10 1970s Musicians You Wouldn’t Want To Meet In Real Life

Back in the 1970s, several musicians made waves with their groundbreaking sounds and unforgettable hits. Their music carved out new paths and still echoes with fans today, years after the decade faded. These artists left a mark that’s tough to erase, and their songs keep finding fresh ears to thrill.

But it’s not all golden vibes—some of these stars come with dark tales that stick around too. The ’70s were a crazy ride for rock-star antics, and while excess was part of the deal, a few crossed lines big time. What flew back then doesn’t always sit right now, as today’s world looks back with sharper eyes on the wild lives of these music giants.

Think of the guy from a famous band still touring, busted after an underage sex worker overdosed at his place, or the guitar hero who shocked fans with a racist rant onstage, or even the late rocker known for being a total jerk. Want the gritty details? Stick around for a list of ’70s musicians you’d probably dodge in real life.

Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton rocked the ’70s as a guitar wizard with Cream, Blind Faith, and Derek and the Dominos, before striking gold as a solo artist. His tunes lit up the charts back then and kept climbing in the ’90s and later, cementing him as a big name in rock.

But his ugliest moment hit in 1976 at a Birmingham, England gig. Wasted on booze, Clapton rambled to the crowd, backing a politician named Enoch Powell, who stirred up trouble with his anti-immigrant talk. “I don’t want you here, in the room or in my country,” he slurred about non-white immigrants, per the Daily Beast. “I think Enoch’s right, I think we should send them all back. Stop Britain from becoming a Black colony. Get the foreigners out,” he added, tossing in some nasty slurs. “England is for white people, man. We are a white country.” That rant’s one reason other musicians can’t stand him.

Years later, in 2018, Clapton faced the mess during a press chat for Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars. “I sabotaged everything I got involved with,” he told the Daily Mail, pinning it on his heavy drinking and drugs. “I was so ashamed of who I was, a kind of semi-racist, which didn’t make sense. Half of my friends were Black, I dated a Black woman, and I championed Black music.”

Don Henley
Don Henley and The Eagles soared high in the ’70s with chill vibes like “Take it Easy” and “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” blending country and rock into gold. Offstage, though, things got messy—especially for Henley, the drummer and voice of the band, who’s had his share of dark days.

In 1980, trouble crashed hard when an underage sex worker he’d hired overdosed at his place. Cops busted him for giving her cocaine, and two girls—one just 15—got nabbed too. “I had no idea how old she was. I had no idea that she was doing that many drugs,” Henley told GQ, per Ultimate Classic Rock. “Yes, she was a hooker; yes, I called a madam,” he admitted, saying he dialed for help when she OD’d. “I didn’t want this girl dying in my house; I wanted to get her medical attention,” he explained. “I did what I thought was best, and I paid the price.”

Fast forward to 2024, testifying in court over stolen “Hotel California” lyrics, Henley opened up about the gloom he was drowning in back then. “I wanted to forget about everything that was happening with the band, and I made a poor decision which I regret to this day,” he said, per The Guardian. “I’ve had to live with it for 44 years. I’m still living with it today, in this courtroom. Poor decision.” That one’s still haunting him.

Gary Glitter
Gary Glitter, born Paul Gadd, struck gold in the glam-rock world with “Rock and Roll Part 2,” a catchy tune that’s still a staple at sports games. But this British star’s shine dulled in 1997 when a repair shop found child porn on his computer, landing him in hot water. After just four months locked up, he faced the press. “I regret doing what I was sent to prison for,” he said on TV. “I’ve served my time. I want to put it all behind me — and live my life.” Easier said than done—back home, he was a total outcast.

He bolted from the U.K., bouncing around before settling in Vietnam. Things hit rock bottom in 2006 when Vietnamese cops nabbed him for abusing two young girls. Convicted, he did 27 months and got out in 2008. But his past roared back in 2015—Britain hauled him in for crimes against minors from his ’70s glory days. Found guilty, he got 16 years. In February 2024, at 79, he begged for parole and got shot down. As of March 2025, Gadd’s still behind bars, one of those musicians stuck in a cell.

Ozzy Osbourne
Ozzy Osbourne shot to fame in the ’70s as Black Sabbath’s wild frontman, then rocked even harder as a solo act in the ’80s. By the 2000s, he’d flipped the script, playing a quirky, lovable dad on “The Osbournes.” But back in the ’70s, his crazy stunts were pure chaos. Living in the countryside with his first wife, Thelma, he picked up a twisted pastime—killing animals, especially chickens. One day, ticked off that the hens weren’t laying eggs, he stormed into the coop and started blasting away. A neighbor, chilling in his yard, saw the mess and coolly asked, “Unwinding, are we, John?” according to “How Black Was Our Sabbath.”

Cats weren’t safe either—Ozzy targeted Thelma’s pets. “I was taking drugs so much I was a f*****,” he told The Scotsman. “The final straw came when I shot all our cats. We had about 17, and I went crazy and shot them all. My wife found me under the piano in a white suit, a shotgun in one hand and a knife in the other.” Then there was the time a vicar stopped by, and Thelma accidentally fed him hash brownies. When the guy passed out, Ozzy thought he’d killed him and dragged him home—only to spot him later, alive and kicking.

Ted Nugent
Ted Nugent’s name now sparks debates over guns and his loud MAGA cheers, but back in the ’70s, he was all about shredding guitars on tracks like “Wango Tango” and “Cat Scratch Fever.” Before the fame, though, he was just a scruffy hippie dodging the draft. He rolled up to his army physically high on meth, his pants a filthy mess after skipping the bathroom for a week. “I did it in my pants. Poop, [urine], the whole shot,” he bragged to High Times in 1977. “My pants got crusted up.” It was gross, but it worked—he stayed out of the war.

During that decade, Nugent’s vibe toward young girls was sketchy too. His 1981 song “Jailbait,” penned in his 30s, lays it bare: “She’s young, she’s tender,” he croons. “Won’t you please surrender.” It wasn’t just talk—around that time, 30-year-old Nugent legally adopted his 17-year-old girlfriend so she could tag along on tour. “I guess they figured better Ted Nugent than some drug-infested punk in high school,” he said in a VH1 documentary, per HuffPost, spilling how he sold the idea to her parents to become her guardian. Creepy? You bet.

Sid Vicious
Sid Vicious stepped into The Sex Pistols in the ’70s, taking over for bassist Glenn Matlock, and man, did he earn that wild name. Born John Simon Ritchie, he was a walking disaster, according to his buddy John Gray. In John Lydon’s book No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, Gray dished on Sid’s nasty quirks. “Sid would strangle cats and slash himself with an old Heinz baked beans tin lid,” he said—stuff that made you want to steer clear. Then there was the time he hunted down music writer Nick Kent over a lousy review and cracked him in the skull with a bike chain.

But that was small fry next to 1978 when cops nabbed him for supposedly killing his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, at the Chelsea Hotel in NYC. She’d been stabbed in the gut and bled out. Sid first owned up to it, then flipped, swearing he was asleep when it happened. Before the trial could settle it, he overdosed on heroin and died at 21, leaving the mess behind him.

Jim Gordon
Jim Gordon ruled the ’70s as a top-tier drummer, laying down beats for big names like Joe Cocker on the wild Mad Dogs and Englishman tour and jamming full-time with Eric Clapton’s Derek and the Dominos. He lived hard, chasing highs with drugs and booze, but didn’t realize it was fueling something darker—undiagnosed schizophrenia that’d only get named later.

The cracks showed early. In 1973, a nasty blowout with his wife turned ugly—he hit her so bad he broke her ribs, and that was the end of their marriage. All the while, whispers in his head got louder, but he kept them secret, scared to spill. By the late ’70s, the substances had dulled his once-sharp skills, and folks in the biz started dodging him—too shaky for the session gigs he used to nail.

Then, in 1983, it all exploded. He snapped, grabbed a hammer, and killed his 71-year-old mom, saying a voice told him to do it. Locked up after that, he stayed behind bars until he passed in 2024, his talent drowned by the chaos inside.

Lou Reed
Lou Reed, a rock legend who passed from cancer in 2013 at 71, carved his name deep as a genius poet of the genre, first with The Velvet Underground and then flying solo. But flip that shiny coin, and you’d find a guy notorious for being a total jerk—quick to snap and rude as they come.

After he died, the praise poured in, but writer Howard Sounes, who dug into Reed’s life for a biography, wasn’t buying it. “They seemed to forget the truth that almost every journalist who ever met Reed knew: He could be very unpleasant,” he told Vice. His first ex-wife, Bettye Kronstad, knew it up close—once, he smashed her face, leaving her with a black eye. “It was pretty clear to me that the only way he would ever stop doing that was if I did it to him, so he’d have to walk onstage with a black eye,” she told Sounes, per The New York Times.

“He was constantly at war with people — with family, friends, lovers, band members, managers, and record companies,” Sounes said to the Times. “He was a suspicious, cantankerous, bitter, angry man.” To Vice, he added, “He habitually fell out with people. He made enemies. He messed people about. He was often rude. He was a drunkard and a drug addict, which doesn’t enhance anybody’s personality.”

Ginger Baker
Ginger Baker kicked off his career jamming in London’s jazz clubs before hitting it big as Cream’s drummer with Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce. When Cream fizzled out, he teamed up with Clapton again for Blind Faith, then tried to soar with his own jazz-rock crew, Ginger Baker’s Air Force—cool name, but it flopped fast.

People close to him knew Baker could be downright nasty. His son, Kofi, got a front-row seat to that temper during drum lessons. “If I didn’t get something right immediately he’d shout and swear at me and smack me around a little bit,” Kofi shared with Rolling Stone in 2018, admitting they’d been on the outs for years. “It’s never really bothered me because my dad is such an a**hole anyway that it’s not like I was stressed about making him proud or anything,” he added.

That prickly side shone bright in the 2012 documentary, Beware of Mr. Baker, where he talked about Clapton. “He’s the best friend I’ve got on this planet and always will be,” Baker said, per Far Out. Clapton? He didn’t feel the love back, saying he barely knew Baker. “I always pulled back when it started to get scary or threatening or just difficult,” Clapton explained.

John Philips
John Phillips fronted The Mamas and the Papas, a folk-rock crew out of L.A. that gave us earworms like “California Dreamin’” and “Monday, Monday” until they split in 1968. As the band’s main songwriter and creative spark, he steered the ship—until cocaine and heroin dragged him into a foggy spiral in the mid-’70s. He clawed his way to sobriety eventually, but a botched liver transplant took him out in 2001.

Plenty of wild tales swirled around him in life, but the jaw-dropper hit after he was gone. In her book High on Arrival, his daughter Mackenzie Phillips dropped a bomb: she claimed they’d had a years-long sexual relationship while deep in their drug days. On Today, pushing her memoir, she shared a gut-punch moment—she got pregnant and didn’t know if the father was her husband or her dad. “I was horrified,” she told the New York Daily News. “It brought me smack-dab into present time. The implications of it were just so intensely disturbing to me that I had an abortion. I never let him touch me again.” Her stepmom, Michelle Phillips, called it fiction, but the One Day at a Time actress hasn’t budged from her account.