In An Industry Full of Jokes Here Are Some of The Music World’s Best Aprils Fools Gags

While you could argue that the entire music industry is one big joke, it seems that on April 1 everyone involved really ups the dumb ass ante. Over the years a number of albums, releases and incidents (deliberately or otherwise) have become massive thigh slappers. We look back at some of the biggest.

Elvis Presley Becomes an Actor
On April 1 1956, at Hollywood’s Paramount Studios, Elvis Presley was handed a screen test and asked to act the role of Jimmy Curry in a scene from The Rainmaker. The cinema world has never fully recovered.

John Lennon Discovers Timothy Leary and Starts Tripping Hard
On April 1, 1966 Lennon bought a copy of Timothy Leary's The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book Of The Dead. The book's introduction; "When in doubt, relax, turn off your mind, float downstream," captured Lennon's imagination and became the first line of “Tomorrow Never Knows”. The joke is that this line alone probably started the punk movement.

The Bay City Rollers' Get Their Own TV Series
In 1975 somebody at Granada TV thought it would be a good Aprils Fools Day ‘laff’ to give Scottish glam band/'lads' the Bay City Rollers their own kids television show. Tartan teenaged frenzy ensued as the lovable larrikins from Edinburgh ‘mucked about’ and sung some tunes.

The Short Guy from Simon and Garfunkel Buys a Soccer Team
On this day in 1978, the Philadelphia Fury made their debut against a Washington team at Veterans Stadium and were thrashed 3-0. The team was owned by Paul Simon, Mick Jagger, Peter Frampton, James Taylor and others who had too much money. The real joke was the team itself and in their two year existence the Fury didn’t win more than a handful of games.

Somebody Pulls the Power on the Buzzcocks' First Ever Gig
Call it a student prank but during their first ever gig in 1976 at the Bolton Institute Of Technology, the Buzzcocks set was cut short when someone pulled the power after only three songs.

David Lee Roth Goes ‘Diamond Dave’ Full Time
On this day 31-years ago, singer David Lee Roth shocked the rock world by announcing that he was leaving Van Halen to pursue a solo career. Though Van Halen were on the back of another successful tour Diamond Dave had tasted some solo success with the release of platinum-selling four-song EP that included hits “California Girls” and “Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody.” Joke songs that were to be the highlight of the rest of a joke-ridden career.

The Kings of Leon Open For U2
In 2005 during the first leg of their Vertigo World tour, U2 appeared at the Arrowhead Sports Arena in Anaheim, Southern California, with Kings Of Leon as the opening act. Thousands of people paid money to witness this. That’s a lot of Aprils Fools.

Alanis Morissette Bumps Her Profile With ‘My Humps’
In 2007 Morissette released a tongue-in-cheek cover of The Black Eyed Peas's extremely annoying tracak 'My Humps'. Recorded in a slow, mournful, Tori Amos-like voice and accompanied only by a piano, the song and the YouTube video received over 15 million views and revived a career which at that stage had become one bad joke.