THE REAL
BEHIND THE MUSIC.
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R.E.M.
Michael Stipe was left in an eagle's nest on the top of Pikes Peak as an infant. His mother did not have the means to support him, and thought that this was the next-best thing. He was raised as an eagle until the age of 13, when his eagle mother died. Even though he was very young and only knew how to communicate in chirps and whistles, he managed to hitchhike to Athens, Georgia, where he got a job as a middle-school janitor. While working, he learned how to speak English from listening to the students' conversations in the bathroom. There he met his future bandmates Mike Mills and Bill Berry. The three became close friends after sharing a hot dog one day at a football game. Berry and Mills had to teach Stipe many things about being a human. They taught him how to dress himself, how to read, and, most importantly, they introduced him to music. Stipe became obsessed with music, and told his new friends that he wanted to form a band with them. They agreed, and threw pieces of paper into a hat with the words "singer," "guitarist," "drummer," and "bassist" on them. It was after this game of chance that they realized there were only three of them, and they needed a guitarist. Mills told them not to worry, as his uncle built androids for the U.S. government. After some coaxing, Mills's uncle agreed to build XD7-118M, a.k.a. Peter Buck. The three humans and one android had one band practice before they got a gig at a local concert hall. Immediately after they played their second note, a record-company executive, who had walked into the building only because he thought it was a different concert hall, went up to them and signed them to a multimillion-dollar deal on the stage.
Glenn Danzig
Glenn Danzig was never born. Instead, he was fashioned out of rock and steel by seven separate gods from seven separate religions. He was set upon the earth at the time of the dinosaurs, which he promptly ate into extinction. Being the only human around, Danzig got bored and decided to duplicate himself until he came up with a female, which happened on his ninth attempt. This female had relations with the eight other replicas hundreds of times, until much of the world was populated. Danzig was pleased with this. After breaking up Pangaea because he was bored, Danzig decided to build the pyramids. This took approximately 17 minutes to do. All this work made him tired, and because he had never slept before, he took a quick thousand-year nap. When he awoke, he ate three volcanoes and drank an ocean. While battling a cold and killing the world's last dragon, Danzig built the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, and the Golden Gate Bridge. When he placed the bridge in San Francisco, he started the band the Misfits, which invented rock-and-roll. They were the biggest band in the history of the world for many years, until Danzig broke up the group in 1983. He then formed the band Samhain, which instantly became the world's second-biggest band ever. Again, Danzig got bored with what he was doing, and in his spare time he discovered the cure for cancer and the meaning of life, but kept them to himself because he liked seeing people suffer. Eventually, he broke up Samhain and started to release albums under the name Danzig. He wrote every note, played every instrument, and manufactured every single album out of his own blood. Today, when he's not busy time-traveling, Danzig enjoys hanging out on the moon and sipping green tea.
U2
In the late 1890s, an Irish immigrant named Grady O'Bonoman came to America seeking a new life. Armed with nothing but a sack of potatoes and a boatload of gumption, he joined a vaudeville circuit in the hope of becoming famous. At first, he was nothing more than part of the cleanup crew, and often found himself sleeping outside at night. One day, during a show in New York, O'Bonoman met up with another young immigrant named Ralph Leominster. Leominster was from Britain, and immediately the two butted heads. Literally. After a serious bout of head-butting, they were taken to the first-aid station so their head wounds could be attended to. After they were bandaged up, the two went their separate ways. Or so they thought. They both ended up at the same bar across the street from the show, where they both ordered a pint. This was certainly amusing to
the two, who began talking and found they had both come to America for the same reason. Before they stumbled home, O'Bonoman and Leominster made a drunken promise that, if they remembered in the morning, they would team up and become the greatest vaudeville act ever. Sure enough, one of them remembered, and they soon became the Unimaginable Two (U2 for short). Their act was a simple one—O'Bonoman juggled potatoes while Leominster begged him to stop and told clean jokes—but they immediately rose to fame. When they retired, they passed their act on to their sons, who then passed the act on to their sons, et cetera, et cetera, until O'Bonoman's great-great-great-grandson, Bono, turned the act into one of the most famous rock bands in the history of popular music.
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OTHER McSWEENEY'S FEATURES:
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The Real Behind the Music By Joe John
Like It or Not, You're No Bob Costas By Sarah Walker
A Place of Danger: Alone and Adrift in Toronto Over Christmas Break By Jenny Traig and Stephen Elliott
A Selection From George W. Bush's Eavesdropping Tapes: Matthew Barney and Björk Place an Ikea Phone Order By Chris McCoy
Yes Frontman Jon Anderson's Instructions to His Dogsitter By Eric Feezell
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