Musicians Arrested For Weird Crimes

JOHNNY CASH: FOREST FIRE

Was Johnny Cash the ultimate example of outlaw country? It's a tough call. While he died a very un-outlaw death in a Nashville hospital due to complications of diabetes (by way of comparison, Hank Williams died in the back of a Cadillac due to complications of booze, morphine, chloral hydrate, and being Hank Williams), Cash was also responsible for the destruction of close to a million dollars of government property after his pickup truck caught fire, which by any estimation is pretty damn outlaw.

While driving through the Los Padres National Forest in 1965, an overheated wheel bearing set fire to Cash's truck and over 500 acres of land, allegedly killing 49 of the forest's 53 endangered California Condors that were preserved there in one of the nation's first bird sanctuaries.

Johnny Cash grudgingly paid off a government lawsuit, famously proclaiming that he didn't care about "those damned yellow buzzards." Still and all, that cover of "Hurt" was pretty awesome.

LIL KIM: PERJURY

There's an undeniable cachet to criminal convictions and jail time in the hip-hop world, but in most cases these are for drug cases, firearms violation, and the occasional murder. Talented rapper and queen bee Lil Kim did time for a much less romantic offense, however: lying (in a fairly obvious and dumb manner) to a grand jury about her role as a witness to a 2001 shooting.

A trifling rivalry between two no-name rap groups distantly connected to Kim's label led to a shootout outside of Hot 97's Manhattan studio after she had just finished an interview.

Her manager and bodyguard were both involved in the shooting but she unwisely claimed not to know that the two men were at the scene. Security camera footage showed Kim quite clearly accompanying her co-defendants and the judge put her away for ten months in a Philadelphia prison.

Lil Kim's post-prison career has focused more on charity performances for AIDS benefits and much less on lying to judges.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: SUSPECTED VAGRANCY

Good old Ludwig Van was a man wholly committed to his craft, infamous for neglecting his appearance, hygiene, and household while he was busy working on a new composition. This was okay when he was just wandering around his estate mumbling about woodwinds, but in 1820 Ludwig woke from one of his musical fugues deep in the tangled suburbs of Vienna with no idea where he was.

The scruffy composer began peering into shops and windows to try and gain his bearings, attracting the attention of the local constabulary. The Viennese cops summarily threw the dirty weirdo in the lockup, but his constant whining about being one of history's greatest composers eventually led them to consult with the city's musical director. He confirmed that yes, this filthy hobo was in fact a brilliant celebrity musician who should not have been thrown in the drunk tank.

NORWEGIAN BLACK METAL: CHURCH BURNINGS

While wuss-ass punk rockers were busy saying mean things about universally despised institutions like the Queen of England and the Pope, the hardcore crazies of Norway's homegrown black metal scene were literally destroying 900-year-old historical landmarks and subsequently recording albums about them.

Renowned guitarist and homicidal Nazi madman, Varg Vikernes was indicted for the burning of four historic Nordic churches and popularly believed to be responsible for the destruction of a fifth: the Fantoft Stave Church.

He used a photo of the ruined building on the cover of his Burzum album "Ashes" and he was easily crazy enough to have done it.

Unfortunately, Vikernes was far from the only crazy pyromaniac in the Scandinavian metal scene, and over fifty church burnings have been connected to metal bands or fans.

IGOR STRAVINSKY: IMPROPER USE OF CREATIVITY

Igor Stravinsky was and always will be the original punk musician. He was a brilliant and unconventional outsider, whose compositions were so revolutionary that they literally caused riots (ask any Parisian from 1913).

Even after Stravinsky formally abandoned his native Russia for the United States, his boundless creativity still got him in trouble. A 1944 performance in Boston that featured his unique interpretation of the Star-Spangled Banner was so adventurous that the Boston Police Department mobilized the next day "to make sure he didn't play it again."

While recent events have shown that the BPD is prone to ostentatious displays of force, the police action against Stravinsky remains the only time an American police force has been called into action in order to suppress a potentially dangerous symphonic performance.

JOHNNY PAYCHECK: ATTEMPTED MURDER

Famous shover of jobs, Johnny Paycheck had a saying about his status in the "outlaw country" movement: "To me, an outlaw is a man that did things his own way, whether you liked him or not. I did things my own way."

A generally more accepted definition of an outlaw is someone who shoots another man in the head: a crime Paycheck was found guilty of in 1985 after a bar-room struggle ended when the musician grazed a man's skull with a .22 bullet.

Paycheck insisted that he acted in self-defense and the appeals process dragged on for years, finally convicting the singer in 1989 to a seven-year stint in prison.

Johnny Paycheck served only 22 months before the governor stepped in to pardon his sentence, freeing the musician to commence a reign of terror that spanned... actually no. Paycheck cut his dependence on alcohol and drugs and lived out the rest of his life performing small tours and concerts.

STALAGGH: KIDNAPPING, EXPLOITATION OF THE INSANE

Mysterious Dutch noise-metal band Stalaggh may have one of the most metal names possible, but they top that with their controversial policy of using vocalists taken from local asylums-and not always with the asylum's full knowledge or consent.

Allegedly, one of the anonymous collective behind Stalaggh's music worked at a mental institution and was able to check out some of the louder patients for recording sessions that the group excused as a form of scream therapy.

Several of the "guest vocalists" were homicidally violent, and the band claims that an attempted murder was caught on audiotape for their second album.

GAAHL: NEARLY EVERYTHING

Former Gorgoroth front-troll Gaahl lives the black metal lifestyle to the fullest. Already a controversial figure for his statements supporting church burnings, Gaahl staged a 2004 black mass/concert that was investigated by Polish police for being both a prosecutable religious offense and being an example of cruelty to animals (several sheep paid the ultimate price for Gorgoroth's art).

Gaahl and associates Infernus, Tormentor, King ov Hell, and... uh... Hat all plead ignorance of local law and shifted the blame to their local manager, but a bizarre incident in 2002 wasn't as easy to shrug off.

A 40-year-old man attending a party with Gaahl and company claimed that he was just trying to leave when some angry words were exchanged and somebody sucker-punched him from behind. He woke bound to a chair and confronted by Gaahl, who tortured him over the course of several hours, at one point collecting the victim's blood in a cup for later consumption.

Bizarrely, the typical sentence for vampiric torture in Norway was apparently only ninety days in jail, but the jury found Gaahl's violence so extreme that the sentence was boosted to a full year.

Since you can't keep a good torturer down, Gaahl was later found guilty of another torture incident in 2006, which he absurdly claimed to have been an act of self-defense.