"Are you on anything?"

Courtney Love pauses suddenly from her simultaneous sewing, smoking, and theorizing about how the only way to be successful by the age of 25 is to forget that you have parents and grills me about the contents of my bloodstream.

In 2008, Kings of Leon wondered if they'd ever be as popular at home as they were over-seas. In 2009 they got their answer. But as Caleb Followill and family celebrate their victory, they're also learning they need to be careful what they wish for.

Radiohead are the most important band in the world! Nirvana killed off hair metal! Lady Gaga's music sucks!

Many hold these truths to be self-evident. We don't.

We poke holes in rock's greatest myths. Read our take -- then argue back in the comments boards.

CLICK HERE FOR OUR ROCK MYTHS SECTION!

During the spring of 1994, while the Flaming Lips were barnstorming across America, convincing radio programmers and their own label that a brain-fryingly weird pop tune, "She Don't Use Jelly," from their album Transmissions From the Satellite Heart, could be a hit, I was engaged in a middle-class rite of passage, backpacking across Europe.

You haven't really tasted death until you've been inches away from an ax swung by Eddie Vedder.

It's midnight on Manhattan's Lower East Side, and the apple-cheeked guitarist in the baggy tank top doesn't know what's coming. "Yeah, we've got another show in Brooklyn in a couple days," brags Apple Cheeks to Dominic, a skinny blond Englishman in a black leather jacket. It's early summer and the two are standing outside the front door of a small club/bakery called Cake Shop.