Incubus Recall Pornographic Fliers While Playing ‘Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?’
Incubus are celebrating the 20th anniversary of Make Yourself with a massive North American tour. With Incubus experiencing such a lengthy and successful career, we invited singer Brandon Boyd and guitarist Mike Einziger to prove and disprove what’s written about them on Wikipedia.
It’s true that Boyd used to design concert fliers for Incubus while in high school, using pornographic images to promote the band. Predictably, this got the band into some trouble. “We were passing these things out at other high schools and people’s parents started complaining,” Einziger recalls. “We’d get these voice messages — angry parents [whose] kids had brought these fliers home. We just thought it was hilarious.”
It’s also true that the pipa (a Chinese lute) heard on “Aqueous Transmission” was gifted to Enziger by guitar legend Steve Vai. It turned out to become on of Vai’s favorite songs, though he had no idea his pipa was featured in the track. It’s not true, however, that “Drive” was originally titled “I’ll Be There” and was changed after Incubus discovered a Jackson Five song by the same name.
“Megalomaniac” was indeed banned from daytime rotation at MTV. The song’s political tones were considered “unpatriotic” by supporters of then-popular president George W. Bush. “‘Megalomaniac’ is weirdly prophetic,” Boyd says. “We kind of wrapped back around and came back to an even worse, more dangerous megalomaniacal figure.”
Watch the Incubus edition of ‘Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?’ above and click here for the full list of Make Yourself 20th anniversary tour dates.
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