Rock ‘n’ roll has always been just as much about the musicians as it has the music. Nothing can make a dirty rock song about drugs, violence, girls or Satan better than if it is sung through the raspy pipes of a musician who you know is willing to back up every word. To salute the music and lifestyle we love so much, we decided to honor the 10 most outrageous characters rock has given us over the past several decades. We decided to highlight one of our favorite moments from each rock antagonist that we felt elevated them from just another alcoholic or drug addict – these acts bring them to a level reserved for the lowest of the low and the hardest of the hard. Many of those on the list – if they were lucky enough to survive – have since cleaned up, but their actions will always hang over them like a rock ‘n’ roll crown of mayhem.

1. Sid Vicious “kills” Nancy Spungen

Many have claimed the “live fast, die young” mantra, but few have lived it like infamous Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious. Known for pretty much everything besides being a competent bassist, Vicious became the figurehead for the wasted youth era of the late ’70s. Although his half-conscious, drug-induced state made him one of punk rock’s most notorious musicians, he truly earned his dastardly chops on Oct. 12, 1978, when he awoke from a heroin haze to find his true love, Nancy Spungen, blood-soaked and lifeless from a stab wound to the abdomen. He was arrested for the crime but initially claimed he had no memory of it. There were theories that one of the many drug dealers who commonly visited the doomed duo may have killed her while Sid lay unconscious, trapped in the euphoric grasp of the drug. Sid’s later claim that he “killed her because I’m a dirty dog,” however, is a much more plausible and fitting conclusion. Try that one on for size, Joel Madden.

2. Ozzy Osbourne salutes the Alamo

Although Ozzy is now sadly best known as the mumbling star of his own reality TV series, it was a different story during the 1980s. Although his drug use and enjoyment of biting the heads off of small animals is well documented, not many rock stars can say they’ve defiled a national monument. Far from sober and wearing one of his wife’s dresses, Osbourne decided to stop for a bathroom break after a night out on the town during a tour stop in San Antonio. Little did Osbourne know the wall he was caught urinating on was part of the Alamo, and the rocker was subsequently banned from playing in Texas for the next 10 years.

3. Johnny Cash turns a wildlife refuge into a ring of fire

An act that would have surely given Smokey Bear a heart attack, country music outlaw Johnny Cash became the only person ever successfully sued by the U.S. Government for starting a forest fire. The conflagration started when Cash parked his truck, which was leaking oil, at Los Padres National Wildlife Refuge near Ventura, Calif. The hot oil leaking from the truck set a patch of grass on fire, and rather than attempt to put the fire out, the amphetamine-addled Cash decided to go fishing. The fire crew found him attempting to fish in a creek with only three inches of water in it, and when he was asked at the deposition whether he started the fire, the country music icon replied: “No. My truck did. And it’s dead, so you can’t question it.” The fire turned several endangered California condors into barbecue, and Cash was forced to pay $125,000 in damages.

4. GG Allin bites the dust

With songs like “Bite It, You Scum” and a stage show that included blood, urine, feces and brawling with audience members, the entire career of punk rocker GG Allin deserves a special place on the list. Allin often spoke of his desire to commit suicide on stage, but the circumstances surrounding his actual death are every bit as outrageous. Allin’s final concert in New York ended in a riot, with the singer fleeing from police wearing nothing but a mixture of his own bodily fluids. Escaping on foot to a friend’s apartment, the perverted punk rocker overdosed on a lethal cocktail of alcohol and heroin and was found dead on June 28, 1993.

5. Nikki Sixx – stronger than God

There is no doubt that the “Sunset Strip” metal clique of the 1980s was fueled as much by drugs as their need to rock the F-word out. Although there were nearly countless rock-star drug binges to choose from, the self-loathing, self-destructive path of Motley Crue were some of the more noteworthy. Although the band was somehow able to remember enough of its rock star decadence to fill an entire book, 2001’s “The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band,” the climax undoubtedly comes when then-heroin addict bassist, Nikki Sixx, well, died. Paramedics found the now-deceased rock star clinically dead but were able to revive him with two adrenaline shots straight to the heart. In a later interview, Sixx redefined rock star attitude and one-upped John Lennon by proclaiming, “I f—ing died and came back, and you can’t top that. I beat God at his own game.”

6. Iggy Pop discovers the recipe for peanut butter and broken glass sandwich

Often considered one of the forefathers of punk rock, Detroit native Iggy Pop and his band the Stooges not only set punk’s musical standards with their abrasive garage rock, but also the genre’s penchant for ridiculous stage antics. Pop is credited with being one of the first singers to stage dive and often got into altercations with audience members. But his notoriety in the rock ‘n’ roll history books was sealed when he started using jars of Skippy in ways that would mortify a soccer mom. Cutting his chest open at a number of concerts, Pop rolled around in a mixture of peanut butter and broken glass while howling nihilistic lyrics, and young rock fans would never look at PB & J the same way again.

7. Wendy O. Williams brings the mohawk to America

The first boy who ever told Plasmatics front woman and punk royalty Wendy O. Williams that she couldn’t hang with the boys was probably met with an abrupt bullet to the face. Although she is typically forgotten in the sea of punk rockers to call the New York City punk scene their home in the late ’70s, her brash attitude and mohawk hair-do made her one of the most fearsome women to ever walk the bowels of rock ‘n’ roll. Although Plasmatics’ shows were typically cut short by a police raid or ended with the law trying to arrest Williams for performing sexual acts on stage or exposing herself, Williams’s true black mark was left on America through television. Not only was she constantly trying to raise the bar with her extreme look, such as her mohawk and barely-there fashion sense, she blew up a car on Tom Synder’s show “Tomorrow.” Suddenly, simply loving rock ‘n’ roll doesn’t seem too nasty.

8. Jerry Lee Lewis finds true love in his own backyard

The late ’50s marked an incredible period for rock ‘n’ roll – as the musicians were becoming comfortable with the musical style, they were just beginning to tap into the rock-music lifestyle. Elvis’s hips were fulfilling the fantasies of the new female generation, Johnny Cash was discovering prescription drugs and Jerry Lee Lewis was discovering his cousin. In 1957, while his marriage to his second wife was still valid, Lewis defied conventional wisdom and most moral standards when he slipped a ring around the finger of Myra Gale Brown – his 13-year-old cousin. Reportedly, she still believed in Santa at the time of their wedding. Although it is unknown if that was the same year she lost hope in ol’ Kris Kringle – we can assume that was the year she lost something else – yikes.

9. Marilyn Manson has a religious awakening

Rock ‘n’ roll, especially shock rock, has always had an unspoken but very direct connection to the occult. Even before the days of the Ozzy Osbourne-led, demon-fueled Black Sabbath, bands were already pledging their alliance to the grim underworld. Never had Satan been thrust into the musical spotlight like he was when beloved and loathed shock rocker Marilyn Manson became a full-fledged member of the Church of Satan. Manson, named half for the American beauty icon Marilyn Monroe and half for acid-drenched cult leader Charles Manson, was already drawing enough heat from the religious right before his meeting with Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey. When the then-upcoming rocker met with LaVey at his house, however, it confirmed what every God-fearing parent already knew – Manson was out to convert their faithful children into his satanic alter boys. It probably didn’t help that after the meeting, LaVey bestowed upon Manson the title of Reverend in the Church of Satan, solidifying him as one of rock’s immortal lords of the underworld.

10. Varg Vikernes practices what he preaches

Although he is little known outside his home country and the heavy metal underground, Vikernes, mastermind behind one-man black metal act Burzum, is certainly worthy of greater infamy. With a criminal career involving murder and setting fire to several historic Norwegian churches, Vikernes makes Ozzy Osbourne’s drug-addled antics look like an episode of “The Muppets.” Burzum’s lyrics were a mixture of Satanism, Norwegian folklore and Lord of the Rings-style swords and sorcery, typical of black metal’s extreme philosophy. But, unlike most other black metallers, Vikernes would eventually put black metal’s misanthropic ideology into deadly practice on Aug. 10, 1993, by brutally murdering Oystein Aarseth, aka Euronymous, guitarist of rival black metal band Mayhem. Vikernes was caught and convicted shortly after the slaying, but escaped prison in 2003, managing to steal a car and load it with weapons before being recaptured.