Famous Rock Stars Who Were Terrible People

"Never meet your heroes" has become a common phrase, and there have been countless anecdotes about encountering idols who were less than gracious. Treating fans rudely is one thing, but there have also been occasions when celebrities have acted in a manner most people would find appalling. 

That's been particularly true of rock stars, some of whom have exhibited behavior that has ranged from insulting to shocking to, in some cases, downright criminal. Examples abound, from a 1970s glam rocker who's also a notorious pedophile, to the singer for a legendary band who's long been dubbed one of the biggest jerks in the music industry, to the funk-rock legend who was imprisoned for torturing a woman he'd enslaved, to a guitar legend whose pervy habits landed him in legal trouble more than once. 

Truth be told, there have been plenty of rockers who haven't exactly been great to be around. To find out more, keep on reading for a rundown of some rock stars who were terrible people.

Paul Gadd took the British music scene by storm in 1972 as glam rocker Gary Glitter, his debut album rocketing up the charts on the strength of the hit single "Rock and Roll Part 2." While he never again experienced that level of success, the popularity of that anthem-like song endured, becoming a favorite at sporting events. 

It all came crashing down in 1997 when he brought his computer to a shop for repair. The technician working on the machine came across child sex abuse images and notified authorities. Gadd was arrested and hit with multiple charges. In 1999, he was sentenced to four months behind bars after pleading guilty to 54 charges of downloading images of children being abused.

Following his release, he was so hated in Britain that he was forced to flee to Spain; when his identity became known there, he moved to Cuba, and then Cambodia. He was deported in 2003 and wound up in Vietnam. It was there, in 2006, that he was convicted of sexually abusing two young girls, aged 10 and 11, with similar accusations leveled against him in the years that followed. In 2015, Gadd was convicted in Britain on charges related to sex crimes he committed against minors in the 1970s and sentenced to 16 years in prison. The 79-year-old singer came up for parole in February 2024 but was denied, remaining one of the musicians who are currently in prison. 

Ted Nugent was a solo act in the 1970s and '80s before co-founding supergroup Damn Yankees in 1990, but his far-right political views have overshadowed his music in recent years. That was certainly the case with his 2014 interview with Guns.com, in which he described then-president Barack Obama as "communist-raised, communist-educated, [and] communist-nurtured," adding a racist slur at the end of that sentence. Obama, he then added, was also a "gangster" who'd figured out how "to weasel his way" into the White House. 

To be fair, Nugent's bad behavior extends beyond political name-calling and goes back decades. Way back in 1977, in fact, Nugent gave an interview to High Times magazine, proudly declaring that he'd dodged the draft and avoided Vietnam by defecating in his pants and taking crystal meth prior to his military physical. 

Then, of course, there was the time when Nugent, then 30, was dating a 17-year-old girl. Because she was too young to marry him, he allegedly did the next best thing and convinced her parents to let him adopt her so he could become her legal guardian. "I guess they figured better Ted Nugent than some drug-infested punk in high school," Nugent said in a VH1 documentary (as reported by HuffPost).

Buoyed by catchy Beatles-esque melodies, British rock band Oasis struck gold with such hits as "Champagne Supernova," "Wonderwall," "Don't Look Back in Anger," and others. The band split up in 2009 after years of public squabbling between co-founder siblings Noel and Liam Gallagher. In looking back at the brothers' feud, it's clear that both were equally terrible to each other. 

Case in point: a now-legendary 1994 interview with NME that went wildly off the rails as the brothers viciously insulted each other. "Sit the f*** down, you're getting into a state, you've had too many G&Ts," Liam told his brother at one point. Also notorious was the time in the recording studio when they got into a physical fight, with Noel smashing Liam in the head with a cricket bat. (The actual bat was sold at auction as a piece of Oasis memorabilia.) Perhaps the best put-down, though, was when Noel said of Liam, in an interview with now-defunct magazine Q (via The Standard), "He's the angriest man you'll ever meet. He's like a man with a fork in a world of soup."

Noel once ran afoul of Taylor Hawkins after the Foo Fighters drummer spontaneously told the crowd to start a petition for Oasis to reunite, while playing the Reading Festival. As Hawkins told Bang Showbiz, Noel responded by saying some vicious things about the Foos. "He was really mean," Hawkins recalled. "He was really a jerk."

Mike Love is an original member of The Beach Boys, co-founding the band with his cousins Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson and pal Al Jardine. While Love's voice has been at the forefront of the band's biggest hits, he's also carved out a reputation for being an unadulterated jerk; Rolling Stone, in fact, once described Love as "one of the biggest a**holes in the history of rock & roll." In response, Love told the magazine, "The fable is that I'm such an a**hole, but a lot of that stuff is skewed by the crazies."

He may think that rep is unfair, but consider his behavior over the years, primarily Love's long-running feud with Brian Wilson. For example, he's repeatedly sued The Beach Boys' creative visionary for songwriting credit, even though his contributions were minimal. (Compare The Beach Boys' classic album "Pet Sounds," which was produced, composed, and arranged by Wilson, and any of Love's solo albums for an indication of who the genius is.) Love also sued former bandmate Jardine for using The Beach Boys' name (which Love managed to control) in advertising when touring as a solo act. That case was ultimately settled.

Despite evidence to the contrary (those solo albums!), Love has insisted that he had a far bigger role in The Beach Boys' hits than he's given credit for. "There was always the perception that my cousin Brian did all the writing as well as the producing and stuff like that. That was not true," Love told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. 

Ryan Adams had been an indie-rock darling for years — first with alt-country band Whiskeytown and then as a solo artist — when his successful music career hit the skids after accusations that he had sexually and emotionally abused women. A 2019 expose in The New York Times detailed the allegations of seven different women, one of whom was just 14 when she met Adams.  

Among those to come forward were singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers and even Adams' ex-wife, actor and singer Mandy Moore. According to Bridgers, she reached out to Adams when she was 20, in search of advice launching her music career. The relationship turned romantic but eventually became abusive. Moore — who was married to Adams from 2009 until 2016 — was even more scathing. "His controlling behavior essentially did block my ability to make new connections in the industry during a very pivotal and potentially lucrative time — my entire mid-to-late 20s," Moore told The Times.

Adams addressed being "canceled" in a self-pitying 2021 interview with Los Angeles Magazine. "So I'm losing my life's work, and my dream of who I am, my ability to provide for myself. And I now don't have the emotional support to help fix this. The door has slammed and what am I going to do?" he said. That followed an Instagram post (which he deleted but lives on via NME) pleading for a second chance. "I know I'm damaged goods," he wrote. "I'm months from losing my label, studio and my home."

Anton Newcombe, lead singer for Brian Jonestown Massacre, has built a reputation as a temperamental hothead with a penchant for getting into brawls. "I don't go to bars, because people want to provoke me and pick fights," he told The Guardian. "I see red. My natural tendency is to want to grab people by the throat and not stop." He's also been known to berate other members of the band onstage if he thinks their playing is substandard — one reason why the band has burned through dozens of members over the years. "Sometimes you gotta crack the whip — you're only as good as your weakest link," he explained.

Sometimes those altercations have turned ugly, such as the time that he and guitarist Matt Hollywood went at it with weapons. "Matt and I once had a serious fight that involved a hammer and a knife," Newcombe revealed in a different interview with The Guardian.

In November 2023, a Brian Jonestown Massacre show in Melbourne, Australia, went sideways, becoming one of the nastiest band fights that happened right in front of fans. As concertgoer Ginger Dymke told Australia's ABC Radio Melbourne, Newcombe had been "unhappy and angry at everyone" when he began laying into guitarist Ryan Van Kriedt. Words were exchanged, then punches, with Newcombe smashing Van Kriedt on the head with a guitar before security guards stepped in an pulled the men apart. The band's remaining tour dates were cancelled, and the guitarist parted ways with the band.

Rick James crossed over into the mainstream with his 1981 hit "Super Freak," melding funk and soul with elements of rock and new wave. What should have been a bright future, however, was hampered by James' descent into heavy drug use. By the end of the decade, he'd holed up in his LA mansion, the windows blocked by foil as he freebased cocaine.

Things really went off the rails in 1991, when he and girlfriend Tanya Hijazi were arrested and charged with kidnapping, imprisoning, torturing, and sexually assaulting a 24-year-old woman. According to the victim, James allegedly threatened her with a pistol if she attempted to escape. James was free on $1 million bail in 1993 when he pulled a similar stunt with another woman, record executive Mary Sauger. She claimed that James and Hijazi physically assaulted her, repeatedly. "It seemed they were just getting their kicks out of beating someone," Sauger told the Los Angeles Times.

James was sentenced to more than five years in Folsom Prison but was released after serving just 15 months. When he died in 2004 at age 56, an autopsy found nine drugs in his system, including cocaine and methamphetamine. 

Chuck Berry is arguably one of the architects of rock, defining the guitar riff with such classics as "Maybelline," "Roll Over Beethoven," and "Johnny B. Goode." That legacy, however, has been tarnished by Berry himself, who was so notoriously cheap that he refused to tour with a band, instead showing up at whatever venue he was booked and playing with a local pickup group, without even bothering to rehearse. (A young unknown named Bruce Springsteen once backed Berry.)

In the 1987 documentary "Hail Hail Rock and Roll," Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards — an acolyte whose own signature guitar style owes much to Berry — rehearsed with him for a star-studded concert celebrating Berry's 60th birthday but found him so infuriating to work with that at one point Richards walked offstage, mid-song.

Clearly, Berry — who died in 2017 at age 90 — was one of rock's biggest jerks, yet there were also far darker aspects about him. Back in 1959, in fact, he was indicted on charges of transporting a 14-year-old girl over state lines for "immoral purposes." Decades later, a magazine article shared more salacious claims, including that he'd installed hidden cameras in the women's bathrooms in his Missouri theme park, Berry Park.

Morrissey was lead singer of The Smiths until the band broke up in 1987 and he embarked on a solo career. And while he can claim legions of fans, most of them wouldn't want to meet Morrissey in real life. That's because he's behaved like a lout on more than one occasion. For example, in 2019, NME reported that he'd thrown his support behind Britain's UKIP far-right political party, notorious for spouting anti-Muslim rhetoric and even blaming traffic jams on immigrants. 

In an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel, Morrissey discussed actor Anthony Rapp's accusations that Kevin Spacey had attempted to sexually assault him when he was 14. "You have to assume that the boy had an inkling of what might possibly happen," Morrissey dismissively said, via Vice.

Morrissey is also one of the few celebrities who's scuffled with "The Simpsons." He was irked about a character named Quilloughby, a washed-up 1980s rock star who finds a fan in Lisa Simpson. She goes to see him in concert, only to discover the once-cool British singer is now a racist who treats his audience with contempt. Morrissey's manager, Peter Katsis, fired back at the beloved animated comedy in a lengthy Facebook post, writing that "calling the Morrissey character out for being a racist, without pointing out any specific instances, offers nothing. It only serves to insult the artist."

Kid Rock broke through with his 1998 album "Devil Without a Cause," blending rock and rap in such popular songs as "Bawitdaba" and "Cowboy." In the years since then, however, he's generated more controversy than hits, including his penchant for waving a Confederate flag during concerts, faking a run for Senate, anti-LGBTQ rants, and a drunken tirade blasting Oprah Winfrey. 

And that's only stuff that he's done in public. In his private life, he's allegedly demonstrated some truly terrible behavior. That's the contention of his ex-wife, Pamela Anderson. As she wrote in her 2023 memoir, "Love, Pamela," her marriage with Kid Rock ended in divorce after a private screening of Sacha Baron Cohen's "Borat" movie. She didn't tell him that she appeared in it, wanting to surprise him — which did not go well. "I forgot about the part in the film that referenced the 'sex tape.' Bob stormed out, calling me a w**** and worse," she wrote (via an excerpt in IndieWire), referring to his real name, Robert Ritchie. "He was embarrassed, and his reaction was not thought through ... After I chased Bob to his car, he peeled out, leaving me there alone."

When it comes to monetizing rock, Gene Simmons is in a league of his own. The assorted merch devised by the KISS bassist over the years has included KISS Kondoms, KISS Krunch breakfast cereal, and, of course, the infamous Kiss Kasket, which allows fans to demonstrate their devotion to the band for all eternity. Then, of course, there are his claims to have slept with nearly 5,000 women, and the time he made a joke about his "schmekel" that so offended his wife, Shannon Tweed, that she walked off a talk show — to say nothing of a 2008 sex tape in which he's seen fornicating with a woman who was decidedly not Tweed.

"I would say there are some — could be a large number, could not — who think I'm an a**hole," Simmons said while appearing on the "Really Famous with Kara Mayer Robinson" podcast. "And there are other people who think, 'You only do this for money.' And my response is — of course," he added. "I'm okay with being labeled or thought of as an a**hole, because I know who I am."

While he may be fine with that perception, Rachael Gordon, the longtime girlfriend of his former bandmate Ace Frehley, has made far darker accusations about Simmons. In a since-deleted Facebook post (via Metal Sucks), she alleged that Simmons attempted to have Frehley whacked. "They tried to have Ace killed in the '70s," she wrote. "Tried sending him to a so called 'private party' in the Bahamas."

When discussing rock stars who are terrible human beings, it's pretty tough to top Ian Watkins. Frontman for Welsh band Lostprophets, Watkins made horrific headlines when a 2012 drug bust at his home led police to discover images of child sexual abuse. He was charged, and he pleaded guilty to 13 child sex offenses involving two infants. He was sentenced to 29 years in prison, while his co-defendants — the mothers of those babies — were sentenced to 14 and 17 years, respectively.

In delivering his sentence, reported BBC News, the judge observed that Watkins had "plunged into new depths of depravity." Citing Watkins' "complete lack of remorse," Justice Royce added, "This case breaks new ground. Any decent person ... will experience shock, revulsion, and incredulity." The prosecutor in the case, Suzanne Thomas, was likewise disgusted. "It is incomprehensible that adults would commit such appalling acts against children,"  she said.

Watkins' 2014 appeal to reduce the length of his sentence was denied. In 2023, while incarcerated in HMP Wakefield, a prison in Yorkshire, Watkins was taken hostage by three other inmates. During a six-hour standoff with guards, Watkins was repeatedly stabbed and beaten. Shortly after the incident, Sky News reported that his stab wounds weren't life-threatening.

If you or anyone you know may be the victim of child abuse, needs help with addiction issues, or has been a victim of sexual assault, contact the relevant resources below:

• The VictimConnect Hotline by phone at 1-855-4-VICTIM or by chat for more information or assistance in locating services to help. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
• The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
• The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).