Tommy Lee strapped a pedometer to his shoe for a 2-hour Mötley Crüe show. The answer: 13.3 miles. That's why he eats whatever he wants and never gains weight. Drumming isn't just music — it's the most athletic thing in rock.
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At 1:42:30 · chapter starts 1:39:40
The origin story of Tommy's wild drum setups starts with his father — a mechanic who built drum risers, lighting rigs, and homemade pyrotechnics in their residential backyard, filling pipes with gunpowder and creating mushroom clouds while neighbors called the fire department. That DIY fearlessness ran in the family. Decades of escalating stage contraptions followed, each year wilder than the last, until the Crucifly: a roller coaster that travels from the front of the stage all the way to the back of the arena while Tommy plays drums upside down, spinning as it goes. The engineering challenges were enormous — gravity reverses the direction of force on every stroke, pedals fall open without springs, hi-hats won't close. Tommy solved each problem iteratively. The nine-minute ride ends with him sucking oxygen from a bottle while Mick Mars plays guitar solo. Joe calls it the most athletic thing in all of music.
Before Mötley Crüe could afford professional production, Tommy Lee's mechanic dad drilled out wooden blocks, wired in electrical prongs, and filled pipes with gunpowder to make homemade pyrotechnics in the backyard. Neighbors called the fire department. Dad loved every second of it.
Tommy Lee attached a pedometer to his shoe during a 2-hour Mötley Crüe show and discovered he covers 13.3 miles, which explains why he has weighed the same since high school.
Reggae didn't emerge from thin air — it was built layer by layer from mento in the 1940s, ska in the late 1950s, and rocksteady in the mid-1960s. Each stage absorbed new influences, from transistor radios picking up Miami R&B to the distinctive 2-and-4 rhythmic accent that defines the genre.
Before hip-hop existed, Jamaican DJs were already doing it. Electricity spreading across Jamaica enabled mobile 'sound systems,' and DJs developed toasting — speaking and singing over recorded music — a tradition that DJ Kool Herc brought from Kingston to the Bronx at age 12.
Joe Higgs is reggae's great unsung hero. This Kingston musician took teenage Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer under his wing and taught them how to sing, write songs, and make music — at a time when most artists would have focused on their own careers. Without him, the Wailers probably just would have sucked.
Reggae archivist Roger Steffens' analogy says it all: Bob Marley was reggae's Martin Luther King Jr., making the music universally palatable; Peter Tosh was its Malcolm X, inserting fierce militant political energy. Together, they gave the Wailers a depth no single voice could achieve alone.
King Tubby built his own hardware from cast-off recording gear to strip vocals and create dubbed-out instrumental reggae — essentially inventing electronic music in Kingston before Kraftwerk did it in Germany. The dubplate he created became the raw material for DJs to toast over, seeding hip-hop.
Two days before the 1976 Smile Jamaica anti-violence concert, gunmen shot Bob Marley in the chest and shoulder, shot Rita Marley, and wounded two others. He showed up and played anyway. The concert had already drawn accusations that Marley was a tool of the PNP government — a charge that frustrated him deeply.
Peter Tosh's killer was a man Tosh had taken in after prison, giving him shelter and food. The man repaid that generosity by holding Tosh hostage, torturing him for money, and shooting him in the head. It is one of the most brutal betrayals in music history.
The Windrush Generation brought Caribbean music to London after World War II, and reggae's 2-and-4 rhythm lodged itself deep in British culture — giving birth to ska bands like The Specials, pop acts like UB40, and even punk. Johnny Rotten was a reggae fan, and Public Image Limited has the dub influence to prove it.
Reggaetón didn't come from nowhere. It emerged from underground Spanish-language reggae-rap scenes in Panama and Puerto Rico, drawing directly on Jamaican reggae's rhythms and attitude. The line from Kingston to Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance is a straight one.
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