At Least Lauryn Hill's Not A Cannibal... Five Bizarre Musician Jail Stints

You think Lauryn Hill's three month stint in the big house is pretty bizarre? She has got nothing on a few renowned musicians who have been jailed for some pretty serious and bizarre shit over the years. Here are our five favourites, though it feels kind of creepy to refer to them like that.

CHUCK BERRY

Sure, before he became a big famous rock star he had to do a few years in the slammer for armed robbery, but it was his 1959 arrest for being in violation of the Mann Act that has become Chuck Berry's most famous crime. At what was arguably the peak period of his popularity, Berry was sentenced to five years in prison for violating the act after inviting a 14-year-old Mexican girl across the border to the United States to work for him. He ended up serving about 20 months of his initial sentence.

The act he was found to be in violation of was to prevent slavery, human trafficking and, essentially, prostitution – cracking down on those who bring youngsters into the country for “immoral purposes”.

Berry swore that the only reason he brought the young woman to the US was to work a legitimate job in his St Louis nightclub. She was eventually fired from the club and went to police with a different story about Berry's intentions for her.

IAN BROWN

You really need to behave yourself when you're on an aeroplane, that's something rock stars can sometimes fail to understand, though hopefully Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown learnt his lesson after an incident in 1998 that landed him in jail for four months.

Brown was flying into Manchester Airport when a stewardess thought he was gesturing to her for service. Turns out he wasn't and when she apologised, Brown went a little too far and threatened to chop off her hands. As if this wasn't enough, he then approached the flight deck and started banging on the door of the cockpit for 30 seconds.

Brown claimed he was just having a laugh, no one really believed him.

FELA KUTI

Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti was rarely a popular figure with authorities in his native Nigeria and his 1984 imprisonment is pretty indicative of that. He was charged with currency smuggling by the government led by Nigerian Head Of State Muhammadu Buhari, who Kuti had very publically criticised, and sentenced to five years in jail.

Amnesty International considered the imprisonment to be politicially motivated and, alongside a number of other human rights groups, took on his case. He was eventually released after just 18 months in prison.

They say that jail can change a man; it certainly had that effect on Kuti, as he divorced each of his 12 wives after being released.

GG ALLIN

Yes, GG Allin got into some pretty nasty shit in his lifetime, anyone with even a cursory knowledge of punk rock knows about that, but his only extended jail time came after the mistreatment of a female fan in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the late-1980s. She says that Allin and his band had raped and tortured her but Allin said, while he did cut her, burn her and drink her blood, that she was a willing participant.

This sentencing document is fascinating – if not completely disturbing – reading, taking into account both parties' sides of the story and finishing up with a psychological evaluation of Allin's personality that makes him sound as messed up as you'd expect, but says that there's no need for further psychological intervention.

Allin's candidness is striking, “The next day we woke up and we were bored. So we had a masturbation session to pass time,” he says at one point.

The charges against GG Allin were downgraded to felonious assault and he served just over 16 months behind bars. He died a couple of years later.

BIG LURCH

Okay so we're including this one purely because it's so fucked up, not because there was anything particularly special about his brand of gangster rap. Don't read this one if you're eating your lunch.

Big Lurch was a Texas bred rapper who had worked with the likes of Mystikal and was a member of the minorly successful '90s rap group Cosmic Slop Shop.

When he was 24 Lurch was hit by a car and broke his neck, an injury which caused him a great deal of pain long after he left hospital. His solution for dealing with it? Plenty of PCP.

The problem with PCP is that it can make you do some pretty fucked up things. Things such as, I dunno, murdering your 21-year-old roommate and eating her liver? Lurch is currently serving a life sentence after the 2002 crime, convicted of murder and aggravated mayhem after the court decided intoxication and claimed (though unproven) insanity weren't reason enough for him to commit the crime.

Highly Commended:

The smoother than smooth Barry White served four months after stealing $30,000 worth of Goodyear tyres, which was a shitload of tyres back in the early-'60s, but because he did it before he became a star we've left him out.