DISGRACELAND

Spade Cooley: Jealousy, Torture, Murder

Spade Cooley was one of the Postwar America’s biggest celebrities and most talented musicians. He was also a violent, drunk and homicidal psychopath who had no heart. Mean, jealous, abusive and almost totally driven by the deep seeded insecurity that he wasn’t good enough for any of the women who flocked to see him in concert, on television and on the movie screen, Spade Cooley couldn’t bare the thought of his wife with another man so he he did the unthinkable and what followed was at the time, the trial of the century.

Big Lurch: Hip Hop Cannibal

Big Lurch, didn’t just rap about standard hip-hop culture; he rapped about serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and horror movie villains like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger and in the process contributed to a sub-genre of hip-hop called, “horrorcore”. He also smoked way too much PCP. So much so that he could not separate his horrorcore lyrics and the horror movies he watched from reality. The result? Unspeakable. Not just murder. Cannibalism.

Marvin Gaye: Father, Father There’s Too Many of Us Dying

Marvin Gaye was born into a God-fearing home to a sweet, wholesome mother and crossdressing, philandering, pentecostal preacher who ruled his children with an iron fist. Despite his tense upbringing, Marvin Gaye found his calling - music - and used it as his ticket out of his repressive home life. He chased away his shame and followed his muse to the top of the charts; through a sea of cocaine and sex, becoming one of the biggest and most gifted entertainers of all time before sinking into addiction and depression and ultimately winding up back at home with his parents. A move that would prove to be more devastating than any of his volatile sexual relationships and more deadly than any drug he’d ever taken.

Brian Jones: To Be On Your Own Like A Sinking Stone

Brian Jones invented “The World’s Greatest Rock ‘N Roll Band”, The Rolling Stones but would find himself kicked out of that band just a few years after helping rocket him and his bandmates to international success. He was ousted because of his excessive drug use and his abuse of women and shortly after bottoming out, Brian Jones was found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool under somewhat mysterious circumstances.

Johnny Paycheck: Pardon Me, I've Got Someone to Kill

Lots of country music stars wear the black hat but none of them wore it with more authenticity than Johnny Paycheck. Johnny Cash may have bragged about shooting a man “just to watch him die” but Johnny Paycheck actually pulled the trigger. He was a true outlaw and totally hardcore. Hardcore honky tonk.

Motley Crue: Sex, Drugs And Holy Sh*t, How Are These Dudes Still Alive?

Motley Crue frontman, Vince Neil totaled his Ford Pantera on a beer run and took the life of his friend Razzle Dingley, drummer for Hanoi Rocks in the process. Bassist, Nikki Sixx survived multiple heroin overdoses. Guitarist Mick Mars walked away from a blackout drunk drowning and drummer, Tommy Lee lived through his own Caligula-like Sunset Strip sexcapades. Motley Crue, a degenerate band of death cheating rock gods has us asking, “how are these dudes still alive?” Maybe, they’re the undead. *Producer's Note: Please consider a donation in the memory of Ian Kennedy. Ian, a member of the Disgraceland family left us too soon recently. A GoFundMe campaign has been established to help his daughter and wife and can be linked to here: https://www.gofundme.com/for-sophie-and-michele-kennedy

John Lennon (Part 2): “The phony must die, said the catcher in the rye”

John Lennon was a walking contradiction: a violent pacifist and a creative genius marred by creative inconsistency. He was gunned down just as he was getting his groove back by Mark David Chapman, a self-loathing narcissist obsessed with his contradictory hero, John Lennon, Lennon’s musical rival, Todd Rundgren and J.D. Salinger’s angsty, Holden Caulfield from The Catcher In The Rye. Hear how all of these factors and more contributed to the musical icon’s senseless murder in a two part Disgraceland episode.

Michael Alig: If a Club Kid Kills, Stuffs the Body in a Box and Tells The World About It Will Anyone Listen?

In March 1996, “King of the Club Kids”, promoter Michael Alig, after appearing on TV’s Geraldo and on the cover of New York Magazine, bashed his friend and DJ, Angel Melendez in the head with a hammer, who died quickly. His body was then dismembered and stuffed into a duct taped cardboard box. Alig proceeded to tell any one of his friends from the raging 90s NYC club scene who would listen, what he had done, but the problem was, Alig’s well known, over the top depraved behavior was such that no one believed him. “Has anyone seen Angel?” “He’s dead. I cut him up and put him in that box over in the corner…”

Bob Marley: Rasta Vigilante

Bob Marley is known as the peace and love reggae superstar but the truth of who he really was is a bit more complicated. After gunmen raided his home, putting bullets into him, his wife, his manager and his guitar player, Bob managed to live but the lives of his assassins - all of them - were eventually brought to violent, horrific ends. And their killers were never found. Many think the perpetrator was an angry young man from the Trenchtown ghetto who those who feared him called, “Screwface” aka, Bob Marley, Rasta Vigilante.

The Rolling Stones: Sleeping With the First Lady and Trafficking Heroin

In the 1970s, the world regarded The Rolling Stones as an insular band of hedonistic and glamorous pansexual junkies. But all of the trouble they’d stirred up during the 60s and early 70s would be dwarfed by the mess they would cause in Canada in 1977. Up until that point Keith’s constitution, the band’s money and collective luck had been enough to fend off destruction, but the scandal they embroiled themselves in touched the highest levels of government, threatened to destroy the band and their so-far indestructible guitar player, Keith Richards.

Van Morrison: Astral Weeks, Movement and Murder

In 1968 Van Morrison was hiding out from the New York City Mafia in Boston, Massachusetts. Recently the victim of a physical attack from a Genovese crime family member, Morrison was desperately trying to piece together a band to complete what would become his landmark creative statement, Astral Weeks. One of the musicians who would help him achieve this goal; a young, handsome guitar player from Emerson College named, Rick Philp would mysteriously go missing and eventually wind up dead. Disgraceland pieces together this story using, as one of many sources, the recently released, critically acclaimed book, “Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968” by Ryan Walsh.

Sam Cooke: An Insatiable Libido and a Justifiable Homicide

Sam Cooke was a lot of things: soul superstar, civil rights champion, whip smart entrepreneur but he was also a serial womanizer with an unbridled libido. On December 11, 1964, Sam Cooke, was shot to death by Bertha Lee Franklin, manager of the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles, CA. Franklin killed Cooke in what was ruled by the courts to be a justifiable homicide due to Cooke’s unruly, drunken behavior that involved him holding another women captive in his hotel room and allegedly raping her earlier in the evening. With full appreciation of the MeToo moment we are currently all living through as a culture, Disgraceland, with fresh eyes, looks into this crime and the successful effort by Sam Cooke’s family and powerful music industry colleagues to salvage his legacy and reputation by personally discrediting his victim.

Jerry Lee Lewis: The Killer and Getting Away With Murder

The night before, Jerry Lee Lewis’ 5th wife died, she made a phone call to her Mom. She told her that she was thinking of leaving the rock and roll pioneer, but that he wouldn’t let her. Then, she made a second call — this one to the sister of her high-school sweetheart, making plans for the sister to come take her away from Jerry Lee later that month. Then… in mid-sentence the phone went dead. The next day, Mrs. Jerry Lee Lewis was found dead. Neatly placed on top of a perfectly made bed in the newlywed couple’s guest room. Despite the bruises on her body, the blood under her fingernails, the scratches on her husband’s hands, and the mountain of other physical and anecdotal evidence, the death was ruled an accident. Did Jerry Lee Lewis kill his wife and get away with murder?