The Book of the Bizarre: Freaky Facts and Strange Stories (50 page)

Guitarist Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band died in a gruesome motorcycle accident on October 29, 1971. On his way to the hospital to see Allman, the band's bassist, Barry Oakley, totaled his car. A year later, at the exact same crossroads where Allman had met his maker, Oakley was involved in another accident when his motorcycle crashed into a bus. He refused medical attention, but onlookers noticed a thin trail of blood coming out of his nose and feared he had internal damage. This proved to be the case, and Oakley died later that afternoon. Both men were twenty-four years old when they died.

DID YOU KNOW . . . ?

• Ronnie Van Zant, lead vocalist for Lynyrd Skynyrd, frequently played concerts barefoot, claiming that he “liked to feel the stage burn” under his feet.
  
• The scar on Johnny Cash's cheek is the result of a bungled operation to remove a cyst while he was serving in the U.S. Air Force in Germany in the 1950s.
  
• James Brown, known as the Godfather of Soul, once spent two years in prison after leading police on a high-speed car chase on Interstate 20 in Georgia.
  
• Otis Redding's greatest hit, “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay,” was recorded just three days before the singer's plane crashed into a Wisconsin lake, killing him.
  
• The band Black Sabbath took its name from a 1963 horror film.
  
• Before he was a rock star, Rod Stewart worked as a gravedigger to pay the bills.
  
• Rock legend Meatloaf, born Marvin Lee Aday, got his nickname after he allowed a friend to run him over with his Volkswagen on a dare. One of his friends reportedly remarked that he “must have meatloaf for brains.”
  
• Jimi Hendrix is said to have believed that rainbows are actually pathways that connect the living world with the dead.
  

ENEMIES UNTIL THE DEATH

Rockers Neil Young and Ronnie Van Zant had a complex relationship. Though the two lyricists often feuded publicly, they also held each other in high esteem. When Van Zant died, it was rumored that he was buried in a Neil Young t-shirt. Some say that his fans went so far as to exhume his body to find out, but police reports deny that his coffin was ever opened.

On October 17, 1982, members of the horror-punk band the Misfits were arrested and charged with grave robbing. The supposed target? The body of Marie Laveau, a New Orleans–based practitioner of Voodoo whose ghost is said to haunt the French Quarter to this day.

DIDN'T KNOW WHAT HIT HIM

Folk singer (and one-hit wonder, some would argue) Harry Chapin was cruising down the Long Island Expressway one day when something went wrong. According to eyewitness accounts, the singer slowed his tiny Volkwagen Beetle down to 15 mph and turned on his flashers, recklessly crossing lanes as he did so. A massive tractor-trailer, unable to slow down enough when Chapin's car cut him off, struck the Beetle, and sparks from the crash caused the car to burst into flames. The truck driver dragged Chapin's body from the wreckage shortly after, but Chapin had already died of a heart attack. Nobody knows whether the heart attack was brought on by the crash or caused it.

DUCK DANDER

It is illegal to orally ingest duck dander in nine American states due to its intense hallucinogenic properties.

PACKED WITH PUNCH

It is currently illegal to serve sangria anywhere in Virginia. Since 1934 it has been prohibited to mix wine or beer with spirits. Because most authentic sangria is a mix of wine, liqueurs, and fruit juice, the concoction is in violation. As recently as 2006 a tapas bar in Alexandria, Virginia, was fined $2,000 for serving the illegal brew.