The truth behind music "twist of fate" stories

By Jess Santacroce
Music Writer, Phoenix Radio 

Tales involving twists of fate can serve as both an inspiration and a warning. We hear of someone being upset with their spouse for not waking them up early enough on the day of a big meeting or job interview, only to later learn that a tragedy occurred on what would have been their route. Or their roommate kept asking silly questions as they tried to get out the door, it made them forget their umbrella, and when they ducked into a coffee shop to get out of the rain, they met the love of their life or their new best friend. A few of these tales circulate among music fans. Some are absolutely true. Others turn out to be nothing more than debunked urban legends. Still others cannot be proven, but there is also no proof they didn’t happen. 

True: Country legend Waylon Jennings missed dying in a plane crash at age twenty-one by switching rides with the Big Bopper

Waylon Jennings passed away at a very young age by today’s standards, dying in 2002 at only sixty-four years old. However, he would have only made it to twenty-one had he not done what he believed at the time to be a simple act of kindness for another musician back on February 3, 1959. 

Now often referred to as “the day the music died,” this day refers to a tragedy in the early days of rock music. Buddy Holly, J.P. Richardson, Jr (known professionally as The Big Bopper) and Richie Valens were all killed when the small plane intended to be a more comfortable ride than the freezing tour bus they had available, crashed. 

As the musicians discussed and bickered and bartered to decide where to put everyone between the bus and the plane, Jennings realized that Richardson was already sick from spending time on the bus with a broken heater. He gave up his seat on the plane so that Richardson would not get any sicker, and took his place on the cold bus. The plane would later crash, killing everyone on board. Jennings’ choice of taking the bus over taking the plane saved his life that day. 

Unverifiable: Someone was prevented from ending their own life because a John Denver song began playing in their room.

According to the urban legend, John Denver’s by then ex-wife, Annie Martell, worked as a mental health counselor. During one session, a young woman asked her if she had been married to John Denver. When Martell said that yes, she had been, but then reminded the young woman that it was important to focus on herself during  her counseling session, the woman explained that this story was about her. She had been planning to end her own life when a John Denver song began playing on a record player or radio in her room. The music was so sweet, so loving, and so hopeful, the woman knew she had to stick around in a world that contained such gentleness.

There was once an entire tumblr page devoted to John Denver and how much he meant to his fans, but this particular story has never been verified. Current searches for Annie Martell generate vague answers about her profession, with some referring to her as being “in education,” or “in tv” and not even a counselor at all. Phrasing the question differently only results in an AI generated “Yes” indicating the story is true, backed up by a link to an article that does not even mention Martell as a counselor or anything of this nature happening. This is of course the result of AI being programmed to tell people what it reads them as wanting to hear rather than evidence that the events in the story actually did occur. 

While this story cannot be proven, it does not mean John Denver’s music did not have such a profound and beneficial impact on one or more fans. It is entirely possible that something similar to this story did in fact happen, and the person simply chose not to publicize it, or to come forward as the inspiration for the debunked urban legend. 

False: The Ohio Players’ song “Love roller coaster” just happens to contain a real scream from someone in serious distress. 

It would not be at all unusual for a song that uses a roller coaster as a metaphor to feature a scream as a sound effect. People do after all sometimes scream when things feel like roller coasters in their lives, and they often scream when riding on an actual roller coaster. Hiring a backup singer to scream at a certain time during the recording of a song called “Love roller coaster” would not be at all odd, not a twist of fate at all. 

However, during an interview, a DJ pointed out that the scream on the record sounded particularly anguished, and particularly high-pitched and feminine, and made a crack about someone being deliberately harmed to produce the sound. 

This led to speculation that the person screaming was a woman, and that the woman was in great genuine distress. The exact nature of the distress varied, with some versions being especially gruesome. Regardless of the details, the story began to circulate that the band just happened to have recorded the song somewhere near a horrible incident, and instead of stopping, finding the victim, and rendering aid, they simply kept recording, since it fit in well with the song.

Nothing even remotely like this actually happened. There was no woman in distress anywhere near the band when the song was recorded. There wasn’t even a female vocalist hired to make it sound like they’d recorded someone screaming. The scream on the song is actually a screech made by keyboard player Billy Beck. 

Twists of fate certainly can occur in music. Some, like  the story of Buddy Holly, J.P. Richardson, Jr, and Richie Valens, are real and tragic. Others just might be life-saving or life-changing, even if there is no public record to prove they happened. Still others will be wild urban legends, with the only twist being the off-hand comment that launched them coming at the right time to inspire an urban legend.