From new wave to metal to pop, music in the '80s touched a lot of genres and a
lot of lives. But only one album was ever put on trial for murder.
The Beatles don't typically make lists of the most notorious partiers and drug
abusers in rock history, but in 1980, Paul McCartney actually got in trouble
for marijuana possession in Japan. And it wasn't a tiny amount. He had a cool half
pound of pot on his person when security busted him at Tokyo's Narita Airport.
He insisted the drugs were for personal use,
but skeptical authorities locked him away in the Tokyo Narcotics Detention Center for
nine days nevertheless. He was promptly freed and kicked out of the country,
before even going to court. No harm, no foul, just a funny story he gets to tell at parties.
But it could have been much worse. The amount of drugs he was caught with actually made a
smuggling charge possible, which could have come with a seven-year sentence. The country doesn't
mess around when it comes to drug trafficking, but the Japanese wanted to avoid the inevitable fuss
that would ensue if they actually locked up a living legend for nearly a decade.
Years later, McCartney told "The Late Late Show" host James Corden about the incident,
including the part where he learned he might be facing "seven years
hard labor" from fellow inmates during his nine-day stint.
"That was the sentence for what I'd done. I got out 'cause of my celebrity."
Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne is no stranger to outrageous controversy. There's
the time he got arrested for urinating near the Alamo in 1982, the time he almost killed a guy
by throwing a TV out of a hotel window, and when he recently admitted to the Mirror that he spent
much of the pandemic lockdown shooting at birds and cats that wandered onto his property for fun.
"You wanna try everything."
Other notorious Osbourne legends seem to be more myth than fact, like the infamous ant-snorting
story seen in Mötley Crüe's "The Dirt": Osbourne's former guitarist, Jake E. Lee, told Tone-Talk that
it was mostly made up, for example. Still, this guy has seen and done some absolutely wild stuff.
But the Ozziest Ozzy moment of all time has to be the very real time when,
while performing live onstage in 1982, he bit the head off a live bat. Thing is,
it wasn't on purpose. As he explained to David Letterman years later,
he thought the bat was a rubber prop someone in the audience had tossed onstage as a joke.
"Somebody threw a bat onstage. And I thought it was one of these toy bats. So I picked it up,
bite the thing's head off, and suddenly everyone's freaking out 'cause it's a real bat."
Money goes fast if you're not careful. "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" singer Marvin Gaye,
a Motown icon with years of hits under his belt,
found himself living at home in 1983. On top of the mental health, substance abuse,
and financial struggles that put him in that position, he and his father, Marvin
Gay — minus the "e" — didn't get along. According to History, Gay Sr. was an abusive alcoholic who,
rather than being proud of his son's success, may have actually been jealous of it.
Earlier reports indicated growing tensions and assaults, but on April 1, 1984,
it got deadly. As The New York Times reported shortly after the incident,
police responded to reports of what they called a "verbal dispute that
led to a physical altercation," where they realized Gay Sr. had shot his son.
According to Frankie Gaye, who wrote about holding his brother
as he died that night in "Marvin Gaye: My Brother," the singer's final words were:
"I got what I wanted. [...] I couldn't do it myself, so I made him do it."
Few rockers of the '80s metal scene partied harder than Mötley Crüe,
whose debauched exploits have become the stuff of rock legend.
"We f---ed everything up, and we always walked away unscathed."
But on December 8, 1984, tragedy struck. The Crüe had taken Finnish glam rockers
Hanoi Rocks under their wing during their first United States tour. Crüe lead singer
Vince Neil and Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas Dingley, aka Razzle, both already drunk,
hopped into Neil's car to run to the liquor store. While speeding around Beverly Hills,
Neil crashed his vehicle into another car. Neil survived but Razzle, just 24, died on the scene.
"Razzle, you know, my buddy from Hanoi Rocks, he died in my arms that night."
Hanoi Rocks guitarist Andy McCoy told Metal Express:
"Razzle disappeared. So did Vince. [...] [We] went looking for them. We drove past this accident,
and I was like, 'What color was the car they were driving? Because we just passed a f---ing
scene of an accident with a bright red sports car.' Then I saw Razzle's hat on the street."
In a 2005 interview with Blender magazine, Neil said:
"I wrote a $2.5 million check for vehicular manslaughter when Razzle died. I should have
gone to prison. I definitely deserved to go to prison. But I did 30 days in
jail and got laid and drank beer, because that's the power of cash. That's f---ed up."
When former Second Lady Tipper Gore bought her 11-year-old daughter Prince's "Purple
Rain" album, she was shocked at its explicit lyrics. Subsequently,
Gore helped to form the Parents Music Resource Center, which put
forth an effort to put content warnings on music deemed inappropriate for kids.
"They don't understand perhaps the difference in what a slasher group
might produce versus a more mainstream group."
Many musicians cried foul. In the widely watched 1985
Tipper Gore-Frank Zappa Senate hearing, also known as the "rock-porn" hearing,
Gore and the PMRC were opposed by the likes of Frank Zappa, John Denver,
and Twisted Sister's Dee Snider, all of whom claimed to be championing artistic freedom.
"The beauty of literature, poetry, and music is that they leave room for
the audience to put its own imagination, experiences, and dreams into the words."
But Gore's organization was eventually successful,
and parental advisory stickers were slapped onto albums with mature content.
Gore has stuck to her guns in the decades since. She said to Rolling Stone back in 2015:
"All of the artists and record companies who still use the advisory label should be applauded for
helping parents and kids have these conversations about lyrics around their own values."
Interestingly, not everyone thought the stickers were really all that bad
for the artists. Music wasn't taken off the shelves, and as MTV explains,
the stickers made artists look cool and dangerous, and actually incentivized kids to buy the records.
Madonna has never shied away from controversy. But she really pushed the envelope in 1989 when
she released the music video for "Like a Prayer." Making its debut on "Entertainment Tonight," it
was immediately clear the video was going to cause problems. It pulls no punches,
both in its depiction murder and racism, and its religiously provocative imagery.
The video was so late arriving to the "ET" set that there wasn't enough time to do proper damage
control before it hit the air. Instead, producers could only edit out the most shocking parts and
air what was left in the closing credits of the episode. But when the whole thing finally
made it to MTV, uncensored, the outrage was real. Predictably, religious organizations
were among the loudest detractors of the video, Madonna, and any company associated with showing
or distributing it. Italian Roman Catholic historian Roberto de Mattei said at the time:
"The video is a blasphemy and insult because it shows immorals inside a church."
"They are trying to keep people from seeing it. … per favore!"
Not even Pepsi, whose commercials often featured Madonna, got off the hook:
They were forced to end their relationship with her due to the backlash. But the boycotts fell
short of sinking Madonna's career. "Like a Prayer" was even nominated for MTV video of the year.
In 1989, Rob Pilatus and Fabrice "Fab" Morvan, better known as R&B duo Milli Vanilli,
were performing "Girl You Know It's True," when the track malfunctioned,
repeating the same line over and over. They were clearly lip syncing. But the incident
proved to be the tip of a scandalous iceberg that unraveled their career and
outed the entire act as frauds. Many artists have been caught lip syncing,
but it's a rare day when you find out they never sang a single word on the albums, either.
AP says that the team behind the duo had gone to great lengths to hide the scam. At one point,
they even hired dialect coaches to help Pilatus and Morvan, who had thick
German and French accents, respectively, sound more like the voices on the track,
so nobody would get suspicious during interviews. But it was too little, too late.
Disgraced and humiliated after the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences stripped
them of their Grammy, Pilatus and Morvan told the Los Angeles Times that they were actually victims
and had only agreed to participate in the fraud because they were so poor when the offer came in
that they'd literally been stealing food just to stay alive. According to Morvan:
"Our producer tricked us. We signed contracts as singers but were never
allowed to contribute. It was a nightmare. We were living a lie."
"At that moment in our lives, we couldn't think better or wiser. We were 22, 23, very naive."
A satanic panic gripped 1980s America, with millions convinced that crimes
and child abuse were perpetrated by devil worshippers and cults.
"New and intense scrutiny on the activities of satanic cults."
"Stories of devil worship and satanic cults corrupting young minds."
Simultaneously, metal bands were incorporating evil imagery, from the pentagram on Mötley Crüe's
"Shout at the Devil" to Iron Maiden's 1982 record "Number of the Beast." Unsurprisingly, suburban
conservatives and headbangers didn't exactly get along. Occasionally, the courts got involved.
On December 23, 1985, Raymond Belknap and James Vance were moved to take
their own lives. Belknap died, but Vance lived for a few more years,
although he was disfigured in his attempt. The grieving families ultimately pinned the blame
on British metalheads Judas Priest, saying they hid subliminal messages in their lyrics
that brainwashed the young men into taking their lives. Vance himself even claimed:
"I believe that alcohol and heavy-metal music such as Judas Priest led us to be mesmerized."
But there was no hard proof that the band, who denied all responsibility,
had secretly infused their music with evil messages. The case was tossed.
Years later, Priest frontman Rob Halford told Metro UK:
"People, backed by people who were against heavy metal music,
said we were writing songs that if listened to in a certain way made you kill yourself. It was
insane. Ozzy Osbourne went through it with his song 'Suicide Solution' and then it was our turn."
"People just don't appreciate that, you know,
we're humans with feelings just like everybody else and we don't all sing about love."
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts,
please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.