1. Angus Young: schoolboy?

Early AC/DC publicity info claimed Angus Young was born in 1959 - to help his 'schoolboy' image. He was actually born in 1955 – otherwise he would have been gigging with AC/DC aged 14. Angus Young was 18 when AC/DC released debut album High Voltage.

2. Pre-AC/DC Angus

Angus and Malcolm Young both play on Tales Of Old Granddaddy, by the Marcus Hook Roll Band. Not a recommended buy.

Guns And Roses recorded the beautiful "Patience" one night they were totally drunk (maybe that explains why the song is perfect for a it-doesn't-matter-if-the-bitch-left-you-have-another-beer-and-howl-along-with-us night). The next morning when the band heard what they had recorded they thought it was a hell of a song, but needed to be re-recorded since Axl could be heard puking his guts out in the middle of the it.

One night at a gig, when The Who had just begun, Pete Townshend was experimenting with the feedback he got when he put his guitar near his amp. He accidentally hit the ceiling with the guitar, which caused an awesome sound that was cheered by the (small) audience. Pete tried to repeat that sound with such bad (or good) luck that he broke the guitar's neck. "No one cheered, in fact there was a terrible silence, a "this-guy-is-an-asshole silence, so i finished breaking the guitar acting as if that had been my true intention". On The Who's next performance there were twice as many people.

Today’s dose of “kinda cool, kinda heartbreaking, kinda creepy” news comes to us courtesy of Sachs Media, where execs recently bankrolled a series of computer-generated portraits depicting what some of rock’s best-loved deceased stars would look like if they were alive today.

Sachs hired Phojoe, a company that creates artificially aged photos for missing-persons reports, to bring their technology to bear on a slew of famous faces, including Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Keith Moon and Elvis Presley — and although no one has yet written software that can truly revive the dead, the results of Phojoe’s work are still pretty compelling.

A young Bruce Dickinson was expelled from boarding school after wandering over and taking a slash in the headmaster’s dinner. We don’t know what the dish was. Nor do we don’t know whether the teacher carried on eating.

Bassist Steve Harris is the founding and only original member of Iron Maiden. In the early days the line-up was constantly shifting, one guitarist lasted just two days before his girlfriend wouldn’t let him go on tour with the band.

While Iron Maiden have been dogged with accusations of Satanism by religious fundamentalists throughout their career, a Brazilian priest, Marcos Motolo describes himself as “their number one fan in the world”. He has 162 Iron Maiden tattoos, a son called Stevie Harris and references their lyrics in his sermons.

Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith bought his first guitar off other Maiden guitarist Dave Murray when he was fifteen for five quid. Smith fixed up the broken axe and sold it on for a profit.

While it’s well known that the group began life as The Polka Tulk Blues Band, named after a talcum powder brand, you might not know that Sabbath almost called themselves the "Blues Band Margarine", a riff on popular supermarket spread Blue Band Margarine. Thankfully, the Brummie boys eventually looked for inspiration elsewhere and in 1969 settled on Black Sabbath, after a 1963 horror film.


Ozzy’s apparent fondness for spreads came full circle in 2006 when he appeared in a comedy skit ad campaign for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, opposite impersonator Jon Culshaw. That wasn’t the only time he’s showed off his acting chops: the 65-year-old played an evangelical pastor who hates music in 1983 horror Trick or Treat, voiced a garden deer in 2011 cartoon Gnomeo and Juliet and recently appeared as himself with his Sabbath band mates in an episode of CSI.

Tony Iommi wrote Armenia’s 2013 Eurovision Song Contest entry. His ballad, ‘Lonely Planet’, came about when reps from the Armenian public television network contacted the 65-year-old – beloved in the country for rebuilding a music school destroyed by an earthquake – after the nation failed to make the finals of the previous year’s competition. Performed by rock band Dorians, the song came 18th with 41 points. Still better than Britain’s effort, mind, lagging one place behind in 19th. "I've always thought, 'Oh no, not the Eurovision', and here I am in it now," a bemused Iommi told BBC News.

There's a Brazilian version of 'Where's Wally?' called 'Where's Ozzy Osbourne?'. Fans were challenged by a radio station in Sao Paulo to find the frontman in a huge cartoon illustration.

The band would often set Bill Ward's beard on fire as a prank, once resulting in third degree burns for the sticksman. And they wonder why he declined to join the band’s recent reunion.

Previous names for the band included the Noble Five, My Backyard and One Percent.

The band finally got their name from the basketball coach at their Jacksonville High School, Forby Leonard Skinner, after he sent them to the Principle's office for having hair that was too long. At first they spelt it, Leonard Skinnerd, which then changed to their more distinctive spelling on their first album.
They established their trademark three guitar attack on their first big hit Free Bird which was a tribute to the recently deceased Allman Brothers guitarist Duane Allman.
1974 hit Sweet Home Alabama was written as a tribute to the celebrated R& B studios Muscle Shoals, but after Neil Young's criticisms of the South in his songs Alabama and Southern Man they rewrote the third verse to rebuke him. But the band and Young were on good terms and the Canadian originally wrote Powderfinger for Lynryrd Skynyrd although they never recorded it.
Gimme Back My Bullets was a reference to Rolling Stone magazine's rating system. They had to stop playing it live because fans threw real bullets on stage.

The Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" album was titled because of an insult between bandmates. When Brian Wilson showed Mike Love  the new material, he said "Who the hell is going to listen to this?...the ears of a dog?".



The night of Jimi Hendrix's first gig, Jeff Beck was coming out of the club and outside he ran into Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend. With a frightened expression he told them "I think we're in trouble here!".



 Termites will eat wood two times faster when listening to heavy metal.