Rock Stars Who Had Surprisingly Short Marriages

Famous musicians are generally not associated with long, monogamous marriages. Plenty of rock stars have destroyed their relationships, even some who had reputations as the good ones (just ask Dave Grohl how his relationship with Jordyn Blum is going ...). The sad truth is that the rock-star lifestyle is not always conducive to healthy marriages, what with being on the road touring all the time and fans throwing themselves at the musicians every night. Add in regular human failings like emotional immaturity and you get a career path that marriage might just not be conducive to.

Even in this grim reality, though, there are some rock stars who manage to stay in marriages for shockingly short periods of time. We're talking about couples for whom a one-year anniversary was an impossible dream. At best, these love birds might have made it a couple of years, but along the way they separated or even filed and then withdrew petitions for divorce multiple times. And in one case, it wasn't divorce but a suspicious death that ended the rock star's marital bliss. Here are rock stars who had surprisingly short marriages.

Axl Rose and model Erin Everly's relationship might have inspired the classic Guns N' Roses song "Sweet Child O' Mine," but their reality was not sweet at all. Everly accused Rose of physical abuse, eventually taking him to court over it. While Rose denied the abuse, he did tell Rolling Stone in 1992, "Erin and I treated each other like s***. Sometimes we treated each other great, because the children in us were best friends. But then there were other times when we just f***ed each other's lives completely up."

After dating for four years, the couple married on April 28, 1990, but it was far from a fairytale wedding. In fact, Everly claims she only agreed to elope to Las Vegas with Rose because he threatened to kill her if she didn't marry him immediately. Like many people in abusive relationships, it took more than one try for Everly to fully break from Rose. He filed for divorce after just a month of marriage. Then, she tried to leave him after he put her in the hospital a month after that. But the couple reconciled both times and Everly became pregnant that September. After miscarrying, she left the rock star for the last time in November 1990; the marriage was annulled in January 1991. They were married for less than nine months.

Everly later sold various breakup letters Rose sent her at auction. While expected to fetch up to $800, they eventually went for over $5,000.

Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson managed to fit a whole lot of drama and several weddings into what was an extremely short relationship. The pair met in April, 2001, and got engaged a year later, although that engagement didn't end in a wedding. But when they reconnected in 2006, they decided to tie the knot after just a month. The first wedding — held on July 29 on a yacht in France, with Anderson in a white bikini — wasn't technically legal, but they made sure that wouldn't be an issue by holding several more. "I'm going to get married a few times this month to the same guy," she said at a press conference (via People). "We had to do Malibu, we've got to do Detroit, and we've got to do Nashville." In the latter location, they held a surprise ceremony in front of a shocked audience at a bar.

But more weddings did not make their relationship stronger. On November 27, 2006, Anderson took to her website to announce the marriage was officially over. While their dual divorce petitions disagreed on what date they separated by five days, either way, they made it less than four months from their first wedding in France.

As for why Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson's relationship ended? According to Sacha Baron Cohen, Rock was furious when he saw the final cut of "Borat," where the titular character "kidnaps" Anderson from a fan event and carries her off to marry him. 

Jerry Lee Lewis went through several marriages; seven, to be exact. Many of them ended badly or even started badly, such as in the case of his third marriage to his 13-year-old cousin. But his shortest marriage was caused by the strange death of Jerry Lee Lewis' fifth wife. 

Shawn Stephens was 25 years old and in seemingly perfect health. She'd met Lewis in February 1981 when she was pulled out of the audience at a concert and asked to go to a party with the rock star over two decades her senior. Despite the age difference, the two began dating and then got engaged. Their wedding (pictured) took place on June 7, 1983. Friends and associates would later claim that the marriage was going really well and that Stephens had even been saying that she thought she might be pregnant. Then tragedy struck. On August 22, Stephens died in her bed at the home she shared with Lewis, who was present and acting strangely. It was eventually determined that she had overdosed — but there were also mysterious injuries to her body and his. The couple had only been married for 77 days. 

In 1985, Lewis told the Chicago Tribune, "I know it's a very suspicious-looking situation. I can see to where it would be and I don't blame anybody for looking at it suspiciously, but believe me, [I] would never harm a hair on nobody's head, much less take someone's life. That, I could never do."

When Irish music legend Sinead O'Connor died at just 56 in 2023, it wasn't exactly a shock as she'd been experiencing well-documented issues for some time. One of the headlines in the years before O'Connor's death — which was supposedly illustrative of her issues — was that her fourth marriage to a therapist named Barry Herridge had only lasted 16 days. However, in reality, while they did have major problems (including the singer taking the drug counselor searching for drugs on their wedding night) during their whirlwind romance, the couple quickly reconciled. O'Connor announced on her website (via Rolling Stone), "We decided to be boyfriend and girlfriend again and stay married, but we did rush [into marriage]." Two years later, she reiterated that they were still together and were going to renew their vows. While the singer said she was single in a 2021 interview, the couple remained legally married up until O'Connor's death.

While the 16-day marriage wasn't true, that doesn't mean O'Connor fails to make this list. She secretly married journalist Nick Sommerlad (her second marriage) in August of 2001, and the couple split up within a year, although they did not officially divorce until 2004. 

O'Connor's third marriage in 2010 was to one of her backing musicians who she had known since the 1980s, Steve Cooney (pictured). That union only lasted eight months before the couple decided to part ways, even though O'Connor said the pair had been happy together.

Michelle Phillips of the Mama and the Papas met actor Dennis Hopper in 1970 on the set of "The Last Movie." They married just months later, on October 31. Details that have come out about the wedding indicate that it was far from your standard ceremony, with a mystical, almost witchy feel to it. The marriage that followed was allegedly no less weird, beginning with Hopper getting so high he didn't recognize Phillips and moving on to rumors of shooting guns in the house with her child, restraining Phillips against her will, and expecting her to perform sexually in ways she was not comfortable with. After just eight days, Phillips filed for divorce.

Hopper gave his version of the story to Vanity Fair in 1987: "We got married on Halloween, had a big wedding, 200 people or so. And we were married for eight days. I got Michelle a job with Leonard Cohen as a backup singer, and she called me from Nashville and said, 'I'm not coming back.'"

Phillips told Vanity Fair her version in 2007. Calling their brief marriage "excruciating," she fled with her daughter. Once she was back in California, she explained, "My father dragged me into his attorney's office and said, 'Men like that never change. File for divorce now. It'll be embarrassing for a few weeks, then it will be over.' It was embarrassing for more than a few weeks. Everybody had the same question: 'A divorce after eight days? What kind of tart are you?' "

Lead singer of Mötley Crüe Vince Neil met Playboy playmate Heidi Mark thanks to her work with the iconic magazine. She'd been on the cover in 1994 and when Neil saw her picture, he set out to find her. "It was a perfectly bad setup from the get-go," she told the New York Post in 2001. "Young girl, Florida, Playboy mansion, rock star. He was completely predatory, hunting me down." The couple dated for years afterward and finally married on May 28, 2000.

In Neil's autobiography, "Tattoos & Tequila: To Hell and Back with One of Rock's Most Notorious Frontmen," Mark is given space to tell her side of their story. She said that when the couple were just dating, the rock star was not only impressed but proud that his girlfriend had her own career, made plenty of money, and could pay for things she wanted rather than always relying on him. She said he'd never dated a woman with a job before. While her modeling and acting meant the pair were not always together (and Neil cheated on her during their time apart), he had no problem with being with a working woman.

His easygoing attitude allegedly changed after the wedding, however. While his girlfriend could work, Neil wanted his wife to be at home. Mark said it was her husband or her career, and also alleged Neil was abusive and misused alcohol. She filed for divorce in August 2001, after just 15 months of marriage. 

Lisa Marie Presley was rock royalty just by virtue of being the daughter of the King of Rock 'n' Roll, but she didn't rest on her laurels. The musician released three rock albums between 2003 and 2012, two of which made the Billboard Top Ten and the first of which was certified gold. 

Presley managed one more marriage than she did albums. While her most famous union — her second marriage, to Michael Jackson — lasted from 1994 to 1996, it was her third marriage to Nicolas Cage that made the Jackson marriage look successful. Cage and Presley met in 2000 when she was engaged to another man, but she soon broke that off and went public with the Oscar winner. They wed on the 25th anniversary of the death of her father Elvis in August 2002, and made it four months before she filed for divorce, which was finalized in 2004.

Presley released a statement announcing their divorce, saying, "I'm sad about this, but we shouldn't have been married in the first place. It was a big mistake"  (via Access Hollywood). Cage later told Barbara Walters (via YouTube), "Oftentimes when you have two people who are very strong and their own personalities and rather intense, sometimes you can have a hard time meshing. It's sad and I miss her every day and sometimes I wish we couldn't have rushed the marriage and sometimes I regret rushing the divorce, but it just seemed like it wasn't going to change."

There is not a lot of information available about Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee's first wife, the Canadian Elaine Starchuk. A model and dancer who posed for Playboy and Penthouse, she was involved with Mötley Crüe at a very young age, and she allegedly dated the band's frontman Vince Neil before dating Lee.

Unlike his famous paramours, such as Pamela Anderson and Heather Locklear, most of what we know about Starchuk's time with the rock star comes from the woman herself via her social media. After dating for two years, she says they got engaged when Lee was just 19, and the pair married on November 24, 1984. They separated almost immediately, although sources give different estimates ranging from a few days to a few months. In his autobiography, "Tommyland," Lee compared the marriage to Britney Spears' 55-hour first marriage. The divorce was finalized in 1985.

Starchuk was not included as a character in the movie version of "The Dirt," something she was not happy about. She posted a recent picture (above) of herself with her ex-husband on Instagram, writing, "Being the first wife of Tommy Lee and around during some of their motliest moments 81-84 ...I must say ... Im a little disappointed when I saw their new movie ... I was around during many of the stories that were in this film... I helped those boys out a lot for two years.. in return they buried their first wifes!"

Hayley Williams of Paramore was only 18 when she started dating Chad Gilbert of New Found Glory, who was seven years her senior and still married to his first wife. In other words, their relationship was a huge mess from the start. 

After Gilbert's divorce, they dated for eight years before getting married in February 2016. Williams actually broke off the engagement shortly before they ended up getting married anyway. Williams told Rolling Stone that because she felt so much guilt over being the other woman in Gilbert's first marriage, "I needed this relationship to work so badly. I just knew that when I was headed into marriage that not only was I making a terrible decision for me, but I was also making a terrible decision for my partner." She also believes she was trying to deal with the unresolved childhood trauma of her own parents' divorce by choosing a partner who was bad for her and then trying to fix the relationship — in a way attempting to fulfill her childish belief she should have been able to fix her parents' marriage. This was not the recipe for wedded bliss, and after 17 months of marriage, in July 2017, the rock star pair released a statement on Instagram announcing their split. 

In an essay for Paper magazine, Williams wrote that in this time "writing kept me alive. ... It helped me realize that I shouldn't have ever married my ex and that love is not something we can just extract from one other."

In 2024, Cher made headlines with the claim in the first volume of her autobiography that she filed for divorce from her second husband Gregg Allman after just nine days. Her more famous marriage to her first husband, Sonny Bono, had only been over for three days when she made it legal with one of The Allman Brothers. But his issues with the misuse of drugs and alcohol immediately made the marriage unbearable for her. She claimed that he was so out of it, he didn't even comprehend when she told him she was leaving him. 

Despite filing for divorce so soon after their wedding, Cher and Allman reconciled and had a child together, Elijah Blue. In 1976, Cher told People, "I've always loved Gregory, but until now, I never felt it was going to last. For the first time, I feel like married people." That contented feeling would not last, and Cher divorced Allman two years later, after multiple setbacks in his sobriety journey.

"I just didn't have the juice anymore," she told People in 1978 after filing for divorce from Allman for the second time. "I wouldn't have gone through it except that nobody ever made me feel as happy as Gregory did. God, he's wonderful. I don't understand why he can't see it. He's the kindest, most gentle, loving husband and father. But then, he forgets and everything goes to s***."

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues or is dealing with domestic abuse, contact the relevant resources below:

• The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

• The National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.