Rock’s 25 Most Dastardly Villains

25
FEELIN’ ON YO’ UNDERAGE BOOTY
R. Kelly
Jerry Lee Lewis with a camcorder

RAP SHEET Personal-flight-ability-believin’ soul singer Kelly married Aaliyah in 1994, when she was 15 (the marriage was soon annulled), and has a reputation for liking ’em young. The 33-year-old has settled two cases involving sexual abuse of underage girls.

This February, the Chicago Sun-Times received a videotape of a man who looks like Kelly screwing and urinating on an allegedly 14-year-old girl. Three more disgruntled youths subsequently filed lawsuits against him; in June, a grand jury indicted the R&B star on 21 counts of child pornography. His response? The song “Heaven, I Need a Hug.”

THE DEFENSE Indicted doesn’t mean convicted, and Kelly maintains his innocence, saying of the videotape: “I have no interest in seeing anything that I know I haven’t done.”

QUOTE “The world’s greatest? Whatever/Ain’t nothing but a child molester.” — Sisqó, “This Is Heart”

24
THEIR INVENTION KILLS OUR STARS
The Wright Brothers
Aeronautical pioneers

RAP SHEET Fascinated by the possibilities of air travel after their father bought them a toy helicopter, Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully tested the world’s first real plane, Flyer 1, on December 17, 1903. The brothers’ invention would ultimately deprive music of an astounding array of talent, including the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, guitarist Randy Rhoads, assorted members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Patsy Cline, Jim Croce, John Denver, Rick Nelson and Aaliyah, all of whom died in plane crashes.

THE DEFENSE Orville, who outlived his brother by 36 years, continued to invent throughout his life, working on a variety of safer projects, including a toaster, children’s toys and an automatic record changer.

QUOTE “I couldn’t imagine our plane coming apart like it did.” — Lynyrd Skynyrd security manager and crash survivor Gene Odom

23
DIRT DIGGER, ROCK HATER
Albert Goldman
Rep-destroying music biographer

RAP SHEET Elvis Presley had been dead for four years when reporter Albert Goldman produced a blasphemous 1981 biography, Elvis, saying that in decline he looked like “a big fat woman recovering from some operation on her reproductive organs.”

Then in 1988, Goldman’s The Lives of John Lennon enraged Beatles fans with a relentless cascade of tawdry scenes: Yoko Ono snorting heroin, Lennon soliciting boys in Bangkok brothels.

THE DEFENSE Goldman, who died in 1994, didn’t much like Lives either; he complained that his editors cut 81,000 words of his more balanced manuscript.

QUOTE Yoko Ono: “I’m not aware that there were 81,000 words of positive material removed from the book at the editing stage. That’s like saying that [Lennon’s killer Mark David] Chapman had some very positive things to say about John which were not reported.”

22
JUDGE YE NOT
Simon Cowell
American Idol’s Mr. Nasty

RAP SHEET By far the most obnoxious judge on Fox’s American Idol talent show, Cowell, a British music executive, routinely dismissed singing hopefuls with such critiques as “pathetic,” “rubbish,” “fat” and “that sounded like a train going off the rails.” He told one contestant, “You will never, ever, ever have a career in singing.”

Another, after Cowell told her that she needed singing lessons, said, “I truly believe he enjoys getting people upset.” Two aggrieved entrants attempted to assault Cowell after an Idol taping; he later hired bodyguards.

THE DEFENSE He loves dogs. “You’ll never find anything on Earth more loyal than a dog,” he says.

QUOTE “He has this thing about the sexual tension between us. But the only sexual tension is the fact that his pants are so tight.” — Fellow American Idol judge Paula Abdul

21
TURN IT DOWN
Muzak
Purveyors of crap covers

RAP SHEET The brainchild of World War I veteran General George Owen Squier, the Muzak company has been guilty of sucking the lifeblood from countless melodies since its founding in 1922. It once even considered adopting the slogan “boring work is made less boring by boring music.”

Muzak’s existence so irked Ted Nugent that in 1989 the guitarist offered to buy the company for $10 million just so he could destroy its tapes. Muzak’s output is especially lamentable to the partially deaf, who pick up the “mood music” at high volume, causing them “pain, discomfort and unnecessary distress,” according to Britain’s Royal Institute for Deaf People.

THE DEFENSE Muzak just might have helped avert nuclear war: During the ’60s, the U.S. experimented with playing its mind-numbingly relaxing sounds on Polaris submarines to help ease sailors’ frazzled nerves.

QUOTE “I like anything on Muzak — it’s so listenable,” Andy Warhol once said. “They should have it on MTV.”

20
BAD VIBRATIONS
Mike Love
Anti-bandmate, pro-PMRC Beach Boy

RAP SHEET When the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson began conceiving his 1966 masteriece, Pet Sounds, his cousin Mike Love moaned that it would alienate the group’s fans. Love has been openly hostile and litigious toward his bandmates and, according to Beach Boys biographer Steven Gaines, in 1966 he beat his second wife while she was pregnant.

Love is virtually the only rocker of note to have supported Tipper Gore’s Parents’ Music Resource Center and, in 1988, he insulted the Beatles and Rolling Stones at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony. Also seems under the impression that wearing a hat at all times will make people believe he isn’t bald.

THE DEFENSE Some of Love’s hostility can be explained by the fact that Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson seduced Love’s second wife and then married his daughter, Shawn.

QUOTE “[Mick Jagger]’s always been chickenshit to get onstage with the Beach Boys.”

19
USING MY RELIGION
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
The Beatles’ libidinous guru

RAP SHEET A physicist from India, Mahesh Yogi gave up science in 1959, moved to London and began lecturing about Transcendental Meditation. A popularization of traditional Hindu teaching, TM caught on rapidly, capturing the hearts of (among many) the Beatles.

Things went sour when the Maharishi released an album of his lectures, dubbing himself “the Beatles’ spiritual teacher.” Accusing him of gross commercialism and sexual promiscuousness, every Beatle but George Harrison cut ties with him. John Lennon wrote “Sexy Sadie” about him; the song’s original lyrics include this touching line: “Maharishi, you little twat/Who the fuck do you think you are?/Oh, you cunt.”

THE DEFENSE Indian Major General Kulwant Singh recently said that Yogi’s teachings offer a nonballistic alternative to George W. Bush’s missile-defense system.

QUOTE “There is no guru. You have to believe in yourself. It’s all up to you, mate.” — John Lennon, after the fallout

18
ENTER BADMAN
Lars Ulrich
Napster-harassing Metallica drummer

RAP SHEET While Metallica have managed to produce only one album of original material since 1991, they’ve been working overtime the last few years to piss off electronic-file traders. In April 2000, Metallica filed suit against Napster for allowing its users to trade digital copies of Metallica songs. A month later, Ulrich hand-delivered to Napster a list of 317,377 people who had downloaded Metallica MP3s to their computers, forcing the music-swapping service to banish them and setting in motion the eventual downfall of the best thing to happen to music since Nirvana.

THE DEFENSE Metallica later allowed Napster to reinstate 35,000 people who, it turned out, had downloaded only live recordings.

QUOTE “You want to fucking see in three months how we can fucking blow your measly little company apart? No problem.”

17
GOT PLENTY OF “SATISFACTION”
Allen Klein
Avaricious manager of Beatles and Stones

RAP SHEET In the mid-’60s, Klein, who had managed Bobby Darin and Sam Cooke, noticed the Rolling Stones’ mounting fiscal difficulties and swooped in, promising them shelter from crushing taxes. He became the Stones’ feudal lord, acquiring their pre-1970 master recordings (which he still owns) and dispensing their cash in trickles. In 1968, Klein acquired another bauble: the Beatles, whose Apple Corps was in dire financial straits. The Stones and Beatles spent parts of the ’70s wriggling out of Klein’s contracts.

THE DEFENSE Both bands probably would have gone broke immediately without Klein’s interference — particularly the Beatles, whose fiscally foolish Apple pissed away cash on such employees as the well-liked but incompetent technician “Magic Alex” Mardas.

QUOTE “Why don’t you like me, Bill?” “Because I don’t trust you, Allen.” — A frank exchange between Klein and Stones bassist Bill Wyman

16
WORST EXECUTIVE EVER!
Robert Morgado
Bean counter who destroyed music’s best label

RAP SHEET By the mid-’80s, Warner Bros. Music Group was the most successful record company in the world — and the hippest, too, with an impeccable roster of artists (from the Grateful Dead to Madonna) and top-tier executives who knew how to make both records and money.

That prosperous era ended in 1991, when corporate hatchet man Morgado was appointed the company’s new chief and initiated a restructuring plan that would purge nearly every top exec. Warners soon slid into mediocrity and has yet to fully recover. After his 1995 dismissal, a Dutch analyst assessed the company’s music division as “practically worthless.”

THE DEFENSE Has a sense of humor. He once admitted that Warners’ bloodletting made “Bosnia look like Shangri-la.”

QUOTE “Why would a man burn down the most beautiful house on the block, with all the beautiful stuff still in it?” — Former Elektra chief Bob Krasnow

15
HE KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE
“The Man”
Shadowy figure bent on harshing world’s mellow

RAP SHEET A never-photographed but enormously powerful individual hellbent on hassling, taxing and jailing our musical heroes through such agencies as the INS and FBI, both of which harassed John Lennon in the early ’70s, and the IRS, which has put the pinch on Chuck Berry, Willie Nelson and James Brown.

The Man’s influence even extends abroad, as Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Keith Richards discovered when they were busted for narcotics at Richards’s estate in England in 1967. Note: The Man is not to be confused with his drug-dealing cousin of the same name, for whom Lou Reed has been patiently “waiting” since the mid-’60s.

THE DEFENSE The Man has shown himself equally keen to bust such truly dangerous characters as Gary Glitter, Suge Knight and Charles Manson.

QUOTE “Ain’t no God in Mexico, ain’t no comfort in the can/When you’re down in Matamoros getting busted by the Man.” — Waylon Jennings

14
BOY-BAND BARON
Lou Pearlman
Brought you Backstreet Boys, ’N Sync, O-Town

RAP SHEET The Dr. Frankenstein of boy bands, Pearlman gave the world the Backstreet Boys, ’N Sync and O-Town — which alone would justify his inclusion on this list, even without the frequent accusation that “Big Papa” treats his charges in a less-than-paternal manner.

’N Sync began a bitter legal battle against Pearlman in 1999, claiming he “took advantage of our trust.” In 1998, the Backstreet Boys filed a lawsuit alleging that in the preceding five years, they had received only $300,000 in royalties. Boys singer Brian Littrell was forced to delay crucial surgery on his heart because of touring commitments.

THE DEFENSE This April, Pearlman was cleared of allegations that he broke child-labor laws in his treatment of boy band Take 5.

QUOTE “You’ll sign in blood.” — The words with which Pearlman greeted prospective O-Town members on the TV show Making the Band

13
SUPREME BITCH
Diana Ross
That’s “Miss Ross” to you, buddy

RAP SHEET The narcissism of Miss Ross (reportedly the only name she allows her underlings to call her) is legendary. In 1973, original Supreme Florence Ballard launched an unsuccessful lawsuit charging that Ross and Motown supremo Berry Gordy had conspired to bilk her out of royalties, and that the pair “maliciously plotted” to remove her from the trio.

In 2000, Ross attempted to organize a Supremes reunion tour; when her former bandmates turned her down (they were due to be paid a fifth of Ross’s salary), she went ahead with the tour, joined by two ex-Supremes who had joined the group after she had left.

THE DEFENSE Although Ross made a showy, tasteless entrance at Ballard’s funeral, she did set up trust funds for the singer’s three children.

QUOTE “I want an autobiography without revealing any personal information whatsoever.” — Ross, to prospective publisher Jackie Onassis

12
FILTHY LUCRE
Money
The root of all evil

RAP SHEET From Pink Floyd’s “Money” to Jay-Z’s “Money Ain’t a Thang,” the greenback has long obsessed musicians. Sadly, attainment of wealth rarely has a good effect on stars’ careers — they become distracted by drugs, vanity record imprints, building home studios and, in the case of aging Brits Roger Daltrey and Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson, fish farms.

Financial considerations have also been behind many unwanted musical reunions (the Sex Pistols the most recent example) and countless band breakups. Worse, cash-related murders wiped out several Jamaican reggae stars, including the Wailers’ Peter Tosh, who was shot to death by burglars.

THE DEFENSE Stars can actually do good with their fortunes. Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour did so this past January when he gave $4.5 million to Crisis, a British charity for the homeless.

QUOTE “I’m going to build my own shrine, and then every dollar is going to be tax-free.” — Gene Simmons

11
THE KINGMAKER
Colonel Tom Parker
The original puppet master

RAP SHEET Elvis Presley’s manager was actually a Dutchman named Andreas van Kujik, who came to the U.S. at age 17 and developed a carnival act in which chickens “danced” on a straw-covered hot plate. He began managing Presley in 1955, and swiftly steered the King to fame. In time, however, his ruthless pursuit of money had adverse consequences for Presley’s career, as Parker forced him to appear in increasingly dreadful movies for Hollywood producer Hal Wallis.

Presley’s estate sued Parker after the King’s death in 1977. A court found the colonel malfeasant in his administration of the star’s affairs. He died in 1997 of complications from a stroke.

THE DEFENSE Before going into management, Parker would dress up as Santa Claus at Christmastime and give puppies to children.

QUOTE “He got a helluva kick out of getting someone to pick up the check. Or out of just beating you in a deal — any kind of deal.” — Country guitarist Chet Atkins

10
PEACE, LOVE AND RAPE
Woodstock ’99 Organizers
Overpriced water and a grisly finale

RAP SHEET “We felt that as good as [Woodstock ’94] was, we could do better,” claimed promoter John Scher, explaining why he decided to schedule another show five years later. In fact, Scher and his colleague Michael Lang were responsible for a disastrous festival.

The last day of the 72-hour Woodstock ’99 was marked by a minor riot, numerous acts of arson and a potpourri of other violent crimes. Attendees also reported many instances of sexual assault — including four alleged rapes, one of which was a gang rape said to have occurred during Limp Bizkit’s set.

THE DEFENSE “Throwing psychology aside for a minute, in a crowd this size, there are going to be a certain number of assholes,” said Dr. Paul Ramirez, the “director of psychiatry” for Woodstock ’99.

QUOTE Asked about the alleged rapes, Scher replied, “What about the 199,000 kids who came and had a great time?”

9
BEYOND THE PALE
White People
Exploitation, discrimination, appropriation

RAP SHEET Let’s just say you wouldn’t want to run into them in a dark alley. At least, not if you’re one of the many black musicians who were plagiarized, discriminated against and exploited by white rockers and executives. For example:
- Led Zeppelin stole songs from Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf, adapting Wolf’s “Killing Floor” into “The Lemon Song.”
- Until the mid-’60s, execs omitted pictures of many black artists from albums for fear of offending audiences.
- White artists from Pat Boone to Vanilla Ice have diluted black styles and sold the results to a mass white market.

THE DEFENSE In 1987, Zeppelin settled with Dixon, admitting lyric theft and paying him royalties. Recently, the White Stripes have loudly credited Blind Willie McTell for songs of his they’ve covered.

QUOTE “You get caught only when you’re successful. That’s the game.” — Robert Plant

8
HIP-HOP HOODLUM
Suge Knight
Put the gangsta in gangsta rap

RAP SHEET The CEO of Death Row Records (now Tha Row) has a reputation for his intimidating business practices, which are even more substantial than the ex-footballer’s six-foot-two, 300-pound frame. In 1992, former N.W.A rapper and Ruthless Records head Eazy-E alleged that Knight had threatened him with a baseball bat while “negotiating” to get Eazy’s bandmate Dr. Dre out of his Ruthless contract. Knight denied the accusation, though Eazy got no compensation when the contract was broken.

A brawl in a Las Vegas hotel put Knight in the slammer from 1996 to 2001. Nick Broomfield’s recent documentary Biggie & Tupac implicated Knight in the murder of Tupac Shakur — a charge he strongly denies.

THE DEFENSE Prompted by a news item he saw while imprisoned, Knight donated $21,000 to rebuild a vandalized inner-city playground in Sacramento, California.

QUOTE “I’m God’s child, and God always tells the truth. Those stories are full of lies. . . . It’s amazing what people can say about you when you’re in prison.”

7
CENSORESS IN CHIEF
Tipper Gore
Made Dee Snider sound like Lenny Bruce

RAP SHEET In 1985, when Elizabeth “Tipper” Gore heard her daughter’s copy of Prince’s Purple Rain, the future vice-presidential wife flew into a rage that prompted the creation of the Parents’ Music Resource Center, an activist group devoted to pressuring the record industry not to sell such “pornography” to children. Aided by religious rightists like Pat Robertson, the PMRC endorsed the specious notion that naughty music promotes social ills, and encouraged companies to affix warning labels on “offensive” albums.

THE DEFENSE The PMRC sparked surreal Congressional hearings in 1985 at which Frank Zappa, John Denver and Dee Snider defended their lyrics.

QUOTE “What if the next bunch of Washington wives demands a large yellow J on all material written or performed by Jews, in order to save helpless children from exposure to concealed Zionist doctrine?” — Zappa, addressing the U.S. Senate

6
PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED
Morris Levy
Ripped off innumerable songwriters

RAP SHEET A legendary shyster, Levy established a record company, Roulette, in 1956, and owned several nightclubs, including New York’s Birdland. But his real money came from his devious music-publishing practices. The entrepreneur preyed on poor and needy songwriters, buying tunes for as little as $15 and often crediting himself as the primary songwriter.

Levy even ripped off John Lennon, releasing an unauthorized album that featured three covers by the former Beatle. His career ended in 1988, when he was convicted of extortion along with a Genovese family mob underboss. He died two years after his conviction holding a total of 35,000 copyrights.

THE DEFENSE Was the United Jewish Appeal’s man of the year in 1973.

QUOTE “Morris gave me back the demo, bent in half, and told me if his name wasn’t on it, the song didn’t come out.” — Songwriter Ritchie Cordell

5
THE DEVIL’S DANDRUFF
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 the 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’ The Long Run, Aerosmith’s Night in the Ruts and, recently, Oasis’s Be Here Now.

The list of musicians whose deaths were at least partly attributable to coke abuse includes Blind Melon’s Shannon Hoon, the Pretenders’ 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 A storefront preacher and the father of the soul legend (who changed the spelling of his surname to Gaye), Gay 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’ Los Angeles home. That April 1, he attacked his father for verbally abusing his mother. The reverend responded by shooting his son. Marvin Jr. had given his father the gun as a gift four months earlier; he was killed instantly. Gay was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to five years’ 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 CRAZY
Hell’s Angels
Altamont assailants

RAP SHEET The moment that secured the Angels’ place in rock infamy occurred in 1969, when the Rolling Stones hired them to provide security for their 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’ Oakland chapter, contends that Hunter’s death was the Stones’ 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, 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

And Finally, Rock’s Most Dastardly Villain
1
BEATLEMANIAC
Mark 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. Born in 1955 in Fort Worth, Texas, Chapman 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 worshiped me. Sometimes, when I’d get mad, I’d blow some of them up.”


Confessions of a Reformed Villain
It’s never too late to change your evil ways. Just ask Rick “Super Freak” James, who has neither freebased nor kidnapped or sexually tortured anyone in a really long time. Praise Allah!

A decade before R. Kelly learned how to operate a camcorder, funk-rock star Rick James was throwing away his groundbreaking career in a tailspin of freebasing and sexual violence.

In 1991, James was arrested, along with his girlfriend, Tanya Hijazi, on charges of kidnapping, burning and torturing a woman in their Los Angeles home. A year later, another woman filed separate assault and torture charges. Facing three life sentences for the drug-fueled frenzy, James escaped with a relatively light plea bargain. Because of allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, he served only two-plus years in California’s Folsom Prison.

“I was a selfish and crazy drug addict who didn’t give a fuck about my life or anybody else’s,” James, 54, recalls today from his home in Southern California. “I had degradation all around me. Pimps and ho’s, actress-bitches and model-bitches and normal street ho’s. It got to the point where I wasn’t even able to get up to turn on the light. I paid people to do that for me.”

James, who began studying Islam in prison, credits his incarceration for saving his life. “Allah blessed me with prison,” he says. “I was able to learn discipline and build my up spirit.” Now a veteran of Narcotics Anonymous, James prays daily (“I put God first in everything”), mentors young convicts in prison and guides his daughter, Ty, a fledgling hip-hop artist.

James released Anthology, a two-disc collection of his greatest hits, last summer. However, he blanches at the “living legend” title often tossed his way. “I don’t know about legend,” he says, “but I feel that I’m finally living.”
– D.J. CENTURY


Are You a Rock Villain?
Find out with this simple multiple-choice quiz

1 A rival band manager is attempting to poach one of your acts. You . . .
(a) Invite him out to lunch to discuss the ethical implications of his business tactics
(b) Instruct your lawyer to hit him with a cease-and-desist order
(c) Get him to reconsider by dangling him headfirst out of a seventeenth-story window

2 Midway through your concert, a 15-year-old girl in the crowd holds up a sign that says YOUR HOT! You . . .
(a) Invite her backstage and correct her spelling
(b) Invite her backstage and find out if she has an older sister
(c) Invite her backstage and videotape yourself peeing in her face

3 A publishing house contracts you to write the definitive biography of a beloved but sadly deceased musical icon. You concentrate mostly on . . .
(a) His singing and songwriting
(b) His adultery and alcoholism
(c) His habit of watching pubescent girls frolic around in nighties while voiding his bowels into an adult diaper

4 While you’re judging a TV talent show, one of the contestants starts singing woefully out of tune. You . . .
(a) Tell her that she needs to practice a little more
(b) Tell her not to give up her day job
(c) Tell her you would rather eat your own excrement than be forced to hear her godawful caterwauling ever again

5 After years of physical abuse, your common-law wife/musical partner finally leaves you for good. You . . .
(a) Acknowledge your dark side and start attending anger-management classes
(b) Drown your sorrows in booze and coke
(c) Mercilessly beat her with a twisted coat hanger while yelling, “That’ll teach you, woman!”

Are you a rock villain? If you answered . . .
Mostly (a): Congratulations! You aren’t a rock villain at all!
Mostly (b): Congratulations! You are somewhat of a rock villain!
Mostly (c): Congratulations! You’re a complete and utter rock villain! Time to send over some thugs with baseball bats to give us smart-asses the savage beating we deserve!