Let’s see: Varg Vikernes and GG Allin, for starters…
Actually, do I need any more?
Battling drug addiction and mental illness doesn’t make someone an asshole. Jaco Pastorius in particular was much beloved as a friend by almost everyone he worked with, read the biography by Bill Milkowski sometime or read the many retrospectives of other musicians towards him, he was known to be a very warm and kind individual when he was NOT experiencing manic episodes and/or drunk.
Well that depends…
Richard Rogers was a one-man assholeum, disliked by all including his family. Keep in mind that one must be rather fucked in the head to dive into performance. “Normal” people avoid stages. So, expect much dysfunction.
Tthe first names that popped into my mind were Keith Moon and Joe Walsh. Throwing TVs from hotel windows is a sure sign.
Or maybe Kim Fowley.
Vocals- Jim Morrison
Bass- Roger Waters
Guitar- George Lynch
Drums- Don Henley
Keyboards- Charlie Rich
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Guitar: Richie Blackmore
Bass: Roger Waters*
Drums: Ginger Baker
Keys: (dunno really, all the ones I can think of seem to be nice guys, John Cale maybe)
If you manage to keep that lot in a room long enough chuck in…
Vocals: Sinead O’Connor
- If you want an instant fist fight at this point substitute Ted Nugent** for Mr Blackmore.
** Nominally I’m pretty sure Waters is a pacifist, but I think he’d make an exception for Ted (the fight might be short if Ted has brought some weaponry with him, but Roger might get a sharp word or two in before being shot/stabbed/skewered).
“OHMYGOD, was that a scream?”
“I think that was Ike tuning up his backup singer”.
I’ll give you Pastorius, but addiction usually makes people colossal assholes. Chet Baker used up people and threw them away. Both Baker and Pepper were unreliable, missed gigs, nodded off during recording sessions, etc.
I’ll add Frank Sinatra on vocals to my list.
How about Marrakesh Express? Bright and peppy, privileged college age asses who don’t need to work, off to exotic lands on their parents’ dime, to get high.
I’m not sure I can wholly agree with that. It’s an explanation for why someone is acting like an asshole, but in my book it is not excuse. Jaco Pastorius could apparently be a really great guy. He also was universally spoken of as an extreme egomaniac who very much rubbed some musicians the wrong way. And starting bar fights is asshole behavior, drunk and bipolar or no.
Few people are assholes 24/7. Even notoriously prickly jerks like Lou Reed and Ginger Baker could be decent, generous, loving human beings under the right circumstances. But on balance they were difficult assholes.
Pastorius to the best of my understanding probably doesn’t deserve to be ranked with a legendary curmudgeon like Baker. But given his ego I’m sure he could’ve done his share to shatter a band full of other very difficult people ;).
I had an old Italian uncle (well, my mother’s uncle) who liked to point out that MANY people loved Francis Albert Sinatra, and what’s more - - that by and large those who personally knew Sinatra tended to love him while everyone who personally knew Bing Crosby hated him. Or as he put it:
People who never met Bing Crosby love him, but everyone who ever met him in real life hates him including his own family. And schmucks off the street think Sinatra has a temper and is tied up with mob (just because of the vowel at the end of his name), but everyone who ever met him loves him. Loves Him! They sing his praises for his generosity, and his big heart, and . . . .
Without doubt, Sinatra made a better friend than an enemy, and he most certainly had a temper. In addition there seems to be plenty of instances of him associating with unsavory people (like mobsters and the Kennedy’s) but many, many people did admire and love him. Not so sure about Crosby in that arena (I will graciously admit they are both very talented singers).
Yeah, I almost made them a duo for this thread, as Crosby was a true prick to his family and to others. Sinatra was mainly an asshole in terms of arrogance and difficulty at work. But then he was a perfectionist in how his music was made, which can be grating for other musicians after the 50th take.
That interpretation never occurred to me. I like it.
Well, we’re going to need an emcee to introduce these bands. How about Johnny Carson? I heard he was not very likable outside of the Tonight Show. Couldn’t hold his liquor.
My understanding of the situation is that Jaco was really off the rails during the last two years of his life, experiencing very frequent manic episodes, abusing alcohol partly to cope with this as the treatment was not very well understood today - the only alternative, I think was to take lithium which he refused to do because he found the side effects unbearable. He didn’t exactly “start bar fights” so much as try to provoke people into attacking him as a masochistic compulsion. Numerous people have claimed that he never actually struck back during these incidents.
Where’s the line between “mental problems” and “character flaws”? It’s not a rhetorical question, I honestly don’t know the answer. I do know that Jaco Pastorius collaborated with a LOT of other musicians, even up until the end. He was eager to work with and share creative energy with his peers, and he recorded and performed with a really wide variety of people from different genres. Everything I’ve read and heard suggests that he spent just as much time talking up other musicians and lavishing praise upon his friends, as he did flexing his own ego, or possibly more. One of the many people interviewed in the documentary about him said that whenever you were with Jaco around other people, he’d never shut up about how you were the “greatest [whatever instrument] player of all time”. That’s definitely not asshole behavior.
Chet Baker I’ve never heard described as an asshole so much as “hopelessly addicted to heroin” and a crushed, defeated individual.
Buddy Rich, on the other hand, I have read a lot of accounts of him being a huge asshole. And not because of drugs or alcohol. I don’t think Rich was even into drugs and alcohol. I think he was just a really arrogant, condescending guy. (I’ve also heard people say his drumming was highly overrated, although I do not know enough about the idiom of jazz drumming to offer any opinion.)
All of that aside, my pick for asshole vocalist is Elvis Costello. The bad stories I’ve heard about him outweigh the good ones, by far. But he’s undeniably a good vocalist and frontman. The picks for this thread I think shouldn’t JUST be assholes, they should also be as talented a musician as you can find within that parameter.
I’m not sure I do either and it is a touchy line. I’ve linked to this story before, but Richard Lloyd is notoriously bipolar and jerkish at least partly because of it. Meanwhile his opposite number Tom Verlaine is notoriously narcissistic, paranoid and controlling, but far as I know not diagnosed with a mental illness. Who’s worse? Reading that article I’m not sure I could tolerate Lloyd for very long :). .
BUT…I will reiterate that I agree with you that compared to a lot of other people listed in this thread Pastorius doesn’t seem to have been that bad. Whereas I think just about everyone agrees someone like Frank Sinatra was an asshole’s asshole.
That band already exists:
Mötley Crüe.
Their group biography “The Dirt” was one of the saddest books I have ever read, and not just because of the death of Vince Neil’s daughter.
How about The Replacements?