Rock & roll insanity

Ever wondered just how crazy your fave rock & rollers were or are? Well, thanks to the good folk at Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service, you can refer to a handy list. For instance:

Pioneer rocker BILL HALEY’S records sold 60 million copies during his lifetime, but the money and fame did not save him from insanity. His return to Nashville in 1973 to film Just Rock and Roll Music was a fiasco. He was mean and violent toward his band, breaking furniture, and such things, and he “was run out of Nashville in disgrace” (John Swenson, Bill Haley: The Daddy of Rock and Roll, p. 148). On a European tour in 1979, reports came back that he assaulted fans and disrobed onstage. He became increasingly paranoid, depressed, and psychotic as the years passed. “Police would often find him wandering aimlessly after nightfall, lost on some remote country lane, delirious, incoherent, suffering from amnesia.” He moved into the garage, painted the windows black, and installed floodlights outside to ward off imagined enemies. Even to his own children he told wild tales about being in the Marines and being a deputy sheriff, though he had never done those things. Before his death he would visit restaurants and show the waitresses and various customers his driver’s license, telling them he was Bill Haley. “He died, out of his mind, in Harlingen, Texas, on February 9, 1981” (Nick Tosches, Unsung Heroes of Rock ‘n’ Roll, p. 108). He was 55 years old.

or this:

NINA NAGEN is a German rocker who sings “about God and flying saucers in an operatic punk howl.” She says that she saw her first witch sitting under the table when she was three years old. “At age 17 she had an ‘out of the body experience’ during an acid trip, at which time (she claims) that a representative of God named Micky ‘borrowed’ the body of the non-tripping friend taking care of her. Nina and God had a talk. Since that time, Hagen’s albums and life have been filled with her version of [the Deity]” (Creem, August 1984, p. 15, cited by Jacob Aranza, More Rock, Country & Backward Masking Unmasked, p. 87).

I particularly like the source cited in that Nina Hagen one. Full list is at that link above.

Greyhound to go gay?

I've heard some rumours recently that the Greyhound Hotel , arguably St. Kilda's last surviving real rock venue, is to be transformed into a full time gay bay in the next couple of months.
This annoys and saddens me on a couple of levels. Historically, St. Kilda was always something of a gay hub- who remembers those drag queen photos that used to line the staircase at the Prince Of Wales?- and still hosts the Gay Pride march each year. However, the centre of gay culture in Melbourne seems to have cemented itself fairly firmly a couple of kilometers away, in Prahran. Up there, The Market Hotel, where I once saw bands like Little Murders, International Exiles & the Nicest People , has been a gay bar for years now.
The drag show in the back room of the Greyhound has peacefully co-existed with the rock & roll in the front bar for years. I just can't see how the place will survive as a full time gay venue though- those long term customers who prop up the bar each day will go elsewhere, for a start, and the location is, as I say, outside the gay district. Where will the bands be able to play now?
And why do we need segregated bars these days anyway?
It seems to be a bad decision on a few different levels, and I hope the rumours turn out to be false. The 24 hour kebab shop/garage across the road is being demolished soon (where will the Carlisle St. working girls get their 3.00am dim sims & cans of Coke?) and if the gay thing doesn't fly, I can see the 'Hound being converted into apartments in the next year or two.