The Funniest People in Music, Volume 3: 250 Anecdotes

Some Samples: • Rolling Stones Keith Richard and Ron Wood attended a party hosted by Dudley Moore and Peter Cook at the Cobden Working Men's Club in London. The party was upstairs, over a bar, and so when Mr. Richard and Mr. Wood felt like getting a pint, they went downstairs. Mr. Richard talked with some of the people in the bar, and one of them asked, "What do you do?" Mr. Richard replied, "I'm in a band." "Which one?" "The Rolling Stones." "Oh, yeah. I think I've heard of them." • Tom Mathers, the founder of the Mathers Fund, learned the hard way the truth of these words: "If you find a great growth company, don't sell it just because it gets a little pricey — you may never get back in again." Back in the 1960s, he and his wife wanted to buy a piano. He owned shares of stock in Disney, and since he thought that the Disney stock was pricey, he decided to sell his Disney stock and use the money to buy the piano. Over the years, of course, the price of Disney stock rose higher and higher and higher, and because he had sold his Disney stock, he lost out on all that growth in the price of Disney stock. As you would expect, he sometimes looks at the piano in his living room and complains, "That's the most expensive d*mn piano on the face of the planet!" • Jazz violinist Joe Venuti used to go out with his bassist, Irving Edelman, and eat Italian food with him after they had finished performing. He also played a practical joke on Mr. Edelman by putting a little bag of sand in his bass after each performance, so that the bass got heavier and heavier. Mr. Venuti didn't explain the joke until Mr. Edelman came to him and said that he was going to quit because all the Italian food he had been eating had caught up to him and it was getting too difficult for him to carry his bass.