By Bruce Warren, Program Director for WXPN

Brian Divver, one of WXPN’s web staff (and our resident metalhead) came across an article called “101 Things You Didn’t Know About Rock ‘N’ Roll” that we had to share. Reading through them is like reading a music geek’s collection of trivia. Some things I knew and some I didn’t.

Here’s some of the cool useless trivia that I actually did not know. Where do you stand? Take a moment and read some of these examples and when you’re done, link to the article and let us know what you think. And if you’ve got your very own rock ‘n’ roll tidbits and knowledge you’d like to share, drop it in the comment section. And please don’t say: “I can’t believe you didn’t know that!”

• Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Ronnie Van Zant is said to be buried with a Neil Young t-shirt, the same he uses on his last cd cover. The admiration between these two musicians was mutual: Young said he’d rather play “Sweet Home Alabama” than “Southern Man”.
• “Smoke On The Water” refers to a Frank Zappa show in Montreux in 1971, where someone lit a flaregun and “burned the place to the ground”.
• Slash’s real name is Saul Hudson.
• Bob Dylan said in his school yearbook that his ultimate dream was being in Little Richard’s band.
• Waylon Jennings was Buddy Holly’s bass player.
• Roy Harper sang lead vocals on Pink Floyd’s “Have A Cigar” on the Wish You Were Here album. It is the only song in the Floyd canon, that a member of Pink Floyd didn’t sing.
• Al Kooper, who played organ on Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone”, had never played organ before the session. He had turned up to the studio hoping to play guitar and, finding an excellent guitarist (Mike Bloomfield) already on hand, sat down at the organ instead.
• Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters) has Bonzo’s (Led Zeppelin’s drummer) symbol, three intersecting symbols tattooed on his forearm.