20 of the craziest rock star confessions: Slash, Keith Richards, Ozzy Osbourne and more

Slash's 2007 eponymous biography contained plenty of eye-popping stories about his wild years with Guns 'N Roses, from the time he ran naked across a golf course during a drug binge to Axl Rose staging a sexual encounter in a recording studio to spice up their song “Rocket Queen." He explained, "We lit up some candles for atmosphere, then (the woman) and Axl went out into the live room, got down on the floor by the drum riser, and we recorded (their) performance," he recalled. "Enjoy it – it’s right there in the final mix."

Unsurprisingly, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has enough crazy stories to fill a book. His 2010 memoir "Life" contained an anecdote from his younger years when he was driving his bandmates in his car, which was filled with hidden drugs. "I had a denim cap with all these pockets in it that were filled with dope," he said. "Everything was filled with dope. In the car doors themselves, all you had to do was pop the panels, and there were plastic bags of coke and grass, peyote and mescaline. Oh my god, how are we going to get out of this?" he recalled asking himself.

Richards, whose past drug use is well-documented, also famously admitted to NME magazine in 1997 that he ingested his father's ashes, which he mixed with cocaine. "My dad wouldn’t have cared," he said. "It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.” 

Six years after "The Dirt" came out, Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx published his own book, 2007's "The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star," which recounted his descent towards rock bottom. "There is something about spending Christmas alone, naked, sitting by the Christmas tree gripping a shotgun, that lets you know your life is spinning dangerously outta control," he wrote.
 

“It was (a decadent lifestyle),” Manson told Spin in 2003 about his recording process. “I think (collaborator Trent Reznor) felt unable to deal with it, and it crumbled our relationship. I would go to bed at 7 a.m., wake up at 4 p.m. and then begin drinking and doing drugs. The funniest point – which is something I just watched a videotape of – was a day when I wore only a blond wig, a Burger King crown and a paper towel tube around my (expletive). I walked around like that in broad daylight. To me, that’s true rock & roll, and I’m not afraid to go there again.”

 

Perhaps rock 'n' roll's craziest 21st birthday party belonged to The Who's late drummer Keith Moon, who recounted the night's bacchanalia at a Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan, in a 1972 Rolling Stone interview.  "By the time the sheriff came in I was standing there in (my) underpants," he recalled. "I ran out, jumped into the first car I came to, which was a brand new Lincoln Continental. It was parked on a slight hill and when I took the handbrake off, it started to roll and it smashed straight through this pool surround [fence] and the whole Lincoln Continental went into the (Holiday) Inn swimming pool, with me in it. We’d also destroyed a piano. Completely destroyed it. Reduced it to kindling. And don’t forget the carpet. And the Lincoln Continental in the bottom of the pool. So I got a bill for $24,000."

Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis detailed his history of bad behavior in his 2005 autobiography "Scar Tissue. Recounting one example of excess, he and guitarist Hillel Slovak, a fellow heroin addict, were trying to steer clear of that drug while on tour. So instead they would drink copious amounts of  Jagermeister because it "gave us the feeling closest" to that drug's high. The Jagermeister high was at least enough to prompt Kiedis to "take off all my clothes in the motel and walk down the hall and knock on people's doors." 

Kiedis also recalled meeting a girl on tour in the mid-'80s and bringing her on their tour bus, only to have the encounter go terribly wrong. "'I have something to tell you,'" she told him. "'My father's the chief of police and the entire state of Louisiana is looking for me because I've gone missing. Oh, and besides that, I'm only fourteen.' " How did he react?  "I wasn't incredibly scared," he wrote, "because in my somewhat deluded mind, I knew that if she told the chief of police she was in love with me, he wasn't going to have me taken out to a field and shot, but I did want to get her the (expletive) back home right away."

The drug habits of Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry were so legendary, they became known as the "toxic twins." In Tyler's 2012 autobiography "Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?" he recounted how Perry kept "vials of coke with straws in them at the back of the stage, and when the lights would go out he’d go over there like he was checking something or making a guitar change and (a roadie) would put the straw in his nose; he’d take a hit, then the lights would come on again.”

In his "I am Ozzy" memoir,  Ozzy Osbourne revealed the cocaine-inspired original title of Black Sabbath's 1972 album "Vol. 4." He wrote, "For me, 'Snowblind' was one of Black Sabbath's best-ever albums – although, the record company wouldn't let us keep the title, 'cos in those days cocaine was a big deal, and they didn't want the hassle of a controversy."

Iggy Pop detailed his raucous 1970s in the anthology "Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk." He noted that one time, he was confronted by Elton John in a gorilla costume, and was so high he thought Elton was a real gorilla. "I'd taken so many downers the night before, they threw me in the bushes, just left me in the shrubbery next to the Days Inn. I woke up and I couldn't talk ... I could barely stand up, and that night Elton John came out onstage in a gorilla costume. I was like, 'Oh my god! What do I do?' I couldn't fight him."