There's a reason why rock stars are synonymous
with excess in everything — a lot of rock idols really lived that life. Their exploits became the stuff of legend
and coroners' reports — because the danger in partying is the temptation to party too
hard. Here are some rockers who partied way too
hard. British rocker Billy Idol took punk mainstream
in the early 1980s. Well, he had a punk background and his pop-rock
had a punk flair to it. But he really embodied the quintessential
punk look with his spiked and bleached hair, constant sneer, and torn up shirts. Idol may have dressed like a young punk, but
he partied like a classic rock star. While the likes of Led Zeppelin and The Who
famously trashed hotel rooms, Idol absolutely destroyed the penthouse suite of a hotel in
Bangkok, Thailand. "No way." He took residence in the palatial quarters
in 1989, staying for three weeks and refusing to leave. The entire time was a non-stop party full
of booze, drugs, and women. It got so bad that the hotel's management
ordered him to leave…but he wouldn't go. So, they were forced to call in the local
military who shot him with a tranquilizer dart and carried him out. When it was all said and done, Idol received
a bill for the damages...which added up to 250 thousand dollars. "NO WAY!" Ozzy Osbourne is responsible for some of the
most unbelievable rock legends of all time, but most of them happen to be true. For example, he really did take a bite out
of a bat on stage during a concert, and was so drunk and annoyed during a record label
meeting that he bit the head off of a live dove. And that's just what Ozzy does at work. When he was enjoying his personal time during
his 1984 concert tour with Mötley Crüe as his opening act, he performed some especially
depraved and disgusting acts. According to Mötley Crüe memoir The Dirt
and later dramatized in the Netflix bio-pic of the same name, the band members and Ozzy
were hanging out at a hotel pool in Lakeland, Florida. After asking for some cocaine and not receiving
any, Osbourne took a straw, got on the ground and snorted a line of ants. One gross act deserves another, and for Osbourne's
next trick, in full view of women and families, he urinated all over the pool deck. It gets worse. Osbourne then went back down to the ground
and licked it up. In the end, it was just one more infamous
substance for Osbourne to add to his list. "It was fun at the time, but then we all sort of thought it isn't a good idea anymore." "So you don't have a more stable life now?" "No." The Who's Keith Moon is one of the greatest
rock drummers of all time. Yet Moon is arguably more memorable for another
rock n' roll achievement: He's the guy who made "trashing a hotel room" a quintessential
part of the rock star experience. Moon celebrated his 21st birthday in 1967
during a tour stop in Flint, Michigan. By the time he hit the stage that night, he'd
been drinking all day, but he was just getting started. Back at the local Holiday Inn, The Who threw
a birthday party. Moon started a food fight, and then, while
running around without pants or underwear, he tripped and knocked out half of a tooth. He was so drunk that the emergency dentist
wouldn't give him any anesthetic for the repair surgery. Meanwhile, the party had descended into a
riot, and The Who received a bill for the damages in the tens of thousands. Moon also enjoyed personally ruining smaller
rooms of other hotels. It was a tour habit of the drummer's to use
cherry bombs and other small explosives to blow up bathroom toilets. That is...when he wasn't busy blowing up his
drum sets. In 1978, and after a few hospitalizations,
Moon attempted to quit drinking. A doctor prescribed him medication to help
him deal with withdrawal symptoms. In a sad twist, Moon overdosed on the drug
and died. He was only 32 years old. Led Zeppelin generated a huge sound out of
just four musicians, only three of whom played instruments. A big part of Zep's extremely influential,
heavy sound is the thundering yet precise drum work of John "Bonzo" Bonham, who charged
the band along as he pounded away on classics like "Immigrant Song" and "Rock and Roll." Bonham was just as hard-charging in some of
the non-musical parts of his life — particularly when it came to alcohol. Like Keith Moon and many of music's other
heavy hitters, it was tough for Bonham to live the life of a rock drummer and still
stay in control. "Control control control! In control." Bonham was a serious drinker, and not just
in party or social situations. In late September 1980, Led Zeppelin convened
at guitarist Jimmy Page's home for rehearsals. While working, Bonham helped himself to quadruple
vodka shots. The drummer imbibed somewhere in the area
of 40 servings of alcohol, and ultimately blacked out. Bonham was so intoxicated that when his body
tried to throw up all that toxic alcohol, he couldn't wake up. Bonham choked on his own vomit and passed
away. For decades, the Playboy Mansion was literally
party central. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner lived in the sprawling
Los Angeles estate with any number of "Playmates." High-profile guests came around most every
night of the week to enjoy wine, women, and song. It was essentially a fancy flophouse, a comfortable
place where celebrities could enjoy themselves without judgement and freely engage in whatever
debauchery they could imagine. And yet the legendary Dave Navarro, guitarist
for Jane's Addiction and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, found some things that were too much
for even the Playboy Mansion's unofficial "anything goes" policy. In 2004, the guitarist published Don't Try
This at Home: A Year in the Life of Dave Navarro, recounting his exploits from 1998 to 1999. In the book, Navarro wrote about a visit with
multiple women to a room in the Playboy Mansion. When the women started undressing, Navarro
busied himself preparing and injecting a dose of heroin. With the blood that ran back into the syringe,
Navarro tried to write on the wall. While Navarro notes that he "cleaned it off,"
it still got him kicked out — and forever banned — from the mansion. Which is pretty rough...because once anyone
or anything has had a taste of the Playboy Mansion, they cling on to it for dear life. “Uhhh, why don't I just keep him here for
a little while until he calms down?" Most tales of rock n' roll debauchery end
with a rock star passed out, more often than not in a destroyed hotel room. However, the events of December 8th, 1984,
are among the darkest days in rock history, and certainly the worst in the life of hard
rock band Mötley Crüe — a time when the partying got so intense that it left a body
count. Crüe lead singer Vince Neil had been drinking
at a beach house for a few days almost totally uninterrupted. Late on the night of December 8th, he decided
to make a liquor store run to acquire more booze. However, he was already very intoxicated,
and he took Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle along for the ride. While driving down a winding road, Neil lost
control of the vehicle and smashed into another car. While all parties were injured, Razzle got
the worst of it — the 24-year-old was declared dead on arrival and Neil was arrested for
drunk driving. While the intoxicant of choice for Mötley
Crüe's Vince Neil was alcohol, bandmate Nikki Sixx enjoyed harder pursuits. In 1983, Sixx crashed his Porsche and damaged
his shoulder. He got really into the painkillers doctors
prescribed, but those didn't do the trick for long. Sixx wrote in Mötley Crüe's memoir The Dirt, "Heroin began to consume me, first to kill
the pain of the shoulder then later to kill the pain of life, which is the pain of not
being on heroin." By 1986, Sixx's heroin use was an open secret
in the band's orbit, and his management team put him in a rehab center…which he bailed
on by jumping out of a second-story window. On December 23rd, 1987, Sixx enjoyed a night
of cocaine with members of Guns N' Roses, Megadeth, and Ratt before retiring to a room
at the Franklin Plaza Hotel, where Sixx was injected by his drug dealer with a lethal
dose of heroin. Yes...lethal. Sixx lost consciousness, and a friend called
an ambulance. After being actually, clinically dead for
two minutes, Sixx sprang back to life thanks to two adrenaline injections administered
by a paramedic. Rod Stewart apparently faced a conundrum during
his 1970s peak. He wanted to keep his signature, just-raspy-enough
voice exactly as it was…but he also wanted to enjoy the spoils of the success that his
voice brought him. In other words, how could Rod Stewart both
sing his heart out every night but also ingest a small mountain of cocaine during the after-party? If he took it the old fashioned way, snorting
lines of the stuff up his nose, that would damage nasal passages, and in turn, his throat,
and subsequently, his famous voice. Fortunately for Stewart, he devised other
ways to get cocaine into his bloodstream. “And I for one still don't understand the chemistry of it. And I never will, for as long as I live." Stewart wrote in Rod: The Autobiography, "We started buying anti-cold capsules from
the chemist's [and] separating the two halves of the capsules, replacing their contents
with a pinch of cocaine." Then that pill would go up...well, where most
people don't want to put pills. According to Stewart, "They would dissolve effortlessly into the
system." That's right — Rod Stewart made and used
homemade cocaine suppositories. Although this method worked for Stewart, his
suppository solution is a much trickier procedure for many people. "You know cuz sometimes you have it, sometimes it escapes Some people never find it in their entire lives." Maybe the most infamous hard partying hard
rocker of all time, Keith Richards has defied modern medicine by still being alive despite
his well-documented and copious drug use. Chasing a high has nearly killed the Rolling
Stones guitarist a couple of times. He got heavy into heroin in the early '70s,
A few years later, he claimed to have been poisoned with strychnine-laced heroin. "I was totally comatose, but I was totally
awake. I could listen to everyone, and they were
like, 'He's dead, he's dead!' [...] I was thinking, 'I'm not dead!'" Now, it's hard to pinpoint the craziest thing
Keith Richards did, but it's probably the time he inhaled his father's ashes up his
nose. Richards told the NME, "I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding
him up with a little bit of blow. [...] It went down pretty well, and I'm still
alive." While we'll never know the spiritual benefits
of ingesting a parent, Richards did notice one interesting side effect. "Well, it got me off." Most of the stories about Guns n' Roses concern
the band's iconic, notorious singer Axl Rose and lead guitarist Slash. But plugging away alongside them for years,
both onstage and in the sordid halls of rock n' roll legend, was Duff McKagan. The bassist celebrated and dealt with the
pressures of his success with a one-two punch of alcohol and cocaine. McKagan routinely consumed a half-gallon of
vodka daily — put another way, that's more than 40 shots of the stuff. At one point, McKagan realized that drinking
so much vodka everyday probably wasn't so good for his health, so he traded out spirits
for wine. In the long run, that wasn't so good for him
either, because in 1994, McKagan's pancreas burst. Doctors told him that if he were to have just
one more drink, he'd die. McKagan told The Independent, "My mom had Parkinson's and I saw her come
in crying, seeing her youngest son on tubes [...] That turned me around." "And that was like all the rehab I needed." Due to their love of illicit substances, particularly
heroin and cocaine, Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry earned the nickname the Toxic
Twins. The cred to back up that nickname was confirmed
by no less than arguably the most drug-addled rock star of all time. Tyler told Rolling Stone in 1990 that "Jerry Garcia says that we were the druggiest
bunch of guys the Grateful Dead ever saw. [...] So that gives you some idea of how f---ed
and crazy we were." Tyler claims that he and some of his bandmates
were so into that one rock n' roll excess that they didn't have the energy to indulge
in the other. And that's something he regretted. Tyler said, "I'm still bummed out I didn't get all the
sex I could have had in the Seventies. [...] We were more interested in the finer blends of cocaine. Which, by the way, was laced with opium." At some point during his journey to sobriety,
Tyler must have taken a good look at himself and had some seriously profound thoughts. "That is E to the Z ooh tweedly-dee-sgusting!" "You haven't heard me sing diddley-ding yet." Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Grunge videos about rock stars
are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the
bell so you don't miss a single one.
