Musicians, especially rock stars, are well known for their flamboyant and outrageous
personalities.
But don't all musicians eventually turn into regular people when they go to the grocery
store or put gas in their cars or whatever?
Not all of them.
Here are musicians you wouldn't want to meet.
Billy Bob Thornton, while not acting on-screen, also plays in a band.
He really, really wants you to know that and to not ask him about his day job.
His band, the Boxmasters, had a run of gigs they were promoting on a Toronto radio station
when the host, Jian Ghomeshi, had the misfortune of mentioning that Thornton had been in some
movies in the past.
Entertainment Weekly reported that Thornton bristled at his work being brought up and
then gave a master class on being difficult on the air.
Questions were evaded or flat-out ignored with stunning tenacity.
"Billy Bob, you guys formed only in the last couple of years, right?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Ghomeshi noted that the band was currently on tour with Willie Nelson.
Pretty cool, right?
Thornton's response?
"Uhh, I've never met him."
The air was thick with ridicule and hostility, and Thornton eventually said the host had
been instructed not to bring up his acting career.
The Boxmasters were supposed to play a song in the studio, but Thornton refused to join,
apparently making up a lie that he didn't have his drums with him and then just bouncing
from the studio altogether.
Funnily enough, the Toronto shows he was promoting ended with the band being booed because of
his on-air antics, according to Rolling Stone.
Two subsequent shows were canceled.
As the one-hit wonder performer of a novelty song about drugs, Afroman is known primarily
for 2001's "Because I Got High."
Both a celebration of and a cautionary tale against smoking marijuana, it details how
a man's life goes terribly wrong because he neglects to take care of a series of escalating
responsibilities, choosing instead to get high.
At first, Afroman seemed like a jovial, chilled-out presence, one guess why, both on his record
and in the video featuring noted fictional stoners Jay and Silent Bob.
But the next time Afroman made headlines, it was because of an ugly incident at a 2015
concert in Biloxi, Mississippi.
According to TMZ, while Afroman was performing, a female fan got up on stage and danced next
to him, to which he responded by flipping around and decking her in the face.
According to witnesses, the woman crumbled to the ground, crying and bleeding, while
Afroman continued with his song.
Before long, police had ended the concert, arrested Afroman, and booked him on an assault
charge.
The fan, Haley Byrd, sued the company that owns the concert venue and Afroman himself,
as reported in TMZ, especially on account of how she may have suffered a concussion
from the punch.
A judge ruled in her favor, ordering Afroman to pay out $65,000.
As the lead singer and chief creative force behind Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Corgan snarled
his way to alternative rock superstardom in the '90s.
With songs of anger and dissatisfaction like "Zero" and "Today," millions of jaded young
people found an ally in Corgan, who, over the past 20-odd years, has made a second career
in starting feuds.
For example, he dated Hole's Courtney Love before her marriage to Kurt Cobain and then
again after his death, according to US Magazine.
Corgan also worked on Hole's Celebrity Skin... which he then publicly trashed, saying it
"left a bad taste in [his] mouth."
Years later, according to Rolling Stone, he wrote songs for a Love solo album that were
included against his wishes, leading him to use Twitter to dismiss her, saying she should
go away and "live off [her] husband's money."
And that's just how he treats people he knows.
Corgan has more vitriol for strangers.
According to Queerty, in 2011, he directed verbal abuse at a trans woman, while in 2016,
the Guardian reported that Corgan went on the conservative Alex Jones Show and compared
politically progressive social justice warriors to both 1930s KKK members and the Maoists
who started a Communist revolution in China.
Jennifer Lopez is a major actress and mega-successful pop singer, but she insists she's still just
a normal person, belaboring the point on her hit single "Jenny from the Block."
There's quite a bit of evidence, however, that Lopez doesn't care to mingle with common
folk.
According to Star Magazine, one of the singer's associates told them,
"She doesn't speak to salespeople, restaurant or hotel staff, or flight attendants.
She only talks through her assistants."
Also, on one occasion a flight attendant allegedly asked Lopez if he could get her a beverage.
The attendant said,
"But Jennifer refused to acknowledge me.
She turned her head away and told her personal assistant, 'Please tell him I'd like a Diet
Coke and lime.'"
And in 2012, a maid working at a hotel in Germany told Us Weekly that she asked Lopez
for her autograph during a stay.
Assistants rejected her on Lopez's behalf, and a day later, the maid said she was fired
after Lopez complained.
Lopez apparently isn't much kinder to famous people.
In a 1998 interview with Movieline, she gave her shockingly unfiltered opinions of her
actress competition.
Lopez called Cameron Diaz,
"...a lucky model who's been given a lot of opportunities I just wish she would have done
more with."
She also noted that Winona Ryder, quote, "gets nominated for Oscars, but I've never heard
anyone in the public or among my friends say, 'Oh, I love her.'"
Gwyneth Paltrow may have gotten the worst of it, though, as Lopez said she couldn't,
quote, "remember anything she was in."
The Beach Boys' chief songwriter, Brian Wilson, took things to the next level in the mid-'60s,
creating pop symphonies like Pet Sounds, which is universally regarded as one of the greatest
records ever made.
Wilson's bandmate (and cousin) Mike Love, however, didn't agree.
According to Vice, when he heard a sample of what would become Pet Sounds, Love barked,
"Who is gonna hear this s---?
The ears of a dog?"
Ironically, that gave Wilson the idea to name it Pet Sounds.
Love would also go on the offensive several times.
In 1992, according to Associated Press, he successfully sued Wilson for songwriting credits
on dozens of old Beach Boys tunes.
In 2005, according to Today, Love sued Wilson again, claiming he, quote, "shamelessly misappropriated"
their band by distributing a Beach Boys CD to promote Smile, his solo album that had
originally been a Beach Boys project in the '60s.
According to Rolling Stone, Wilson scrapped that album because Love had been so critical
of it.
Brian Wilson isn't the only seemingly untouchable icon to earn Mike Love's ire.
On the night the Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988,
Love went off on the Beatles and the Rolling Stones:
"The Beach Boys did about 180 performances last year.
I'd like to see the Mop Tops match that!"
Love then continued the challenge, saying:
"I'd like to see Mick Jagger get out on this stage and do 'I Get Around' versus 'Jumpin'
Jack Flash' any day now."
Tommy Lee was a founding member of Motley Crüe, one of the most proudly debauched and
depraved bands in rock history.
It's all laid out in mind-blowing detail in the collective Crüe bio The Dirt, although
Lee got into some antics on his own, such as an off-and-on relationship with Pamela
Anderson that resulted in a lucrative honeymoon tape, as well as some jail time.
Per the Los Angeles Times, Lee had a long rap sheet of violent charges, which a California
judge noted in 1998 when he sentenced the drummer to six months in jail, plus three
years probation for spousal battery.
Lee reportedly assaulted Anderson while she was holding their baby son...because she wouldn't
tell her parents to cancel a visit.
MTV News reported that Lee was later charged with inciting a riot at a 1997 concert after
he assisted bandmate Nikki Sixx in pouring beer on a security guard's head.
According to Court TV, Lee was sued on another occasion when a four-year-old boy drowned
in his swimming pool during his son's birthday party.
He was cleared of any wrongdoing there, but Lee got himself back in the news once more
in 2018, when The Blast reported that he landed in the hospital after a fist fight with his
adult son.
What a mess.
If you or someone you know is struggling with domestic abuse, please call or chat online
with the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.