Music
Rock Vs Country Music—Hot Messes Exegesis—Which Genre’s More Rock ’n Roll?
18 Jul, 16
rock vs country music hot messes—From having assistants blow cocaine into your vajayjay, to cold-blooded murder, rock stars party like rock stars while country stars party like, well criminals
Find out who tied up a groupie and shoved live fish into her orifices.
Who murdered his wife in front of their daughter.
And who snorted up his deceased father’s ashes!
Some are alive, some overdosed long ago, and then there’s Keith Richards.
No one can be sure exactly what’s going on there.
But we do know this: Every cigarette you smoke, adds one year to Keith Richard’s life.
So, rock Vs country music—which has produced more hot messes?
Breaking it down:
Rock N Roll hot mess hall of fame:
rock vs country music hot messes 1: Keith Richards
The Rolling Stones guitarist has done more morphine, heroin, cocaine and booze than any given wing of the Betty Ford clinic.
Yet, despite this, he’s never overdosed!
He attributes this to only using “high quality drugs.”
Rumors are rampant that Keith even snorted his father’s ashes, mixed with cocaine.
When asked if the rumor was true, he clarified that it was indeed false.
He actually snorted the ashes straight, and chased them with a quart of Jack Daniels.
When cops raided a party at Keith’s country estate in 1967, Richards’ was tripping so hard on acid, he mistook them for uniformed dwarfs and welcomed them in with hugs for all.
Those friendly “uniformed dwarves” almost threw him in the slammer!
For two years Keith Richard’s thought the handsome, chiseled-jawed guy hanging out with his son Marlon was just one of Marlon’s drug dealers.
Then one night it hit him.
“Whoa! Scissorhands!”
He finally recognized that the drug dealer was not in fact a drug dealer, but friggin’ Johnny Depp!
The two have since become bosom buddies and as recently as 2015, allegedly got thrown out of Hollywood steakhouse Musso and Frank’s for being drunk and disorderly.
rock vs country music hot messes 2: Fleetwood Mac
The members of Fleetwood Macwere such coke fiends, they even thanked their coke dealer on the Rumours sleeve!
Speaking of rumors, legend has it that all that snorting left Stevie Nicks‘ nose so ravaged, she had to enlist a roadie’s help to blow drugs into her vajazz!
She denies the story, but admits that she could “put a big gold ring” through her septum.
rock vs country music hot messes 3: The Doors
Jim Morrison was such a bad ass that he was actually placed on the US Government’s watch list, because of his tendency to incite riots.
In 1967 he incited one such riot after explaining to the audience that the show was delayed because cops had happened upon him making out with a girl back stage, and decided to mace them both!
The crowd went crazy, and Jim was arrested.
He was arrested on stage at another concert for indecent exposure after stripping off his clothes and encouraging the audience to do the same.
And then, Morrison turned down a plea bargain from the Miami Police Department, refusing to do a free concert in exchange for having the charges dropped!
Once a sinuous sex-god, Jim was a bloated alcoholic near the time of his death, allegedly putting down 36 beers a day.
On July 3, 1971 his body was found in the bathtub of his apartment in Paris.
Although he was only 27-years old, the cause of death was ruled as “natural causes” and no autopsy was done.
But singer Marianne Faithfull says she knows who killed him.
In her 2014 interview with England’s Mojo magazine, Faithfull said her then-boyfriend, a heroin dealer named Jean de Breiteuil dealt him a lethal strain of heroin.
Faithful claims:
I could intuitively feel trouble.I thought, I’ll take a few Tuinal and I won’t be there. And he went to see Jim Morrison and killed him. I mean I’m sure it was an accident. Poor bastard. The smack was too strong? Yeah. And he died. And I didn’t know anything about this.
rock vs country music hot messes 4: Iggy Pop
Presumably taking a cue from predecessor Jim Morrison, Punk God Iggy Pop frequently performed Full Monty.
He was also the first performer to do a stage dive.
When the band wasn’t committing lewd and lascivious acts on stage, they were hanging out at “the fun house.”
And what a fun house it was!
The Igster and his The Stooges crew liked to decorated the walls of the Detroit area home with the blood that would quirt out of syringes after they shot up.
rock vs country music hot messes 5: Keith Moon
Drummer for The Who, Moon was a hope-to-die booze bag who pretty much laid off the drugs, but still managed to earn the nickname “Moon the Loon“ for his hobby of blowing up toilets with cherry bombs and M-80s.
Moon trashed so many rooms, The Who was forced to stay in neighboring towns when doing concerts because they were banned virtually every local hotel!
He once even drove his Lincoln into the swimming pool of a Holiday Inn!
During one concert Moon passed out on stage so many times the band turned to the audience and said “Is there a drummer in the house?”
Some random dude got on stage and finished the concert.
Moon died at the age of 32 from overdosing on a prescription drug that was intended to help him quit drinking.
rock vs country music hot messes 6: Eric Clapton
First clue that Eric Clapton liked to party?
One of his biggest hits is called Cocaine.
And even though the cocoa plant inspired him enough to croon such an ode, he was still dropping $16,000 a week on heroin!
$16-fucking-thousand!
And this was back in 1976!!!!
Allegedly he was donating a fair amount to The Beatles, with whom he consorted frequently back in the diz.
Clapton was so loaded once he did an entire show lying down, and no one batted an eye!
rock vs country music hot messes 7: Pete Doherty
Pete Doherty, who enjoyed being Kate Moss‘ more effed up half for about 5 years, has a police record longer than his track-marked arm.
And nearly all of his arrests pertain to possession: crack, heroin, ketamine, and cannabis.
A staunch heterosexual who dated one of the most legendary supermodels of all time, Pete admitted to prostituting himself to pay for his astronomical drug habit.
He even admits to once robbing a male client to get drug money.
Taking a cue from Iggy Pop, Pete created an art exhibit coined “arterial splatter,” made up of paper glued onto canvases with various drawings and poetry all created from the spray of the blood from his heroin syringe.
He was eventually jailed for six months in 2011, following his 26th drug-related arrest.
Yep, 26th…
rock vs country music hot messes 8: Nikki Sixx
Mötley Crüe bassist and lyrics writer, Nikki Sixx was once pronounced dead after overdosing on heroin, but the EMT was a huge fan, and vowed to revive him.
When he finally came to in the hospital, Nikki ripped out all of the tubes and wires, and went AWOL to do more drugs.
The incident inspired the song Kick Start My Heart.
One Valentine’s Day he overdosed at his dealer’s house, and the panicked dealer shoved ice down his pants, and when that failed to rouse him, beat him to a pulp with a baseball bat.
Nikki wouldn’t wake up, so the dealer dumped him in a dumpster and left him for dead.
Eventually he came to, crawled out of the dumpster and scored more smack.
Because, that’s how he rolled….
rock vs country music hot messes 9: John Bonham
Not sure if this qualifies as partying, or misogyny, or depravity, or insanity, or some perverse combination therein.
But Led Zeppelin drummer and hardcore drunk John Bonham, decided to fish off the balcony of his room at the Edgewater Hotel in Seattle, Washington one night after a concert.
He was joined by Zeppelin manager, Richard Cole and they managed to fill the room with various types of fish, including several mud sharks.
A ginger-haired groupie turned up and announced that she loved being tied up during sex.
Bonham and Cole obliged her predilection and then proceeded to stick fish in the orifices of the bound girl, while saying things like “I’m putting a red snapper in your red snapper”.
Frank Zappa immortalized the revolting incident with the song Mud Shark.
And when there were no groupies to be found, “Bonzo” would attend to The Beatles.
One night, he shaved the hair and eyebrows off an unconscious Ringo Starr.
At the age of 32, Bonham died by choking on his own vomit after doing 40 shots of vodka.
Rock ‘n roll baby!
rock vs country music hot messes 10: Ozzy Osbourne
It’s safe to assume that Ozzy Osbourne was pretty wasted when he bit the head off a bat during a concert.
And when he peed on the Alamo, and managed to get himself banned from San Antonio, Texas for a decade.
1984 saw an unholy union when Mötley Crüe opened for Ozzy during his Bark at the Moon tour, which has come to be known as one of the craziest, drug and alcohol fueled tours in the history of rock-n-roll.
One night Nikki Sixx snorted a huge line of cocaine, and told Ozzy to “beat that”.
Ozzy did, when he noticed a convenient procession of ants marching along the sidewalk.
The Prince of Darkness bent down, snorted the line of ants, stood up, peed on the remaining insects, and then licked up the wretched urine/ant concoction.
Nikki then whipped out his little fireman, sprayed the sidewalk, but before he could lap up the puddle, Ozzy had already swallowed.
rock vs country music hot messes 11: Duff McKagan
Guns N’ Roses‘ guitarist, Duff McKagan ingested such large quantities of drug and alcohol that his pancreas exploded backstage after a concert!
He tells the story to Gavin Edwards:
You get third-degree burns on the inside of your intestine and your stomach.For a lot of people, they split their skin open to get the steam out. I had morphine in this arm for the pain, and then I had lithium in this arm for the DTs.
Beat that Country music!
Well, here goes!
Country music hot mess hall of fame:
rock vs country music hot messes 12: Mindy McCready
When she was just 15-years old, Mindy McCready had an affair with married Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens, who was 28 at the time.
In 2004, McReady was charged with prescription drug fraud after illegally obtaining OxyContin.
She was sentenced to three years of supervised probation and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service.
In 2005, McCready was arrested again and charged with DUI and driving on a suspended license.
A few days later, her ex-boyfriend William McKnight was charged with attempted murder and aggravated burglary after allegedly breaking into her home and beating her up.
Just weeks later, McCready was charged with identity theft, unlawful imprisonment and hindering prosecution, then hospitalized after attempting to kill herself.
She left the hospital and went back to McKnight, her abusive boyfriend.
Two years later, she landed herself in jail for a probation violation after resisting arrest and committing battery during an argument with her mother.
She served several months.
In 2008, she went to rehab.
By 2009, McCready starred on season three of VH1’s Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.
In 2010, McCready was hospitalized again, for a mystery ailment, but hospital staff suspected she overdosed on prescription pills.
In February of 2013, Mindy died of a single self-inflicted gunshot wound.
rock vs country music hot messes 13: George Jones
George Jones‘ second wife, Shirley Corley, once tried to stop him from driving to the liquor store by hiding his car keys.
But, according to his autobiography, I Lived to Tell It All, he was so determined to get hammered that he drove there on his John Deere lawnmower.
Corley divorced him, and he married singer Tammy Wynette, who had to contend with the same shenanigans as her predecessor.
In her 1979 autobiography, Stand by Your Man, Wynette recalled waking up in the middle of the night to find Jones gone.
After driving 10 miles to the nearest bar, she found his John Deere lawnmower sitting in the parking lot.
**BONUS POINTS TO JONES FOR LOOKING LIKE A CREEPY CULT LEADER**
rock vs country music hot messes 14: Janis Joplin
Even though she was known as the Queen of Rock ‘n Roll, Janice Joplin’s music was firmly rooted in blues and country.
Her life though was more conventionally rock ‘n roll.
Joplin was only 27 when she died, and her will funded $2,500 to throw a wake party in the event of her demise.
Joplin drank so much Southern Comfort that she managed to get the company to give her a lynx coat as a thank-you for boosting their sales!
A belligerent drunk, she once broke a bottle over Jim Morrison’s head at a party in San Francisco.
The Texas native also enjoyed her heroin and cocaine.
On October 4, 1970, Janis joined the 27 Club by overdosing on whiskey and heroin.
Many believe that Jean de Breiteuil, the same dealer that allegedly dealt Jim Morrison the potent batch that killed him, dealt Joplin the lethal dose.
She died within sixteen days of Jimi Hendrix, and ten months of Jim Morrison.
rock vs country music hot messes 15: Johnny Cash
In 1965,Johnny Cashwas arrested by a narcotics squad in El Paso, Texas with 688 Dexedrine capsules and 475 Equanil tablets in his guitar case.
He broke his toes trying to kick the bars out of the jail cell.
He was also the first person ever to be sued by the U.S. for igniting a forest fire, after taking his camper, Jesse James, out to the desert for a methamphetamine binge.
It caught fire, and the blaze killed almost every endangered condor in the refuge, to which Cash replied, “I don’t give a damn about your yellow buzzards.”
In the late 1950s, Cash and his band bought 500 baby chickens and let 100 loose on each floor of the hotel they were staying at.
Another time, Cash and Co. flushed cherry bombs down a toilet, destroying the plumbing system.
Cash also stabbed a reproduction of the Mona Lisa that was hanging in a hotel because it didn’t quite reach his standards.
rock vs country music hot messes 16: Waylon Jennings
Jennings had a wicked appetite for cocaine, and by his own account, during the 1970s he was spending over $1,500 a day on marching powder.
$1,500 A DAY….. in the 1970s….!!!!.
In 1977, federal agents arrested Jennings for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute.
But the charges were dropped because he flushed all 27 grams of cocaine down the toilet while authorities waited for a search warrant.
The incident was ultimately recounted in his classic song, Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit’s Done Got Outta Hand?
rock vs country music hot messes 17: Spade Cooley
Spade Cooley was known as The King of Western Swing, and when he drank, things could get ugly.
How ugly?
Well, in 1961, Cooley’s wife of 15 years told him that she was leaving him.
He responded by savagely beating her in front of their 14-year-old daughter, whom he forced to watch under threat of death.
He didn’t take his battered wife to a hospital for five hours, and when she finally made it to the emergency room, she was pronounced dead on arrival.
Cooley told authorities that her injuries, which included a ruptured aorta, head-to-toe bruises and numerous cigarette burns, were the result of her falling in the shower.
He was convicted of murder and died of a heart attack in 1969.
rock vs country music hot messes 18: Johnny Paycheck
Johnny Paycheck rose to fame in the 1960s with folksy murder ballads likePardon Me, I’ve Got Someone to Killand It Won’t Be Long and I’ll Be Hating You.
In December 1985, Paycheck shot a man named Larry Wise in a bar because he asked the singer if he had ever eaten deer meat or turtle soup.
”Do you see me as some sort of country hick? “Paycheck, replied, then whipped out a pistol and shot at Wise’s head, blowing his cowboy hat cleeeeaaan off.
Paycheck served almost two years in prison.
He died in 2003, age 64.
rock vs country music hot messes 19: Elvis Presley
You may not think of Elvis Presley as a country singer, but the Pelvis belted out such farm favorites as Kentucky Rain, Blue Moon, It Keeps Right On A Hurtin’, and many more.
And when he wasn’t crooning country ballads or pop hits, Elvis was doing lotsa drugs, thanks in part to his personal physician, Dr. George Nichopoulos.
The good doc was found to have written Elvis 199 prescriptions totaling more than 10,000 doses of sedatives, amphetamines and narcotics in just the first 8 months of 1977.
Elvis and Dr. Nick kicked off each tour with three locked suitcases filled with prescription drugs.
One time Elvis’s road manager, Joe Esposito, raided Elvis’s bedroom at Graceland.
He found three giant pharmacy-sized jars, each containing 1,000 high-dose barbiturates, Dexedrine amphetamines and tranquilizers.
He even found vials of pills hidden in the seams of the curtains.
Dr. Nick was so terrified that Elvis would overdose, he once convinced Knoll, the manufacturers of Dilaudid, to make a special batch of a thousand pills without any active ingredients to trick The King into taking less.
Elvis Presley died anyway on August 16, 1977. On the toilet no less.
rock vs country music hot messes 20: Keith Urban
The squeaky-clean American Idol Judge?
Yes, there was a time that Mr. Nicole Kidman was “crawling around the carpet looking for a rock of crack.”
Keith was such a hot mess, his friends would even “make fun of him behind his back, saying, ‘Man, that guy can’t hold his substances,'”
He was so wasted one day, he, (GASP) missed a recording session with The Dixie Chicks!
Congrats, Mr. Urban/Kidman whatever, The Rock Bottom Award goes to you!
rock vs country music hot messes 10. Ray Charles
Given his raging heroin addiction, it’s pretty impressive that Charles managed to sire twelve children (by nine different women).
Charles kicked off his drug dalliance by smoking weed, which soon escalated to heroin.
The singer struggled with heroin addiction for 16 long years—and was arrested on narcotics charges three times.
He finally kicked his addiction in 1966, and went on to immortalize his struggle in songs such as I Don’t Need No Doctor, and Let’s Go Get Stoned.
rock vs country music hot messes—(dis) honorable mention : Whitney Houston
During a 2002 interview with Diane Sawyer, proving denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, Whitney Houston broke it down:
First of all, let’s get one thing straight. Crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack. Let’s get that straight. Okay? We don’t do crack. We don’t do that. Crack is whack.
But Tina Brown told a different story, revealing that her former sister-in-law spent days locked in her bedroom “smoking crack, using sex toys to satisfy herself and ignoring personal hygiene”.
“I did crack with Whitney. She won’t stay off drugs. It’s every single day,” Tina said. “It’s so ugly. Everyone is scared she’s going to OD.”
Whitney was so deep in her addiction that her teeth started to fall out, and she was forced to wear dentures.
“She loses them in the house and when she’s out on drug binges,” Tina claimed. “They cost $6000 and the dentist has to keep FedEx’ing her a new set.”
Whitney even regularly hallucinated that she was being attacked by the devil, and she would punch and bite herself until she was covered in cuts and bruises!
Houston died February 11, 2012—age 48.
The singing legend was found unresponsive, face down in the bathtub, surrounded by drug paraphernalia, in her Beverly Hills hotel room.
Didn’t she almost have it all?
Just say no kids.
So the winner?
It has to be country…
Because, rock stars will just kill themselves—country stars though?
Day-am, they’ll kill themselves and anyone unlucky enough to be standing in the surrounding area at time of implosion.
Last word to Johnny Cash:
When I was just a babyMy Mama told me, “SonAlways be a good boyDon’t ever play with guns,”But I shot a man in RenoJust to watch him dieWhen I hear that whistle blowin’I hang my head and cry
Keith Richards
The Rolling Stones guitarist has done more morphine, heroin, cocaine and booze than any given wing of the Betty Ford clinic.
Yet, despite this, he’s never overdosed!
He attributes this to only using “high quality drugs.”
Rumors are rampant that Keith even snorted his father’s ashes, mixed with cocaine.
When asked if the rumor was true, he clarified that it was indeed false.
He actually snorted the ashes straight, and chased them with a quart of Jack Daniels.
When cops raided a party at Keith’s country estate in 1967, Richards’ was tripping so hard on acid, he mistook them for uniformed dwarfs and welcomed them in with hugs for all.
Those friendly “uniformed dwarves” almost threw him in the slammer!
Fleetwood Mac
The members of Fleetwood Macwere such coke fiends, they even thanked their coke dealer on the Rumours sleeve!
Speaking of rumors, legend has it that all that snorting left Stevie Nicks‘ nose so ravaged, she had to enlist a roadie’s help to blow drugs into her vajazz!
She denies the story, but admits that she could “put a big gold ring” through her septum.
The Doors
Jim Morrison was such a bad ass that he was actually placed on the US Government’s watch list, because of his tendency to incite riots.
In 1967 he incited one such riot after explaining to the audience that the show was delayed because cops had happened upon him making out with a girl back stage, and decided to mace them both!
The crowd went crazy, and Jim was arrested.
He was arrested on stage at another concert for indecent exposure after stripping off his clothes and encouraging the audience to do the same.
And then, Morrison turned down a plea bargain from the Miami Police Department, refusing to do a free concert in exchange for having the charges dropped!
Once a sinuous sex-god, Jim was a bloated alcoholic near the time of his death, allegedly putting down 36 beers a day.
On July 3, 1971 his body was found in the bathtub of his apartment in Paris.
Although he was only 27-years old, the cause of death was ruled as “natural causes” and no autopsy was done.
Iggy Pop
Presumably taking a cue from predecessor Jim Morrison, Punk God Iggy Pop frequently performed Full Monty.
He was also the first performer to do a stage dive.
When the band wasn’t committing lewd and lascivious acts on stage, they were hanging out at “the fun house.”
And what a fun house it was!
The Igster and his The Stooges crew liked to decorated the walls of the Detroit area home with the blood that would quirt out of syringes after they shot up.
Keith Moon
Drummer for The Who, Moon was a hope-to-die booze bag who pretty much laid off the drugs, but still managed to earn the nickname “Moon the Loon“ for his hobby of blowing up toilets with cherry bombs and M-80s.
Moon trashed so many rooms, The Who was forced to stay in neighboring towns when doing concerts because they were banned virtually every local hotel!
He once even drove his Lincoln into the swimming pool of a Holiday Inn!
During one concert Moon passed out on stage so many times the band turned to the audience and said “Is there a drummer in the house?”
Some random dude got on stage and finished the concert.
Moon died at the age of 32 from overdosing on a prescription drug that was intended to help him quit drinking.
Eric Clapton
First clue that Eric Clapton liked to party?
One of his biggest hits is called Cocaine.
And even though the cocoa plant inspired him enough to croon such an ode, he was still dropping $16,000 a week on heroin!
$16-fucking-thousand!
And this was back in 1976!!!!
Allegedly he was donating a fair amount to The Beatles, with whom he consorted frequently back in the diz.
Clapton was so loaded once he did an entire show lying down, and no one batted an eye!
Pete Doherty
Pete Doherty, who enjoyed being Kate Moss‘ more effed up half for about 5 years, has a police record longer than his track-marked arm.
And nearly all of his arrests pertain to possession: crack, heroin, ketamine, and cannabis.
A staunch heterosexual who dated one of the most legendary supermodels of all time, Pete admitted to prostituting himself to pay for his astronomical drug habit.
He even admits to once robbing a male client to get drug money.
Taking a cue from Iggy Pop, Pete created an art exhibit coined “arterial splatter,” made up of paper glued onto canvases with various drawings and poetry all created from the spray of the blood from his heroin syringe.
He was eventually jailed for six months in 2011, following his 26th drug-related arrest.
Yep, 26th…Nikki Sixx
Mötley Crüe bassist and lyrics writer, Nikki Sixx was once pronounced dead after overdosing on heroin, but the EMT was a huge fan, and vowed to revive him.
When he finally came to in the hospital, Nikki ripped out all of the tubes and wires, and went AWOL to do more drugs.
The incident inspired the song Kick Start My Heart.
One Valentine’s Day he overdosed at his dealer’s house, and the panicked dealer shoved ice down his pants, and when that failed to rouse him, beat him to a pulp with a baseball bat.
Nikki wouldn’t wake up, so the dealer dumped him in a dumpster and left him for dead.
Eventually he came to, crawled out of the dumpster and scored more smack.
Because, that’s how he rolled….John Bonham
Not sure if this qualifies as partying, or misogyny, or depravity, or insanity, or some perverse combination therein.
But Led Zeppelin drummer and hardcore drunk John Bonham, decided to fish off the balcony of his room at the Edgewater Hotel in Seattle, Washington one night after a concert.
He was joined by Zeppelin manager, Richard Cole and they managed to fill the room with various types of fish, including several mud sharks.
A ginger-haired groupie turned up and announced that she loved being tied up during sex.
Bonham and Cole obliged her predilection and then proceeded to stick fish in the orifices of the bound girl, while saying things like “I’m putting a red snapper in your red snapper”.
Frank Zappa immortalized the revolting incident with the song Mud Shark.
And when there were no groupies to be found, “Bonzo” would attend to The Beatles.
One night, he shaved the hair and eyebrows off an unconscious Ringo Starr.
At the age of 32, Bonham died by choking on his own vomit after doing 40 shots of vodka.
Rock ‘n roll baby!Ozzy Osbourne
It’s safe to assume that Ozzy Osbourne was pretty wasted when he bit the head off a bat during a concert.
And when he peed on the Alamo, and managed to get himself banned from San Antonio, Texas for a decade.
1984 saw an unholy union when Mötley Crüe opened for Ozzy during his Bark at the Moon tour, which has come to be known as one of the craziest, drug and alcohol fueled tours in the history of rock-n-roll.
One night Nikki Sixx snorted a huge line of cocaine, and told Ozzy to “beat that”.
Ozzy did, when he noticed a convenient procession of ants marching along the sidewalk.
The Prince of Darkness bent down, snorted the line of ants, stood up, peed on the remaining insects, and then licked up the wretched urine/ant concoction.
Nikki then whipped out his little fireman, sprayed the sidewalk, but before he could lap up the puddle, Ozzy had already swallowed.
Duff McKagan
Guns N’ Roses‘ guitarist, Duff McKagan ingested such large quantities of drug and alcohol that his pancreas exploded backstage after a concert!
He tells the story to Gavin Edwards:
You get third-degree burns on the inside of your intestine and your stomach.For a lot of people, they split their skin open to get the steam out. I had morphine in this arm for the pain, and then I had lithium in this arm for the DTs.
Mindy McCready
When she was just 15-years old, Mindy McCready had an affair with married Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens, who was 28 at the time.
In 2004, McReady was charged with prescription drug fraud after illegally obtaining OxyContin.
She was sentenced to three years of supervised probation and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service.
In 2005, McCready was arrested again and charged with DUI and driving on a suspended license.
A few days later, her ex-boyfriend William McKnight was charged with attempted murder and aggravated burglary after allegedly breaking into her home and beating her up.
Just weeks later, McCready was charged with identity theft, unlawful imprisonment and hindering prosecution, then hospitalized after attempting to kill herself.
She left the hospital and went back to McKnight, her abusive boyfriend.
Two years later, she landed herself in jail for a probation violation after resisting arrest and committing battery during an argument with her mother.
She served several months.
In 2008, she went to rehab.
By 2009, McCready starred on season three of VH1’s Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.
In 2010, McCready was hospitalized again, for a mystery ailment, but hospital staff suspected she overdosed on prescription pills.
In February of 2013, Mindy died of a single self-inflicted gunshot wound.
George Jones
George Jones‘ second wife, Shirley Corley, once tried to stop him from driving to the liquor store by hiding his car keys.
But, according to his autobiography, I Lived to Tell It All, he was so determined to get hammered that he drove there on his John Deere lawnmower.
Corley divorced him, and he married singer Tammy Wynette, who had to contend with the same shenanigans as her predecessor.
In her 1979 autobiography, Stand by Your Man, Wynette recalled waking up in the middle of the night to find Jones gone.
After driving 10 miles to the nearest bar, she found his John Deere lawnmower sitting in the parking lot.
**BONUS POINTS TO JONES FOR LOOKING LIKE A CREEPY CULT LEADER**
Janis Joplin
Even though she was known as the Queen of Rock ‘n Roll, Janice Joplin’s music was firmly rooted in blues and country.
Her life though was more conventionally rock ‘n roll.
Joplin was only 27 when she died, and her will funded $2,500 to throw a wake party in the event of her demise.
Joplin drank so much Southern Comfort that she managed to get the company to give her a lynx coat as a thank-you for boosting their sales!
A belligerent drunk, she once broke a bottle over Jim Morrison’s head at a party in San Francisco.
The Texas native also enjoyed her heroin and cocaine.
On October 4, 1970, Janis joined the 27 Club by overdosing on whiskey and heroin.
Many believe that Jean de Breiteuil, the same dealer that allegedly dealt Jim Morrison the potent batch that killed him, dealt Joplin the lethal dose.
She died within sixteen days of Jimi Hendrix, and ten months of Jim Morrison.
Johnny Cash
In 1965,Johnny Cashwas arrested by a narcotics squad in El Paso, Texas with 688 Dexedrine capsules and 475 Equanil tablets in his guitar case.
He broke his toes trying to kick the bars out of the jail cell.
He was also the first person ever to be sued by the U.S. for igniting a forest fire, after taking his camper, Jesse James, out to the desert for a methamphetamine binge.
It caught fire, and the blaze killed almost every endangered condor in the refuge, to which Cash replied, “I don’t give a damn about your yellow buzzards.”
In the late 1950s, Cash and his band bought 500 baby chickens and let 100 loose on each floor of the hotel they were staying at.
Another time, Cash and Co. flushed cherry bombs down a toilet, destroying the plumbing system.
Cash also stabbed a reproduction of the Mona Lisa that was hanging in a hotel because it didn’t quite reach his standards.
Waylon Jennings
Jennings had a wicked appetite for cocaine, and by his own account, during the 1970s he was spending over $1,500 a day on marching powder.
$1,500 A DAY….. in the 1970s….!!!!.
In 1977, federal agents arrested Jennings for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute.
But the charges were dropped because he flushed all 27 grams of cocaine down the toilet while authorities waited for a search warrant.
The incident was ultimately recounted in his classic song, Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit’s Done Got Outta Hand?
Spade Cooley
Spade Cooley was known as The King of Western Swing, and when he drank, things could get ugly.
How ugly?
Well, in 1961, Cooley’s wife of 15 years told him that she was leaving him.
He responded by savagely beating her in front of their 14-year-old daughter, whom he forced to watch under threat of death.
He didn’t take his battered wife to a hospital for five hours, and when she finally made it to the emergency room, she was pronounced dead on arrival.
Cooley told authorities that her injuries, which included a ruptured aorta, head-to-toe bruises and numerous cigarette burns, were the result of her falling in the shower.
He was convicted of murder and died of a heart attack in 1969.
Johnny Paycheck
Johnny Paycheck rose to fame in the 1960s with folksy murder ballads likePardon Me, I’ve Got Someone to Killand It Won’t Be Long and I’ll Be Hating You.
In December 1985, Paycheck shot a man named Larry Wise in a bar because he asked the singer if he had ever eaten deer meat or turtle soup.
”Do you see me as some sort of country hick? “Paycheck, replied, then whipped out a pistol and shot at Wise’s head, blowing his cowboy hat cleeeeaaan off.
Paycheck served almost two years in prison.
He died in 2003, age 64.
You may not think of Elvis Presley as a country singer, but the Pelvis belted out such farm favorites as Kentucky Rain, Blue Moon, It Keeps Right On A Hurtin’, and many more.
And when he wasn’t crooning country ballads or pop hits, Elvis was doing lotsa drugs, thanks in part to his personal physician, Dr. George Nichopoulos.
The good doc was found to have written Elvis 199 prescriptions totaling more than 10,000 doses of sedatives, amphetamines and narcotics in just the first 8 months of 1977.
Elvis and Dr. Nick kicked off each tour with three locked suitcases filled with prescription drugs.
One time Elvis’s road manager, Joe Esposito, raided Elvis’s bedroom at Graceland.
He found three giant pharmacy-sized jars, each containing 1,000 high-dose barbiturates, Dexedrine amphetamines and tranquilizers.
He even found vials of pills hidden in the seams of the curtains.
Dr. Nick was so terrified that Elvis would overdose, he once convinced Knoll, the manufacturers of Dilaudid, to make a special batch of a thousand pills without any active ingredients to trick The King into taking less.
Elvis Presley died anyway on August 16, 1977. On the toilet no less.Keith Urban
The squeaky-clean American Idol Judge?
Yes, there was a time that Mr. Nicole Kidman was “crawling around the carpet looking for a rock of crack.”
Keith was such a hot mess, his friends would even “make fun of him behind his back, saying, ‘Man, that guy can’t hold his substances,'”
He was so wasted one day, he, (GASP) missed a recording session with The Dixie Chicks!
Congrats, Mr. Urban/Kidman whatever, The Rock Bottom Award goes to you!
Ray Charles
Given his raging heroin addiction, it’s pretty impressive that Charles managed to sire twelve children (by nine different women).
Charles kicked off his drug dalliance by smoking weed, which soon escalated to heroin.
The singer struggled with heroin addiction for 16 long years—and was arrested on narcotics charges three times.
He finally kicked his addiction in 1966, and went on to immortalize his struggle in songs such as I Don’t Need No Doctor, and Let’s Go Get Stoned.
(dis) honorable mention—Whitney Houston
During a 2002 interview with Diane Sawyer, proving denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, Whitney Houston broke it down:
First of all, let’s get one thing straight. Crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack. Let’s get that straight. Okay? We don’t do crack. We don’t do that. Crack is whack.
But Tina Brown told a different story, revealing that her former sister-in-law spent days locked in her bedroom “smoking crack, using sex toys to satisfy herself and ignoring personal hygiene”.
“I did crack with Whitney. She won’t stay off drugs. It’s every single day,” Tina said. “It’s so ugly. Everyone is scared she’s going to OD.”
Whitney was so deep in her addiction that her teeth started to fall out, and she was forced to wear dentures.
“She loses them in the house and when she’s out on drug binges,” Tina claimed. “They cost $6000 and the dentist has to keep FedEx’ing her a new set.”
Whitney even regularly hallucinated that she was being attacked by the devil, and she would punch and bite herself until she was covered in cuts and bruises!
Houston died February 11, 2012—age 48.
The singing legend was found unresponsive, face down in the bathtub, surrounded by drug paraphernalia, in her Beverly Hills hotel room.
Didn’t she almost have it all?
