The singer came up with the idea for this song after he burned himself with hot water and had to be treated at a hospital. He had a ritual of inhaling steam from a kettle before concerts to help clear his nasal passages.

In an interview about the songs chorus, he explained that after years of hard work and touring, they finally got their chance to play in London.  It was Christmas time, and during that time London basically shuts down.  So they were stuck in their hotel room with nothing to do and nowhere to go.  They were in London for the first time in their lives and they were watching “The Guns of Navarone.”

Those were the words of Boy George of Culture Club.  He is staging a comeback and will be releasing a new single called “Amazing Grace” next week.

Culture Club considers Colour By Numbers their best work, and tonight’s School of Rock feature is from that record. 

The song's video deals with the tragedy of suicide by showing the effects a young man's death has on his surviving family members.  During filming, the band had to try performing three times due to Morgan's difficulty keeping from sobbing. The video's storyline revolves around a depressed boy who decides to leap off a building. As he falls, his family falls with him. Through the course of falling they try to overcome their problems and eventually bounce back up. It has a Suicide Hotline number at the end of the video as well as a picture of Eugene.  Sean Morgan said in a 2008 interview, "I hope this makes some kids realize the choices they make can crush a family and devastate the people they leave behind.”

This was Seether’s second consecutive #1 song from the album Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces.

In a 2001 documentary, Lou Reed who was one of the Warhol superstars, says that it was Nelson Algren's 1956 novel, A Walk on the Wild Side, that was the launching off point for the song, but the song is about people he hung around with at The Factory.

Reed recorded this 2 years after leaving The Velvet Underground.  It was produced by David Bowie, who also sang backing vocals.

311 day is happening in Las Vegas this time and is actually about to kick off an hour from now.  Obviously, you or I could not be there, so I thought I would bring a tiny bit of 311 day to you.

This was their first #1 single on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks charts, and was the song that blew them up. 

This is a very personal song for Dylan, dealing with the changes he was going through, including his marriage falling apart.  Dylan sometimes introduced this on stage by saying it took "10 years to live and 2 years to write.”

In 1995 Hootie & the Blowfish wrote "Only Want To Be With You” as a tribute to Dylan, borrowing various lines of his songs, but he still sued the band for stealing his song-and got a huge settlement for it.

One night, after a horrible gig at a club in Venice, California the band was approached by music manager Shep Gordon, who arranged an audition for the band with composer and renowned record producer Frank Zappa, who was looking to sign bizarre music acts to his new record label, Straight Records. For the audition, Zappa told them to come to his house "at 7 o'clock." The band mistakenly assumed he meant 7 o'clock in the morning. Being woken up by a band willing to play psychedelic rock at seven in the morning impressed Zappa enough to sign them to a three-album deal.

In 1970, after two failed albums, they began working on their third, the last in their contract with Straight Records, and the band's last chance to create a hit. "Eighteen" was released in November 1970, and reached number 21 in the Billboard Hot 100, and Alice Cooper finally had a hit.

Tonight’s artist had success with his debut record and plenty of exposure on MTV, it wasn’t until his second album that he achieved superstar status.  Released in 1983, it produced 4 singles that made it to the Hot 100 chart. 

The album was recorded in only three days at the Electric Lady Studios in New York City. According to the VH1 show Bands Reunited, Scandal drummer Thommy Price was playing in a nearby studio during this time and was recruited to record on this album.  He ended up leaving Scandal and became their official drummer.

More than 25 years after the release, this artist is still regarded as one of the coolist rock stars and still draws huge audiences.  He will be playing among many musicians half his age when he appears at the Download Festival in the UK this summer, but few of them will posses the coolness that Billy Idol oozes.

Kurt Cobain said he was trying to write the ultimate pop song and was basically trying to rip off the Pixies when he wrote their first and biggest hit.

The unexpected success of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in late 1991 propelled Nirvana’s Nevermind to the top of the charts at the start of 1992, making alternative rock part of the mainstream.

The irony is, Kurt really despised the mainstream, according to bassist Krist Novoselic.  He says, “That's what "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was all about: The mass mentality of conformity.”

Kathleen Hanna, the lead singer of the group Bikini Kill, gave Cobain the idea for the title when she spray painted "Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit" on his bedroom wall after a night of spraying graffiti around the Seattle area. In his pre-Courtney Love days, Cobain went out with Bikini Kill lead singer Tobi Vail. She wore Teen Spirit deodorant, and Hanna was implying that Cobain was marked with her scent.

Cobain later claimed that he was unaware that it was a brand of deodorant until months after the single was released. Kurt thought Hanna was complimenting him on his rebellious spirit. Sales of Teen Spirit deodorant shot up when this became a hit.

It seems Glam Rock is the underlying theme to this weeks School of Rock artists.  Tonight’s band is not really considered Glam, but they were heavily influenced by that niche genre.  They recognize artists like David Bowie, Queen and T Rex as the bands they grew up idolizing.

Strangely, though all the band members hail originally from Leeds, England, the band formed in New York City in 1994 when Antony Langdon met Johnny Cragg by chance, in a café where he had a job killing rats. Soon after, Langdon's brother Royston joined the band, and Spacehog was born and they were signed to a record deal shortly after.

On October 24, 1995, Spacehog released their debut album, Resident Alien. It went gold on the Billboard charts, selling over 500,000 copies and spawned the hit single and video "In the Meantime."

Tonight’s band started in England as Tyrannosaurus Rex, then shortened their name to T Rex in 1971.

Founder and singer Marc Bolan claimed to have written this song out of his love for Chuck Berry's song "Little Queenie", and said that the riff is taken from the Berry song. IF you listen closely, at the end a line (And meanwhile, I'm still thinking) of "Little Queenie" is said during the fade out.

This band is a great example of "Glam Rock." There was nothing all that distinctive about Glam music, but the artists stood out because of the outrageous and effeminate costumes and very theatrical stage shows.  Other glam rock bands of the time..David Bowie, Elton John and Queen.

In England, this was called "Get It On (Bang A Gong)." The title was changed on the American release so it would be less offensive.  Because let’s face it, America is a little prudish compared to the UK.

This was the last song Smokey Robinson wrote and produced for the Temptations, due to a deal Berry Gordy made with Norman Whitfield, that if Smokey’s song did not meet with the expected degree of success, then Whitfield's song, Ain't Too Proud To Beg, would get the next release, which resulted in Whitfield more or less replacing Robinson as the group's producer.

This song only made it to #29 on the charts in 1966, even though today it is one of the Temptations most recognizable songs.

Besides producing this, Bowie played guitar, sang backup, and clapped. 

According to an interview Bowie gave to Rolling Stone magazine in 1973, the boys are carrying the same news that the news guy was carrying in the song "Five Years" from Ziggy Stardust, a message that the Earth only had five years left to live: Bowie said, "It's no hymn to the youth, as people thought. It is completely the opposite."

Who knows what they were under the influence of, but when Zutaut saw Sixx 2 nights later, he claims he witnessed a knife and fork rise off the table and stick into the ceiling. He told Nikki, “There is no more 'Shout With The Devil.' He says he truly believed that Nikki had unknowingly tapped into something evil, and it was on the verge of seriously hurting him.

After that supposed incident, the album and song was called “Shout At The Devil.”  The critics hated the record, but Crue fans love it and it went 4X platinum.

Or maybe not…he also had this to say about the song's lyrical content on the band's official website:

“Some of the lyrics were written when I was out of it. There's the words: 'Someday you will find me/ Caught beneath a landslide. That's probably as psychedelic as I'll ever get. It means different things when I'm in different moods.  But some of the words are about nothing.  When I'm in a bad mood being caught beneath a landslide is like being suffocated.”

After Noel's abrupt departure from the band in August 2009, this became the last original song Oasis performed live together.  The rest of the members will be continuing on but under a different name and plan a new release this summer.

From 1996, this is “Champagne Supernova” from Oasis.