Requiem For A Jacko

The world hardly needs another Michael Jackson tribute. There’s probably billions online in every language in existence. But let’s get it out of the way: yes, he wrote some fantastic songs, the best being Billie Jean. Yes, his dancing was poetry in motion. Nuff said.

But looking at the scores of tributes in the media, you would have thought Michael Jackson died 16 years ago, like his life from summer 1993 onward never happened. Like he dropped dead shortly after setting ratings records in America with his Super Bowl Half Time performance, which nearly 100 million American televisions displayed.

It’s like Michael Jackson never was reviled for over 15 years as a pedophile. It’s like Michael Jackson’s media coverage wasn’t limited to bad Jay Leno jokes and people debating if his face could handle one more plastic surgery on Entertainment Tonight. It’s like Michael Jackson didn’t release two epic flops for the ages, 1995’s HIStory and 2001’s Invincible that cost Sony Music an assload of money they never recouped. It’s like critics never gave him mediocre-to-terrible reviews on Bad onwards. It’s like people weren’t only interested in his Madison Square Garden masturbatory self-celebration in 2001 just because it was so freaky and the tip of his nose possibly fell off while performing. It’s like the public opinion wasn’t that only absolute mentally ill freaks of society came out to the court he was at to support him during his 2004 child molestation trial. It’s like the public opinion after Living With Michael Jackson aired was always “Martin Bashir is evil!” and not “Wow, Michael Jackson’s mental state is so far gone he honestly doesn’t realize what he’s doing.”

All of those were totally opposite opinions on June 25th, 2009 before the announcement of Jackson’s passing was made.

When someone dies, especially a celebrity we didn’t have to deal with in our lives on a day to day basis, all of their wrongs are instantly erased. So here are some cold, hard truths. Marlon Brando was a morbidly obese megalomaniac who let his erratic behavior overshadow his film career. Tupac Shakur was not viewed as anything but a run-of-the-mill gangsta rapper in his lifetime. Brandon Lee was a B-movie actor who was always going to be a B-movie actor. Selena’s posthumous English album was far too generic to have made her “the new Madonna”. Marilyn Monroe was never going to get close to winning an Oscar. And coming out as a Michael Jackson fan prior to his death got close to the same reaction coming out as homosexual to a bunch of bigots would get you.

Real Michael Jackson fans were a loud and proud tiny subculture during his 1993-2009 era as entertainment media’s most beloved freak of nature. They, along with their idol, endured persecution and mockery by the rest of the world that gave them almost proud martyr-complexes not unlike Jackson’s. They all honestly believed the constant accusations that Jackson was a pedophile were a media conspiracy character assassination because the white media couldn’t stomach seeing a successful African American richer than they were, more famous than they were, holding the ultimate white-boy high water mark creation of the Lennon/McCartney catalog in his possession. They were the same type of people who will fiercely debate you about the government’s knowledge of UFOs landing in the United States, even though you never consented to said debate. Trust me, if any of you recent MJ converts attend any public service memorials around the country, you will be going out of your way to avoid being in the presence of real Michael Jackson true believers.

Michael Jackson spent half of his life as a beloved entertainer and the other half as a despised sideshow. He lived a very sad life. He was forced into the public eye before he was old enough to understand what they meant, and therefore never had a clear grasp on reality. Sometimes he looked like he loved being in the middle of the spectacle that even going out to the store to buy a carton of eggs would bring him. Other times he’d release a single called “Leave Me Alone” and decry the tabloid obsession that reduced his life to staying in a bizarre fantasy amusement park nearly 24/7. But it was common knowledge his people would plant outlandish stories to the tabloids to keep his name in the press, which Jackson would always deny. When other celebrities have pulled the “PAY ATTENTION TO ME......OMG HOW DARE YOU KEEP PUTTING ME IN TABLOIDS!” doublespeak, they’re instantly shutdown as frauds. Jackson got away with it for years. Because he was the first true new era tabloid icon. Sure, his good friend Elizabeth Taylor had gotten similar treatment before he was old enough to sing “ABC”, but I doubt anyone will ever be such a permanent fixture in tabloids as Jackson was. And unlike most celebrities, his tabloid coverage increased as his stardom faded. His last burst of National Enquirer headlines revolved around the belief that he was dying from Emphysema in late 2008, which his people denied. If Jackson got even a tiny royalty on tabloid coverage, not only would his financial problems never have occurred, but he’d be giving Bill Gates and Warren Buffet a run for their money on the Fortune 500 list.

So now they’ve got one last chance to wring every drop of sideshow ratings/sales boom out of him as the run-up to his memorial services and debate on how he actually died continues. You just know every tabloid outlet is looking for a way to bribe some hospital worker to swipe some of his autopsy photos for the ultimate selling issue. Because you know those are going to be so disturbing you must gawk. One unconfirmed report out of Australia says under his wig he only had “peach fuzz” for hair, he weighed around 100 pounds, wore a bunch of make-up to cover “13 plastic surgery scars” on his face, and his arms were covered in trackmarks. But until they can get that ultimate exploitation dollar out of Wacko Jacko Inc. and have to face the public scrutiny and lawsuits, they’re doing a 360 and pretending like they actually cared. No, they loved his relationship with his children, they never called for them to be taken away from him. They loved his eccentricities, they never claimed he was mentally ill. They’re devoting the most coverage of any celebrity event in history because they cared about him and want to help his family find the true cause of his untimely death, not because they’re going to get a fortune and a ratings bonanza out of it.

So for the time being, Jackson is getting a state of adoration that’s possibly more than he ever received during the Thriller years. Right now history looks like it is about to re-write him, definitely on Elvis Pressley’s level if not The Beatles as a musical innovator. The truth is Jackson was smart enough to see the MTV revolution coming and jumped on it, making eye catching videos with huge budgets in MTV’s infancy when a simple performance miming piece was good enough for most music videos of the day. And taking Jackson on as MTV’s first “black music” airplay experiment was only an impressive risk taking maneuver to MTV. Jackson was already a superstar the day they decided to play Billie Jean, as Off The Wall was a multi-platinum hit popular with white people as well, and he had been in the public eye for nearly 20 years at that point. He was also arguably the most non-threatening African American male in music history. They had a chance to push Rick James as their first black video star, who was more of a traditional rock star in attitude than Jackson ever was, who made an album equally as good as Thriller. But James was dangerous to lily white people. Rick James didn’t care that you knew he was on drugs, and if you didn’t like it, he’d fuck your girlfriend. Michael Jackson was asexual, polite, probably didn’t even drink a glass of wine until years later. Sure, he was a handsome guy with smooth dance moves that white women had crushes on, but you knew he’d politely turn them down; whereas Rick James would have invited as many of them as he could fit into his suite for a wild coke-orgy and written a awesome song all about it. And there was a ton of great, innovative hip-hop being produced at the time that MTV wouldn’t embrace until years later. Playing that would have been risky. Michael Jackson.....a surefire hit.

But Michael Jackson did one thing not even a terrorist attack, death of a former President, election, Super Bowl, World Cup, celebrity sex tape, or any other world event could do: he shutdown some of the biggest sites on the internet: Wikipedia, Google, YouTube, TMZ, and every blogging and social networking site in existence for upwards of hours. Not to mention put a strain on all the major cellphone carriers as friends called and text messaged friends to discuss the news. His legacy will be written as a man who, for a brief time, united a large chunk of the entire music listening populace together with one album. In death he united a large chunk of the internet surfing populace to see if his demise was true or another internet hoax. And they said the internet peaked with Rickrolling.

In all sincerity, though, I wish the best for his children. And more importantly I hope when they’re old enough they realize what celebrity did to their father and don’t stumble into the same fame pitfalls.

Cinematic Mayhem

According to Rolling Stone, the long delayed Mayhem bio-pic will finally begin filming this September in Norway. The film had been attempted to be made since 2004, but producers could never get the funding needed to film it until now.

The movie will be based on the 1998 book “The Lords Of Chaos”, which was written by Michael Moynihan an Didrik Soderlind. The book chronicled the rise of the Norwegian Black Metal movement, which unlike most of the Satanism used in American and British heavy metal, took the Satanic aspect seriously, mixed in with some ancient Odinism. For instance, Slayer are actually Atheists who used pentagrams because they looked cool as imagery. But their some of their Norwegian counterparts and their fans took Satanism seriously enough to go on church-burning sprees.

For those that do not know the story of Mayhem, they were a Black Metal band formed in 1984 who, kind of like rappers, gave themselves nicknames and wore “corpsepaint” on stage. Originally with Euronymous on vocals and guitar, Necrobutcher on bass and Manheim on drums. Euronymous eventually decided the band should have another vocalist and went through Maniac and Messiah before settling on Dead in 1988, and replaced drummer Manheim with Hellhammer.

Mayhem’s concerts started gaining the attention of Europe’s metal community. The band would perform with impaled animal heads on stage, singer Dead would routinely perform self-mutilation with knives while performing, and they started building one of the larger fanbases in their music community. Dead would also keep his stage closed buried outside and dig them up right before performing so they’d have the appearance of what a corpse would be wearing. He also carried around a dead bird in a jar, which he opened and inhaled to smell decay to help get him in the mood to perform. Drummer Hellhammer also claimed he once asked him to bury him underground for the total corpse effect.

On April 8th, 1991, after suffering from severe depression since he was a teenager, and reportedly depressed about situations within the band, Dead slit his wrists and then shot himself in the head with a shotgun at the home the band shared. Hours later Euronymous came home and discovered the suicide scene. But instead of immediately calling police, Euronymous went to a local drug store to buy a disposable camera, with which he used to take pictures of the crime scene. He also claimed that before finally calling the police, he collected bits of skull fragment to make into necklaces and scooped up brain matter to mix into a stew he was cooking. One of Euronymous’s photos of Dead was reportedly stolen and circulated around their fanbase until it made its way on the cover of a live bootleg.

After that the Norwegian Black Metal scene got even bigger. A few murders by people associated with the scene mixed in with churches being burned down made it one of the most talked about metal scenes in the world in the early 90s. Even Britain’s Kerrang magazine came in to do a cover story on them, despite most of the bands not even having released proper albums yet (Mayhem’s debut didn’t see the light of day until 1994.)

Varg Vikernes of the band Burzum became the mouthpiece of the scene. He cemented his place at the forefront of Black Metal by announcing to a newspaper reporter the Black Metal community was at war with Christianity, and flirted with Nazi ideas and imagery (including decorating his home with Nazi memorabilia.) He also appeared on the cover of Kerrang magazine holding knives and gloated about the violence and destruction the community was bringing to Norway. His boasts got the attention of police, who arrested he and several other Black Metal band members for suspicion of arson. Vikernes didn’t help his case any by using a picture of a burned down church on the cover of a Burzum album, although he denied taking it himself.

Vikernes was also briefly the bassist of Mayhem, redubbing himself Count Grishnackh. But even though he was only with the band for less than a year, he left a huge impact. He was the bassist when in early 1993 they finally recorded the long-awaited debut album “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas”, which is Latin for “The Mysteries Of Satan”, although the band attempted to have it Latin for “Lord Satan‘s Secret Rites” but got a bad translation. But on August 10th, 1993, Euronymous was dead by Count Grishnackh’s hand.

Vikernes’s side of the story is that there was a dispute over money Euronymous owed to him, so he traveled to his apartment to discuss matters with him. He claims that they got into an argument and that Euronymous attacked him, so he murdered him in self-defense. But police believed it was a premeditated murder, since accomplice Snorre Ruch confessed to police that the two drove hours to Oslo, Norway with a knife to murder Euronymous. Also he told police that they had rented a movie and left it running on their VCR so that neighbors would believe they were still in Vikernes’s apartment as an alibi. The other members of Mayhem believed that Euronymous liked to give death threats to people he was angry with, although he wasn’t serious, but that Vikernes did take him serious and murdered him because he believed Euronymous was out to kill him. Vikernes was eventually found guilty of the murder and sentences to the maximum sentence of Norwegian law, which is 21 years.

In May 1994, “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas” was finally released and hailed as an instant classic by the metal community. Euronymous’s family asked the remaining Mayhem members singer Attilla Csihar and drummer Hellhammer to remove the bass parts of Vikernes before it was released. Hellhammer claims they told the family they would, but in actuality left them in and just turned them down in the mix, but left in his credit in the album. Music writers were interested that it was the first album where a murderer plays on the album with the person he murdered. This wouldn’t be done again until Zapp drummer Larry Troutman murdered his brother, Zapp singer Roger Troutman, on April 25th, 1999.

Hellhammer re-hired ex-bassist Necro Butcher at Euronymous’s funeral and announced plans that the band would continue with new guitarist Blasphemer and went on tour to support the record. They didn’t release new material until the EP “Wolf’s Lair Abyss” in 1997 and the full length “Grand Declaration Of War” in 2000. They gained headlines again in 2003 when they were charged with assault after a concert in Bergen, Norway when a band member threw a severed sheep’s head into the crowd and it landed on a fan’s head, fracturing his skull.

Now if this doesn’t sound like it would make one hell of an entertaining movie, then I don’t know what does!

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.