Beetlejuice was born with microcephaly, which gives him his small head relative to his small body. On the October 2, 2007, broadcast of The HowardStern Show, Jerry O'Connell revealed that he knew Beetlejuice while he was growing up. O'Connell's mother was Beetlejuice's special education teacher at PS 31 in Jersey City, NJ, and Beetlejuice was such a good student that he did special work as her "assistant".
Career
Beetlejuice made his debut on The Howard Stern Show in 1999, making an appearance with Frank "Third Degree" Burns, another little person. Beetlejuice sang "This Is Beetle", also known as "The Beetlejuice Song", on The Howard Stern Show in late 2004. Stern Show producer Richard Christy recorded the song, wrote music to accompany Beetlejuice's raw vocals, and then engineered it into the full song. The key lyrics to the song are, "This is Beetle, he's bad as can. He knows he's the best." The song, which Beetlejuice created spontaneously in the recording studio, has been covered by the rock group Staind, who included the song on special editions of their album Chapter V. On September 19, 2005, Blues Traveler played their version of "This Is Beetle" on The Howard Stern Show. Initially, Stern was unable to broadcast this recording on his Sirius Satellite Radio program because CBS Radio owned the copyright to all of Stern's shows from K-Rock. Stern and his production staff recreated many of the more popular segments from his days on K-Rock, but attempts to recreate "This Is Beetle" were unsuccessful. However, in May 2006, Stern, Sirius, and CBS reached an agreement to sell the rights for all his K-Rock broadcasts to Sirius, thus enabling Stern to play the song. There was also a controversy around the share of potential profits from the song, and Beetlejuice's manager at the time, Sean Rooney, got into an argument with Gary Dell'Abate, the executive producer of The Howard Stern Show, regarding the percentage share of the profits between Beetlejuice and Christy. In 2002, Beetlejuice appeared in rapper N.O.R.E.'s music video for the song "Grimey" and was featured on three songs on the hip-hop group Smut Peddlers' 2001 debut album, Porn Again, on the tracks "Beetlejuice Intro", "Pimpology by Beetlejuice", and "Beetlejuice Outtakes" on Rawkus Records.
