His contemporary T.H. White, OTOH, did have some struggles with his gender identity, and with depression.
C.S. Lewis never had any sexual or substance-abuse problems, AFAIK, but he was a “tortured soul” on general principles. 
Frank Zappa.
In interviews with band members, many commented about how deeply he cared for his family.
I’m sure he had his share of idiosynchrasies, but I wouldn’t classify him as a tortured soul.
I believe the OP was referring to great artists, not “paint-by-numbers” hacks.
Well, remember also that if Shakespeare (not getting into the Oxfordian/Marlovian hooplah but just assuming it was the actual man credited) was sexually abused by both parents and was addicted to powdered mummies and cocaine imported from the New World and three times put in jail for breaking his wife’s jaw for not of ripaste making appropriate the table in a manner most timely, we’d have no idea. We don’t even have any records connecting him to the authorship of his plays from his own lifetime- we have next to no idea whether he was happy, sad, whatever. (We do know he outlived his son and had other personal tragedyes).
True, but on the other hand, if he’d had a penchant for trouble equivalent to Jonson’s or Marlowe’s, we’d certainly have heard about that.
Robert Herrick seems to have had a long, respectable, and mostly rather mundane life, unless you count the fact that his father committed suicide when he was a toddler.
I was coming to this thread to offer Wallace Stevens, who is one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century, and who had a pretty middle-of-the-road mainstream lifestyle. other than the fact that his first book of poetry wasn’t greeted as enthusiastically as he may have wanted, he didn’t really have a lot of static in his life.
Not simply “artist,” but “great artist” is even harder to quantify.
Hard to define “mess him up”. It did effect him deeply. As I’m sure having most of your friends killed around you while you lived due to dumb luck would effect anyone. LOTR would not be the book it was without those experiences. Maybe it never would have been written at all. He was a very private person. It would not surprise me if he suffered from some type of PTSD. He did seem to be able to cope with it pretty well.
How about William Blake? Paul McCartney? Charles Dickens? Cannonball Adderley? Stanley Kubrick? Jerry Lewis? Hardly *tortured * souls…
mm
He didn’t like drugs at all, either. He went well out of his way to may his disdain for drug use plain to everybody, and hated to see people at his concerts who were obviously stoned. (Ian Anderson hated that, too.)
He supposedly spent an amazing amount of time in his home studio, and he may have been kind of an obsessive figure - his Wikipedia bio has some examples - but I think he probably still escapes the ‘tortured’ label.
Aside from cigarettes, he was vocally opposed to drug abuse.
Christopher Walken. I don’t know much about him, but I have read that he has been happily married for a couple of decades. In the one interview I ever read, he seemed a little ditzy, but on the whole, cheerful, down-to-earth, and well-adjusted.
Nitpick: Chris Walken has been married to the same woman since 1969. Kudos to them both.
Neil Young had a rough spot in the early '70’s, but the last 30 years or so the guy seems happy as a clam.
re: Christopher Walken. I believe the man drives a Volvo. The sure sign of inner contentment and balance 
Read it! I always tell people they are so lucky to be able to read it for the first time. Harpo was a real sweetie, and he makes his life sound fun.
They had a very hard life at first, living in extreme poverty. Their family was close and loving, but nuts. (Dysfunctional, not wacky.) When they started perfoming, life on the road was hard as well. Harpo is the only one who came through without obvious scars.
I’d call Groucho tortured. He had real problems with women and with trusting anyone. He drove away most people who loved him. The way he treated his first wife and his older daughter was horrendous. (Chico had issues, too: gambling and womanizing. His life didn’t end well, either. And Zeppo, well, he was lovely to look at, he sang well and he brought Afghan Hounds to America. The dogs probably kept him from ending up in a tower, shooting at people. Gummo was probably the happiest of the bunch, personally, aside from Harpo.)
But read Harpo Speaks. He was a full-fledged member of the Round Table, and he tells a lot of funny stories about his friends.
Maybe I’ll have time to visit a bookstore tonight. I’ve seen a number of people talk about Groucho in similar terms - I guess it comes from his daughter’s book or other biographies?
Kate Bush, one of the musical geniuses of our time, was born to and raised in a financially well-off, creative and supportive family. She got an inheritance from an aunt at, I believe, 15. She got a record deal when she was 16 and they gave her money to practice singing, writing and dancing, and just grow up. Her very first single became a massive hit all over the world (except for the backward USA) and she never had to worry about money for even a second. Other than some insults (from kids and then reviewers), breaking up with a long-time boyfriend, and the deaths of her grandparents and mother, she’s led a very charmed life. She can pick up the phone and get any musician in the world to work with her. She can use her home studio and sweetheart distribution deal to record and release anything she wants at any time she wants, in any way she wants, or not at all if she chooses to take 12 years off. She’s fascinating and her music is brilliant, but tortured soul she is not. Her best album The Dreaming, however, would make you think otherwise, with its dark and creepy themes.
I always thought Lou Reed was a pretty normal person for the most part, at least more normal than his image. The members of REM don’t seem too out there.
Bernard Sumner from New Order also seems pretty normal, but maybe that’s because his weirdness was overshadowed by Ian Curtis.
I realize considering the people he was around, Reed might’ve seemed fairly normal but didn’t he have a really bad heroin problem for awhile?
I don’t know for sure. He was into heroin for a while, but I don’t know if it was as bad as with some people. I think it was just fashionable to be into drugs and freaky sex. I guess the main thing is the “considering the people he was around” part.
He wrote the song Heroin before he got into the drug, so that’s partly why I mentioned him.
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As far as I know, only one of his daughters wrote anything about him, a fairly pleasant book of letters they exchanged. His son wrote a lot about him, and let’s just say their relationship was conflicted. (Arthur - named after Harpo, Groucho’s favorite brother - wrote a fair number of celebrity biographies, not always kindly. His bio of Bob Hope is incendiary.)
There are several decent biographies of Groucho, some of which he collaborated on to some extent. The one by Hector Arce is a bit dated (he has a very Freudian view of the Marx family) but very thorough. The general consensus is that he wasn’t a happy man.