DISGRACELAND

Spade Cooley was one of Postwar America’s biggest celebrities and most talented musicians. He was also a violent drunk and homicidal psychopath with no heart. Mean, jealous, abusive, and almost totally driven by the deep-seated insecurity that he wasn’t good enough for any of the women who flocked to see him in concert, on television, and on the movie screen, Spade Cooley couldn’...

Rick James may have been born into a life of crime, but he was determined to make his way in life through music. He intimidated George Clinton, inspired Prince, and more than likely saved Jim Morrison’s life. Rick James was rock ‘n roll’s Zelig. He was also sex-crazed, dangerous, and heavily addicted to crack cocaine. These three traits led to two separate arrests for the kidnapp...

Big Lurch didn’t just rap about standard hip-hop culture; he rapped about serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and horror movie villains like Freddy Krueger. In the process, he contributed to a sub-genre of hip-hop called “horrorcore." He also smoked way too much PCP – so much that he could not separate his horrorcore lyrics and the horror movies he watched from reality. The result...

Keith Moon of the Who was the prototype for rock drummers, both onstage and off. His drumming was wholly unique. Like his bandmates' behavior, it was violent, and like his personality, it was electric. Everyone loved Keith Moon aka “Moon The Loon” and it seemed that people never tired of his always hilarious and sometimes violent, drunken hijinks until one fateful night when a crew of...

Marvin Gaye was born into a God-fearing home to a sweet, wholesome mother and crossdressing, philandering, pentecostal preacher father who ruled his children with an iron fist. Despite his tense upbringing, Marvin Gaye found his calling—music—and used it as his ticket out of his repressive home life. He chased away his shame and followed his muse to the top of the charts; through a sea...

GG Allin, the notoriously transgressive punk rocker, pushed the limits further than anyone before or after. For GG, there were no limits. No laws. He lived and performed well outside the boundaries of the mainstream and saw himself as the leader of what he called "The Rock 'N Roll Underground," for whom he pledged he would one day make the ultimate sacrifice: commit suicide on stage. Listen to thi...

Brian Jones invented “The World’s Greatest Rock ‘N Roll Band," The Rolling Stones, but would find himself kicked out of that band just a few years after helping rocket him and his bandmates to international success. He was ousted because of his excessive drug use and his abuse of women and shortly after bottoming out, Brian Jones was found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool...

Lots of country music stars wear the black hat but none of them wore it with more authenticity than Johnny Paycheck. Johnny Cash may have bragged about shooting a man “just to watch him die” but Johnny Paycheck actually pulled the trigger. He was a true outlaw and totally hardcore – hardcore honky tonk. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at  www.disgracelandpod.com . This epi...

Frank Sinatra had it all, then lost it all, then got it all back tenfold. He was a man of extreme talent, confidence and insecurity. And he had powerful and dangerous friends. He orchestrated some of the greatest music ever made. And he also orchestrated an alliance between two friends—mob boss Sam Giancana and John F. Kennedy—that would help the latter win the White House and, in the end, prove d...

Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil totaled his Ford Pantera on a beer run, and in the process took the life of his friend Razzle Dingley, drummer for Hanoi Rocks. Bassist Nikki Sixx survived multiple heroin overdoses. Guitarist Mick Mars walked away from a blackout drunk drowning and drummer Tommy Lee lived through his own Caligula -like Sunset Strip sexcapades. Mötley Crüe, a deg...

John Lennon was a walking contradiction: a violent pacifist and a creative genius marred by creative inconsistency. Just as he was getting his groove back he was gunned down by Mark David Chapman, a self-loathing narcissist obsessed with his contradictory hero, as well as Lennon’s musical rival, Todd Rundgren and J.D. Salinger’s angsty Holden Caulfield from The Catcher In The Rye. Hear...

John Lennon was a walking contradiction: a violent pacifist and a creative genius marred by creative inconsistency. Just as he was getting his groove back, he was gunned down by Mark David Chapman, a self-loathing narcissist who was obsessed with his contradictory hero, as well as with Lennon’s musical rival, Todd Rundgren and J.D. Salinger’s angsty, Holden Caulfield from The Catcher I...

John Lennon was a walking contradiction: a violent pacifist and a creative genius marred by creative inconsistency. Just as he was getting his groove back he was gunned down by Mark David Chapman, a self-loathing narcissist obsessed with his contradictory hero, as well as Lennon’s musical rival, Todd Rundgren and J.D. Salinger’s angsty Holden Caulfield from The Catcher In The Rye. Hear...

John Lennon was a walking contradiction: a violent pacifist and a creative genius marred by creative inconsistency. Just as he was getting his groove back, he was gunned down by Mark David Chapman, a self-loathing narcissist who was obsessed with his contradictory hero, as well as with Lennon’s musical rival, Todd Rundgren and J.D. Salinger’s angsty, Holden Caulfield from The Catcher I...

What happens when the hardest working man in show business takes a break? Idle hands are indeed the devil’s workshop. This episode will detail James Brown’s scorching career as well as the scorching high speed chase he led cops on that led to his arrest and jail sentencing for drugs and firearms. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at  www.disgracelandpod.com...

In March 1996, promoter Michael Alig, the "King of the Club Kids," after appearing on TV’s Geraldo and on the cover of New York magazine, bashed his friend and DJ Angel Melendez in the head with a hammer. The body was then dismembered and stuffed into a duct-taped cardboard box. Alig proceeded to tell anyone who would listen—including his friends from the raging '90s NYC club scene&mda...

Who killed Tupac? Who killed Biggie? The answer has been right there out in the open for years. This episode looks at the lives and deaths of both rap superstars, the east coast/west coast beef and the media’s culpability in driving a highly sensationalized narrative that ultimately led to the murder of both men. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at  www.disgracel...

Bob Marley is known as the peace and love reggae superstar, but the truth of who he really was is a bit more complicated. After gunmen raided his home, putting bullets into him, his wife, his manager and his guitar player, Bob survived. But the lives of his assassins—all of them—were eventually brought to violent, horrific ends. And their killers were never found. Many think the perpet...

The Arlington, Texas rapper born Taymor Travon McIntyre was involved in two killings by the time he was 17. Arrested on murder charges and placed under house arrest until hearings were to take place, Tay-K sawed off his ankle bracelet and announced to the world via Twitter that he was going on the run. He made it from Texas all the way to New Jersey, where he recorded his most infamous song, &ldqu...

In the 1970s, the world regarded the Rolling Stones as an insular band of hedonistic and glamorous pansexual junkies. But all of the trouble they’d stirred up during the ’60s and early ’70s would be dwarfed by the mess they would cause in Canada in 1977. Up until that point, the band’s money and collective luck had been enough to fend off destruction. But the scandal they e...

TLC’s Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes was known as “the crazy one.” She did, after all, burn down the mansion of her boyfriend, NFL player Andre Rison. But given the fact that it was done after one of many domestic assaults, Disgraceland sees Left Eye as a badass—and not “the crazy one.” This episode digs into what really happened that night, who Lisa Lopes re...

In 1968, Van Morrison was hiding out from the New York City Mafia in Boston, Massachusetts. Recently the victim of a physical attack from a Genovese crime family member, Morrison was desperately trying to piece together a band to complete what would become his landmark creative statement, Astral Weeks. One of the musicians who would help him achieve this goal—a young, handsome guitar player...

Never has there been a more extreme form of musical rebellion than Norwegian Black Metal. The genre’s founding band, Mayhem, its sister act Burzum and supporting cast of musicians with names like Necrobutcher, Hellhammer, and Dead horrified Norway in the early nineties with supreme acts of terror, satanic ritualism, murder, arson, and cannibalism. By the time the ashes settled and the corpse...

Sam Cooke was a lot of things: soul superstar, civil rights champion, whip smart entrepreneur. But he was also a serial womanizer with an unbridled libido. On December 11, 1964, Cooke was shot to death by Bertha Lee Franklin, manager of the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles. The killing was ruled a justifiable homicide due to Cooke’s unruly, drunken behavior, which involved him holding another woman c...

It has long been believed that punk rock icon Sid Vicious died of a heroin overdose. That is true. However, new evidence suggests that his overly affectionate and increasingly dependent mum gave him a fatal hotshot in a final, maternal act of mercy. Listen to find out why. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at  www.disgracelandpod.com . Who are the most disgraceful couples in...