There's a reason why rock stars are synonymous with excess,
as a lot of them really have lived their lives as indulgently as you can imagine. Their exploits
have become the stuff of legend, but some of them, like the following, partied way too hard.
In many ways, Kiss is the definitive rock band. Most of their songs are arena-ready anthems about
rock 'n' roll itself, and their stage show is full of pyrotechnics. And while they were rocking and
rolling all night, they also partied every day, particularly longtime guitarist Ace Frehley , also
known as "Space Ace." He started drinking at the age of 13 and spent most of his life struggling
with addiction before kicking his habits for good in 2006. His moment of clarity happened
when his daughter called him out on how he'd started drinking again and implored him to quit.
Frehley's drinking days featured some notably audacious booze-fueled moments. In 1979,
while Kiss was on Tom Snyder's Tomorrow show, a visibly intoxicated Frehley grumbled and drunkenly
joked his way through the appearance, to the annoyance of his bandmates.
“But you're kinda like a spaceman."
"No, actually I'm a plumber. On the side."
There was also the time when the band was riding in a limousine and Frehley chugged
a bottle of perfume after being told that it technically contained alcohol.
Despite his wild ways, he's still alive and kicking in 2020.
In the 1960s, Fleetwood Mac was just one of many British blues rock groups. But in the next decade,
they adopted a softer sound and became one of the most definitive rock bands of all time.
Their new direction was smoother, chiller, and groovier. And it totally belied how the
group was fueled by cocaine. Drummer Mick Fleetwood first tried the drug around the
time that the band was recording their 1975 self-titled album. As the group got bigger,
the drug indulgence increased, to the point that cocaine was purchased in bulk,
written off as an expense, and handed out in packets to band and crew members alike each night.
Fleetwood once made a list of rock music's biggest spenders, specifically for how much
money he'd spent on cocaine. That figure was somewhere in the area of $60 million. He and
some associates eventually determined exactly how much cocaine that was. By figuring that he snorted
an eighth of an ounce every day for 20 years, that works out to a seven-mile-long line of cocaine.
Mick Fleetwood wasn't the only cocaine enthusiast in Fleetwood Mac.
Stevie Nicks used to consume the drug with as much fervor as she brings to
wearing shawls and singing spooky songs. As she described it to Rolling Stone in 2015,
"All of us were drug addicts. But there was a point where I was the
worst drug addict. [...] I was a girl, I was fragile, and I was doing a lot of coke.
And I had that hole in my nose. So it was dangerous."
"I used to carry a gram of cocaine in my boot. At all times.
And it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up in the morning."
By 1985, Nicks had reportedly spent roughly $1 million on cocaine. That's evidently enough to
literally blow a hole through a nose, as Nicks snorted so much that it left an interior opening
and led to regular nosebleeds. By 1987, her body reacted to the constant influx of drugs,
cocaine and otherwise, with blackouts and falls. A doctor eventually told her that
if she continued to snort cocaine at the rate at which she'd been accustomed, she'd suffer a
brain hemorrhage or another fatal health defect. But she nevertheless kept going and only quit
after seeking help at the Betty Ford Center following an intervention from her bandmates.
"Motorhead" is a slang term that means "a person who takes a lot of amphetamines." Thus the band
Motörhead was aptly named, as frontman Lemmy Kilmister was a long-time amphetamine enthusiast.
In his memoir White Line Fever, he recalled the time when he accidentally ingested what
he thought was amphetamine but was actually poisonous belladonna. It was only a teaspoon,
but that was about 200 times the amount for an overdose. He passed out and woke up in a hospital,
where a doctor told him that he was about an hour away from death had he not been treated.
In 1975, Lemmy was arrested at the Canadian-American border with amphetamine
sulfate in his pants. After a night in jail, the charge was dropped. He was busted for cocaine,
not speed, and was released on that technicality. Lemmy also liked booze,
as he drank a bottle of Jack Daniel's every day for decades. As he aged, he had to scale back,
partly because it wasn't good for his diabetes. In his later years, he lived in Los Angeles,
a few blocks from the Rainbow Bar and Grill. He was such a frequent customer that after
his death in 2015, the restaurant held a memorial service and erected a statue of him.
Green Day has evolved quite a bit from its early days as a sloppy punk band. The power trio,
led by singer-songwriter Billie Joe Armstrong, has gone on to produce some very un-punk things,
like a concept album, power ballads, and a Broadway musical. But they've still retained
their punk spirit, which was abundantly clear during their set at the 2012 iHeartRadio Festival.
They were on a crowded bill that also featured pop stars like Taylor Swift and Rihanna. All acts
were required to adhere to a performance schedule and were alerted when the time in their set was
running low via an onstage monitor. When a "one minute remaining" message flashed up during Green
Day's set, Armstrong came undone and launched into a profanity-laced tirade. He also smashed
his guitar, flipped the bird, and stormed off. He later reflected on the incident in an interview
with Rolling Stone, explaining that he'd been blackout drunk for the set, and shortly thereafter
he sought out professional help at a rehab clinic. He also noted that he and his bandmates agreed
that they probably shouldn't have been playing at the fest in the first place. As he put it,
"Once a punk, always a punk, is really what it comes down to."
In the early 2000s, Creed was one of the biggest bands in the world.
Led by throaty singer Scott Stapp, they combined sludgy riffs with spiritually
inspired lyrics and scored a ton of big hits in the process. But then they split up in 2004,
and that had more than a little to do with Stapp's wild behavior. The breakup
was telegraphed by the band's December 2002 show at Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois.
According to a source who spoke to Blabbermouth, Stapp was high out of his mind and unable to sing.
He also spent most of the set leaning against a riser, lying on his back, and sweating intensely.
It was so bad that Creed wrote an official apology to their fans that said in part,
"The band has heard that you were unhappy with the quality of the recent Creed show in Chicago.
We apologize if you don't feel that the show was up to the very high standards set by our
previous shows in Chicago. We also understand
and appreciate the fact that there has been much concern about Scott's health
and we want to assure everyone that he is doing very well and is taking a much needed break."
It was such a terrible performance that four fans
sued to get reimbursed for the cost of their tickets and parking fees.
Metal guitarist Zakk Wylde got his big break around 1987, when Ozzy Osbourne selected the
then 19-year-old New Jersey native to be part of his solo band. He would go on to play on and
write for a number of Osbourne's records, and he later formed his own popular group,
Black Label Society. Osbourne gave Wylde his start not just in the highest levels of music
but also in extreme partying. As he recalled in a 2019 interview with Jenny McCarthy:
"That's when my drinking problem began. But uh, you know,
I drank until then, and then it was just double-fisting from that point on.”
Wylde's heavy drinking lasted into his early forties, when he had to quit due
to a disorder that caused potentially fatal blood clots to develop. Weirdly enough, though,
Wylde's prolific drinking actually prevented his premature death. After developing severe leg and
knee pain while on tour in 2009, he was prescribed oral blood thinners to prevent blood clots.
A mid-tour checkup included a CT scan, which revealed the presence of three clots that had
already hit his heart and passed through safely. Alcohol thins the blood, and a doctor believed
that Wylde's years of drinking had successfully prevented large, deadly clots from forming.
Guns N' Roses straddled hard rock and hair metal, which was a formula for staggering success.
A big part of the group's sound was the thundering
percussion of drummer Steven Adler, who fully embraced the substance use
element of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle. He was seriously addicted to heroin for seven years,
during which time he cheated death literally dozens of times. On one occasion,
he injected a speedball, which is a combination of heroin and cocaine. As he later recalled,
"I could feel my face hit the tile floor [...] I felt my teeth loosen
as they broke away from the gums. I felt the lacerations on my face. The
last thing I remember was pounding my face into a pool of blood."
Rushed to a hospital, Adler was diagnosed with a stroke. He would go on to suffer
another heroin-induced stroke, along with a heart attack, and approximately
31 hospitalizations for overdoses. He was prescribed an opiate blocker in 1990,
which made him violently ill due to the heroin still in his system. Days later,
he was summoned to the studio to record with Guns N' Roses. He was so out of sorts that it
took him about 25 takes to get his track somewhat right. That's when his frustrated bandmates kicked
him out of the band. He eventually turned things around, though. In a 2018 interview, he announced,
"My health is fabulous. Actually, tomorrow I will have four years and four months of
no drinking. And I haven't done drugs since 2008. So I've never been happier."
"If you survive the whole drug thing like what I went through,
you feel like changing. It's like, enough's enough."
Amy Winehouse emerged as one of the most celebrated new stars of the 21st century
by making old music sound fresh. Evoking classic R&B, she packed a deeply soulful
voice to sing songs of love, heartbreak, and her struggles with substance abuse.
She sold millions of records and won multiple Grammys. But all that success
was overshadowed by her personal troubles, which included arrests for drug offenses,
a viral video of her smoking what was reportedly crack cocaine, and an emphysema diagnosis.
Winehouse's demons tragically got the best of her. In July 2011, she was pronounced
dead at her London home. A London coroner found no drugs in her system, though it was determined that
she died of alcohol poisoning following three weeks of sobriety. She was only 27 years old.
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, please call the Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Administration's 24/7 National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP. That's 1-800-662-4357.