G.G. Allin

To some, G.g. Allin was the ultimate symbol of rock & roll rebellion, taking it to extremes that no one else was dangerous enough to explore. To others, he was a lunatic whose attempts to shock and disgust were too ham-fisted to be taken seriously. Wherever the truth lay, there can be no doubt that Allin was the most spectacular degenerate in rock & roll history. Music was almost incidental to his violent, scatological stage act, which got him arrested over 50 times for a litany of offenses, and made Iggy Pop's antics with The Stooges look like The Donny & Marie Show. Rarely performing for more than 10-20 minutes before clubs shut him down, Allin usually took the stage in a jockstrap and wound up nude; he beat himself bloody with broken bottles, torn cans, and microphones (when he wasn't trying to shove the latter up his own ass); he attacked and was attacked by his own audience; he urinated on the stage, on his band, on the audience; he frequently took laxatives before shows in order to defecate on the stage, after which he generally ate his own feces or threw them at the audience; and yet, somehow, he still found audience members willing to perform oral sex on him on-stage. Needless to say, he also ingested enormous amounts of booze and drugs, served several prison terms, and even promised to commit suicide on-stage on Halloween (he died of an overdose in 1993 before he could follow through). His songs -- such as they were -- were comically over-the-top hell-raisers about substance abuse, casual violence, and sexual conduct that was at best degrading and at worst criminal. Yet no matter how vile he was, Allin had his supporters, whether they belonged to the outermost fringes of society, admired his absolute freedom of expression, or were simply fascinated by the spectacle of a man venting all the ugliest, most primal impulses of the human id.