Whether it’s through temperament or the result of sheer boredom, rock stars have always been prone to excess. And, crucially, they also tend to have the cash to get away with it. Here’s a selection of the most outrageous, and occasionally bizarre, tales of rock star excess. It’s all here, from sex, drugs and general debauchery to pyromania and, ahem, ants.
1. Ozzy and the ants
You could fill this whole list with stories about Ozzy Osbourne, but let’s go with this slightly lesser-known one. It’s 1984, and the young Mötley Crüe are on tour with Ozzy. This is a volatile combination if ever there was one, but things are about to get weird.
The story, as recounted by Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee and depicted in the film The Dirt, goes like this. Ozzy and the Crue are hanging out by the pool of their hotel – wasted, obviously – when the Prince of Darkness spots a line of ants attracted by a discarded popsicle. Eager to out-gross his younger touring partners, and having run out of cocaine, he promptly got down on all fours and snorted up the unfortunate insects.
2. John Bonham + hotel + motorbike
No list of rock star excesses would be complete without a mention of Led Zeppelin in their early 70s pomp. And in fact, they'll be popping up twice in today's wall of honour (or shame). First to Zep's legendarily hard-partying drummer John Bonham. For his 25th birthday in 1973, 'Bonzo' was given a Harley-Davidson motorcycle by his bandmates. He then proceeded to ride the silver chariot up and down the corridors of the Continental Hyatt House Hotel in Los Angeles, where the band were staying at the time while touring the US.
No small amount of damage was caused. Bonham paid for it, though, and even gifted the hotel the bike. Aww, the softie.
3. Keith Moon celebrates his 21st birthday
It’s one of the great symbols of rock star excess: the car driven into the swimming pool. But few have actually done it. The Who’s drummer Keith Moon did. The incident occurred during the band’s 1967 tour of the US, supporting Herman’s Hermits. August 23 was Keith’s 21st birthday, during which he found himself at the Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan.
The evening’s debauchery began with a common or garden food fight involving Keith’s giant birthday cake – and went downhill from there. Literally, in the case of a fellow guest’s Lincoln Continental, which the self-destructive drummer drove into the hotel swimming pool. Some have subsequently claimed that the celebrated incident never happened, bit Keith himself described it vividly.
4. Nikki Sixx gets an adrenaline rush
One of the hazards of taking large amounts of recreational drugs is that your organs tend to give out, as Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx discovered when he overdosed on heroin. Shot up with adrenaline by a paramedic, the apparently deceased Sixx recovered. In true rock star style, he promptly set out to score more drugs. But the band did get a hit single out of his experience in the form of ‘Kickstart My Heart’, which appeared on 1989's Doctor Feelgood album.
5. Sabbath’s Fiery Drummer
Every band has their practical joker, and in Black Sabbath that role belonged to guitarist Tony Iommi. His party piece was setting drummer Bill Ward on fire. He generally used a small amount of rubbing alcohol, which was easily put out but tended to alarm those who weren’t familiar with the prank.
While making 1980’s Heaven and Hell album, though, Tony did the routine in front of producer Martin Birch, who was already nervous of the band’s reputation. Alas, Tony rather overdid it on this occasion and Bill wound up in hospital with third-degree burns. And that was the end of Tony Iommi’s career as an amateur pyromaniac.
6. Queen’s Jazz party
Few would claim that 1978's Jazz is Queen’s greatest album (that title belongs, arguably, to 1975's A Night at the Opera). But the accompanying launch party has gone down in history as one of the moist extravagant and debauched events of its kind. Held at the Fairmont Hotel in, naturally, New Orleans, on 31 October 1978, the witchcraft-themed Halloween party was budgeted at $200,000.
Journalists and record company executives were treated to entertainment that included stippers, cross-dressers and – according to a persistent but unconfirmed rumour – dwarves with trays of cocaine strapped to their heads. To say that a good time was has by all would probably be the understatement of the century – though whether anybody remembered it accurately afterwards is another matter.
7. Keith Richards snorts his dad
Yes, crazy old Keef has repeatedly claimed to have snorted his dead father Bert’s ashes in 2007. It’s one of rock history’s most bizarre anecdotes, which Keith sees as a sign of his intimate connection with his father. These days, he doesn’t snort anything at all, having given up drugs and alcohol in favour of a clean lifestyle. Indeed, he's in our Hall of Fame of rock stars who've partied hard but lived long.
8. Izzy relieves himself on a plane
What’s a rock star to do when he finds himself caught short on an aeroplane and there’s a huge queue for the toilet? That was the dilemma facing Guns N’ Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin on a flight from Indianapolis to LA back in 1988. Somewhat the worse for alcohol, Izzy simply unzipped and let rip in the aisle in front of suitably horrified fellow passengers.
Naturally, there was a price to pay for unleashing Little Izzy in such a public manner, and the guitarist was arrested on landing and subsequently sentenced to a year’s probation. He also had to write a letter of apology to the flight crew – including, presumably, the unfortunate person charged with mopping up after him.
9. Led Zeppelin, the mud shark and the groupie
One of the strangest stories in rock star history, which throws up a whole bunch of questions, quite apart from the obvious one: did it really happen? Was it a consensual act? And what the hell is a 'mud shark' anyway?
Let’s start at the beginning. It’s 1969 and Led Zeppelin are enjoying their first flush of global fame, having seen their debut album rise rapidly up the charts. They’ve just played at the Seattle Pop Festival and have repaired to their hotel, the Edgeware Inn, which is renowned for the opportunity it affords guests to fish directly from their hotel room windows. Naturally, the Zeppelins are eager to indulge along with their chums from American rockers Vanilla Fudge.
The presumably somewhat surprised mud shark (a large fish that lives in silty waters, apparently) was promptly hoiked out and used to pleasure a nearby groupie. Allegedly. The story was recounted in song by Frank Zappa on the Mothers of Invention’s Fillmore East live album in 1971 and by former Led Zep road manager Richard Cole, whose stories have been dismissed as rather fanciful by members of the band.
10. Gene Simmons’ photo album
Everyone’s got to have a hobby and Gene Simmons of KISS’s is photography. Specifically, he has taken photographs of each and every one of his sexual conquests. Apparently, his suitably bulging album contained almost 5,000 snaps. Not that anyone will be checking that figure now, as his wife-to-be Shannon Tweed made him burn the lot before their marriage in 2011. Apparently the resultant bonfire lasted 'for days'.
11. Duff McKagan’s exploding pancreas
Yes, it’s another Guns N’ Roses story. Bassist Duff McKagan liked a drink. In fact, he liked rather too many drinks than was good for him, with the result that his pancreas exploded. Duff was a mere lad of 30 when his prodigious alcohol intake came back to haunt him, resulting in internal third-degree burns. Doctors gave him hours to live, but miraculously he survived. And gave up drinking.
12. Neil Young’s Nostril
During the filming of The Band’s valedictory 1978 movie The Last Waltz, Neil Young felt in need of refreshment. So he naturally snorted up a huge line of cocaine prior to performing ‘Helpless’. But director Martin Scorsese wasn’t alone in noticing the telltale signs of Neil’s indulgence in the form of a huge lump of powder lodged in his nostril. Fortunately, this was removed from the finished film thanks to the magic of digital technology.
13. Alice Cooper’s three-album blackout
Many a rock star has stories of over-indulgence that results in a temporary loss of memory. But to have no memory of recording three entire albums? Like Wayne and Garth, we have to bow down before the legendary Alice Cooper. At the height of his drinkin’ and druggin’ in the early 1980s, Alice set down Special Forces, Zipper Catches Skin and DaDa – a trio of LPs that (he now says) he has no memory of making.
Punters have no memory of purchasing them either, as these proved to be his commercial lowpoint. It wasn’t until the end of that decade that Alice got his life and career back on track with the multi-platinum selling Trash album.
14. Lemmy, Hawkwind, and the wrong drugs
Lemmy was always adamant that he’d have been quite happy to remain a member of Hawkwind – thus depriving the world of the mighty Motörhead. But the Hawks had other ideas after their bass played was busted for possession on the Canadian border on 1975. The cops initially thought they’d got him for cocaine, but when the nose candy was confirmed to be low-rent biker drug speed the charges were dropped.
By this time the Hawks had recruited former Pink Fairies man Alan Rudolph to take his place, having tired of Lemmy’s speedfreak behaviour – and disapproving of his choice of recreational chemicals. Motörhead went on to eclipse Hawkwind commercially, hitting number one in the UK album charts with their 1981 live album No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith, while Lemmy became an unlikely cultural icon.
15. Eddie Van Halen gets tanked up
In one of rock history’s least likely collaborations, guitar hero Eddie Van Halen was invited to jam with Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst in 2001. Tickled by the idea of the greatest guitarist of his generation playing with the singer of the worst band ever, Eddie readily agreed and showed up at Durst’s Beverly Hills home ready to jam.
Unsurprisingly, this was not a great success and the guitarist soon departed, leaving all his equipment behind. Subsequent attempts to retrieve it proved fruitless, so Eddie set out across LA in a military assault vehicle he had bought at an auction and literally parked it in Durst’s lawn. As you do.
As recounted in Andrew Bennett’s book Eruption in the Canyon: 212 Days & Nights With the Genius of Eddie Van Halen, the guitarist recalled: 'That asshole answered the door. I put my gun to that stupid f***ing red hat of his, and I said, "‘"Where’s my shit, motherf***er?"' Eddie’s ‘shit’ was promptly returned by a minion.
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