A lot of cash comes a million ways to lose it. There have been plenty of rockers who should have been rolling in it, who suddenly find themselves broke or even in bankruptcy court.(Grunge)
When that happens, they might start questioning how it got to that point. Maybe they signed a bad contract or trusted the wrong people to take care of their money. And of course, there's always the rock and roll excess, which can mean rockers wake up one day and realize they threw or drank or snorted all their cash away.
In 1984, Mick Fleetwood filed for bankruptcy. This was absurd, since he had founded Fleetwood Mac 17 years before. At the time Rolling Stone asked how this could happen to him,In 1984, Mick Fleetwood filed for bankruptcy. This was absurd, since he had founded Fleetwood Mac 17 years before. At the time Rolling Stone asked how this could happen to him,
Part of the problem was that as the drummer, Fleetwood didn't write any of the band's songs, so he made "the least money," according to the Telegraph. And in 1984, his lawyer was quick to point out that while Fleetwood loved "great drums, cars, beautiful women, and magnificent pieces of real estate," (and cocaine)
When Eric Clapton found himself involved in the drug bust that signaled the beginning of the end for Buffalo Springfield, the English guitarist wound up enduring what he called a night of hell. Back in time, Who's Pete Townshend, a very close friend of him, when he found out he was selling his guitar to buy heroin, went for a help and locked him down.
Pete Townshend, guitarist for The Who, organized a comeback for Clapton to help him beat his addictions in 1973. ... “I thought there was something otherworldly about the whole culture of drinking, that being drunk made me a member of some strange, mysterious club,” Clapton told The Today Show recently. Now Eric Clapton, CBE is a British rock musician who has a net worth of $450 million. Ranked #53 on "Rolling Stone" magazine's Top 100 Artists Of All-Time
For someone who hasn’t really released new music in more than 20 years, Billy Joel is having an epic third act. His monthly shows gross him more than $2 million each. He has sold more than 150 million albums and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
William Martin Joel (born May 9, 1949) commonly nicknamed the “Piano Man”, he has been making music since the 1960s, releasing popular albums throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Joel met his first wife in 1970, through his friend and bandmate Jon Small. Elizabeth Weber was married to Small, and they had a baby son but Joel was knocked out. When Small discovered the affair, Weber left them both, disappearing for weeks. Joel became suicidal. He was 21, broke, friendless, loveless and “crashing at my mom’s place again, which is abject failure.”A few weeks later, Joel tried again, this time drinking furniture polish.
How Billy Joel’s Three Wives stole his heart and money. He has spent much of his life in battle against his ex-wives, against booze, bad managers and bankruptcy.
David Crosby saw huge success with not one but two legendary bands: The Byrds and supergroup Crosby, Stills, & Nash (and sometimes Young). But then it all fell apart in the 1980s.
Ultimate Classic Rock says Crosby's first run-in with the law happened when he crashed his car while on cocaine. He also had a concealed weapon on him. Then just three weeks later he was busted with more cocaine and a gun in a nightclub he was performing at. According to the Los Angeles Times, he got lucky when that conviction was overturned on appeal, but he didn't learn a thing. In 1984, Crosby got three years' probation for driving on a suspended license while drunk. A year later he crashed his car again and, as he was probably used to by now, charged with possession of a concealed pistol and narcotics paraphernalia, and just to mix it up, hit-and-run driving.
The combination of drugs and drama had not been nice to his bank account. Bankrate reports that in 1985, he filed for bankruptcy. In 2003, Crosby told Bankrate he estimated he'd burned through $25 million over the course of his career. He eventually made his money back by continuing to work, but was arrested for possessing a gun and drugs yet again in 2004.
When Tom Petty filed for bankruptcy in 1979, it was a strategic choice, and one that would be copied by several later artists. But Petty was the first one to figure out how to legally say he had no money to get out of a terrible recording contract.
In 1979, Petty found himself with two hit albums, numerous hit singles, and what he thought was an unfair cut of the sales, due to an "extremely unfavorable contract that Petty felt he had signed under duress." So he completed a third album, which he financed himself, but refused to let the record company release it. This left him $500,000 in debt, and he filed for bankruptcy. Now his net worth is of $95 million dollars in 2021.
Franka complains that she was left virtually penniless after her divorce from Wright in 1994, having received just £150,000 in her settlement. Wright claimed at the time that he was worth only £200,000, yet left a £24 million fortune when he died from cancer in 2008.
He did, however, write a letter of wishes – which is not legally binding – to the executors of his will, in which he asked that Franka enjoy a lifelong pension from his estate. This, she says, has never been honoured.
Indeed, her circumstances are a world away from the lifestyle she once enjoyed with Wright. ‘People think I walked away with millions,’ she says. ‘They don’t believe that I have no money and that my life is a big struggle. I had to borrow €1,000 to pay the doctors when I had severe bronchitis
she said she was too out of it to pay attention to what happened to the money. After Cobain died, she was "doing drugs from the moment [she] woke up till the time [she] went to bed." When it came to finances, Love just "did what [she] was told to do," and by the time she realized what was happening, she was totally broke. She and her daughter, Frances, had to move in with Love's stepfather to avoid homelessness.
