Rock stars are not like us. They don’t think twice about spending half their lives on tour buses. For breakfast, they eat groupies and large swaths of leather, washing it down with a glass of fire. And they can knock out amazing songs while sitting on the crapper. It’s only when they open their mouths and say something so preposterously stupid that we realize they’re human too ― only with far lower IQs. Since our “10 Stupidest Rock Quotes” feature was so popular last year, we’re making it an annual tradition. And since these artists really outdid themselves this year, we’re making the list 50 percent longer!
Presenting Gibson’s Stupidest Rock Quotes of 2008:
1. Considering his band used to feature a fully revolving drum kit on-stage, Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil probably could have used a better example when bemoaning the current state of rock concerts to Rolling Stone than this offensive-on-so-many-levels grievance: “Bands don’t do what we used to do. Bands don’t have the theatrics. We were lighting ourselves on fire. I had a chainsaw and cut a nun’s head off. You don’t see that shit at all anymore, which is kind of sad.”
2. Snoop Dogg seems to have figured out a way to save the record industry while offending an entire gender. “How many ugly women selling records?” He said on BET. “None! Only the pretty ones sell records — Beyoncé, Mary J. The ugly ones just be singing their little hearts out but don’t get no sales.”
3. With his newfound maturity, Oasis singer Liam Gallagher seems to have forgotten that he’s probably the most inert frontman in all of rock and roll. “I’ve mellowed, but not in the sense of liking Radiohead or Coldplay,” he told The Guardian. “I don’t hate them, I don’t wish they had accidents. I think their fans are boring and ugly and don’t look like they’re having a good time.”
4. Maybe all that Cabo tequila is going to his head, but back in May erstwhile Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar thought pretty highly of his then-new-but-never-heard-from-again supergroup ― with guitarist Joe Satriani, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, and bassist Michael Anthony ― Chickenfoot. “When people hear the music, it’s Led Zeppelin,” Hagar said. “I know that’s a bold statement, but it’s as good as that.”
5. Considering even the most ardent Claymates stopped buying his albums, Clay Aiken should really be more careful about what he says about prospective employers. After joining the Broadway cast of Monty Python’s Spamalot ― which he will return to next year ― the former American Idol contestant admitted he didn’t exactly get the show’s dry British humor, only in less polite words. “The first time I saw it I thought it was the stupidest thing I’d ever seen in my entire life,” Aiken told USA Today.
6. We love Ryan Adams. We love when he put 15 albums worth of unreleased music ― from hip-hop to death metal ― on his Web site. We love when he dates Hollywood starlets and writes sad songs about how he’s shocked things didn’t work out. We even love this weird Grateful Dead phase he’s going through. The only problem arises when he offers half-hearted explanations for his all his crazy behavior, like when he tried to explain to the Guardian why he blogs as much as a 13-year-old emo girl. “Unless you go on the road to party and make out with a bunch of girls that you don’t know — which is not me, it’s not who I am — then it’s good to have something to do, it’s good to have someone, it’s good to have a friend. Not like an imaginary friend, but someone there — that’s kind of what the blog is.”
7. Wondering why you haven’t heard much 3 Doors Down on the radio since the band’s self-titled fourth album entered the charts at No. 1 way back in May? The group’s bassist Todd Harrell just may have offered an unwitting explanation in a New York Post interview: “We don’t ever waste time once something starts, we don’t ever take too much time on trying to make a song better.”
8. Kenny Rogers. You may not recognize the face anymore, but you must certainly remember the name. Right? “The Gambler”? “Islands In The Stream”? The beard? The fried chicken chain? The men who look like Kenny Rogers? OK, maybe if you’re over 70 these things are ringing a bell, but the crossover-country crooner thought of a surefire way to reconnect with the youth this year ― or so he thought ― by releasing his new album exclusively through Cracker Barrel stores. “For me, the whole goal is to stay relevant as long as I can,” he said in USA Today.
9. Why would Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilmeister wear a Nazi cap to a band photo shoot in Germany? “From the beginning of time, the bad guys always had the best uniforms,” he explained to the Guardian. “Napoleon, the Confederates, the Nazis. They all had killer uniforms. I mean, the SS uniform is f***ing brilliant! They were the rock stars of that time. What’re you gonna do? They just look good.”
10. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich may be living clean these days but that doesn’t mean he has to put up with boring old sober people around the dinner table at parties now, does it? “Two guys in a bathroom stall ― it feels like the most important place in the whole world in that moment,” Ulrich told Blender. “I’ve actually gone into bathroom stalls with friends since I quit, just so I still have a little bit of that bonding.”
11. In July, pop ingénue Mariah Carey made a case for winning a coveted Moonman at MTV’s annual Video Music Awards ceremony for the surreal promo clip accompanying her single, “Touch My Body.” Not a very good one, but a case nonetheless. “My house is not complete without an American Moonman, and I would say ‘Touch My Body’ deserves one,” she said. “Brett Ratner directed it, I have a unicorn in there, I have [Guitar Hero] in there — who else has that?”
12. With a new album to promote, Alanis Morissette tried to come up with a profound reason as to why she did that bizarre, slow motion cover of “My Humps” on YouTube. Naturally, she failed. “The lyrics really have the light shone on them when they’re balladized,” she told the LA Times. “So there is something to be said about, Make him work work, make him work work work work work.”
13. Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz thinks mighty highly of John Mayer’s cameo on his band’s Michael Jackson cover. “Back in the day, Eddie Van Halen played on ‘Beat It,’ and I don’t believe he was in the video. And we were trying to think about who is a contemporary guitar guy who’s going to go down as a legend.”
14. Since we brought him up, there’s this from John Mayer. The New York Post reported that the guitarist with the extra scrunchy face “Googles himself every morning, and has been known to respond to online rumors just to clear the air.” The next morning, Mayer took to his blog: “This is, quite simply, untrue.”
15. And, finally, in the “what comes around goes around” department (or something like that), Hannah Montana’s dad Billy Ray Cyrus told Blender the enticing way he came up with his most successful recording to date: “I wrote the theme song for my first show, Doc, on a plane. That show aired for 88 episodes and is in syndication. So that’s probably the best luck I’ve had. And I wrote it on the back of a puke sack.”
Special Honor: Chris Martin
It would really be unfair to lump Coldplay singer Chris Martin with the rest of the artists on this page ― he deserves a list of his own. In the meantime, peruse these philosophical highlights from the past year:
1) You know when you’re drinking those smoothies you’ve got in America, and you’re like, ‘I think I can taste papaya.’ That’s what we’re trying to do: make musical smoothies. We’ll have a Kanye West influence here, a Beatles influence there.”
2) “(Nickelback) take a lot of flack from people who have never done f*** all in their life. I think they’re great. That’s my final word.”
3) “Like millions of people in the world, I can’t listen to Coldplay.”