Post your little known musical factoids

Legend has it that Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Ike Turner, Bobby Womack, Billy Preston and many others are uncredited guest musicians on the Sly and the Family Stone masterpiece album ‘There’s a Riot Goin’ On’. The reason that they’re uncredited is that everyone was so off their box when recording it that no-one, including the engineers and all the artists, can remember who did what or if they were even there in the first place.
 
African funk revolutionary Fela Kuti, who you could politely call the James Brown of afrobeat but that doesn’t even cover the half of it, didn’t just have his own venue in Lagos in the 70s - he set up his own independent state in an armed compound with free heathcare and a social centre.

His band would play pounding afrobeat for hours and hours every night, 30 minute songs, with a rotating daily schedule - Monday for spirituality, Tuesday for revolutionary politics and discussion, Thurs-Sat for the party. Ginger Baker from Cream made a doco about it, which is one of the wildest rides I’ve ever seen on YouTube, there’s a bit where his horn player gets possessed and Fela performs a funky exorcism.

Eventually the Nigerian government got sick of it and stormed the Free State of Fela with a thousand troops. His mum was killed during the raid. His 28 wives survived.
 
Lemmy bought me a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale at a Motorhead gig in Middlesbrough Rock Garden - i returned the compliment with a Jack Daniels & Coke at the Moonlight Club in Hampstead London, some 2 years later at a Modern English gig.

however back to the original thought by the OP - In 1971, john Peel played pretend Mandolin for Rod Stewart's hit single Maggie May on TOTP, and got a performers fee rather than a presenters fee.
was that when motorhead supported The Damned (and vice versa)
 
Workers at the Irish pressing plant contracted to manufacture The Feeding of the 5000, the first Crass album (actually an 18-track EP) refused to handle it due to the blasphemous content of the track "Reality Asylum" (referred to as "Asylum" on the record sleeve).
The record was released with this track removed and replaced by two minutes of silence, retitled "The Sound of Free Speech". This prompted Crass to set up their own record label in order to retain full editorial control over their material.
 
and here's my fave:
I had the pleasure of meeting Joe Strummer in Auckland, NZ, in 2000 after the Mescaleros played a blistering set at the Big Day Out.
They say you should never meet your heroes, but you couldn’t meet a nicer bloke. The set finished with four or five Clash songs and the crowd loved it as much as he did. He enjoyed it so much he said he’d be back in the future, but died less than two years later.
 
Lemmy used to go out with a female friend of mine back in the very early 80s. She eventually ended it due to his addiction to slot machines. Said she got sick of sitting chatting to the bar staff night after night, while he was glued to the machines.

Years later she was working in London and went to go into a hotel as he was coming out, accompanied by an entourage. She said it felt like a piece of film, suddenly slowed down. They both halted as he looked her in the eye and said sadly, "You really liked me, didn't you?" She replied "Yes, I did" before he was hastened away to wherever he was headed. They never met again.
 
Beethoven's 5th symphony was meant to be his 4th but he got stuck when writing it, so he 'parked it' and started writing another one. That one became his 4th symphony and he then went back to the unfinished work, and was able to complete it as his 5th.
 
Echo & The Bunnymen once bounced a mini down a street when they arrived at a gig in Leeds and found it blocking their loading entrance. It belonged to Annie Lennox, who was with the gig headliners The Tourists at the time and she went mental.
 
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