Being a musician essentially entails starving in your parents basement for a couple of mandatory years, before you finally make it. But once you do, there is no reason to retain any semblance of normalcy, or sanity. Rockstars do insane things in hilarious ways, and we love ’em for it, Here’s our top picks.

5. Ozzy Osbourne Has a Vendetta Against The Animal Kingdom

In a famous story of Rockstar extremism, Ozzy Osbourne, black metal orginator, and later marble-mouthed father figure, once bit the head off a bat. But you probably knew that already. And to credit his sanity, he did not know it was a real bat.

Since then of course, the man has declared full blown war against flying animals. Another lesser known (but much more awesome) incident happened at CBS Records in Los Angeles. At the start of his solo career, Sharon Osbourne thought it’t be a good idea for him to take a couple of doves in his pocket to set aflutter mid-meeting and impress the record execs (not a very good idea in hindsight, but she probably had an elephant’s weight of secondhand cocaine diffused in her blood stream by then).

But the Wizard of Ozz, instead of going benevolent wizard way, went the batshit insane Ozzy Osbourne way, and in a moment unadulterated awesomeness, bit the head right the f*** off one of them critters.  

Arrrgh.

4. Assorted Rockstars smoke impossible things in impossible ways

Keith Richards is, hands-down a great musician. But his real talents probably lie in smoking things you would not consider ordinarily smokable. This one time, media reported that he smoked his father’s ashes mixed with cocaine. 

But since Keith Richards is Keith Richards, he did the only thing he could to better the story. He oneupped the universe by claiming he used no cocaine. And since the man looks like a jurassic crustacean and will probably live to be 782, there is no reason to disbelieve him.

This apparently starting a whole trend in the music industry, because after that, Tupac Shakur’s pals smoked his ashes.

Right now, approximately forty percent of our reader base is looking for dead people to burn.

3. Keith Moon becomes rockstar by the sole virtue of giving zero fucks

In the beginning years of The Who, they ran through a succession of bad drummers like a fat man with a plate of sausages. One night in London, they finally met their destiny. Insane-batshit-howling-at-the-moon destiny.

So, The Who is conducting a show with a really crappy drummer. And an eighteen year old boy is sitting in the audience, watching them play. As one set got over, this boy, having copiously imbibe ind his favourite beverage, walked up to the drummer and politely ask him to eff a sitting duck greased with mustard (ok i might have made that bit up)

The Band, impressed by his boldness and possibly by his flair in language, ask him to sit in as drummer. And as the new song started, young Moon (for it was he!) started very systematically obliterating the drum set, in a way only Keith Moon can.

First the bass pedal went flying into the crowd. A couple of well administered licks tore the drumskin right off. And then he delivered the coup de grace by kicking the dismantled drumset into the stage.

And Pete Townshend said, ” I think we just found a new drummer.”

2. Nikki Sixx gets resurrected

So in the 80s, it was almost obligatory for rockstars to come on stage inebriated or higher than kites. Eric Clapton actually delivered an actual full concert while being horizontal on stage with the microphone rolling around on the floor, and nobody batted an eyelid.

So Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue did what everybody else was doing, ingesting enough heroin to floor full grown blue whales. But he levelled-up. His heart actually stopped as he OD’d. So Nikki Sixx was dead, but much like Jesus Christ and The Terminator, he returned.

A paramedic was on the scene, who quickly revived him with two adrenaline shots to the heart. After which, he bravely escaped the clutches of medical care, and promptly did some more heroin.

Apparently he survived with no ill effects, but has displayed a proclivity to say Hasta La Vista, Baby at most inappropriate times after that.

1. Iggy Pop is insane!

Apparently when you do a lot of heroin, there is a little blood residue in the syringe.

This slighly disgusting phenomenon explored throughly by Iggy Pop and the Stooges, and raised to levels so gruesome it might have called the dark lord ctulhu from under the ocean.

They were holed up in an apartment in Detroit, doing heroin for weeks and months, and spraying all the walls with the blood. Later Stooges member  Ron Asheton was recorded saying,  “… it would dry on the table or on the floor… I wish I was smart enough to take pictures of it because it would have been a masterpiece.”

We wish so too, Ron Asheton, we’d finally have a blood form more disgusting than vaginal discharge.

However, in his post drug days, Iggy Pop is most famous for his elaborate contract riders, enumerating the objects he needs backstage during concerts. Written in a fimly tongue in cheek manner, the documents records various Iggy Pop requirements for er, artistic stimulation including a Bob Hope impersonator and “a copy of USA Today that’s got a story about morbidly obese people in it.”

Also such gems like:

“Seven dwarves dressed up as those dwarves out of that film about the dwarves. You know the one. Cinderella?”

“Two cans of red bull. Something with testicles in it.”