all in together. One hour is just not long enough to talk about 365 days. It doesn’t help that they can’t decide if they want to focus on the politics or the music or the movies of that year. It just comes off like a total clusterfuck of television. The 1992 episode is the biggest offender “Okay, we’ve got 45 minutes after commercials, guys. Let’s go! Cut to Michael Jackson, cut to Nirvana, cut to Pearl Jam, cut to En Vogue, cut to Cypress Hill, cut to Bill Clinton, cut to Sir Mix-A-Lot, cut to Body Count, cut to U2 prank calling the White House, cut back to Bill Clinton, now back to Pearl Jam, now back to Nirvana, cut to Public Enemy, now show footage of George Bush and Dan Quayle, now back to Clinton, now back to En Vogue, cut to PM Dawn, now show that picture of Kurt Cobain crying so we can mention he killed himself 2 years later....” Sorry, but every band that had a hit that year getting 2 minutes a piece isn’t good TV.