Day Jobs

The old adage, “practice makes perfect,” is certainly applicable in the world of rock ‘n’ roll. Although many musicians were fortunate to hone their craft at an early age and began supporting themselves with this talent in their late teens, there were also scores of artists who had to punch in at the daily grind of a “day job” while they found their musical chops. Just learning that your favorite artists toiled a part of their early lives away in the service industry or some blue collar occupation should make every aspiring musician reading this feel like their break will be right around the corner.

Since the rock attitude is based partly on the “look” of an artist, it’s no surprise some musicians have spent time working in the salon industry. When he wasn’t managing a drive-in restaurant, keyboardist Paul Revere of Paul Revere and the Raiders was a barber in Boise, Idaho. Chuck Berry earned a degree in cosmetology, and when not working at the GM auto factory, he became a hairdresser and beautician. The Cranberries’ drummer Feargal Lawler also teased hair for customers, and mousse-mad rocker Bobby Dall of Poison was a cosmetologist. Blondie’s Debbie Harry worked as a beautician when she wasn’t occupied in her other profession.

Debbie’s other profession entailed donning a bunny costume and serving cocktails in a Playboy club. Other musicians have certainly served their share of meals in the restaurant industry over the years. While the B-52’s Fred Schneider shuffled plates at Eldorado, a vegetarian restaurant in Athens, Georgia, his fellow bandmate Cindy Wilson was dispensing milkshakes at the local Kress department store. Also serving up the cool stuff was a teenage Joe Perry of Aerosmith at the Anchorage, an ice cream parlor in Sunapee, New Hampshire. Susan Dallion, otherwise known as Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie & The Banshees waitressed at an establishment in Kent, England. Over in Cornwall, folk artist Donovan did the same. Down in London, Annie Lennox of Eurythmics worked the tables at Pippins restaurant, and back in the States, Cass Elliot of The Mamas & The Papas made sure the meals came out of the kitchen piping hot. In New York, Madonna toiled at a Times Square donut shop when she wasn’t modeling. On the left coast, Huey Lewis ran a yogurt business in the Bay Area, while down in LA, both Stevie Nicks and Rickie Lee Jones took customers’ orders. Back in the kitchen, lead guitarist Will Sergeant of Echo & The Bunnymen whipped up cuisine as a restaurant chef. The plates always piled up, so Carlos Santana stepped up to the sink as a dishwasher in a diner, and Little Richard fit in a little scouring in a bus station restaurant, when he wasn’t selling snake oil in a traveling medicine show. In Richmond, Virginia a young singer by the name of Pat Benatar put in time at the waitress station, as well as, another support position.

Pat spent a few hours doing the unheralded tasks of an administrative staffer. In her case, she was a bank clerk. Also participating in banking clerical duties was keyboardist Martin Gore of Depeche Mode, while his bandmate, Andy Fletcher, shuffled papers in the insurance industry. Fellow Brits like Elton John fetched tea for his bosses at a music-publishing firm, while pop heartthrob Cliff Richard scrutinized invoices as a credit control clerk in a lamp factory, and The Who’s John Entwistle eyeballed the bottom line as a tax clerk. New York reaped its share of support staff with Suzanne Vega as an office receptionist, David Cassidy as a mailroom clerk in a textile factory, Lou Reed as an accounting typist for his dad’s firm, and Eddie Money as a filing clerk for the NYPD’s police academy.

Some musicians would feel just too cramped working in those office conditions, so maybe that’s why Joe Cocker chose the hands-on chores of a fitter with the British Gas Board. Noel Gallagher of Oasis also worked with British Gas, while Billy J. Kramer, sans his Dakotas, grunted as an apprentice fitter with the British Rail System. Several rockers worked construction sites like Bo Diddley, Eric Clapton, Geoff Barrow of Portishead, and keyboardist Liam Howlett of Prodigy. Tapping nails as a carpenter’s helper, John Mellencamp also moonlighted at his local telephone company. And while Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band would describe his part-time job as a painter qualified as art, all four members of the band Bush were just flat-out painters.

When the whistle blew, some musicians headed home from the factory after a hard day’s work. Until that grateful sound rang out, Fats Domino was springing into action at a bed-making factory, and Johnny Cash steered his career path through an auto plant. Brothers William and Jim Reid of The Jesus and Mary Chain labored in a cheese-packing plant and an aerospace facility respectively. Drummer John Steel of the Animals also hung out at an aircraft factory. Presumably relishing the blood, Ozzy Osbourne had a grand ol’ time working in a slaughterhouse plant. Other musicians who worked the line at the plant were able to fit in other occupations along the way. Elvis Presley worked in both a tool factory and an upholstery factory but left time in his early years to usher people to their seats in a movie theater and to drive a truck for an electric company. Both Howard Jones and Graham Parker found time to punch in at a factory, but Howard also taught piano full-time, while Graham made a living at picking tomatoes.

Speaking of tomatoes, wait one cotton-pickin’ minute! That’s a good reminder of how a handful of artists spent their time out on the farm. Specifically, Carl Perkins was bent over at one time, picking cotton for a living. Iain Harvie of Del Amitri was a farmhand, while lead singer Lemmy of Motorhead broke horses for a quick stretch. And down at the farmers’ market, Chubby Checker helped to sell off chickens from the coop. Somewhere down a dusty Texas road, Bob Dylan was moving on to the next town with a travelling carnival.

Some jobs don’t require a great deal of skill, just a healthy dose of tenacity and dependability. For example, window cleaning. Van Morrison probably had plenty of time to think about his musical horizons as he squee-geed panes in Ireland. Kurt Cobain of Nirvana was just required to lift a lot of equipment in his stint as a roadie for the group The Melvins. Mops figured prominently in the lives of guys like Big Country’s Bruce Watson, when he cleaned nuclear subs, as well as for Paul Westerberg of the Replacements and Kris Kristofferson, both of whom were janitors. Stephen Malkmus of Pavement got to walk around with a walkie-talkie when he was a security guard at the Whitney Museum in New York. And Bryan Ferry must’ve felt pretty independent driving a van around London. Bryan, however, used his noodle a bit more with jobs as an antiques restorer and another interesting occupation looming in his future.

Mr. Ferry went on to become a ceramics teacher at an all-girls’ school. Yes, the hallowed halls of education beckoned several aspiring musicians to the heads of their classrooms. In New York, tongue-wagging Gene Simmons of Kiss kept the students focused on the front, and in England, Sting pontificated before a classroom of children under the age of 9. Ian Dury of Ian Dury & The Blockheads lectured at the Canterbury College of Art while next door in Scotland, lead singer Ricky Ross of Deacon Blues taught children with behavioral difficulties. And sticking close to her favorite subject, Sheryl Crow strummed the guitar and taught music to elementary students in St. Louis.

Several other public sector jobs have been filled by musicians over the years such as Keith Richard of the Rolling Stones, whose stint at his local post office lasted only four days. Happy Mondays’ lead singer Shaun Ryder lasted a little longer in his postal position. Over at the hospital, lead vocalist Philip Oakey of Human League pushed around carts as a porter. And down in the morgue, Jonathan Davis of Korn was cutting up as an assistant coroner for Kern County, California.

A good deal of smarts is needed to become a part of the technical world of engineers, architects, and computer operators. Brainy musicians like Tom Scholz of Boston, who produced computer product designs for Poloroid, made up part of this crowd. Heaven 17’s Ian Craig Marsh and Martin Ware were early operators in the computer age. At the Elizabeth Arden cosmetic factory, young Elvis Costello was a computer technician. Drummer Dave Rowntree of Blur and Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads also tinkered in the computer field before joining their respective bands. Over at the architectural firm, Ray Davies of The Kinks pondered the blueprints for his future, while John Denver sketched out plans as a draftsman. Robin Guthrie of The Cocteau Twins made a strike at being an oil refinery engineer, and Seal sparked his career as an electrical engineer.

Speaking of Mr. Seal, he also found time to follow another path as a clothes designer in London. The thriving city’s fashion world also saw The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones working in a department store, Queen’s Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor selling their line of clothes in a stall in Kensington Market, and Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders working in Malcolm McLaren’s punk shop Sex, selling her own leather handbags on the side. Up north, fashion was anything but Garbage to lead singer Shirley Manson as she once worked in an Edinburgh clothing shop, and Jamiroquai’s lead singer Jay Kay got into Scottish couture by hand-making kilts. Across the Atlantic, the screeching pixie Cyndi Lauper just had fun behind the counter of Screaming Mimi’s clothes shop in New York. Not-so-fashion-conscious Sinead O’Connor once made a living by dressing up as a French maid in order to deliver Kiss-O-Grams. And the world of fashion was literally discarded by Hole’s Courtney Love as she stripped her way through clubs across the U.S.

Fashion has always heavily influenced the world of advertising, and a smattering of musicians made a brief impression in this field as well. With a keen sense of flamboyance, David Bowie first lent his creativity to the commercial culture as an ad agency artist. Drummer Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones also laid out his designs at an advertising firm, and Robert Palmer was simply irresistible with his graphics ability.

The acting stage beckoned a few musicians with a paycheck before they established themselves on the rock stages of the world. Trained as a theatre actor, Fine Young Cannibals’ lead singer Roland Gift had not given much thought to fronting a band before he was suddenly thrust before the international spotlight singing the hit song “She Drives Me Crazy.” Not so with musicians Lenny Kravitz and Eagle-Eye Cherry, both of whom played in bands while they acted in bit parts on television (the two of them at different times worked with Bill Cosby) and in commercials. Starting out as a child actor gave some musicians the comfort of being in front of an audience at an early age, like Phil Collins, who did theatre work and had a cameo in The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” when he was a young teenager. Britain’s ITV soap opera “Coronation Street” featured child actor Peter Noone, lead singer of Herman’s Hermits. And a very youthful, non-angst-ridden, Alanis Morissette seemed happy to take a gunging on camera in the hit Nickelodeon program “You Can’t Do That On Television.”

Performing well-crafted songs is one thing. To be a well-rounded musician, many artists choose to write their own songs. Naturally, the field of journalism might be an ideal launching pad for several musicians to tweak their lyrical inspirations. Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits wrote for the established Yorkshire Evening Post. Unfortunately, bassist Mike Mills of R.E.M. was stuck in the sorting end of the newspaper world when he accepted a job as an insert operator. Musicians writing about music can help bring about an appreciation for the craft, and Pet Shop Boy, Neil Tennant, went so far as to edit his own pop magazine. Other novice journalists who focused on the music world in their writings were Patti Smith, Jimmy Buffett, Morrissey, and Bob Geldof of The Boomtown Rats.

Out of all the prior occupations filled by the artists above, it is only an assumption that the next best thing to playing music for a living would be to stand around a shop all day and get paid to listen to music. That’s right, become a record store employee. A library of songs are right there to capture your imagination and spark those creative juices. Former record shop assistants like Harry Casey, aka K.C., of K.C. & the Sunshine Band, R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, and Steve Marriott of The Small Faces could probably attest to the fact that out of all of the day jobs mined by musicians over the years, this one came pretty darn close to the real deal.

© 2000 Ned Truslow

Basic Food Groups (Pt. 1)

“Attention shoppers. Be sure to check out aisle 6 to help inspire you in the naming of your next band.” Judging by a perusal of the CD bins at your local record store, that’s one way rockers seem to have solved the name game over the years. So stop fretting over what to call your new group. Just head to the nearest supermarket. Let those automatic doors slide open. Feel the cool breeze of that over-modulated air-conditioning system wash over you. Grab a nearby cart, the one with the stuck right front wheel. Let’s tour the produce section. There’s bound to be inspiration amongst the bounty of fruits on hand.

First up, you’ll find different kinds of apples. One named Fiona Apple was born Fiona Apple Maggart and decided to just use the middle name passed down from her grandmother. This Apple blossomed around June 1996 when she released her debut album “Tidal.” Filled with angry, slice-of-angst imagery, the moody song “Criminal” stood out from the rest of the bunch, climbing the chart grapevine to number 21 in the U.S. This particular Apple has a tendency to be tangy and bitter, especially during the year 1997 when she gave a bit of a spoiled rotten Apple speech at the MTV Video Music Awards.

The Silver Apples are rarer and much harder to spot. Their seeds were planted in New York in 1967, and this duo group played melodies with a science fiction bent. Lots of oscillator tones and bombarding bass pulses. Along with those noises, they paired spoken poetry with lyrics about things like teen phlegm, which signaled a very odd apple indeed. These whacked-out hippie Apples were re-discovered in the mid-90s when one-half of the band, Simeon, toured with a new partner, and then, later, the former bandmates re-released some of their previous tracks.

Around the Denver area, you might be able to find a rare quartet which originally referred to themselves simply as The Apples in 1993. But perhaps wanting to show they had ripened in their sound by 1995, they renamed themselves Apples In Stereo and released a catchy album called “Fun Trick Noisemaker.”

The same variety of inspiration can be found amongst the grape family. Rooted firmly in the mid-1960’s San Francisco Bay area, Moby Grape cranked out a cluster of psychedelic, Summer-Of-Love tunes resulting in their first two albums cracking the top 30 in the U.S. Like many a grape family, this one mixed genus in its personnel line-up over the years, but always retained its original Moby Grape name.

Up in British Columbia, Canada, some grapes sprang forth in 1983 with the Steinbeck moniker, Grapes of Wrath. This quartet cluster wasn’t the least bit angry though and presented jangly folk-pop tunes reminiscent of early Elton John compositions. Releasing several albums throughout the ‘80s and early ‘90s, this group had a hit single in Canada with “Peace Of Mind.” Incidentally, this particular grape family made a jump to the spice aisle in 1994, when three of its members formed a band called Ginger. Overall.

In Manchester, England, Happy Mondays’ lead singer Shaun Ryder was plagued with drug addiction, and his band was forced to break up. The not-so-happy Ryder battled out his affliction, and in 1995, cultivated his musical vineyard for a new group of bandmates known as Black Grape. Happy once again, this funky, satirical, house party quintet struck the British charts with their optimistic debut album “It’s Great When You’re Straight…Yeah.”

Amongst the lemon bin, you’re likely to find an old, unusually sugary-sweet band from the 1960s called The Lemon Pipers. Grown around the Cincinnati area in 1967, this group fancied themselves a psychedelic force, but when their label was about to drop them from their roster of acts, the Pipers accepted an offer to record the bubblegum classic, “Green Tambourine.” The song went to number 1 on the Billboard charts in February 1968. The lemon bandmates swallowed this bitter pill, produced a few more saccharine songs, and then tried, unsuccessfully, to revive their career with their own material. By 1969, this particular fruit was no more.

The Lemon Drops followed the same growth trajectory in Chicago over the years between 1967 and 1969, but to a lesser degree of success. They stayed true to their psychedelic reflections with singles like “I Live in the Springtime” and the anti-Vietnam War song, “It Happens Everyday.” But without wider exposure, this fruit band withered and dried up by 1969.

True to their lemon roots, The Lemonheads, burst forth in the mid-‘80s with an acidic, pulpy, punky, hard rock approach. Led by singer, songwriter, and guitarist Evan Dando, this Boston-based group changed its personnel over the years but always seemed to deliver straightforward punk-pop and had moderate success covering tunes like Suzanne Vega’s “Luka” and Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson.” The Lemonheads spun off the vine around the early ‘90s when Dando wrestled with a severe drug addiction. Success for this fruit band was sweet but short-lived.

Seedless describes the pulp of the banana fruit, and suffice to say, aside from the vocal range possessed by the members of the 1980s band Bananarama, this fruit group did not contain any other seeds in the talent bin. But vocal harmonies proved to be enough, because with the help of hit producer/writers Tony Swain and Steve Jolley, the Bananarama trio released a slew of top ten hits in the United Kingdom as well as the number 9 ranked hit “Cruel Summer” in the U.S. The pinnacle of success came in September 1986, when the girls’ remake of the song “Venus” topped America’s charts.

Wheeling the cart over to the berry section, we find a variety of bands that have snatched inspiration from this delectable fruit. The biggest wake-up call to the psychedelic ‘60s seemed to ring out from the Strawberry Alarm Clock. Planted in the Los Angeles area in 1966, the band members were inspired by the Beatles’ song “Strawberry Fields Forever,” both in its name and its psychedelic allusions. The band released three albums over the next three years, producing the number 1 single “Incense and Peppermints,” but by 1971, the Strawberry’s brand of trippy songwriting was yesterday’s news, and the group went their separate ways.

Another type of berry sprang up in 1971. Formed by Eric Carmen, who would later have a solo soft-rock hit with “All By Myself,” The Raspberries clustered around the Ohio region and began performing Beatlesque melodies with memorable hooks. Their debut album featured a “scratch-and-sniff” raspberry sticker on its cover, and the first single off the record, “Go All The Way,” went to No. 5 on the U.S. charts. By the mid-‘70s, the band members gave Eric the raspberry, and struck out on their own, less pop-filled frontiers.

The most powerful berry of the bunch has to be The Cranberries. This Irish quartet perfected their Celtic trance-rock throughout the early ‘90s around the Dublin, Limerick and Cork region and were led by the tart trills of vocalist Dolores O’Riordan. Their debut album, “Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?,” harvested the top ten single “Linger,” and the band saw further success with songs like “Zombie,” “Salvation,” and “Free To Decide.” Their 1999 album, “Bury The Hatchet,” helped the legacy of The Cranberries branch into the 21st century.

Not usually associated with being a sweet bunch, a group of Germans formed a progressive electronic-rock outfit in 1967 Berlin with the juicy name Tangerine Dream. Fostering a cult of devoted followers, these sequencer craftsmen have pushed their fruity band through droning-industrial soundscapes to new-age synth-laden instrumentals. Although the initial trio has gone on to produce their own solo projects, Tangerine Dream’s prodigious output of albums, like the early ‘70s masterpieces “Rubycon” and “Ricochet,” still grows as the band reunites in one form or another seemingly every year to produce a new record.

Over in the melon section, be sure to sample the firm, hit-charting quintet of the early ‘90s known as Blind Melon. Forming in Los Angeles, the band was quickly signed to a record deal and became widely known for its video of the song “No Rain,” which featured a girl in a bee suit. The group’s eponymous debut album went to #3 in the U.S. before this melon splattered off the music radar by the late ‘90s.

Speaking of splattered fruit, be sure to watch your step around the Smashing Pumpkins in this aisle. This monster alternative hard rock band defined what other so-called alternative rockers should’ve aspired to be in the ‘90s, namely a potpourri stirring of heavy metal, goth, progressive, art, orchestral, pschedelia rock. Led by the now-baldheaded Billy Corgan (whose head, come to think of it, kind of resembles that of a jack-o-lantern), the Pumpkins’ hit the height of lush and layered creativity with the release of their double-disc set “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness,” which debuted at number one on the U.S. charts on November 11, 1995. The band still has not faded from prominence into the next century.

Cherries are certainly a welcome fruit at any time of the year. Back in 1976, a brand of Wild Cherry was formed for a second time, after a misfire career incarnation under that name earlier in the ‘70s. This time around, group leader Bob Parissi wanted to focus on hard rock, but disco was taking root. After continually being harangued by club patrons to play “funky music,” well, the boys did just that. Their hit song, “Play That Funky Music,” went to number one on the Billboard chart for three weeks in September 1976, and the group put out four more chart singles before dropping off the musical vine in 1979.

First performing with a band called The Cherries, and later branching out on her own, Neneh Cherry, born in Sweden as Neneh Mariann Karlsson, pioneered a rap-pop sound that would forge the way for later band sounds of TLC and SWV. Her 1989 hit single, “Buffalo Stance,” off her album “Raw Like Sushi,” hit number 3 on the U.S. charts, and was the high point of this Cherry’s career.

But from one hit Cherry soon came another. Neneh’s step-brother, Eagle-Eye Cherry, blossomed in the mid-to-late ‘90s when he put together a jazzy rock debut album, “Desireless.” The single, “Save Tonight,” charted on many European top ten lists throughout 1998 and finally peaked at number 5 on the U.S. charts in 1999.

Along the cherry aisle, you also might spot an album called “Cherry Alive” which should really be in the plum section. Confusing at first, but understandable once you learn it was released by a band called Eve’s Plum. Formed in New York in 1991, this pop-punk quartet offered alternative hits like “Blue” and “I Want It All” as their pleas to independent radio. These tunes were rewarded with ample airplay until the mid-‘90s when the band’s output began to be seen as a little dried up.

But those plums didn’t fully dry up to be prunes. No, leave that to The Electric Prunes. Their short shelf life debuted in 1967 with this quintet’s release of their 12-track album titled after their band name. A psychedelic song, “I Had Too Much To Dream” charted in the U.S. at #11, and the group went through a major personnel change shortly thereafter. By 1969, this prune had passed.

Over in Ireland, a special strain of prune, known as The Virgin Prunes, were being cultivated around 1978. They broke onto the club scene as one of the first punk bands in the Dublin area. One of the bandmates, Dik Prune, was the brother of another famous Irish musician, U2’s The Edge. Bashing the inference drawn from their name, the band members often appeared on stage partially or completely naked, simulating sexual intercourse with each other. These prunes certainly were not prudes.

Let’s stop with all this fruit. Soon, we’ll see what the rest of the rock supermarket has to offer.

© 2000 Ned Truslow

Let’s Get Spiritual

Many have said that rock ‘n’ roll is the devil’s music. Evil in its manifest form has been singled out in the music’s driving beat, in the lyrics sung either backwards or forwards, and in the lifestyle of drugs and sex that rides shotgun inside many a tour bus. It is a broad generalization that clamps a lock on the entire genre and doesn’t allow for interpretation or insight. Granted many a song, especially those hitting the airwaves these days, isn’t likely to be piped in at the next convocation of cardinals at the Vatican. You’re probably not going to be hearing Eminem’s “Bitch Please, Part 2” blasting out of the Popemobile anytime soon. But even Bob Dylan performed before His Holiness in 1997, so lumping all of rock music into the bad egg basket can be a tad reactionary.

Nevertheless, many popular artists have found that the seedier elements involved in mainstream music are impetus enough to seek a higher calling. For some, that means immersing themselves completely in a new spiritual life and giving up their former rock lives. For others, it’s enough to work both sides of the fence, focusing their talents on the secular and spiritual side of their performance. Some of these musicians have washed away their past without so much of a glance backward. Others have wrestled with their transition in walking some form of godly path.

Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis has arguably wrestled the most with his spiritual conscience. The Louisiana piano prodigy always felt the need to follow a sacred direction, but the lure of rock ‘n’ roll always managed to draw his buckshot attention span into its tumultuous web. His mother, Mamie, wanted her son to stay away from the squalor of show business and enrolled young Jerry into a Texas Bible college when he was in his mid-teens. But, while performing for the Lord at an assembly, Lewis allegedly boogied-up the hymn “My God Is Real” to the point where he was curtly expelled from the institution that night. While he pursued a contract with Sun Records, he also pursued a preacher’s daughter, Dorothy Barton, whom he married at age 16. Not able to toe the straight-and-narrow, Lewis abandoned Dorothy and went back to the clubs.

As his life simultaneously hit highs and lows throughout the 1960s, with bestselling records and three divorces, Jerry felt pangs of guilt, constantly comparing his life with that of his more spiritual cousin, Jimmy Swaggart. After 13 years of marriage ended with his third wife, Myra, in 1970, Lewis swore off women, cigars and alcohol and embraced the calling of the Lord once again. His conviction lasted all of two months. The death of two children and two wives, along with bouts of alcohol abuse plagued him in the decades to come. Poor Jerry seemed to consign himself to the dark side early on in his career. In 1957, during a recording session, he said, “You’ve got to walk and talk with God to go to heaven…I have the devil in me! If I didn’t have, I’d be Christian!”

Little Richard
Another contemporary of Jerry’s also has wrestled with his faith over the years. Richard Penniman bounced from Atlanta to Houston in the early 1950s, virtually creating the sound that would evolve into the very definition of rock ‘n’ roll. After signing with Specialty Records in Los Angeles, Little Richard headed his own band and toured extensively, belting out songs like “Rip It Up” and “The Girl Can’t Help It.” But his buddy, Joe Lutcher, was constantly reminding him that rock ‘n’ roll was evil, and Little Richard was ready for a conversion. According to rock legend, after being warned of his own damnation in a vision and praying to God to save him on a plane with a fiery engine, Little Richard finally renounced the music he had been playing while on tour in Australia. He enrolled in Seventh-Day Adventist courses at the Oakwood Theological College in Alabama and received a bachelor’s degree. Subsequently, he was ordained a minister at the Church of God of the Ten Commandments and began touring the country with Lutcher in the Little Richard Evangelistic Team.

Richard’s record company kept his life alteration a secret for a while, and his mainstream songs continued to sell phenomenally. Little Richard, in the late ‘50s, married a fellow Christian named Ernestine, and recorded gospel records with Quincy Jones. Rock ‘n’ roll beckoned to him again in late 1962, and the reverend Richard was back on tour, playing his boogie hits to appreciative fans. Working with the legends of his day, such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, Little Richard soon fostered a mean drug habit. When he was arrested for homosexual acts in a bus station bathroom, Ernestine divorced him. The narcotics habit spilled over into the 1970s, as he performed sporadically in festivals and package concerts.

Finally, after the death of his brother, Little Richard re-committed his life to the pulpit (this time with the Universal Remnant Church of God), wrote a testimonial autobiography, and said, “If God can save an old homosexual like me, he can save anybody.” While he continued to perform his rock hits well into the turn of the century, he seems to have stayed more ensconced with his religious walk. In his autobiography, he summed up some of his trepidation about secular music. “My true belief about rock ‘n’ roll…is this: I believe this kind of music is demonic…A lot of the beats in music today are taken from voodoo, from the voodoo drums…If you study music in rhythms, like I have, you’ll see that is true. I believe that kind of music is driving people from Christ. It is contagious.”

Al Green
Little Richard isn’t alone in the world of preaching the gospel and leaving time for a little soul strutting. Growing up in a gospel-singing family, Al Green jumped into the world of R&B sounds by the late 1950s with both feet. By the early 1970s, he was garnering top five hits with “Look What You Done For Me,” “You Ought To Be With Me,” and the heavily-covered “Let’s Stay Together.” Around 1973, Al felt the need to seek a higher truth and turned to Christianity for answers. Shortly thereafter, he met Mary Woodson at a concert in New York State. This troubled New Jersey housewife left her husband and children behind, following Green back to his Memphis home, and became his girlfriend. On October 18, 1974, tensions boiled over when she suddenly flung a pot of burning hot grits on Green while he was taking a shower, and then proceeded to fatally shoot herself in the head.

Having already sought religious conviction, this was all Green needed to prompt him to become an ordained pastor. He bought the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Memphis and preached from the pulpit. Still touring and singing his old tunes, Green suffered a bad spill from a stage in Cincinnati in 1979 and became more committed to the Lord. He said, “I realized that I was being disobedient to my calling. I was moving towards God, but I wasn’t moving fast enough. That was God’s way of saying I had to hurry up.” He released several gospel albums throughout the 1980s. By the end of the decade, however, he began performing his classic hits and has continued straddling the fence of spiritual and secular singing ever since.

Sinead O’ Connor
Another ordained figurehead who still grounds her singing career in mainstream rock is the troubled Irish dervish Sinead O’Connor. Signing a record deal at age 17, this emotive and facile singer has led a tumultuous career throughout the 1990s, inciting outrage and stupefaction. Vilified in the press for everything from declining appearances at awards shows to her lack of support of the Gulf War, she effectively shotgunned her rising career into the crapper in 1992 when she tore up a picture of the Pope on “Saturday Night Live.” “Fight the real enemy” she muttered, and producer Lorne Michaels offered, “We were sort of shocked, the way you would be at a house guest pissing on a flower arrangement in the dining room.”

While she was still the critics’ darling, O.Connor’s record sales subsequently dropped, and her personage was relegated to the quirk bin. By 1999, it appeared O’Connor was coming apart at the seams, relinquishing custody of her daughter to the girl’s father and reportedly attempting suicide. To mend the emotional wounds, she strangely turned to the Catholic Church once again. On April 22, 1999, she was ordained as a priest in the dissident Roman Catholic Latin Tridentine church in France. She is now called Mother Bernadette Mary of the Order of Mater Dei. She is supposedly committed to the vow of celibacy. She told Gear magazine, “I prefer having sex with women, I prefer making love with women, I find that sexier. I’m more suited to going out with women. However, I’m celibate and choose to be celibate.”

For O’Connor, the traditional spiritual path associated with the Catholic religion seems to be, well, a bit out of step in her walk. Perhaps, she’s trying to be the most liberal clergywoman around. Check out how this priest talks to her 13-year old son, according to the Gear article. “We ring each other up and use all the insults from ‘South Park’ at each other – ‘a**ramming,’ ‘Uncle F****,’ ‘s***face,’ and “c***sucker.’ It’s great to have that kind of relationship with your son.”

Jeremy Spencer
Religious conviction is a heady thing, especially in Christianity, and many a convert has simply dropped their previous life altogether and wandered off to seek God. For the folks of Fleetwood Mac, this very scenario took place amongst their ranks in 1971. While on tour in Los Angeles, the band’s guitarist, Jeremy Spencer one day simply left his hotel room and never came back. Frantic calls to the local police, the FBI and Interpol yielded no clue of his whereabouts. After two days, everyone learned that Spencer, who had been distraught over his rock lifestyle, had simply boarded a Children of God bus and driven off. This particular faction was a religious sect that later became known as The Family. Journalist Cameron Crowe spotted Spencer on a London street corner, “blank-eyed and selling Children of God books.” Spencer released an album, “Jeremy Spencer and The Children” with his brethren in 1972, followed it up with another band-oriented effort in 1977, then virtually disappeared for about 20 years.

Vanity
Religious cults didn’t figure into the departure from the secular spotlight for the vampy Prince protégé Vanity. The Canadian-born lead singer of Vanity 6 found God after years of heavy drug usage and carnal pleasures, including a brief fling with the Purple One himself. After she was hospitalized for a liver infection brought on by narcotics abuse, Vanity, whose real name is Denise Matthews, became a born-again Christian. She left behind the ripped lingerie, stopped singing “Nasty Girl,” and became a full-fledged evangelist. Now based out of Fremont, California, Denise travels the country as a guest speaker for many Christian-based engagements.

Leon Patillo
After founding keyboardist Gregg Rolie left the group Santana in 1971 to seek other horizons with the band Journey, Leon Patillo joined the Latin-flavored rockers. Singing as lead vocalist on several albums with the group throughout the 1970s, Patillo felt something was missing in his life. The brother of his girlfriend told him about Christianity, and soon, Patillo felt the call of the ministry and quit Santana. He immersed himself in a two-year bible study course and became an ordained preacher. He was fired up for the Lord in 1985 when he told Contemporary Christian Magazine, “I’m going to make a stand. I’m going to do something different. I’m going to let the world stand up and say, ‘Wow, man, did you see that guy?’ And it’s going to be a perfect set-up. As soon as they’ve got their mouths open or their hearts open and they’re going ‘Wow,’ I’m gonna throw Jesus right down their throats.”

Patillo followed through on his new-found conviction, recording 9 spiritual albums over the years and performing Christian shows for sell-out crowds in venues like Madison Square Garden and the MGM Grand. He hosted his own TV show, “Leon and Friends” from 1992 to 1996, and since 1998, he has been a pastor for the Rock House Church, an all-denominational house of worship, in Long Beach, California.

Jeff Fenholt
Around the time rock singer Jeff Fenholt was playing Christ in the original Broadway version of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” he thought about turning his own life over to the Messiah. When he sought out a church to help him with his transition, he was kicked out because of his long hair. This was the early 1970s, so people with stringy coifs were more associated with being a Manson follower than being overtly holy. Fenholt sank into years of drug addiction. He almost killed his wife several times. After the Broadway play ended, he toured with many rock groups into the 1980s, including heavy metal headbangers Armageddon.

He finally had a chance around the turn of the decade to hear about Jesus from some workers renovating his home. Accepting the Lord into his life, Jeff continued to play for bands like Black Sabbath in the early 1980s, but soon he became disenchanted with the mainstream rock world. He went on to a successful career recording contemporary Christian music and witnessing to troubled youth, especially those behind prison bars.

Dion
A heroin addiction figured into the conversion of one of Rock’s earliest idols. Fronting the doo-wop group the Belmonts, Dion was arguably the most influential link between the early progenitors of rock like Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly and the subsequent conquerors that swept in with the British Invasion. “Runaround Sue,” “The Wanderer,” and “Ruby Baby” all rode high on the charts, but Dion himself was riding high on heroin by 1963. The quality of his work was suffering, and on April 1, 1968, he prayed, “God, if you’re out there, please help me.” He and his wife went to Miami, and Dion’s been drug-free ever since.

While not giving up the world of rock ‘n’ roll, Dion did spend a good portion of the 1980s devoting his life to recording 6 gospel albums. By the end of the decade, he was playing nostalgia-tinged concerts and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Dion stayed the rock ‘n’ roll course in the ‘90s, but never let go of what helped him shake his addiction. In March 2000, he was sitting in Rome, witnessing to his long-held faith to a group of ecumenical students.

Kerry Livgren
A whole slew of rockers from the 1970s seemed to yearn for a spiritual change in their lives. Kerry Livgren, guitarist for the famous prog-rock outfit Kansas, told interviewer Red Beard in 1991, “I was a very philosophical, mystical, religious pilgrim – I guess would be the best way to describe myself. I went a period in my life where I was just – the guys used to say I was the charter member of the religion of the month club, you know. I would just go from one thing to another.” This quest for spiritual nourishment in Livgren’s life continued throughout the decade.

In 1979, he settled on Christianity and found everything he’d been looking for. While continuing to perform with Kansas, Livgren began to present a Christian view of the world in the lyrics he wrote and released a solo album called “Seeds of Change” in 1980. Lead singer Steve Walsh grew frustrated with Livgren’s religiously-laced songwriting and left Kansas in January 1982. Livgren felt the time was ripe to strike out on his own. He formed his own band called AD and also released several Christian solo LPs throughout the 1980s. After serving as a church treasurer and minister of music at a Covington, Georgia house of worship, Livgren hooked up with his old bandmates and toured sporadically with Kansas throughout the 1990s. He is still committed to the Christian lifestyle, having started his own spiritual record label, and last heard working on a classical album based on the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead.

Mark Farner
Another early ‘70s rocker who went on to a meaningful religious conversion was Mark Farner of the power boogie rock machine Grand Funk Railroad. With two number one hits, “We’re An American Band” and “The Loco-motion” between 1973 and 1974, the blistering guitar outfit defined American anthem rock for a generation. By 1976, the steam had run out of the group, and lead vocalist/guitarist Farner created an alternative energy retail company in Michigan. Re-teaming with the Railroad in the early ‘80s, Mark found his need to pursue the arena lights was tempered by an inner desire to find spiritual fulfillment. He subsequently became a Christian and formed his own band Vision in 1985. Recording several solo albums for the Christian label Frontline in the late ‘80s, Mark also started his Common Ground Ministry that toured the country for speaking engagements.

But the call of his Grand Funk roots was never too far in the distance. Farner joined his bandmates periodically over the years, and after a sellout performance to aid Bosnian victims in 1997, the group hit the road for a massive tour at century’s end.

B. J. Thomas
Billy Joe Thomas was a Texas balladeer who scored phenomenal hits in the ‘60s with songs like “Hooked On A Feeling,” “I Just Can’t Help Believing,” and “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head.” He also was scoring his fair share of drugs and consuming alcohol on a daily basis. By the time he hit the mid-70s, he was desperate to hear about an alternative to his lifestyle. He told interviewer Barry Klein, “I didn’t have a vision. I just had some people talk to me about kind of changing my ways, and I had always been kind of raised around the church, so I always had those beliefs. I just kind of returned to my faith along with my wife Gloria, and that helped me all the way down through, even though I did fall into drug addiction again for a number of years.”

Thomas also changed his tune, cranking out gospel music for several years. Since he didn’t just stick to this format, he was oftentimes criticized. When Klein asked Thomas if he’d sang any gospel in the ‘90s, B.J. responded, “I really haven’t done – I did a little gospel thing for Warner Brothers in ’94, but that’s the only thing I have done in gospel in like 15 years. I do think that gospel was some of the best music I ever did, and I did win five Grammys for that. Trying to exist and get along in the Christian music business is just almost impossible. You know, they didn’t like me and it got down to the point where we were having death threats. I never did just do only gospel music. I just did my regular show and I would add gospel music, so we really went through some heartbreaking times in that music. So I had to kind of get out of gospel, although I still love to sing it…” B.J. still retains his commitment to God, but he’s been writing country songs ever since.

Richie Furay
The famed guitarist for ‘60s icons Buffalo Springfield and ‘70s folkies Poco also had a tough time crossing over to the Christian music market. Furay’s transition to a more spiritual path was not borne out of so much strife, but instead curiosity. While playing with J.D. Souther and Chris Hillman in the early ‘70s, Furay struck up a friendship with Al Perkins of the band Manassas, who, in turn, related some info to him about God. Furay finally accepted the Lord over dinner in Colorado in 1973. “When I first got saved, I wanted to put together a rock ‘n’ roll band for God. I believed we were going to get out there and win the world for God. I found it very difficult in 1976 to really make those in roads,” he told Charisma magazine.

Furay continued to play clubs and bars over the ‘80s and ‘90s, inserting a few Christian tunes in with his old Springfield and Poco hits. “There are a lot of people in the Christian world who do not approve of what we do,” he told Charisma. “But I will tell you – there is not one song that I have recorded that I would be ashamed to play. There were no subtle messages written. Any song Neil (Young) wrote or Steve (Stills) or Jimmy Messina wrote didn’t have a message that I couldn’t do.” Furay is now a pastor in Boulder, Colorado, yet still records his own spiritual music. “I am right now working on a secular record and another devotional record,” he recently told Charisma. “Does that mean my secular record is evil?” For Richie, his message and conscience are clear.

Roger McGuinn
Sometimes the call to change one’s life appears in mysterious forms. For founding member of The Byrds, Jim McGuinn, he’d already been fascinated with spiritual dictums for much of his early career. The group’s chart-topping 1965 hit “Turn! Turn! Turn!” practically lifted verbatim it’s lyrics from the bible book of Ecclesiastes. By 1968, as a follower of the Subud faith, Jim changed his name to Roger, in accordance with the religion’s allowance of a person to pick an optional moniker to suit the sound of their soul. But soon Christianity began to manifest itself in Roger’s life.

He found a strange man on his front lawn one day claiming Jesus told him to bring McGuinn some songs to sing. Roger became agitated when he learned Elvis had died of prescription pills abuse, a habit McGuinn was hooked on. He kept encountering Christians everywhere he went, who tried to tell him some good things about God’s Word. Then, under all the burden and stress he felt, Roger simply bowed down one day and prayed to accept Jesus. McGuinn says his burden was instantly released. Roger didn’t exactly hit the road to spew the gospel or start recording Christian-fueled tunes however. “I don’t perform gospel music,” he wrote in Blue Cloud Abbey magazine. “I prayed about it, and received that I was to stay where I was when I was called. So I put a positive spin on all my songs and hopefully, with the Lord’s help, will continue to light up the darkness in a different way.” Happy and committed to his faith, McGuinn is content to being the folk artist at heart, uploading his songs onto the net from his home in Orlando, Florida.

Bruce Cockburn
Another folk singer who came to religion through mysterious ways was the “conscience of Canada” Bruce Cockburn. Heralded as one of rock’s most intelligent songwriters, Cockburn fostered a huge following across the Great White North in the 1970s with his country-folk-blues riffing on humanity’s vast indifference to the world around us and the wonders beholden in nature. Around 1974, Cockburn had been exploring the path of Christianity when, as he told Sojourner magazine, he saw a being on his wedding day that he assumed was Jesus Christ. This puzzling moment lingered with him, and his gradual turning to the faith was more of an evolution as he puts it, instead of a conversion. He simply got to the point one day where he said, “Okay, Jesus, I’m yours.”

He was tagged as a Christian mystic. Cockburn told Rolling Stone magazine, “I’ve seen statistics that one out of every five people in the United States has had what are called ecstatic experiences, which can come from religion or acid or body chemistry. I’ve certainly had those experiences, and on several occasions, they’ve been specifically Christian, involving the person of Christ. If that make me a mystic, I accept it.”

Cockburn certainly did not become a mindless follower. In the 1980s, he toned down his Christian viewpoints so as not to appear a part of the rigid Christian Right that was prevalently vocal throughout the Reagan years. “I’m inclined to be a religious person,” he told Contemporary Christian Music magazine. “But I want to make sure you know that I don’t have to answer for those guys.” His songs addressed the injustices found in the democratic dream, concentrating on postmodern despair, and the crumbling rights of third world citizens. Cockburn’s sly commentary on jingoism made a splash in 1983’s “If I Had A Rocket Launcher,” which contained the lyrics “If I had a rocket launcher/Some sonofabitch would die.” Controversial, yes. Meek, no.

Amy Grant
Interestingly enough, there have been occasions when a person who has been established with a ‘religious’ persona suddenly jumps to a so-called mainstream path. This has occurred most vividly in the Christian music arena. Most recently, current teen sensation Jessica Simpson has taken this approach. Amy Grant was the most publicized musician of the bunch to gain this kind of notoriety.

Having become a committed Christian after attending Bible classes in high school, the Tennessee native’s career took off in the inspirational song market. Grant garnered several gold albums by the mid-80s and won a Grammy for her “Unguarded” record in 1986. But she suddenly announced, “I want to play hardball in this business…I want to be the U.S.A.’s top pop singer with the wholesome image.” By the end of the decade Grant had made that foray into popdom, and in 1991, released the number one hit “Baby, Baby,” a song about her daughter Millie.

Divorcing her husband Gary Chapman in 1999, Amy married longtime friend and country singer Vince Gill in March 2000. While she hasn’t given up on her faith, and many of her so-called pop songs continue to contain religious overtones in the lyrics, many Christian fans gave up on Grant. Amy feels hurt by that narrow-mindedness and told author Bob Millard, “Historically, anytime a gospel artist tried to cross over, it has been just death for them in the Christian music realm. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand the mentality that says you can’t express several sides of your life.” Perplexing for Amy, but understandable in the fickle world of music fans, either secular or Christian.

After The Fire and Sixpence None The Richer
Two other bands that jumped through the same secular hoop as Amy Grant were After The Fire and Sixpence None The Richer. Originally formed in 1972, and sporadically disbanded/re-grouped throughout the 1970s, After The Fire, an English quartet, started their recording career with their self-released album “Signs of Change.” The band’s songs would have been classified as Christian progressive rock. When the 1980s brought synth and new wave, the group signed to CBS, recorded more religious songs, but then scored their one and only hit when they went secular with the 1983 smash “Der Kommissar.”

Like After The Fire, the Texas-based Sixpence None The Richer (named after a phrase in C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”) were designated Christian artists who didn’t see noticeable sales in their strictly-spiritual endeavors. Their first two albums, “The Fatherless and the Widow” and “This Beautiful Mess,” tackled many a worldly woe through Christian philosophy. But when the band released the catchy, non-religious-themed song “Kiss Me” off their self-titled 1997 album, the record shot up the charts. While this new album touched on Christian themes, it also addressed plain-old relationship scenarios and showcased the writings of poets W.H. Auden and Pablo Neruda.

Mr. Mister
Surprisingly, this number one band came to be known as a Christian-based outfit, yet, the members didn’t care for that label. Scoring two chart-topping hits, “Broken Wings” and “Kyrie,” in late ‘85/early ’86, Mr. Mister was seen as a wholesome up-tempo unit who tinkered with Christian-themed lyrics in their songs. “Kyrie” was from a Greek phrase, “Kyrie Elesion,” which means “Lord, have mercy.” Lead singer and main writer, Richard Page grew up the son of a Presbyterian choirmaster and had been a devout churchgoer during most of his youth. But when the media pressed, Page explained away the religiosity of songs like “Kyrie.” “We didn’t want to preach or tell everybody to be a Christian. It was just an inspirational, powerful phrase that fit good as a song title…The song is a prayer basically. It’s not that we’re subscribing to any Christian dogma; I don’t want to be pigeonholed as a Christian band because that’s not what we’re all about.” Page went on to mention that he favored meditation. But no matter how much they tried to downplay their religious persona, Mr. Mister couldn’t fully shake it. Their follow-up hit “Healing Waters” was subsequently nominated for a Grammy…in the Best Gospel Performance By A Duo or Group category.

George Harrison
Of course, not all rockers who choose to immerse themselves on a spiritual journey pick Christianity as the way to enlightenment. George Harrison was one of the first rockers to openly explore religion in the harsh glare of the media, and he started by corralling his fellow Beatles into sampling the teachings of the Mahareshi Yogi. Having gleaned an interest in Indian music during the filming of “Help,” Harrison was drawn to the mystical side of Indian beliefs in the mid-60s. After hearing the Mahareshi, George and the Beatles renounced their drug usage, saying they had “gone beyond it.”

Souring on the humanistic foibles the Mahareshi seemed to display while the band visited him in India (as alluded to in The Beatles’ “Sexy Sadie”), Harrison moved on to the Krishna religion. He wrote, “Everybody is looking for Krishna. Some don’t realize that they are, but they are. Krishna is God, the Source of all that exists, the Cause of all that is, was, or ever will be.” He became a devout admirer of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, a spiritual master in the Hare Krishna movement. Together with John Lennon, George co-signed the lease and paid for the first Krishna temple in England and financed the first printing of the book “Krishna.” In the summer of 1969, George and the devotees of the new London Radha-Krishna Temple produced a single on Apple Records called “The Hare Krishna Mantra.” The mono-droning, redundant chant made the top 20 on the charts throughout Europe and Asia.

Harrison has sprinkled a great portion of his solo songs with teachings gleaned from the Krishna movement. The most popular of those tunes, “My Sweet Lord,” openly praised Hare Krishna in its closing chorus. His triple album release “All Things Must Pass” in 1971 and the album “Living In The Material World” in 1973 both had songs that were loaded with Krishna verbiage and both reached number one on the American charts.

For George, chanting has become a complete way of life. As he sings on “Awaiting On You All,” “By chanting the names of the Lord and you’ll be free.” In an interview with Mukunda Goswami, Harrison said, “We should keep chanting all the time or as much as possible. Once you do that, you realize the benefit. The response that comes from chanting is in the form of bliss, or spiritual happiness, which is a much higher taste than any happiness found here in the material world.” For Harrison, a test of his faith came to fruition one night in 1971. While flying from Los Angeles to New York to prepare for the famous Concert For Bangladesh, Harrison’s aircraft was caught in a horrendous electrical storm. Another airplane almost clipped the top of the one George was flying in. He told Goswami that he just gripped his seat belt and kept yelling “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare” at the top of his lungs. “I know for me,” he said, “the difference between making it and not making it was actually chanting the mantra.”

Seals & Crofts
The Baha’i religion is usually not advertised as a house of worship in your local yellow pages. Its history begins in the 19th century when a Persian prophet named Baha’u’llah claimed he was a Messenger of God. He was subsequently imprisoned for 40 years, then exiled from Iran, and died in 1892. Since then, the Baha’i faith, which promulgates the belief in one God and the oneness of mankind, has seen several messengers of God come into being over the years.

Jim Seals and Dash Crofts, both Texas musicians, weren’t messengers, but they came to believe in this faith. Having spent the better part of the sixties in Los Angeles playing in various bands, the two childhood chums formed a quartet named the Dawnbreakers in 1969. The group’s manager introduced them to the Baha’i religion, and the two became very devoted followers. A year later, Seals & Crofts split from the band and formed their own duo. A string of their gentle hit singles wafted across the airwaves over the next five years, including “Diamond Girl,” “Get Closer,” and “Summer Breeze.” Many of their lyrics and themes were inspired by the Baha’i faith. Their religion afforded them a pro-life stance, and in 1974, their song “Unborn Child,” which was written from the fetus’ point of view, outraged many pro-choicers who had recently seen Roe Vs. Wade pass legislation.

By 1976, the boys’ sales dropped on their latter efforts, and as the decade ended, the two immersed themselves fully in their religion. For the last 20 years, Seals & Crofts have only played a few reunion gigs and have mostly performed for several Baha’i World Congress gatherings.

Richard and Linda Thompson
One of the greatest and most critically-acclaimed folk singers ever, Richard Thompson has filled his prodigious career with an output of songs that cannot be defined in any one genre. From country to Cajun to Celtic, his style of music is at once literate and wholly unique. Singing with The Fairport Convention, Britain’s answer to the Jefferson Airplane and The Byrds, in the 1960s, Thompson honed his craft and began to take an interest in a mystical sect of Islam known as Sufism. His deep belief in the religion caused him to stop playing his electric guitar for awhile. When he left the Convention in 1972, Richard met singer Linda Peters, married her, and together they released six landmark albums throughout the ‘70s and early ‘80s.

Sufism is grounded in the belief of separateness as a part of our human condition. Rumi, the founder of the Mawlawiyyah order, hinged the basis of the faith on Man’s search for an absent God, typifying the separation from a loved one. This kind of isolation figured into many of Richard’s lyrics over this period. He focused on and embraced the topic of death on many of his tunes, particularly in “Wall of Death” and “When I Get to the Border.” Around the mid-‘70s, the Thompsons decided to drop out altogether and joined a Sufi commune.

They barely played any music over a two-year period. Richard and Linda did, however, find strife in their marriage. Linda left Richard twice while they were in the commune. In 1978, the couple resurfaced and signed with Chrysalis records, releasing the album “First Light.” The album contained overt Islamic references. The Thompsons tempered their religious convictions in future albums, and upon listening to Richard’s subsequent works, one would be hard-pressed to hear any allusions to the Sufi religion. The doctrine of separateness seemed to infiltrate their marriage, and by 1981, the Thompsons recorded their last album together, “Shoot The Lights Out,” and divorced. The record was hailed by many as one of the top 10 best albums of the decade. Richard still churns out lauded albums year after year, while Linda runs a jewelry shop in London.

Cat Stevens
Another Islamic believer who dropped out of sight for quite some time was the legendary Cat Stevens. The soft-spoken folk/rocker was at the peak of his career at the end of the 1970s when he virtually plummeted below the radar. He’d garnered eleven top-40 singles, including “Moon Shadow,” “Morning Has Broken,” and “Peace Train.” His record sales made him a fortune. But deep inside his conscience, he was unhappy. He related to “20/20 Downtown,” “My life wasn’t as pretty as my songs.” “I didn’t know what to smile about,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “I was confused.”

While swimming off the coast of Malibu, California in 1975, Stevens was suddenly snared in a vicious riptide and began struggling. Death seemed imminent. “And without hesitation,” he told “20/20 Downtown,” “I called out ‘God, if you save me, I’ll work for you.’ And at that moment, a wave came from behind, which was this small wave, that just pushed me forward, and I was swimming back, you know, with all the energy that I needed. And I was home and dry. And that was my commitment.”

His brother gave him a copy of the Koran. Several months later, Stevens converted from his Catholic upbringing to Islam at a mosque. He made the decision to quit the music business altogether after the release of his 1979 album, “Back To Earth.” Having officially changed his name to Yusef Islam, Stevens married a Muslim woman named Fouzia Ali and settled into starting a family. He auctioned off all his gold discs and guitars and donated the money to his new-found faith.

In February 1989, Stevens was seen in a broadcast seemingly condoning the holy death threat, or ‘fatwa,’ issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini on author Salmon Rushdie. He has since maintained that he was not taking a militaristic stance but was merely reiterating the Koran’s scriptures that make it clear that if someone defames the Prophet, then he must die. Stevens’ recent emergence in the media spotlight coincides with new retrospective releases of his back catalog of songs, and he appears quite content with his ongoing beliefs and way of life. Asked by “20/20 Downtown” if he had ever played the guitar since he walked away from the music business, Stevens chuckled and said, “No, I’m petrified of it.”

Bob Dylan
Of all the rock icons who have committed their life to a higher calling, Bob Dylan certainly shook up the music community in the late 1970s with his sudden left-field announcement of becoming a born-again Christian. For the former Robert Zimmerman, a Midwest Jew who rose to astounding heights in the world of rock adulation in the early 1960s, he was no stranger to dabbling in religions throughout the decade of experimentation. Most notably, he’d taken up chanting and had traveled across America with two Krishna devotees, writing songs and visiting Krishna temples.

But no one seemed to be aware of the signs prefacing his call to Christianity when Dylan suddenly dropped out of sight in the spring of 1979 and took three months of Bible study at the Vineyard Fellowship in Los Angeles. On August 18, 1979, he released the album “Slow Train Coming” which was filled with songs highlighting his newfound teachings. Dylan made no bones about singing openly about his conviction with lyrics like, “I’m pressing onto the higher calling of my Lord,” and “I’m saved by the blood of the Lamb.”

When he launched the subsequent “Born Again Tour,” he opened each gospel-filled concert with sermons. He chose not to play any of his old hits and was booed by some who were not open to his new material. Receiving a Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal in 1980 for the song “Gotta Serve Somebody,” Dylan followed up with another album called “Saved.” A third album, “Shot of Love,” released in 1981 still showcased Christian-laced lyrics, but not as overtly as the previous two records. The times, they-were-a-changin’ again for Dylan.

1983’s release, “Infidels,” returned Bob back to his familiar folk/rock trappings and secular-based observations. He was photographed wearing a prayer shawl at the bar mitzvah of his son in Jerusalem a short time later. When pressed by the San Luis Obispo Register in March 1983 as to his former Christian conversion, Dylan replied, “Whoever said I was Christian? Like Gandhi, I’m Christian, I’m Jewish, I’m a Muslim, I’m a Hindu. I am a humanist.” Dylan formerly returned to his Jewish roots, practicing Lubavitch Hasidism, an ultra-orthodox form of Judaism.

He later cryptically spoke to Newsweek magazine, saying the message is in the song. “Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else. Songs like “Let Me Rest on a Peaceful Mountain” or “I Saw The Light” – that’s my religion. I don’t adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I’ve learned more from the songs than I’ve learned from any of this kind of entity.”

This is a sentiment that describes the attitude of many a rock devotee. Some find all the joy and comfort they need in the varied world of rock music. Others use rock as a way to bring faith to others. And finally, there are those who wrestle with the music, either finding a common ground with the medium or forsaking it altogether. However, you choose to approach it, keep the faith and stay rock-steady.

© 2000 Ned Truslow

Controversial Covers

The Beatles. The picture-perfect, squeaky-clean pioneers of pop-rock. Peddlers of the world’s most catchiest tunes. Cheerful lads you want to just simply hang with. Musical geniuses. Skilled performers. Gentle jesters. Baby butchers. What?! Did you say, baby butchers? Yes, of course, that album cover! Red torn flesh. Disembodied baby heads. Cackling Beatles. Bad Beatles. What went horribly wrong?

The line between creative artwork and bad taste can get a bit hazy in the world of rock marketing. For the most part, record companies try to stop offensive designs before the covers ever leave the plate makers’ plant. But sometimes, community standards or government officials step forward to demand a rock album’s artwork be banned or covered up. Once an album sleeve is withdrawn and replaced, the original version can soon fetch up to thousands of dollars in the nostalgic world of vinyl collectors. And this is where our story begins…

The Beatles were riding the wave as one of the most over-exposed pop groups ever to conquer the planet. From dolls to lunchboxes to postcards to fan books to jigsaw puzzles, the four moptops from Liverpool had their likenesses plastered on just about every imaginable piece of merchandise. The same photos featured the same poses, the standard publicity shots with four smiling Beatles sitting in chairs, pointing to the sky, or some such innocuous image. While they toured the world throughout 1964 – 1965, an Australian photographer named Robert Whitaker was invited by The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein to join the entourage and snap photos of the group during their forays into lands unknown. The quality of Whitaker’s work garnered him praise from the band, and they soon went into a London photo studio one afternoon on March 25, 1966 and set about taking the infamous “baby butcher” shot. Actually, there were several shots taken that day of The Beatles in white smocks with raw meat and plastic baby doll parts strewn about their clothes and in their laps. The majority of Beatles fans assumed that the photos were the group’s “statement” against their American distributor, Capitol Records, who until that point, had taken their songs, originally released on Parlophone Records in the U.K., and chopped them into completely different album line-ups for staggered release in the States. But in a 1991 interview with Goldmine magazine, Whitaker said that the photo session’s theme was his idea, and that, contrary to popular belief, the photos were not a “protest” against Capitol. He claimed that he and The Beatles wanted to take some shots that were completely different from the constraining publicity stills the boys had suffered through on countless occasions. They were sick of routine photos. These shots were never intended to wind up an album cover.

In fact, the “Butcher” photo had already been used for a print advertisement in England for the group’s “Paperback Writer” single and on the cover of Disc Magazine, before Capitol Records chose to put it on the cover of their album “Yesterday…And Today” in late June 1966. Capitol sent the copies with the “butcher” covers to music reviewers, radio stations, and some giant department store chains, as advance promotional issues, around June 10th. Within a few days, the furor over the shocking image caused the company to mail out a statement by Capitol’s president, Alan W. Livingston, to the parties who had earlier received a copy. The letter read, “The original cover, created in England, was intended as ‘pop art’ satire. However, a sampling of public opinion in the United States indicates that the cover design is subject to misinterpretation. For this reason, and to avoid any possible controversy or undeserved harm to The Beatles’ image or reputation, Capitol has chosen to withdraw the LP and substitute a more generally acceptable design.” He asked those who had received the advance album with the controversial cover to kindly return it to Capitol. The “Butcher”-covered “Yesterday…And Today” was never sold to the general public. A photo, also snapped by Robert Whitaker, depicting the group posing by a steamer trunk was pasted either over the few retail “Butcher” covers awaiting sale or placed on new cardboard sleeves of the album. Many individuals who purchased a pasted-over “Butcher” album or had a copy of the advance promo version were savvy enough to hold on to them for collectible value. Livingston himself kept about a dozen albums of the original in pristine, sealed condition for many years until his death. His son has since sold a few copies of the collection, which now fetch several thousands of dollars per record. The Beatles had effectively started, if anything, by sheer ignorance, a trend of controversial covers that would extend throughout rock history to the present.

A primary target on album covers deemed controversial in their design were those that depicted public figures in a questionable light. In particular, it seems that the British government has been far more proactive in its censorship of these kinds of covers than their American counterparts. When a Birmingham quintet called The Move formed in 1966, they tried to achieve notoriety by staging many of the same destructive antics as The Who had pioneered in their performances a year before. Smashing amplifiers and burning effigies onstage were noteworthy shenanigans for this new British band, but when they released their pop psychedelic single “Flowers In The Rain” in September 1967, the group drew attention to the song with a publicity mailing of a postcard to the press and critics depicting the then-Prime Minister Harold Wilson in a nude caricature rendering. Miffed by the chutzpah of these anarchic rockers, Wilson had his barristers promptly haul the matter before a judge in a libel suit. The Move subsequently lost the case and were forced to give all of the royalties earned from the record to charity as part of the settlement. The band went on to relative obscurity by 1971 but fashioned themselves into another line-up led by Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood. They would change their name to Electric Light Orchestra and stay clear of controversy for the rest of their prosperous career.

By the mid-‘70s, British bands were even more outspoken against their authority figures than their ‘60s counterparts. The rise of punk brought forth The Sex Pistols, and with their audacious rants against the monarchy, the Queen herself became caught up in controversy. After the group got themselves fired from their contract with A&M Records in the United States in March 1977, the group had immediately signed with Virgin Records in England. Their first single for Virgin, “God Save The Queen,” was destined to raise the ire of those respectful of their country’s royalty. On May 17, 1977, workers at the Virgin pressing plant were stamping out copies of the single and after hearing the track, they decided to walk out on strike. It took several placating calls to get them back to the presses. The next day, a subsequent protest took place at the plate maker’s shop that was printing the sleeve artwork, and again, several calls by management were needed to cool down angry laborers. Even though the BBC banned the single on May 31st, deeming it “in gross bad taste,” the song went to number 1 on the U.K. charts despite virtually little airplay. Its second verse, “God save the Queen, she ain’t no human being, there is no future, in England’s dreamland,” rankled the demeanor of conservatives nationwide. By June 7th, the authorities were fed up with the Sex Pistols’ anarchic behavior, and arrested the group on public nuisance charges after they rented a boat, named the “Queen Elizabeth,” and shadowed the Queen’s silver jubilee motorcade from the Thames River, blaring the single at high volume. On November 5, 1977, Christopher Seale, a manager of a Virgin Records store in the town of Nottingham was arrested after a policewoman spotted a promo poster in his window advertising the Pistols’ debut Virgin album “Never Mind The Bollocks – Here’s The Sex Pistols.” Because of the use of the word ‘bollocks,’ a Middle English word literally referring to testicles, the confused manager was hauled off under the enforcement of an obscure 1898 Indecent Advertising Act. Other record stores in the U.K. chose to either prohibit the sale of the album altogether or hide it under their front counters for fear of prosecution. When Seale was eventually brought to court, an English professor was solicited by his defense to explain the usage and historical significance of the word in questionable taste. The judge dismissed the case and ruled The Sex Pistols’ cover “decent.”

The howling vocal gymnastics of Bruce Dickinson, lead singer for the metal band Iron Maiden, had propelled the group’s eponymous first album to number 4 on the U.K. charts in April 1980. Part of the band’s early stage show involved a huge mask that would spurt liquid from time to time on the drummer. The prop was christened “Eddie The Head.” By the time the group began releasing its records using the cover artwork designs of artist Derek Riggs, an illustrated zombie character with one arm became known as “Eddie.” The release of two singles from their debut album featured Eddie in the artwork on both singles’ sleeves. For the record “Sanctuary,” released in May 1980, Eddie was shown standing over a knife-slashed, dead Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who lay bleeding on the ground. Catching wind of this violent depiction, the PM’s office threatened legal action on the group. The record company resolved the issue by painting black marks obscuring the Maggie Thatcher figure’s eyes, thus, masking her identity. The band took one last dig at the Prime Minister when they issued a follow-up single in October 1980 called “Women In Uniform” with Riggs’ artwork depicting Thatcher clutching a black machine gun, vengefully hiding behind a wall, observing Eddie picking up on women. No legal action was initiated over this cover, and Iron Maiden went on to feature Eddie, sans Thatcher, on numerous other record sleeves in the decade to come.

Sometimes the objections over design did not stem from British public officials but instead from British celebrities. Such was the case in January 1984, when the cult- favorite band The Smiths released the single “What Difference Does It Make?” The band’s bohemian/arthouse leanings had always led them to issue their singles and albums with stills captured from obscure films, television programs, or books. A shot of Rita Tushingham in the film “A Taste of Honey” was used for their “Hand In Glove” single sleeve. A still from the Andy Warhol film “Flesh” featuring actor Joe Dallesandro was used for the band’s debut album cover. For the “What Difference Does It Make?” single, a photo of the actor Terence Stamp from the 1965 film “The Collector” was chosen to grace the sleeve. The single was first released in a 12” version to the U.K. and Holland, with the shot of Stamp on the cover and no reference to the band’s name. The black & white photo is of a smiling Terence, standing near a door, holding a chloroform pad, looking off camera at his “specimen” in the film, the abducted actress Samantha Eggar. When Stamp learned of his likeness being plastered on a pop record, he put a stop to the unauthorized usage immediately. The band, undeterred, simply posed the group’s singer, Morrissey, in the same clothes, the same grin, the same spare background, and in the same lighting (this time holding a tall glass of milk instead of the chloroform pad), and issued the single with this new photo in April of that year. Eventually, as often happens in the fickle world of celebritydom, Stamp gave his blessing to the use of his photo, so the single went out again, this time with the Terence shot and the band’s name on the sleeve, to all countries, except the U.S.

Tragedy can play a part in prompting the removal of an album cover’s design. An instance where this occurred took place in late 1977, after a small plane carrying some members of the band Lynyrd Skynyrd plummeted from the sky, crashing in a Mississippi swamp. Singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and back-up vocalist Cassie Gaines perished along with three other passengers on impact. The group had already scored Top 40 hits with songs like “Freebird” and “Saturday Night Special,” and on October 17, 1977, MCA Records, the band’s label, released their album “Street Survivors.” Containing the hit single, “What’s Your Name,” the album’s cover featured the Lynyrd Skynyrd line-up standing amongst the tall flames of a roaring fire. The flames almost appear to be shooting out of several members’ heads. Three days later, the air crash occurred. Even though the plane never caught fire, MCA was sensitive to possible accusations of morbid exploitation. They quickly withdrew the design, recalling outgoing shipments, and replaced the front cover shot, with the original album’s back cover photo. This image featured the band lined up under a limbo spot from above, everyone cast in a soft white light, which resulted in a much tamer “traditional” group shot. Needless to say, the rare “flames” album cover is a much sought-after collectible in the LP trade world.

Exploitative violence or disturbing imagery, even if it is completely fabricated, can land a band’s artwork design in hot water. The Beatles obviously were the first to encounter this kind of outcry, but they certainly weren’t the last. Sometimes the protests are simply laughable, as was the case in 1984 when Bruce Springsteen released his landmark album “Born In The USA.” Featuring the extraordinary title cut, as well as the number two-charting single “Dancing in the Dark,” The Boss’ album was well-known for it’s cover photo of Bruce’s jeans-clad derriere facing the camera with a stars and stripes flag draped prominently in the background. As unbelievable as it now sounds, some individuals, namely very conservative critics, voiced their concerns that Springsteen was actually urinating on the flag in the shot. His right hand appears to be curved inward towards his midsection, so with fevered imagination, one might assume he’s got ahold of the wobbly warhead. But there is truly no evidence of any hygienic relief being captured in the shot. Calls for boycotts by these critics fell on deaf ears, and the album went on to ride the top of the U.S. charts for seven long weeks during the summer months of 1984.

A far more controversial matter concerning disturbing imagery arose in the following year, when the San Francisco hardcore punkers, The Dead Kennedys, released their album “Frankenchrist” in 1985. Under the direction of their lead vocalist Jello Biafra, the Kennedys had fostered an underground following that was adoringly devoted to their brand of anti-political and anti-social thrash metal since their formation in 1978. When the “Frankenchrist” album was issued through the indie label Alternative Tentacles, a poster was included inside the cover sleeve. Painted by famed Swiss artist H. R. Giger (known for designing the “creature” look of the alien in the “Alien” films), the album insert reproduced his painting called “Landscape XX, Where Are We Coming From?” It also was known as “Penis Landscape,” and the work showed disembodied images of female and male genitalia and anuses. A year after the album was released, the Los Angeles deputy attorney, having received a consumer complaint about the insert, dragged Biafra and the record label’s manager into court on charges of distributing harmful materials to minors. While the prosecution argued the Dead Kennedys’ actions were irresponsible, Biafra countered by citing that the poster was both a literal and figurative illustration of “people screwing each other over,” and therefore, integral to his album’s themes of racism, poverty and political corruption. Facing a possible year’s incarceration, Biafra sighed relief when the jury was unable to reach a verdict. The legacy left in the aftermath of this first-of-its-kind legal case, in which a rock album was put on trial, saw the disbandment of the Dead Kennedys, an end to Biafra’s marriage, and a whopping debt in legal fees totaling more than $55,000.

In the case of Guns N’ Roses’ big label debut, Geffen Records capped off any chance of an uproar by effectively quashing the original artwork for the bluesy rock ‘n’ rollers’ album when it was released on July 31, 1987. Infamous underground cartoonist/artist Robert Williams had painted a piece called “Appetite For Destruction.” Known for his paintings that featured tumultuous wacky scenes of overt violence, abused women, oversized animals, ravenous demons, crazed clowns, and flying spaceships, the band must’ve thought his work would make a perfect match to their raucous set of singles like “Welcome To The Jungle” and “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” But Geffen Records instead replaced Williams frenetic, hallucinogenic artwork with that of a simple design. The Guns N’ Roses debut album, “Appetite For Destruction,” ultimately hit the streets with an illustrated cover that featured an iron cross with the band member’s faces, depicted as skulls, affixed to its four points and intersection.

Another set of nervous record executives, over at the Warner Bros. label, requested their in-house bad boy, Mr. Antichrist Superstar himself, Marilyn Manson, remove two Polaroid shots intended for the cover artwork of his debut album before it was to be released to the general public. One shot was of a particularly bloodied figure and the other showcased Manson at the age of six, completely naked. Rather than raise hell, the satanic-loving rocker respected their wishes and the “Portrait of an American Family” album was released, sans the two photos, on July 12, 1994. Manson’s ensuing tour in support of the record probably fostered more ulcers in those executives than the photos on the album cover ever could, as he performed naked and was arrested in Jacksonville, Florida, and as he ripped up the Book of Mormon onstage in Salt Lake City, Utah.

While album cover designs of violent imagery have been a definite push-button for reactionary censors to poke at over the years, sexual imagery has also managed to bring nervous distributors’ blood to a boil. When Jimi Hendrix and his Experience released the album “Electric Ladyland” in the United States in November 1968, featuring his blistering rendition of Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower,” the fold-out cover art featured Jimi and his bandmates in a bleached orange and red psychedelic photograph. The U.S. has been notoriously skittish about nudity in its mainstream consumer products, and this was the case with MCA Records new LP at this time. “Electric Ladyland” had already been released in England a week or two earlier on October 25, 1968, and its cover in the U.K. featured naked women lying about with photos and artifacts of the band in their laps. Fearing consumer backlash, MCA slapped the revised photograph on the album when it came time for its release in the States.

Later in the month of November 1968, another controversial cover was being wrapped in plain brown paper for distribution. John Lennon and his new love Yoko Ono were deeply involved with each other, and together, they decided to release their first album. With her avant-garde leanings, Yoko had influenced John in his samplings of natural sounds and bizarre effects. Capturing these atonal, unconnected noises on their home recorder, the duo were adamant about releasing the pieces through The Beatles’ record label, Apple. For the cover work of their album, which was titled “Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins,” John had the idea to pose naked with Yoko, thus, emulating the vulnerable imagery of virginity. Yoko was not very keen of his concept, yet complied to her lover’s enthusiasm, and one afternoon, the two shy artists set the automatic shutter on their camera and captured the two images which would grace the front and back covers of the album. The front cover image was, naturally, a full-frontal nude shot, and the back cover featured the pair turned with their backs to the camera. Apple Records was distributed through the Beatles’ original recording company, EMI, and when the chairman of the corporation, Sir Joseph Lockwood, caught sight of the cover shots, he queried Lennon and Ono (according to author Ray Coleman), “You will be damaged and what will you gain? What’s the purpose of it?” Yoko said, “It’s art.” Sir Joseph replied, “Well, I should find some better bodies to put on the cover than your two. They’re not very attractive. Paul McCartney would look better naked than you.” Suffice to say, EMI declined to distribute the album, so Lennon and Ono turned to a start-up distribution company named Track, which was owned by Kit Lambert and Chip Stamp, managers of The Who. Track agreed to ship the album, provided it was wrapped in paper. When the LP reached American shores, customs officials at Newark Airport in New Jersey seized 30,000 copies for indecency reasons. The album was drubbed by the critics and failed to make any kind of profit. John and Yoko did not seem to mind, and they soon followed this experimental foray with another “Unfinished” LP.

In 1969, the superstar line-up of Rick Grech, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, and Ginger Baker were about to get their one shot of recorded history as a band called Blind Faith when they released their first and final album in July of that year. Hailed as a critical masterpiece with soulful blues tunes like “Had My Cry Today” and “Can’t Find My Way Home,” the album was released with a cover photograph taken by an American artist who lived in London named Bob Seidemann. The shot was of an 11 year-old girl holding a metallic spaceship. The “fuselage” of the ship looked extremely phallic, like a sex-shop vibrator, and she held it pointing down towards her lower torso. While Polydor Records in England did not feel the artwork would be particularly troubling to British society, Atco Records, which handled the record’s distribution in America, felt otherwise. Sensing its provocative and controversial nature, Atco released Blind Faith’s album with a cover shot featuring the band members. Bassist/violinist Rick Grech later tried to explain the meaning behind the original artwork. “The young woman represents purity and hope, the spaceship represents continued progress through technological advancement.” Whatever you say, Rick. After the album topped both the U.S. and U.K. charts for two weeks, Atco Records decided to drop the “softer” second cover design because it wasn’t selling as well as the British counterpart. Subsequently, the “tamer” photo version debut album is ironically the more collectible and rarer record on the vinyl scavengers’ lists these days.

As the years passed into the early 1970s, more promiscuity surged to the forefront of the general media, particularly in the world of motion pictures and men’s magazines, however, rock albums were still monitored carefully with an eye towards self-censorship. An English outfit with an ever-changing line-up loped to the progressive rock fields during this period and brought a kind of renaissance folk flair to its output. The band was Caravan, and in October 1973, they were getting around to releasing their fifth album, “For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night.” The cover photo chosen to grace this effort was of a naked pregnant woman. Their record label, Decca Records, summarily dismissed this idea before releasing the LP, and substituted a shot of the same woman, still pregnant, but instead she now wore a flimsy nightgown in the revised photo. The album did not garner much of a profit and by the early ‘80s, Caravan’s career had, for all intents and purposes, ‘grown dim in the night.’

Flimsy garments of another kind, namely lingerie, figured prominently on the album cover of Roxy Music’s “Country Life” when it was released in November 1974. The slinky glam-pop-rock sounds of Bryan Ferry and his band had been perfectly complemented by the sexy photographic designs of the group’s previous album covers. Featuring high fashion models of the day, Roxy Music’s album artwork oozed hot passion and carnal come-ons. So it was no surprise to delighted male teen fans when the cover for “Country Life” showcased two models, one in see-through lingerie panties and bra, and the other model only in panties with her hands masking her topless breasts. Record shop owners were less than enthusiastic about the smoldering sleeve, especially in the United States. Roxy’s record company wound up selling the album in an opaque green shrink-wrap. With several complaints still filtering into their offices, it was decided that an alternate cover needed to be manufactured. A horribly amateurish photograph of an evergreen tree was used to replace the image of the two erotic gals, and the revised LP was shipped primarily to the American marketplace. Roxy Music would continue to use beautiful women on future covers, including Bryan Ferry’s and Mick Jagger’s former flame Jerry Hall on the album “Siren,” but their poses would not be quite so scandalizing.

Reeling off the gigantic success of their anthemic singles “We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions,” the flamboyant pop rock group Queen was looking for a way to top themselves during the summer of 1978. As they recorded new songs at a studio in France, the country’s annual sporting event, the Tour de France, was being broadcast on television. The song “Bicycle Race” sprang as inspiration from watching this fortuitous programming, and when the band considered doing a promotional video to support the single, someone hit on the idea to fill the Wimbledon Tennis Stadium in London with 50 naked women on bicycles. We’re not talking a plot-heavy concept here. In order to lure fifty women to take their clothes off for a sunny afternoon in front of cameras, the band offered to feature the girl they felt the most attractive of the bunch on their cover for the single “Bicycle Race.” And sure enough, they kept their promise. The lucky winner’s face, and very naked body, was printed on the sleeve of the record. Outrage, particularly in the feminist contingents throughout the country, prompted Queen’s record company to airbrush a bikini on the girl. The single was included as a track on the band’s next album entitled “Jazz,” which was released in November 1978. The album came with a poster insert of all 50 naked girls on their bicycles. Yet another uproar erupted, and the album was subsequently manufactured, sans poster, but with a postcard inserted in its sleeve, which enabled randy teen boys to simply send off for the busty bicycle print. Naturally, “Jazz” broke into both the U.K.’s and United States’ Top Ten charts.

A sticker, not an airbrushing technique, was used in 1979 to cover up another sexually-sensitive piece of artwork, this time on the cover of Whitesnake’s “Lovehunter” album. Truly in a mid-career void between his days of singing for Deep Purple and his glory years of the mid-to-late ‘80s in which he would deliver power ballads like “Here I Go Again” and “Is This Love,” vocalist David Coverdale was struggling with his new band Whitesnake. “Lovehunter,” their fourth release, would not yield him any hit singles or critical notoriety. However, its cover would bring notoriety of a different kind when shop owners, both in Europe and in the U.S., requested some kind of censor solution. The album’s artwork featured a painting of a naked woman sitting with her back and buttocks exposed on a huge serpent, whose mouth hung agape and its forked tongue probed outwards towards the nubile blond. No costly paint touch-ups were required. EMI Records simply plastered a sticker directly over the woman’s pronounced bum, and the record store owners were suitably placated.

Record retailers needed soothing again in 1988. Perry Farrell, a singer in Los Angeles was introduced to Eric Avery by a mutual friend named Jane. Soon a band was formed with the two musicians bringing aboard two other members and calling themselves Jane’s Addiction. Steeped in arty alternative rock trappings, the group was famous in the late ‘80s club scene as being provocative and abrasive. When they landed a major label contract with Warner Bros. Records, Jane’s Addiction released the album “Nothing’s Shocking.” Farrell, an accomplished artist, supplied the company with the cover art, which consisted of a sculpture he had made of two naked women, sitting in a loveseat, joined at the hips and shoulders, with their hair on fire. Although they were merely art pieces, the image was shocking and sexually strong enough that several retailers refused to sell the album. Warner Bros. did nothing to alter the photograph. However, when Jane’s Addiction released its follow-up album, “Ritual De Lo Habitual,” in 1990, an alternate version of the cover was subsequently released. Originally, the ‘Ritual’ sleeve featured another Farrell sculpture, one that showed a menage a trois between two women and a man, their paper-mache naked bodies intertwined, surrounded by occult objects. Candles, fruit, and paper halos all figured in the piece, symbols of the Santeria religion, a Caribbean faith that involves possession by saints. Too many complaints filtered across the record company’s door over this album cover, so a replacement sleeve was issued on which the only items seen were the band’s name, the title of the album, and a copy of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Despite relatively little airplay, no hit singles, and this revamped album cover, “Ritual De Lo Habitual” wound up getting a platinum certification a year later. Jane’s Addiction, however, would stop needing the ‘fix’ of playing together and go their separate ways in 1992.

Ultimately, retailers seem to have the final say-so when it comes to determining whether an album will be readily accessible to the consumer or not. If a product is not suitable for display in their estimation, sales will invariably suffer. However, with the continued explosion of sales exchanging across modem lines on the Internet these days, the marketplace is slowly evolving its economic dynamics. But up until the last three or four years, no one commanded record selling power greater than the huge department store chains across the world. For a band to lose its exposure at a Wal-Mart, a Woolworths, or a K-mart, the fallout from such a disaster could spell the difference between the sales zing of a Sting and the plummeting revenue losses of Insane Clown Posse.

When Wal-Mart notified Polygram Records of complaints they were receiving from their customers over the Scorpions’ 1984 release “Love At First Sting,” the band was certainly not unaccustomed to being in the spotlight for issuing controversial covers. The German heavy metal group’s cover of their 1976 album “Virgin Killer” featured a naked pre-pubescent girl sprawled out on a bare black background with a strategically-cracked piece of glass barely covering her genitalia. There was no way this image was going to get past custom officials in the U.S. An alternate image, showcasing the band’s members leaning into the camera lens with looks of defiance, was substituted in place of the original photo for export to the States. The band went on to release their 1979 LP “Lovedrive” with a cover photo depicting a man’s hand literally stuck to the ‘gummy-flesh’ of a woman’s breast. The back cover photo showed the couple holding a picture of the band, the woman topless and laughing. Once again, this album’s design was banned in the United States (even though Playboy magazine dubiously cited it as the best rock album cover of the year). An illustration of a large blue scorpion laying on the band’s logo replaced the ‘sticky-fingered’ original for the benefit of squeamish American retailers. When the band released yet another controversial cover, this time for that “Love At First Sting” album, they were nonplussed about the usual commotion. The design featured a couple locked in an embrace. The man is shown giving the woman a tattoo on her leg, while one of her breasts is relatively exposed in a loose ‘spaghetti-type’ dress. To placate the Walton family’s shopping emporium, Polygram touched up the photo to minimize the woman’s exposure. Bosom or no bosom, the album turned out to be the breakout worldwide success The Scorpions had been hoping for, and the band subsequently rode high on the charts through the latter part of the 1980s.

The department store Woolworths cried foul in October 1989 when a Hull, England band known as The Beautiful South, an alternative pop-rock sextet consisting of some former members of the Brit-band The Housemartins, released their debut album. Known for their cynical, clever lyrics, the group, whose cheery name was a sarcastic concoction, decided to juxtapose shocking images with that upbeat moniker. Thus, the original artwork to their first LP, “Welcome To The Beautiful South,” featured two sepia-toned photographs on a plain green backdrop. One photo depicted a woman in frilly hat and blouse sticking the barrel of a rather large revolver in her mouth, with her thumb on the trigger. The other photo showed a skinhead gent lighting up what looks like a joint. After the renowned retail chain banned the album, an alternate cover was soon issued. Again two photographs were displayed on a green background, however, this time they were shots of a cuddly toy teddy bear and a furry rabbit. Controversial or not, the band’s output was extremely successful over the years in the United Kingdom, but The Beautiful South barely made a dent in the American market.

In the early ‘90s, the most successful band on the planet was the grunge-laden, sonically-melodic Nirvana. Their breakthrough album, “Nevermind,” sold over 7 million copies, and while the follow-up LP consisted primarily of B-sides, outtakes, and demos, “Incesticide” flew off the shelves at a record pace as well. So, when the band released their 1993 album, “In Utero,” one would assume that every retailer would welcome it with open arms. Au contraire, mon frere. Both Wal-Mart and K-Mart refused to stock it. Specifically, they objected to two album cover items. One was the name of a song called “Rape Me.” The department stores felt it was an inciting phrase and did not want it displayed on the outside cover. The second objection regarded the photo on the back cover of the record, which featured a scattering of bone-like objects mixed in with what could be perceived as aborted fetuses and brain matter. To gain favor with the behemoths of bargain shopping, and after the record had reached number 1 in the United States, Geffen Records re-issued the “In Utero” album with a ‘softer’ display. The title “Rape Me” printed on the back cover was changed to “Waif Me” (I have no explanation either), and the back cover photo itself was filled in with more floral detail and a small turtle. The giants of blue-light specials were satisfied, and Nirvana’s stock rose.

A little boy named Vance got Wal-Mart’s panties all in a bunch again in early 1996. New York rockers The Goo Goo Dolls had toiled on the road and in the studio for nearly a decade before their 1996 album “A Boy Named Goo” (a play on the Johnny Cash song “A Boy Named Sue”) broke them through the barrier to superstardom. The hit single “Name” went to number 5 on the U.S. chart. All seemed to be going well for the band, when, suddenly, after having sold over 50,000 copies of the group’s album, the folks at Wal-Mart yanked the rest of its “A Boy Named Goo” stock off the shelves. What seemed to be the problem? Vance was the problem. For the cover of their album, the Dolls had used a photo taken 13 years earlier of a little baby boy who had smeared his face with blackberry juice. Hailing from California, Vance, was now in his mid-teens. Why the uproar then? A few reactionary customers had peered at the cover and thought that the kid looked like a poster child for toddler abuse. It was blackberry juice on Vance’s cheeks, but as a result of whatever hayseed it was who saw fit to complain, the retail tycoons pulled The Goo Goo Dolls’ disc from their stores. Fortunately, for the band’s sake, their years of hard work hadn’t turned them into an ‘overnight’ flash-in-the-pan. With their song “Iris” included on the “City of Angels” soundtrack, sales skyrocketed, and the Dolls have begun forging a bonafide career.

On June 19, 1999, it was K-Mart’s turn to squelch a band’s release. In 1992, the world ‘got’ Ministry. Up to that point, they were considered another gloomy thrash-industrial group. But their “Psalm 69” album turned heads. Yes, they were heavy rock ‘n’ rollers, but they also threw their mix onto a heavy dance beat that never let up. Their music translated to all-night raves, and the band truly made a name for itself. Since that time, their star has faded a bit with subsequent releases. So, when the band issued its recent album with fanfare, it’s surprising K-Mart sat up and took notice. What they saw was an album cover they found objectionable. They did not choose to ban “Dark Side Of The Spoon,” the record’s name, because of the reference to drug use in the title. Nor did the potentially-offensive religious writing on a chalkboard, which read “I will be god” repeatedly, seem to set them off. Instead it was the image of a naked overweight woman, sitting with her back to the camera, and wearing a dunce cap, that sealed the prohibited fate of Ministry’s latest release. K-Mart shoppers were spared the sight of stumbling upon an image of a less-than-perfect model and were able to amble over to the Jaclyn Smith cosmetic collection unaffected.

Assessing what’s acceptable and what is reprehensible can be a very daunting task in the marketplace of public opinion. For the most part, those albums that have been deemed controversial over the years probably have not suffered much in sales because of this tainted status. In some instances, their outlaw image may have promoted further purchases of the product. In the end, to tamper with a common cliché, most people will judge a compact disc not by its cover, but by its inside tracks.

© 2000 Ned Truslow

Disturbing Behavior (E-G)

The following list continues our multi-part look at instances of outrageous occurrences in the exhibitionist environment of rock. Part three examines disturbing behavior from E to G.

The Eagles
California. Home to a very spooky Hotel. A haunting song from 1976 chronicled the very narcissistic lifestyle of southern California excess. The band which crafted the monumental piece, “Hotel California,” was noted for its own indulgent excesses. The four founding members of the Eagles — Glenn Frey, Bernie Leadon, Randy Meisner, and Don Henley, (none of them California natives) — along with their future bandmates Joe Walsh, Don Felder, and Timothy B. Schmit, arguably defined FM American rock in the ‘70s and topped the charts with numerous albums and singles. They also were surrounded by, and displayed their very own style of, curious behavior.

Although the sounds of the group moved initially from country-rock to mostly middle-of-the-road rock, any sign of mellowness behind the scenes was practically nowhere to be found. Glenn Frey once captured the essence of his band’s history. “(We) went on the road, got crazy, got drunk, got high, had girls, played music, and made money.” Well, that actually sums up the profession as a whole. The Eagles were notorious for their wild parties, which they dubbed their ‘third encore’ after concerts, and they consisted of the band, music hangers-on and executives, and as Frey puts it, “as many beautiful girls as we’d meet from the airport to the hotel.”

While most of the bandmates comforted themselves with the benefits reaped by the aforementioned pleasures, guitarist Joe Walsh was inclined to spend some occasional time redecorating. Basically, Joe followed in the footsteps of Led Zeppelin and especially, the master of trashings, Keith Moon of The Who, and put his own brand of mayhem to the lodging industry’s tolerance test. Don Henley dismissed Joe’s proclivities as being inflated in a Spin Magazine interview. “Most of his legend looms larger than it actually was.” But he went on to say, “Frey and I made him stop that s**t eventually. There weren’t any f**king hotels we could stay in. We were gonna have to start camping out, and I thought it was pretty childish.” Exactly, what did Joe do?

He told Bam magazine in 1981 how it all would start. “So, I’ll be sitting in a hotel room wide awake, buzzin’ with the energy of the concert, thinkin’ ‘hey, where’d everybody go?” So, I would break things and smash things, have a great time, kind of blowing off steam, so I can relax and go to sleep. And I get mad, or sometimes I just enjoy it. If I’m in a Holiday Inn or a Howard Johnsons, why not break everything? They’re all cheap anyway. And it’s fun – you ought to try it sometime.” Irving Azoff, Joe’s manager, as well as the manager for The Eagles, told Hits magazine of a time when he and Walsh were at a Holiday Inn in New Haven, Connecticut. “Walsh was having an insomnia attack. He had his electric chainsaw along. He was next door, but there was no adjoining door, so I made one. Marshall Tucker was also on the bill (touring with The Eagles), and Toy Caldwell (Tucker’s lead guitarist) and some other folks were walking around the circular Holiday Inn with mike stands, punching holes in the ceiling. It was horrible, what with the police and everything.” Azoff went on to relate his favorite Walsh trashing. “He once pushed a piano out of…(a) top floor suite at the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) convention. It was the Astor Towers in Chicago. They pushed a grand piano through a plate glass window…That sucker flew 22 floors and landed on the manager of the hotel’s Cadillac. What was amazing was seeing them knock out all those plate glass windows to get that piano out. And it was all because they wouldn’t let Walsh in the restaurant without a tie.”

Walsh revealed to Bam magazine his own favorite moment of demolition, which also occurred in Chicago. “It was the end of a tour, and I was mad at the record company. A vice president had come out (of his hotel room), so I trashed his whole suite. It had wallpaper like this (referring to the tacky foil-face kind), and I couldn’t stand it, so I took all the pictures down, tore all the wallpaper off, then hung the paintings back up. I said, ‘Hey, it isn’t my room – I didn’t do nothing’…He was crying and s**t – it was wonderful.”

Around the time The Eagles released their chart-topping album “One Of These Nights” in 1975, guitarist Bernie Leadon was sharing his life with live-in partner Patti Davis, daughter of former California governor and future President Ronald Reagan. A track from the LP, “I Wish You Peace” was credited to both Leadon and Davis. Patti must have thought she was an integral member of the band because she told a few friends she was now writing for the group. She exclaimed to the Las Vegas Sun newspaper, “I was very lucky. I made quite a lot of money, and I still get royalties.” Drummer Don Henley became miffed at her bragging rights, a rather harmless claim-to-fame in hindsight. He felt compelled to respond to her article, writing a letter stating that Bernie Leadon was responsible for most of the song and that Patti’s contribution was minimal at best, just a few words. Okay, Don, take it easy. Wait, he wanted to deflate her some more. Henley alluded that he considered the song to be “smarmy cocktail music and certainly not something The Eagles are proud of.” Touchy, touchy Donald. Needless to say, Bernie didn’t quite warm to Henley’s chest-beating counterpoints. Henley later said, “There was a lot of tension in the band at that point.”

In fact, the strain really hit its breaking point after the success of the “Hotel California” album. Eagerly encouraged to come up with another smash success by Elektra, their record company, The Eagles, having replaced Leadon with Joe Walsh and Randy Meisner with Timothy B. Schmit, holed up in a Florida studio and proceeded to spend a lot of money tinkering with tunes. Frey and Henley had written most of the band’s huge hits, and had been allies, living in their big mansion in the Hollywood Hills, but by the time they started to craft “The Long Run” album, their relationship was crumbling. Frey and guitarist Don Felder were practically frothing at the mouth to tear each other apart. Henley turned his accusatory finger at Walsh, branding him a troublemaker. As the months dragged on, Elektra sent the band a rhyming dictionary to not-so-subtly help with jumpstarting their songwriting. Henley, at one point, spent time meticulously typing up a long-winded memo to the recording studio’s manager on the proper spindle direction for unrolling the toilet paper in the lavatory. He argued that, instead of dispensing from the bottom of the roll, the paper should come from the top of it, otherwise the manufacturers would have printed the little pink flowers on the underside of the sheets. (Did we say millions of dollars were being spent for this album?) Henley later claimed in Rolling Stone magazine that it was a joke, yet he was quick to counter, “Don’t you think it should come off the top?” 18 months later, the recording was complete. Frey later said to the Los Angeles Times, “I knew the Eagles were over about halfway through the “Long Run” album. I told myself I’d never go through this again. I could give you 30 reasons why, but let me be concise about it. I started the band. I got tired of it, and I quit.”

Before that happened, the band toured in support of their new album. During their final 1980 performance in Long Beach, California, Glenn Frey told the London Times, “we were onstage, and Felder looks back at me and says, ‘Only three more songs until I kick your ass, pal.’ And I’m saying, ‘Great, I can’t wait.’ We were singing ‘Best Of My Love,’ but inside both of us were thinking, ‘As soon as this is over, I’m going to kill him.”

The Eagles were kaput. Each member splintered off to pursue their solo careers. Joe Walsh modestly submitted his 1980 nomination for the office of The President of the United States. (Think of the potential destruction to the Lincoln Bedroom!) Of the bunch, Mr. Henley scored the most media for his disturbing antics after the break-up. He was very fond of cocaine, prostitutes, and partying, not necessarily in that order. One memorable night which involved 5 of Henley’s ho’s, mounds of coke, and a sex toy was documented in the tell-all book “You’ll Never Make Love In This Town Again.” The merriment was shattered during his farewell-to-The-Eagles party in November 1980, when one of Don’s hookers turned out to be 16 years old. She also turned out to suffer from a massive overdose. The cops were summoned, and Donald was arrested on possession charges of marijuana, cocaine, Quaaludes, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He was fined, given 2 years probation, and ordered to attend drug counseling. He later said, “I had no idea how old she was, and I had no idea she was doing that many drugs. I didn’t have sex with her. Yes, she was a hooker. Yes, I called a madam.” So, perhaps, she was there to fill in on a game of bridge?

Everyone was adament that the band would never re-form. Glenn Frey was the most outspoken. He told Oui magazine in 1983, “I don’t want to be 39 years old with a beer belly singing “Take It Easy” because I need the money. I just think there’s a time and a place for everything, and nine years was fun, but it’s enough.” When prodded that maybe in his 40s they would reunite, Frey replied, “Never. They say, ‘Never say never.’ Well, you can print it. It will never happen.” On April 25, 1994, when the full band reunited to perform on an MTV “Unplugged” program, Frey was 45 years old. We’re not sure if it could be quantified as to whether he had a beer belly or not.

Bass player Randy Meisner was on the receiving end of disturbing behavior throughout the ‘90s. It seems one Lewis Morgan of Atlanta, Georgia had jumped bail in Las Vegas and had begun a cross-country spree of theft, both monetarily and in identity. He was effectively passing himself off as Meisner, wooing women to spend thousands on him, absconding with their credit cards, and moving on to the next town. He was extremely knowledgeable about the music industry. Meisner and his attorneys spent the better part of the decade trying to nail the twerp. Randy told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1997, “God, I want to get this guy. It’s been eight years of this.” Strange women were contacting Meisner, accusing him of wronging them, and one went so far as to show up at one of his concerts armed with an ice pick.

While it seems The Eagles have now put away much of their rivalries and bickering, they haven’t curtailed all of their eccentric ways. A small, non-profit organization known as the National Foundation to Protect America’s Eagles operated their business out of Tennessee. Dolly Parton had adopted a few eagles and placed them in her Dollywood park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Sadly, two of them, named after Eagles songs, Desperado and Best Of My Love died of hydration in their nests in July 1995. Don Henley even adopted an eagle from the preservation group. So, when these devotees of our feathered friends decided to start a web page, they naturally thought to list it under an eagle URL. They registered as www.eagles.org. Well, as silly as it sounds, The Eagles actually felt threatened by this action, citing copyright infringement, and sued the tiny foundation for wrongfully using their name. The preservation group’s founder said, “It’s so obvious to anybody – even a child, I think – that the reason we use the word ‘eagle’ is because that’s what we do. What other word can we use?” For the toilet-paper-memo-writing indulgences of a supergroup, you ought to have a better answer than that, mister! Happily, we can report that the foundation still retains the website. As for The Eagles, they still retain a distinctive identity as the pioneering pirates of ‘70s southern California rock.

Eminem
He’s a Grammy winner, a chart-topper, a MTV Video Music Award recipient and a potential felon. In a nutshell, he’s your average millennial superstar rapper. Carrying on the incendiary traditions of NWA, Tupac, and Ol’ Dirty Bastard into the 21st century, Eminem, nee Marshall Mathers III, has fueled legal fires while his platinum-selling album “The Marshall Mathers LP” enjoys a ride at number one in America.

For Eminem, a poor kid raised around the Detroit area, life has always been confrontational. This could explain the disturbing reaction he had during a weekend in June 2000. As a result of an argument, he was charged with allegedly pulling a 9mm semiautomatic gun on Douglas Dail, an employee of rival Detroit rappers, Insane Clown Posse, outside of a car audio shop. His spree continued into the wee hours that night when he showed up at the Hot Rocks Café in Warren, Michigan, to check in on his wife, Kim. He spotted her kissing bar patron, John Guerra, in the parking lot and reportedly pulled the gun again, this time pistol-whipping a baffled Guerra, who managed to run away.

While he was released pending trial, which could land him a five-year prison sentence, Eminem faced a $25,000 lawsuit filed by victim Guerra. Eminem’s own mother, Deborah Mathers-Briggs, already had a pending lawsuit against her son, claiming he defamed her, characterizing her, among other things, as being a drug abuser, in interviews with Rolling Stone magazine, The Source magazine, and on the Howard Stern Radio Show.

On the home front, things weren’t terribly hunky-dory. Kim subsequently slit her wrists in a suicide attempt on July 9, 2000. Eminem decided enough was enough, and to tenderly cop a chorus line from his wonderfully-artistic song “Kim,” he said, “So long bitch” and filed divorce papers in mid-August. Kim responded with a countersuit, seeking sole custody of their 4-year old daughter and $10 million, claiming she suffered from emotional distress. Among her reasons, songs like the aforementioned “Kim” and “’97 Bonnie and Clyde” tended to make her, well, feel a little insecure. Both songs feature Eminem talking about driving a dead or soon-to-be-dead Kim to a remote location and disposing of her body.

Sample “Kim” lyrics: “Don’t you get it bitch, no one can hear you. Now shut the f*** up and get what’s comin’ to you…you were supposed to love me! (sounds of ‘Kim’ choking) Now bleed, bitch, bleed…bleed, bitch, bleed…bleed!”

Sample “’97 Bonnie and Clyde” lyrics (in which Eminem takes his daughter, Hallie Jade out on this excursion, with her mother already dead in the trunk): “Da-da made a nice bed for mommy at the bottom of the lake/Here, you wanna help Da-da tie a rope around this rock?”

Kim also cited Eminem’s penchant for beating up a ‘Kim’ doll, during his stage performances, as giving her additional emotional distress. The couple eventually settled their differences by the end of August 2000, with Kim receiving an undisclosed dollar amount and physical custody of Hallie Jade.

But hey, not to worry. Sales figures and accolades from music industry wags seem to suggest that Eminem’s just a little misunderstood, and he’s actually a stable, loving guy. For Eminem’s part, he calls his lyrical alter-ego, Slim Shady, “the evil side of me, the sarcastic, foul-mouthed side of me.” Oh, now we understand it. Say, honey, which Eminem tune did you have in mind for the first dance at the wedding reception? “Bitch” or “Just Don’t Give A F***?”

The Everly Brothers
Their two-part harmonies cut cleanly through every hit single they performed. The Everly Brothers’ voices were their silky-smooth distinguishing factor in such notable songs as “Bye Bye Love,” “Wake Up Little Susie,” and “All I Have To Do Is Dream.” These early rock ‘n’ rollers had the right bop in their stylings, that all the kids at the hop had to have their records. From 1957 to 1959, the brothers scored seven top-ten singles on the pop charts. Many of them were written by the tunesmith team of Felice and Beaudleaux Bryant, but their biggest hit ever, “Cathy’s Clown,” in 1960 was written by the two talented boys from Brownie, Kentucky. At the end of 1961, the siblings were drafted into the United States Marine Reserve, and they served a six-month stint for the Red, White, and Blue. It was all downhill from there.

When they returned to the stage, constant pressures of touring and achieving another hit song, sent them both on an unprescribed pill-popping frenzy for speed. Don Everly, the older Everly, seemed to be affected more adversely than his bro. While they were rehearsing for an upcoming European tour in Britain, Don collapsed onstage. Phil Everly was forced to perform their gig at London’s East Ham Granada theatre alone. The official statement on Don’s condition was that he suffered from food poisoning and exhaustion. Actually, he’d had a nervous breakdown and twice had tried to commit suicide by drug overdose in a 48 hour time period. Phil went on to complete the tour alone. Don spiraled into a heady drug addiction through the ‘60s. The two of them began entering into more serious disagreements with one another.

As their hits declined and fan base receded, so did their fortunes. By the early 1970s, the pair were being booked on the dinner theatre circuit. The brothers’ saddest instance of disturbing behavior occurred on July 14, 1973, as they played at the John Wayne Theater at the Knotts Berry Farm theme park in Los Angeles, California. Scheduled to play three different sets that day, the brothers were in the middle of their second show, when a drunken Don insulted Phil. Phil became irate and smashed his Gibson guitar onstage and then stormed off. Don stood for a moment before turning to the audience, saying, “The Everly Brothers died ten years ago.” Entertainment manager Bill Hollinghead then stopped the show. The Everly Brothers had publicly given their resignation. Phil vowed offstage, “I will never get on a stage with that man again.”

For the next 10 years, the press reported that the brothers did not see each other, except for a brief moment at their father’s funeral. Time began to heal wounds, however, and on June 30, 1983, the Everlys announced their plans for a reunion concert. On September 23rd, the boys stood before the audience at the Royal Albert Hall in London and hugged. The crowd cheered and many eyes misted. The Everly Brothers went on to be inducted into the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame, and have toured successfully singing those distinctive harmonies ever since.

Perry Farrell
Entertainer is a word Farrell seems to take to heart in a kind of twisted way. Certainly his music with Jane’s Addiction and Porno for Pyros was all-encompassing, mixing everything from hard rock to punk, folk and a smattering of jazz. Notable for organizing the Lollapalooza events of the early-to-mid-‘90s, Farrell made sure that a carnival of oddities, the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow, accompanied the tour, highlighted by Mr. Lifto, a guy who could carry weights around with his penis.

Nudity has never been a problem with Farrell. When he first hit Los Angeles in the early 1980s, he was an exotic dancer, lip-synching songs for horny women. One of Jane’s Addiction’s first videos for MTV, “Mountain Song,” was banned for its nudity quotient. The covers of both Jane’s Addiction albums “Nothing’s Shocking” and “Ritual De Lo Habitual” featured artwork of naked women — the latter had likenesses of Farrell, his wife Casey and a heroin-abusing friend, Xiola Blue, all together in a naked menage a trois. This album cover was subsequently covered up with plain paper wrapping for sale in stores. For Addiction’s final performance before their breakup in 1992, Perry performed nude at a show in Hawaii.

Around the time of Jane’s Addiction’s breakup, a short film that had been funded by their record company, Warner Bros., was being completed. Entitled “The Gift,” its standout scenes featured a Mexican Santeria blood-sharing ceremony, and Casey overdosing on heroin. The one moment where Warner Bros. was a bit gunshy in releasing the film occurs when Farrell has sex with his dead wife. Ya gotta draw the line somewhere. On October 16, 1991, Perry was busted after a maid at his hotel alerted authorities about the syringes and crack pipes she discovered in Farrell’s room. The wild man later supposedly swore of booze and drugs in 1998 when he became a father.

Fleetwood Mac
While the long road to success can be littered with an occasional ‘falling-out’ amongst bandmates, Fleetwood Mac certainly took the term ‘falling-out’ to great heights. The band went through over a dozen personnel changes in its first decade alone. Drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie, essentially the rhythm section, have been the steadiest members keeping the beat going in excess of 30 years.

The band’s core members suffered a connect-the-dots relationship charting over their heyday in the 1970s. Mick Fleetwood found his wife Jenny getting cozy with group guitarist Bob Weston, so Weston was sacked. Guitarist Lindsay Buckingham and singer Stevie Nicks were an item upon entry into the band, but soon, Stevie had a thing for Mick. John and keyboardist Christine McVie were a cozy couple for the first part of the 1970s, that is, until Christine fancied a bedhop with the band’s lighting director, Curry Grant.

But the disturbing behavior award goes to the band’s early string of guitarists. Founder Peter Green, born Peter Greenbaum in London’s East End, was a sensitive lad prone to crying crocodile tears anytime he heard music from Disney’s “Bambi” because he hated reliving the moment the young deer lost its mother. Later, he was just as keen to cry while watching the evening news. As the band took off to early success in England in the late 1960s, Green was heralded as a guitar genius, among the likes of Eric Clapton and B.B. King. But he began to feel that the group should donate all of their earnings to charity. Just after the band’s tour of the United States in April 1970, Green suddenly wanted to quit, citing, “I don’t want to be a part of the conditioned world, and as much as possible, I’m getting out of it.”

Christine McVie told Rolling Stone magazine that while in Germany, Green had met some “jet-setters” who were into the occult, and they turned him onto acid. Green later found God, but the hallucinogenic use caused him to become mentally unstable. He was homeless for spells at a time, took up menial jobs like gravedigging, and occasionally was hospitalized in mental institutions. His band royalties still came to about 30,000 pounds a year. But at the beginning of 1977, when the band’s accountant, Clifford Adams, showed up with one of those royalty checks, Green allegedly brandished a .22 pump action shotgun, screaming that he wanted the money stopped. Green was subsequently sentenced to spend time at The Priory, a private English mental institution.

The next year, he married a woman named Jane Samuels and moved to Los Angeles. With the help of Mick Fleetwood, Warner Bros. was willing to advance Green $400,000 for a three-record deal. But on the day he went to sign the papers, he wigged out, claiming it was the devil’s money, and the deal fell through. Green wrestled with his mental demons for the better part of two decades. He released over a half-dozen solo albums during this period, yet still required electroshock therapy now and again. By the late 1990s, he was back again, touring with a small band to nostalgic acclaim. Asked by Guitar Shop magazine whether, when he was ill, he remembered how bad it was, Green replied, “No, I don’t remember at all. I was just…destroyed. I think it was someone doing it to me – I’ll never accept that it was just me. I’ve always known that someone made it happen to me, someone mucking about with me.”

Unseen forces seemed to have also affected the life of the band’s next guitarist who took Green’s place, Jeremy Spencer. In 1971, during a tour of the United States, Spencer left his hotel room and never came back. The band’s crew alerted authorities like the FBI and Interpol. After two days, it was discovered that Spencer had simply boarded a Children of God bus, a strict religious sect who later were named The Family, and was now shorn of his hair, travelling the world to spread the sect’s word. Journalist Cameron Crowe later spotted Spencer on a London street corner, “blank-eyed and selling Children of God books.” Spencer released an album, “Jeremy Spencer and The Children” with his brethren in 1972, followed it up with another band-oriented effort in 1977, then virtually disappeared for about 20 years until resurfacing in the late ‘90s, making more music.

Ironically, Peter Green jumped in to fill the void left by Spencer during that 1971 tour, but refused to play any of his old Fleetwood Mac hits. Instead the band took to the stage and just jammed, while Green reportedly cackled in the microphone screaming at the American audience, “Yankee bastards!”

Guitarist Danny Kirwan finally settled into the lead guitar role, but he, too, couldn’t handle the pressure. Five minutes before a show in 1972, he got into an argument with band member Bob Welch about tuning, when suddenly Kirwan bashed his own head against a bathroom wall, to a bloody mess, and then smashed his guitar to bits. The band went onstage, while Kirwan sat with the sound engineer, loudly critiquing the Macs. He was fired immediately. After three attempts at solo excursions, Kirwan drifted away from the music scene by the start of the 1980s, oftentimes reported to be homeless.

Serge Gainsbourg
Okay, so maybe you don’t know this Frenchman’s work, but trust us, ol’ Serge was quite the prolific musical genius of the 20th century, as well as a rapscallion extraordinaire. He just didn’t become all that famous in the United States. In France, his native country, and to the rest of Europe, he was both vilified and praised. His music spanned from jazz to folk to reggae to pop to rock over 40 years. His crusty, audacious manner seemed to span just as long of a period.

Famously stating that for him, “provocation is oxygen,” Gainsbourg set out deliberately to cater to the enlightened fans of the Left Bank and stick it to the prudes of French upper society. While hooked up with lover Brigitte Bardot in the 1960s, the duo released a string of extremely popular bubble-gum songs like “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Harley Davidson.” When he penned the landmark “Je T’aime…Moi Non Plus,” (I Love You…Nor Do I), Bardot felt the song was too racy. Gainsbourg instead got actress Jane Birkin to do the extremely breathy, moaning, orgasmic sounds in this classic which far out-classed, erotically-speaking, any climax-driven groans Donna Summer tried to muster in her early disco ditties. For audiences of 1969, it proved to be controversial and instantly collectible. The BBC banned it, but it went to number 1 all over Europe. Gainsbourg and Birkin’s other single, “Soixante Neuf Annee Erotique,” (’69 The Erotic Year), proved just as groundbreaking with its not-so-subtle references to the pleasures of oral sex.

In the mid-‘70s, Gainsbourg caused more scandal, after being one of the first Europeans to dabble in Jamaican reggae, when he turned the French anthem, “La Marseillaise,” into a rasta-dance tune. His tour with the Wailers as back-up in 1979 led to former soldiers menacing fans at concerts. A bomb threat, along with 400 paratroopers vowing violence in Strasbourg led to the Wailers bowing out of the performance that night.

If anything, by the 1980s, Gainsbourg sought to up the ‘disturbance’ factor with his adoring audience and his harsh critics. His 1980 novel, “Evguenie Sokolov” concerned a painter who farted nonstop, until the one day, after a fart causes a brush stroke to be so inventive, so lauded, he becomes a hero in the art world. Unfortunately, Sokolov gets a kind of “farter’s block” after that, never able to duplicate his ingenious style. In 1985, Gainsbourg really shook things up when he appeared in a music video for his song “Lemon Incest” with his 13-year old daughter Charlotte. The two rolled around in bed, half-naked, while the lyrics, “Papa, the love which we make together is the rarest, the most disturbing, the purest, the most intoxicating,” played gently over the clip. For many disgusted with his antics, Gainsbourg seemingly encapsulated his blunt manner while in the presence of pop star Whitney Houston in 1986, when both artists were appearing on a French talk show. He laconically uttered in English, “I want to f*** her.” It is assumed Houston didn’t fall for this particular charm, and the drawling raconteur left his shock tactics behind when he passed away from a heart attack on March 2, 1991.

Gary Glitter
Big hair, gaudy jumpsuits, and of course, the glitter were the trademark stage personifications of Paul Gadd, an English entertainer who began fronting his own bands as early as 1958. Running through namesakes like Paul Raven and Paul Monday, the cheery glam-boy settled on the moniker Gary Glitter in 1971, after rejecting possibilities like Terry Tinsel, Stanley Sparkle and Vicky Vomit.

It was during the period of this image makeover that he conceived his 15-minute dance opus, “Rock ‘n’ Roll.” His record label split it in half for the single which was released in 1972, and “Rock ‘n’ Roll (Pt. 2)” became one of the most renowned sporting event anthems the world over. Its syncopated, hard-driving beat, coupled with the enthusiastic shouts of “Yeah!,” have gotten the most apathetic of spectators fired up. The single ultimately went to number 7 in the U.S. and up to number 2 on the U.K. chart.

Gary scored a string of number 1 and 2 hits in the U.K. throughout 1973 to 1975. In fact, his first 11 singles reached the U.K. top ten, a record The Beatles themselves had never achieved. But by 1977, he had fallen way out of fashion and had settled into the familiar rock star trappings of overspending and excessive use of drugs and booze. By November 1980, Gary Glitter was bankrupt. Touring mostly universities and small clubs throughout the ‘80s, he had an ‘accidental’ overdose of legal tablets in March 1986. After three drunk-driving charges, his license was taken away for 15 years.

Glitter seemed to live a fairly quiet existence in the 1990s, playing a successful Christmas concert each year, but a disturbing side of his personality reared its ugly head on November 18, 1997, when he was arrested and questioned by authorities for four hours at a Bristol, England police station. It seems a computer he dropped off for repair at a nearby PC World store was found to have several downloaded images of kiddie porn stuck to its hard drive. Management alerted the cops, who, in turn, searched Glitter’s two homes.

After his arrest, a woman who alleged Gary had abused her when she was underage came forward. Allison Brown claimed that Glitter had befriended her when she was a mere 11-years old and “nurtured” her, taking her virginity when she turned 14. Gary countered by saying she had been age 16, the year of consent in Britain, when they first had sex. Glitter had already been seen through the years in the company of author Roald Dahl’s 17-year old daughter Tessa and with 16-year old TV actress Denise Van Outen. Glitter remained free on bail for two years until his trial date finally came up.

Whatever small endeavors Glitter had slated to resuscitate his career were promptly scuttled. An appearance in the movie “Spice World,” in which he sang his song “I’m The Leader of the Gang” with the Spice Girls, was immediately snipped from the print and left on the cutting room floor. A planned performance at the BBC’s “Children In Need” benefit was cancelled as well.

On November 9, 1999, his trial officially began. Gary chose to remain silent during the examination of the charges leveled by Brown – four for indecent assault and four for sexual assault – but in the end, the jury found him not guilty anyway, mainly because she had sold interviews to tabloids. One tabloid had offered her an additional incentive of 25,000 pounds if Glitter had been found guilty.

When the 54 counts of making indecent photos of underage children, namely those 4,000 or so images found digitized on his computer, were brought before the court, Glitter chose to plead guilty. He was sentenced to 4 months, in a segregated division of Bristol’s Horfield Prison. While incarcerated, a former inmate, Matthew Gallagher, told Q Magazine that Glitter’s insatiable taste for porno was not extinguished, as he had begged other inmates to try to have friends smuggle in hardcore magazines for his viewing pleasure.

When it was announced Glitter would be released after serving two months on January 11, 2000, death threats were rampant, and prison officials chose to secretly drive him off the premises in a darkened van. Later that day, Glitter gave a brief announcement to the press assembled in Regents Park. “I deeply regret doing what I was sent to prison for. I’ve served my time. I want to put it all behind me and live my life.”

Life will probably never be the same for Glitter. His own son, Paul Gadd, Jr., said that Glitter was not welcome at his home anymore in South Devon, England. In April 2000, the World Entertainment News Network reported that the 55-year old glam-rocker had fled to Cuba to be with his 26-year old girlfriend, Yudenia Sosa Martinez. The average Cuban salary being approximately $15 a month means that Glitter could live the rich lifestyle there. But apparently the world won’t let him forget his transgressions so easily. When he returned to his London home briefly in August 2000, his house was surrounded by an angry mob who, subsequently, became so unruly the local police needed to intervene. The glitter has definitely gone out of Gary’s life.

The Go-Gos
Their music just doesn’t even begin to reveal the tawdry trappings these five junkie-jokers fell into behind the scenes. Arguably the closest any female group has ever come to aping the shenanigans of a ‘guy’ band, The Go-Gos may have been perky, squeaky-clean pop stars on your MTV, but their real personas consisted of really trashed-out, messed-up pussycats.

Having formed in the hardcore Los Angeles punk scene in the early ‘80s, the band got its initial start at the infamous Masque club in Hollywood. Frontwoman Belinda Carlisle will be the first to confess that they had sex anywhere and everywhere inside that club. As their first album, “Beauty and the Beat” shot up the charts in 1982, the band rocketed into their own ‘feel-good’ orbit. “I was 21, single, with no responsibilities, with more money than you can ever imagine and taking more drugs than you can ever imagine,” Belinda told New Musical Express Magazine. “Of course, it was a complete blast!”

Most guy fans were too intimidated to approach the girls backstage, so they’d oftentimes find themselves surrounded by forward lesbians wanting to get a little action. Most of the girls rebuffed the advances, Carlisle told NME. Instead the band’s road crew were used and discarded by the gals as sex playmates. Guitarist Jane Wiedlin said, “We spent hours trying to drive our road manager crazy. We would take pictures of our crotches, then slip them underneath his hotel room door and write, ‘Guess whose is whose?”

All of the gals picked up serious alcohol and cocaine addiction problems. During their heyday, Belinda was with a boyfriend who had no idea she was hooked. “I used to do drugs in my walk-in closet without him knowing. There were a few times in there when I thought for sure I was having a heart attack, but I couldn’t say anything.” Guitarist Charlotte Caffey upped the ante by diving into a full-blown hunger for heroin.

The most disturbing behavior instance in not just the annals of The Go-Gos history, but perhaps in the disturbing behavior Hall of Fame, occurred while the quintet toured the long roads across America. Let’s allow drummer Gina Schock explain: “The most disgusting thing we got up to was the ‘Corner Cleaners.’ Kathy (Valentine, the band’s bassist) started this thing where we would go into rest stops on the freeway and say, ‘Let’s be corner cleaners,’ which involved getting into the corners and sucking up the filth with your mouth. It was always in dirty bathrooms with s*** everywhere. Just repulsive.” Gives one a whole new image for the term “s***-eating grin,” no?

By 1984, after the poor reception of the band’s third album, “Talk Show,” ego blasts and drug stashes propelled the group to a break-up. Of the five members, singer Carlisle obtained the most successful post-Go-Gos career. It didn’t come, however, with its own brand of disturbing behavior, namely that of stalkers. During her solo years, Belinda had no less than 32 dangerous predators come out of the woodwork after her. “There was one guy who lived half an hour away from me who wanted to kill my husband because I belonged to him,” she told NME. “And I had one guy who came to my show in Reno, Nevada, with a gun – and they wanted me to go onstage wearing a bulletproof vest so they could capture him! I was like, ‘No way!”

The girls are all apparently clean now. Valentine and Coffey don’t touch alcohol at all. Having reunited on several occasions, Jane Wiedlin wistfully says of their new life on the road, “If you’re not going to spend money on drugs, you might as well spend it on a massage.”

Green Day
California punks guitarist Billie Joe and bassist Mike Dirnt, along with drumming assistance from German-born Tre Cool, formed their tight-knit unit, named after their favorite pastime, smoking pot, in the early 1990s. Addressing standard punk topics like lethargy, anarchy, malaise, masturbation, and of course, toking the spleef, the band always managed to put a cheerful spin on their lyrics, even when they sang about killing themselves and snuffing out an entire neighborhood in the process, as they did on the 1993 song, “Having a Blast.”

As standard-issue punks, they were expected to put on the usual sneering bravado, which usually leads to injury. But Green Day’s list of reckless assaults seemed to be more self-inflicted than having been a result of skirmishes with other attacking punkers. Just look at Billie Joe’s litany of incidents during the band’s 1994 tour. “Mike broke his teeth at Woodstock (II) and had to have emergency oral surgery. I tore ligaments in my ankle, so I’m in a brace right now. Tre was drunk and got in a motorcycle accident in Spain. I walked into a pole and sliced open my face. Mike got in a pillow fight with his girlfriend and broke both his arms and had whiplash and 6 stitches in his head. Tre was drunk and fell out of a van in San Diego. Mike broke his finger…It never ceases to amaze me…”

In 1998, this whimsical self-inflicted propensity was witnessed on television, when the band played on MTV’s “Live at the 10 Spot” from San Francisco. During the song, “She,” Mike jumped up in the air and smacked his own nose with his bass guitar. He stumbled offstage bleeding profusely as the band played on. Dirst rejoined his bandmates a few songs later, his nose still a bloody mess.

Disturbing behavior of a different, albeit expected kind, occurred when Green Day trashed a Tower Records outlet in Manhattan on November 11, 1997. Strolling in for a scheduled, in-store, appearance, Billie Joe spray-painted walls, fixtures, and the storefront windows with words starting with the letters F and Y. He then hurled Tre’s bass drum from the second floor landing into a display containing hundreds of CDs on the first floor. The 500 or so fans in attendance went on to perform a little mayhem themselves. The final damage estimate was reportedly as high as $50,000, and the band’s record label, Warner Bros., were dismally stuck with the tab.

Green Day caused a disturbance with another band on June 20, 1998, when they appeared at L.A.’s KROQ radio’s outdoor “Weenie Roast.” While Green Day performed their set, Third Eye Blind’s bassist, Arion Salazar, strode up behind Mike Dirst and gave him a bear hug. Security guards then tackled Salazar, and Dirst began kicking him. Backstage, the two got into a more serious scuffle, and this time Dirst was beaned on the head with a beer bottle, which resulted in his having to be rushed to a hospital with a skull fracture. While Green Day pinned the blame of the errant projectile on Salazar, Third Eye Blind claimed the bottle was lobbed by a concerned fan. Green Day actually went on to hire a private investigator to look into the matter. It took almost a year for the feud to be settled, when Dirst and Third Eye Blind guitarist Kevin Cadogan bumped into each other at a florist shop in Berkeley, California. Cadogan was buying a card for a kid who had been stabbed in the face in his old neighborhood. Dirst was so moved by the story, he not only let bygones-be-bygones, but he signed the ‘get well’ card to the kid. Awww, isn’t that a sweet outcome to one of rock’s many hooligan episodes?

Guns N’ Roses
Where can one possibly begin in documenting the late-‘80s/early-‘90s biggest, sleaziest example of exasperating excess? Probably just showcase all the high points, which, in the case of Guns N’ Roses describes the cognizant state of mind they were in for pretty much the expanse of this period.

Admittedly, it seems Axl Rose, formerly Bill Bailey and William Rose, had a rough upbringing in the farmland communities of Indiana. Regressive memory techniques have helped him to remember instances in which his stepfather abused him. One would think that “making it” beyond one’s wildest dreams in the world of music could help simmer the anger and confusion Rose dragged with him up the ladder of success. But, if anything, his personal demons ultimately led him to isolation and mired eccentricity.

The Tippercanoe County Court Records in Indiana indicate that Axl spent several days in jail off and on over a period of two years just after high school graduation. His rap sheet showed charges of battery, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, public intoxication, criminal trespass and mischief. The young punker with big dreams of making it big in the recording industry was primed to excel in further debauchery once he hit the West Coast.

After Rose and his fellow bandmates – guitarist Slash, guitarist Izzy Stradlin, bassist Duff McKagan, and drummer Steven Adler – had busted their chops in the decadent LA metal scene in the mid-‘80s while living together in a dilapidated studio apartment, several record company A&R execs were eager to sign them to their labels. Tom Zutaut with Geffen Records caught the band at the famous Troubadour club and was ready to make them an offer. Chrysalis Records’ Susan Collins also was interested in a deal. Basically, the band told Collins if she would walk down Sunset Boulevard naked for a few blocks in broad daylight, they’d sign with her. Guns N’ Roses wound up on the Geffen label in 1986.

As the band set about recording their landmark album “Appetite for Destruction,” the title seemed to ape their unspoken credo. In May 1987, Axl got into an altercation with a Los Angeles policeman and was later taken to the intensive care unit at a local hospital where he was allegedly given electro-shock treatment. In November 1987, while on a plane ride over for their first major-venue tour of the United Kingdom, Slash wound up setting fire to a seat with his cigarette. Touring Britain over a five-day period, drummer Steven Adler managed to get into a barroom brawl and broke his fist. Cinderella drummer, Fred Coury, also touring in Britain, replaced him for a spell.

By the time “Appetite For Destruction” rose to the top of the charts in the middle of 1988, it was a well-known fact that the five party boys openly partook of all kinds of uncontrollable substances. Axl told RIP magazine, he had a handle on it all though. “I have a different physical condition and different mindset about drugs than anybody I’ve known in Hollywood, because I don’t abstain from doing drugs, but I won’t allow myself to have a f*****’ habit. I won’t allow it.”

Rose’s track record with women was not perceived as outstandingly tender over the years. He began seeing Erin Everly, the daughter of rocker Don Everly, around 1986, and their relationship would subsequently be dragged before the courts in a messy lawsuit by the mid-‘90s. Basically, Erin portrayed her life with Rose as being one of living hell. She claimed he would regularly smack her around. She told a reporter that Axl beat her when he didn’t like the way she arranged his collection of CDs in the apartment. She further asserted that he threatened her with firearms, smashed her precious antiques, and kept a tight watch on her, refusing to give her money or keys to their home. He supposedly once removed all the interior doors in the apartment so he could keep an eye on her at all times. A former roommate testified that Axl kicked Erin with his boots and dragged her around by the hair, threw a TV at her and finally spat on her. Axl touchingly wrote the multi-million-selling hit “Sweet Child O’ Mine” in honor of his sweetheart.

Surprisingly, the two lovebirds made their knockabout romance official and married on April 28, 1990 in a tumultuous union that lasted all of eight months. Rose was granted an annulment in January 1991. The height of abuse during their marriage, as testified by Everly, came when Axl allegedly hogtied, gagged and very forcibly raped her.

Rose went on to date supermodel Stephanie Seymour, whom he had pursued after spotting in a Cosmopolitan Magazine. He cast her in the Guns N’ Roses music video “November Rain,” and things seemed hunky-dory, until one December night in 1992, when Stephanie claims Axl freaked. She charged, in a lawsuit, that after an argument in the couple’s Malibu kitchen, Rose shattered some bottles on the floor, grabbed Seymour by the throat, put her in a headlock, and dragged her bare feet through shards, while repeatedly hitting her in the head and upper torso. Axl later contended she had spurred the altercation by initially grabbing him by his nuggets.

Erin Everly testified that the New-Age-harmonic-convergence-reincarnation-believing, Rose had stated that he thought she and Seymour were sisters in a past life and “were trying to kill him.” Everly said, “Axl had told me that in a past life we were Indians and that I killed our children, and that’s why he was so mean to me in this life.” The defense rests, your honor. Both of these women in his life filed a civil lawsuit for their abuse, but did not lodge criminal charges. Each of the two civil cases were eventually settled.

But enough about connubial bliss, back to the boys circa the late ‘80s…

The mayhem continued, as the band sat in a Chicago hotel bar while on tour. A nearby patron allegedly commented that Axl looked like nice-guy rocker Jon Bon Jovi. Rose duly noted the observation by punching the man out. He was promptly arrested and put in jail. After springing Rose on bail, the band’s road manager went back to the bar and found Slash passed out. He slung the drunken guitarist over his shoulder, taking him up to his hotel room, and the frizzy-haired waste-case silently thanked the manager by relieving himself all over the good Samaritan. Slash subsequently hired a special bodyguard to carry him for those future occasions when he would pass out.

As far as bladder restraint goes, Izzy Stradlin didn’t fare much better. The band’s continually-inebriated rhythm guitarist, who once said, “There’s nothing like throwing up out a bus door going 65 miles an hour,” took to the skies and let loose one fine afternoon on August 20, 1989. While on board a US Air flight headed west back to Los Angeles, Stradlin’s wasted demeanor was such that he verbally harangued a stewardess, smoked in a non-smoking section, and well, felt the need to drain himself in the aisle near the kitchen area. He was arrested when the plane touched down in Arizona for a stopover and charged with public disturbance. In October, he was ordered to get counseling and fined $3,000, $1,000 of which went to cover the plane’s cleaning costs.

Slash also became a public enemy of the skies when he was caught smoking by a stewardess in a plane bathroom, after an alarm went off. He cited his court appearance as one of the few times he actually dressed up for an occasion. An incident before a gig in Phoenix saw Slash dress down quite a bit. Buzzing high as a kite on cocaine, he trashed his hotel room and ran naked through the halls of the establishment. After being subdued by police and taken to a local hospital, Slash, of course, could later not recall the incident had ever happened.

By September 1989, the group was the musical darling of critics and had sold millions of records. That month, during the MTV Music Video Awards, after Izzy finished a set onstage with Tom Petty, he was temporarily caught off guard when he stepped into the wings. Axl told Kerrang! Magazine, “(Izzy’s) momentarily blinded, as always happens when you come offstage, by coming from the stark stage-lights straight into the total darkness side-stage. Suddenly, Vince (Neil, lead singer for Motley Crue) pops up out of nowhere and lays one on Izzy. Tom Petty’s security people jump on him and ask Alan Niven, our manager, who had his arm ‘round Izzy’s shoulders when Vince bopped him, if he wants to press charges. He asks Izzy and Izzy says, ‘Naw, it was only like bein’ hit by a girl!’ Neil felt he had scored a better shot and told Kerrang! his side of the story. “I just punched that d*** and broke his f****** nose! Anybody who beats up on a woman deserves to get the s*** kicked out of them. Izzy hit my wife, a year before I hit him.” Axl responded, “Izzy never touched that chick! If anybody tried to hit on anything, it was her trying to hit on Izzy when Vince wasn’t around. Only Izzy didn’t buy it. So that’s what that’s all about.” Rose later challenged Vince Neil to a fight, anywhere, anytime, guns, knives or fists.

Axl, himself, had already taken a few swings at a celebrity. While shooting the music video for “It’s So Easy” in Los Angeles, David Bowie stopped in to see the proceedings. Axl’s girlfriend at the time, Erin Everly, was featured in the video as a dominatrix-clad beauty. When Bowie stepped out of line with Erin, at least in Axl’s eyes, the quick-tempered Gunner tried to pop the pop star with a few punches. He had Bowie thrown off the set. Bowie, ever the dapper gentleman, later profusely apologized, and all was forgiven. (In light of Erin’s abuse lawsuit, Rose tried his best to dispose of copies of the video because with her prominently featured onscreen while Rose sang, “See me hit you, you fall down,” it seemed maybe a wee bit incriminating).

Stumbling into the ‘90s, the band didn’t let up in its disturbing behavior. Slash and Duff kicked off the month of January with an utterly intoxicated, profanity-laced acceptance speech at the 17th American Music Awards. Meanwhile, Axl wasn’t extremely neighborly in his West Hollywood digs. Noisy disturbances brought 13 deputies to his door with batons drawn on July 31, 1990. Rose felt their response was such an over-reaction, he filed a complaint against the sheriff’s department. Later, in October 1990, he was arrested for allegedly hitting a neighbor, Gabriela Kantor, on the head with a bottle, after she contacted police complaining about Rose’s loud music. Rose was released on $5,000 bail and dryly commented, “Frankly, if I was going to hit her with a wine bottle, she wouldn’t have gotten up.”

While band members, Axl, Slash, and Izzy seemed to continually snare the spotlight in the excessive demeanor department, apparently Duff McKagan wasn’t immune to some questionable judgement. According to New Musical Express magazine, Duff, one afternoon, became convinced that drummer Steven Adler had been kidnapped by some drug dealers to whom he owed money to. McKagan enlisted the help of a friend to track down Adler. Stopping by Duff’s house momentarily, the friend watched in amazement as Duff stumbled back to the car with a shotgun, which he proceeded to carry with him in the front seat, waving in plain view. The duo drove to LA’s San Fernando Valley, cruising through the many side streets, when, suddenly, Duff called out, “There, that’s the one!” Pulling up to a small tract house, he leapt from the car and pounded on the home’s front door. A man in his 80s answered and nearly had a heart attack at the sight of crazed Duff with a shotgun. The determined bassist brushed passed the codger and searched the house. No Adler on the premises. Back in the car, cruising, and Duff pointed to another home. Banging on this front door, an equally-shocked Vietnamese woman watched as Duff again brushed past and tossed her home. The friend wised-up at this point, placating the catatonic homeowner, and calmly collected Duff, placing him back in the car. McKagan tossed the gun in the backseat, uttering, “F*** it. Let’s get a beer.”

Insinuating drummer Steven Adler couldn’t control his narcotics habit (!), the group let their sticks man go in April 1990. Adler commented on his bandmates’ suspect reasoning: “They said it was drugs…I call that the pot calling the kettle black.”

Sensing the press was not really their friend, and wanting to exercise rock star “control,” the band started to make journalists sign a very restrictive contract obligating their pieces meet with final approval by Guns N’ Roses. Otherwise, a reporter refusing to sign wouldn’t gain access to the group.

On tour during the summer of 1991, Guns N’ Roses irritatingly kept many concertgoers waiting two to three hours before appearing onstage. A pivotal gig at the Riverport Amphitheater outside St. Louis, Missouri on July 2, 1991 was the biggest example of Axl’s need for “control.” On stage, Axl noticed that a fan was capturing shots of the band with his camera in the first few rows. Slash told RIP magazine, “This guy was shooting pictures the whole show. He’d been doing it, and probably having a good laugh. I saw Axl tell the security guard, ‘Stop that f*****’ guy!,’ and the security’s watching the band. So Axl went in, and that’s when it started.” Diving into the crowd himself, Rose tried to get at the offending shutterbug. He made his way back to the stage and said, “Thanks to the lame-ass security, I’m going home.” The band ambled off, and the crowd went nuts.

The venue was thoroughly trashed. Slash said to RIP, “The kids had a field day. I lost all my amps, my guitar tech got a bottle in the head, someone got knifed, our stage and video equipment and Axl’s piano were trashed.” Axl told Rolling Stone Magazine, “Whether I jumped off the stage for a camera or not, that’s not a good enough reason to tear the place down. It was announced that we would come back onstage, and they were more into the riot than even the band playing.” Nevertheless, St. Louis authorities held Rose personally accountable. More than 50 people, including 15 police officers, were injured in the melee and over $200,000 in damages were incurred at the location.

Fans and amphitheater management filed suits against the band. Axl was later found guilty of property damage and assault as a result of the riot. He was placed on 2 years’ probation and ordered to pay $50,000 in donations to local social-service organizations in the St. Louis area.

Rose continued, however, to be the control freak prima donna. During a concert a week later in Colorado, he stopped the show and demanded that security guards remove a heckler from the audience. He caused disturbances a year later, when he simply halted a show in Montreal, Canada after 15 minutes of playing, which resulted in normally-passive French-Canadians taking to the streets smashing storefronts and overturning cars.

Izzy was perhaps dizzy by all the madness, and in November 1991, he decided to leave the band.

Slash was still managing to create disturbing scenarios on his own. Adult film actress Savannah had dated many rock stars by the time she set her sights on Rose and Slash in the early ‘90s. She told a tabloid that Axl rated only a “1” on a scale of “1 to 10” in the sack. But Slash was said to be the love of her life. The pair caused a scandal when they walked into the Scrap Bar in Greenwich Village, New York on April 3, 1992. Ordering a drink was nothing out of the ordinary, but several eyewitnesses, including the bar’s owner, alleged that Savannah quenched another need of Slash’s by inviting his pride and joy to come out and conduct a tonsil probe on her in full view of seen-it-all patrons. Unfortunately, the Lewinsky tactics were not enough to keep Slash interested, and she was heartbroken when he married model Renee Suran in September 1992. Savannah later committed suicide after being injured in a car accident.

When the MTV Music Video Awards rolled around again in 1992, Guns N’ Roses had yet another brusque brush backstage. This time it was Axl who exploded. Nirvana frontman, Kurt Cobain, and his brash wife, Courtney Love, spotted Rose, and as a joke, Courtney asked Axl to be the godparent to their daughter Frances Bean. Cobain later said, “These were his (Rose’s) words, ‘You shut your bitch up, or I’m taking you down to the pavement.’ Courtney later retorted that Rose “should be exterminated.” According to Rolling Stone Magazine, Axl told a friend that Love was trying to possess him. The friend said, “He believes people are always trying to find a window through to control his energy.”

Axl’s childish anger never seemed to dissipate. When he finally had enough money to move into a multi-million dollar, luxurious mansion, he later related, “I’m standing in this house going, ‘This house doesn’t mean anything to me. This is not what I wanted. I didn’t work forever to have this lonely house on the hill that I live in because I’m a rich rock star.” So he did what every wealthy person does when faced with a future filled with good fortune, monumental achievements, and a relatively worry-free lifestyle. He shoved his grand piano right through the massive sliding glass windows of the home in disgust causing $100,000 in damages.

After the release of 1993’s “The Spaghetti Incident,” Guns N’ Roses pretty much dissipated. Duff’s pancreas burst in 1994, due to his excessive drinking, and he was told that one more drink could terminate his life. He’s assumed to be sober now. Slash went on to front another band, as did Izzy.

Steven Adler didn’t fare too well in the latter part of the ‘90s. In February 1997, he was arrested and subsequently convicted on a domestic violence charge that he had committed on his live-in girlfriend. He pled no contest to disturbing the peace, served four days in jail, and was put on a three-year probation. But trouble brewed again on January 27, 1998, when he got into an argument with a 43-year old woman at his North Hollywood apartment over his drug abuse. He allegedly threw her against walls and furniture. When the police arrived, Adler had fled the scene. He was later found in the spring of that year, living in a condominium in Century City, California. He was arrested, charged with battery and violating his probation, yet, he subsequently posted bail.

Spiraling still out of control, Adler allegedly attacked yet another woman at his Century City condo when he supposedly pushed her head into a wall and threw her clothes off a balcony during an argument. By September 24, 1998, the law set down its punishment, when Adler pled no contest to two counts of battery and violation of the probation from the 1997 conviction. He was sentenced to 150 days in jail.

Axl Rose sealed himself in his mansion and in the studio, trying to make sense out of hundreds of unfinished tracks for a new Guns N’ Roses album which has still yet to have materialized. With only a little help from his former bandmates, Rose has plowed through numerous musicians and producers in a fickle 6+ years of recording. One producer, techno wiz Moby, who dropped in for a brief period to assist Axl, told Rolling Stone Magazine in May 2000, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the record never came out, they’ve been working on it for such a long time.”

Slash and Axl no longer communicate with each other. What few friends he has left suggest he still pines for Stephanie Seymour. In a Rolling Stone expose, it was reported that Axl has had a decades’ long friendship with a New Age guru in Sedona, Arizona. It is presumed he had just visited this woman on February 10, 1998 when he was stopped at the Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix by security personnel. An officer asked to see his carry-on luggage. The temperamental Axl Rose raised his voice in snarly defiance, just like he would have in the old days. “I’ll punch your lights out right here and right now…I don’t give a f*** who you are. You are all little people on a power trip. I don’t give a f***. Just put me in f*****’ jail.” It is alleged the bag only just contained a very legal, non-threatening, rather large crystal. All the same, the man who had displayed a lifetime’s worth of disturbing behavior in a matter of a decade or so, opted to be put behind bars for a few hours. He later pled no contest to a misdemeanor charge of disturbing the peace and paid a $500 fine. Welcome to the jungle, baby.

(Note: Unfortunately my stint writing for the website ended around the time of this article, so subsequent exposes on disturbing behavior from H-Z never materialized).

© 2001 Ned Truslow