Music's 25 Most Dastardly Villains
Cocaine
Trashed careers, personalities, nostrils
Rap Sheet: By accumulating dopamine in the brain, cocaine makes the dedicated user obsessive and hyperactive. During the periods of its greatest popularity (the mid-'70s and late '80s), artists and producers spent millions of dollars fattening songs with overdubs only dogs could hear. The result? Ornate but lousy albums like the Eagles's The Long Run, Aerosmith's Night in the Ruts, and Oasis's Be Here Now, among many others.
The list of musicians whose deaths were at least partly attributable to coke abuse includes Blind Melon's Shannon Hoon, the Pretenders's James Honeymoon Scott and the Who's John Entwistle. Meanwhile, crack, cocaine's more destructive cousin, helped destroy the careers of Sly Stone and David Crosby, to name but two.
The Defense: Was the chief stimulant behind Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and most disco records.
Quote: "When I fly over the Alps, I think, That's like all the cocaine I sniffed."—Elton John
4. BAD DAD
The Rev. Marvin Gay
Killed his son, Marvin Gaye
Rap Sheet: Gay, a storefront preacher and father of the soul legend (who changed the spelling of his surname to Gaye), frequently beat his offspring for the slightest infraction.
In 1984, the singer, nearly broke and deep in a drug-induced paranoia, was forced to move into his parents's Los Angeles home. That April 1, he attacked his father for verbally abusing his mother. The reverend responded by shooting his son; Gaye died instantly. Ironically, Marvin Jr. had given his father the gun as a gift four months earlier. Gay was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to five years's probation. He died at age 84 on October 17, 1998.
The Defense: Doctors examining Gay after his arrest discovered a large tumor at the base of his brain — a possible explanation for his erratic behavior.
Quote: "Let's say that I didn't dislike him."—Gay, when asked during an interview if he loved his son
3. STONE CRAZYHell's Angels
Altamont assailants
Rap Sheet: The moment that secured the Angels's place in rock infamy occurred in 1969, when the Rolling Stones hired them to provide security for the free show at Northern California's Altamont Speedway. The Angels kept order by beating audience members with pool cues and knocking down Marty Balin, the lead singer of opening act Jefferson Airplane, when he objected to their behavior.
Later, as the Stones played "Sympathy for the Devil," several Angels stabbed to death a young black man named Meredith Hunter after he allegedly taunted them with a gun — an incident captured on film in Gimme Shelter.
The Defense: Sonny Barger, the president of the Angels's Oakland, California, chapter, contends that Hunter's death was the Stones's fault.
Quote: "All that shit about Altamont being the end of an era was a bunch of intellectual crap."—Barger
2. HUSBAND FROM HELL
Ike Turner
Tina's not-so-better half
Rap Sheet: Although an influential figure in early rock & roll, Izear Luster Turner is far more infamous for his brutal treatment of his onetime wife and performing partner, Tina, than for his music.
According to Tina, Ike first beat her with a shoe tree, and later moving on to "anything that was handy." Tina's suffering — Ike once stuck a lit cigarette up her nose — was not rewarded with fidelity; he later admitted that he had at least a hundred girlfriends during their marriage. By the '70s, he was addicted to cocaine. "If I thought he was bad before," Tina said, "the cocaine started making him evil." She left him in 1976; he later beat his son, Ike Jr., with a cocked .45.
The Defense: Ike claims he "never beat Tina," but he's been contradicted by many witnesses — and, most damningly, by his autobiography.
Quote: "It was like a horror movie. A horror movie with no intermissions."—Tina, on life with Ike
1. BEATLEMANIACMark David Chapman
The man who killed John Lennon
Rap Sheet: On Saturday, December 6, 1980, British DJ Andy Peebles interviewed John Lennon and Yoko Ono to publicize their new album Double Fantasy. The record was Lennon's first in half a decade, but as he told Peebles, "We've already got half the next album, and we'll probably go in just after Christmas and do that. We're already talking about the ideas for the third. I can't wait."
It wasn't to be. Two days later outside the Dakota, his apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Lennon was shot five times with a .38-caliber short-barreled revolver. He was rushed to nearby St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital, but was declared dead at 11:07 P.M.
The man with his finger on the trigger was Mark David Chapman. Chapman, born in 1955 in Fort Worth, Texas, was a delusional depressive who relied on the advice of an imaginary group of "little people." Once a big Beatles fan, he had come to believe that Lennon was "a phony" after reading an interview he gave to Newsweek earlier in 1980. Borrowing $5,000 from his father-in-law, Chapman flew to New York from his home in Honolulu and waited for his chance.
"I was sitting inside the arch of the Dakota building," he later recalled. "I see this limousine pull up. The door opened. John got out. He walked past me. I took five steps toward the street, turned, withdrew my gun and fired five shots into his back. He never saw it coming."
In August 1981, after pleading guilty to second-degree murder, Mark David Chapman was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. His first parole application was rejected in 2000.
The Defense: Chapman was a fan of J.D. Salinger's classic novel The Catcher in the Rye and had a copy in his possession when he shot Lennon.
Quote: "The little people all kind of worshipped me. Sometimes, when I'd get mad, I'd blow some of them up."
