The 50 Craziest Pop Stars Ever- 31 thru 40

40. Serge Gainsbourg
Put the French and pervert into "French pervert"
Case History: Gainsbourg was an eccentric French songwriting pervert whose work included Rock Around the Bunker (an album of Nazi songs) and "Lemon Incest," a duet with his 14-year-old daughter. He refused to stop drinking even after two-thirds of his liver was removed. He died in his bedroom at age 62 in 1991.
Crazy Moment: Once introduced himself to Whitney Houston on France's equivalent of The View by saying, "I want to fuck you."
He's So Crazy: "There's a trilogy in my life, equilateral triangle, shall we say, of Gitanes, alcoholism and girls."

39. Miles Davis
Jazz icon tried to beat drugs. Succeeded in beating wife
Case History: Addicted to heroin starting in the early 1950s. After he was rescued from living on the street by trumpeter Clark Terry, Davis repaid him by ransacking his apartment for drug money. He was an infamous wife-beater — his first fled in fear for her life — and was notorious for wandering offstage after playing just a few notes.
Crazy Moment: Davis once demanded that pianist Bill Evans have sex with each of the men in his band. Evans refused.
He's So Crazy: "Some notes you get better in a specific spot on the stage. If I play a high note and don't hear it, I'll move."

38. Carlos Santana
Friends include angels, dead trumpeters
Case History: A big fan of hallucinogens as a young man, Afro-Cuban fusion pioneer Santana dropped acid at Woodstock and played his guitar as though he believed it to be a snake. He embraced a less-chemical spirituality after picking up a New Age book at the Milwaukee Airport in 1988. Six years later, he claimed to be guided by an angel named Metatron, who looked a bit like Santa Claus. Credits Metatron with letting him know that 1999's Supernatural was going to be a massive hit; claims that the late Miles Davis talks to him.
Crazy Moment: Santana recorded 1972's Carlos Santana and Buddy Miles: Live! in Hawaii's Diamond Head volcanic crater.

37. Arthur Lee
Chemically enhanced Love frontman and jailbird
Case History: In 1968, Lee's band, Love, ingested a steady diet of grass, acid and heroin to make the apocalyptic masterpiece Forever Changes. Lee dropped out of sight in the '80s amid rumors of addiction and homelessness, and spent two years in jail after violating probation on an arson charge. In 1996, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for firing a gun while arguing with a neighbor; he was released — after serving five years — on a technicality.
Crazy Moment: While in prison, Lee found God, and later got Love back together on His orders.

36. Elvis Presley
Guns and pills? Thankyewverymuch!
Case History: Presley had used amphetamines since his army days, but from his 1973 divorce until his death, his drug-taking reached epic levels. His personal physician, Dr. George Nichopolous, prescribed 19,000 doses of pills in his last two years alone. He slept days and worked nights, and became paranoid and clinically depressed, firing revolvers into walls, handing out diamond watches to near-strangers and using his private jet for cross-country sandwich runs.
Crazy Moment: Phoning President Jimmy Carter just weeks before his death, a whacked-out Presley complained he was being "shadowed" by "sinister forces."

35. Ian Curtis
Much-troubled Joy Division leader
Case History: The tortured soul of England's Joy Division, Curtis suffered from grand mal epilepsy, the medication for which can have grave affects on the sufferer's mental and physical state. By 1978, he was having epileptic seizures and blackouts onstage. In April 1980, he attempted suicide, only to be pulled out of a hospital the next night to play a gig. But he could perform only two songs. The crowd rioted, and he suffered another breakdown.
Crazy Moment: On the eve of Joy Division's first American tour, Curtis, just 23, hanged himself in his kitchen.
He's So Crazy: "At this moment I wish I were dead. I just can't cope anymore." — From Curtis' suicide note.

34. Lou Reed
Velvet Underground alumnus, full-time Mr. Rude
Case History: Perhaps less crazy than pathologically unpleasant and cantankerous. Reed's parents put him on a regimen of electroshock therapy because they thought he was gay. He simulated shooting up onstage, and in 1975 he released Metal Machine Music, four sides of unlistenable electronic noise — and talked it up in classical terms.
Crazy Moment: Recorded a song called "I Wanna Be Black," in which he expresses a desire to be assassinated like Martin Luther King Jr. "and have a big prick, too."
He's So Crazy: "Some claim that I'm a terror, a dictator — and they're right."

33. Sinéad O'Connor
That's Father O'Connor to you
Case History: O'Connor's career lunacy was unparalleled: She declined four Grammy nominations, defended the Irish Republican Army and savaged both Bono and "The Star-Spangled Banner." A difficult childhood (reform school, violent nuns) should have earned her sympathy. But even becoming a priest (really) didn't make amends for ripping up a photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live.
Crazy Moment: Declaring that the Roman Catholic Church was the fount of all evil. Then ordaining as a female priest for the Latin Tridentine Church, splinter group of…the Roman Catholic Church.
She's So Crazy: On her now-long-dead fame: "It was the worst phase of my life, which I thank God I'll never have to go through again."

32. George Clinton
Even more obsessed with sex than his presidential namesake
Case History: In the late '60s, Clinton created Parliament-Funkadelic, an acid-inspired cartoon word of characters such as Sire Nose and Mr. Wiggles the Worm — and they certainly loved their narcotics. Clinton managed to stay out of legal trouble until he was arrested after allegedly telling a police officer that he had cocaine in his pocket. He went on to play with an act called, simply, Drugs.
Crazy Moment: He used to jump out of a coffin and encourage other musicians to simulate sex onstage.
He's So Crazy: "Bass was one thing that wasn't illegal on the radio, so we'd try to give you as much of it as we could. Bass was like a big dick."

31. Lee "Scratch" Perry
A genius in the studio — when he isn't burning it down
Case History: Reggae's leading loon. For his freakishly inspired dub productions, Perry fired pistols and recorded crying babies and the sound of the weather outside. At his Black Ark studio in Jamaica, he was spotted walking backward, baptizing locals with a garden hose and worshiping bananas. In 1980, he burned the studio down.
Crazy Moment: Putting a curse on the British Broadcasting Corporation that he refuses to lift until it agrees to play his records around the clock.