Behind the drama: VH1s voyeuristic biographical series turns 5

Kirk Baird

Monday, Aug. 26, 2002 | 8:28 a.m.

Want to know why Billy Joel's marriage to Christie Brinkley failed?

Curious if Motley Crue was as wild offstage as you imagined during the band's heyday?

Stumped by Dennis DeYoung's departure from Styx?

VH1's "Behind the Music" has all these answers and more.

Beginning tonight the music confessional is celebrating its milestone with a weeklong schedule of "best-of" episodes, starting with "Most Shocking Moments," which includes Ozzy Osbourne's decapitation of a live dove during a meeting with record-label executives.

Other "classic" clips culled from "Behind the Music's" 170 episodes are included in four other specials: "Heartbreaks and Breakups," "Riches to Rags," "Near-Death Experiences," "Raunchiest Revelations" and "Gossip and Rumors."

The music network's anniversary celebration culminates Sunday in a two-hour special "Behind the Music" episode on veteran rockers Aerosmith.

This is somehow fitting. For much of its nearly 30-year history, members of Aerosmith reveled in a lifestyle of excess and moral abandonment. And few programs provide as many of those stories as "Behind the Music," including all other biography-type shows that followed suit.

"I think it's had an impact on the reporting of pop culture in general," said Jim Forbes, who has been "the voice" to all but one episode of "Behind the Music."

"When you see such venerable print institutions as the Wall Street Journal, Time and Newsweek doing front-page stories on the show and the culture and the phenomenon it's created, (that) says it all," Forbes said.

During "Behind the Music's" five-year run, the show has become a sort of how-to guide to making it in and surviving the pitfalls of the music business. Usually these lessons are at the expense of the performers or the groups featured.

For example, anyone who has watched more than a few episodes of "Behind the Music" should know by now that: 1) Drugs are bad. 2) Rock stars who sell their soul for stardom will spend years regretting that decision.

3) What goes up will almost unfailingly come crashing down. 4) If you see a rock star boarding your plane, immediately exit and take another flight.

But those are only the series' surface points, said George Moll, a "Behind the Music" executive producer since the show first aired in August 1997.

"People like to paint Behind the Music' with a broad brush stroke, that it's a template of a rocket rise, a meteoric fall and five minutes of rehab," Moll said during a recent phone interview from his office in Ojai, Calif. "The fact of the matter is, if you look at the history (of the program) as a whole, a lot of the stories are just about determination.

"R.E.M. is a great example. Nothing dramatic happened to them, but everybody loves their story of a group of guys getting together and succeeding."

Actually, there is some drama in R.E.M.'s history. Former drummer Bill Berry suffered an aneurysm in 1995 and eventually retired from the band. And the group's guitarist, Peter Buck, was arrested and charged in early 2001 for drunkenness on an aircraft, damaging airline property and assaulting two crew members while on a flight to London. Buck was acquitted of the charges in April.

But R.E.M.'s episode is considered tame by "Behind the Music's" standards, demonstrates the extremism of rock 'n' roll.

The travails, trials and triumphs of these performer's lives are the essence of the show's success.

"We didn't invent the storytelling form. The Greeks did," Moll said. "We gravitate toward the drama because that's going to make for the best story. And, you want to root for people."

In an interview with the Las Vegas Sun nearly 2 1/2 years ago, forgotten teen idol Leif Garrett said his appearance on "Behind the Music" had a profound impact on his career.

"I didn't even realize the impact that it would have. It did jump-start things like crazy," Garrett said. "The timing was perfect because I was already working on stuff."

The show also gave the actor-singer an opportunity to set the record straight. Garrett was behind the wheel when a car accident left a friend paralyzed.

During Garrett's "Behind the Music" episode, he broke down while reliving the events of that day and when he met his friend, Roland, for the first time in 20 years.

"For me, it was an exorcism. I needed to get the truth out about a lot of things. The meeting between my friend Roland and I ... that really took such a weight off my shoulders that I didn't realize was there; one that was so detrimental to my life."

But not all artists view the show in a positive light.

In an interview with the Las Vegas Sun earlier this summer, Jethro Tull's frontman Ian Anderson said he was angered by, what he called, "Behind the Music's" glorification of rock 'n' roll excesses and near-death experiences.

"It's always easy, if you're a 16-year-old today, to think, 'Oh, that's OK to be like the guys in Aerosmith. You can go nuts when you're young and do all the drugs and do all this stuff and then you nearly die,' " Anderson said. " 'And then you quit the drugs, then you come back and you're really famous and successful again.'

"Well, that's kind of a dangerous message. I think there's a danger in glorifying this kind of rock 'n' roll-lifestyle peer group that seems to exist."

And in a recent interview from her home in Los Angeles, Kathy Valentine, bassist for the Go-Go's, said the band's "Behind the Music" failed to tell the group's complete story. Instead, the show concentrated on the conflict, drug use, wild parties and sexual escapades of the all-girl group.

"The nature of that show and the basis of its popularity is how it dwells on the negative and how the things that tear a band down and apart," Valentine said. "What 'Behind the Music' didn't show was how much of a good time we had and how much we really liked doing what we did. It just isn't in its nature to show that kind of stuff."

Still, performers continue to flock to the program for two simple reasons:

It is good promotion.

For example: When Everclear's episode premiered Dec. 12, 2000, the band's album "Songs for an American Movie -- Vol. 2: Good Time for a Bad Attitude" sold 19,551 albums. The following week that number jumped to 25,944. Two weeks later the album sold 39,862 copies.

The show gives the recording artists an opportunity to give an account of what happened in their careers.

"A lot of people have been very reluctant (to appear on the show), and understandably," Moll said. "But we've demonstrated over time that we can handle these shows fairly.

"Most artists have said ... it's almost therapeutic."