CRAZY Town once said that having “been to hell and back” shaped them, and it’s true that they did go through a lot of hard times.
Lead singer Shifty Shellshock, whose real name was Seth Binzer, died at home this week at the age of 49. He had been addicted to drugs and alcohol for 40 years.
According to TMZ, the cause of his death has been “deferred” until toxicology test results come back. His body was found next to drug paraphernalia and a lighter.
The band has been through a lot of bad luck. Their best-known song was “Butterfly,” and their first album, “The Gift of Game,” sold 1.5 million copies.
Crazy Town first broke up in 2003, after eight years of being together. There were claims that Seth was abusing drugs and alcohol so badly that he had to go to rehab more than once.
The singer, who died two days ago, had a hard childhood. As a child, he often stole drugs from his graphic artist dad’s stash. When he was five, he learned how to roll a joint.
He told Rolling Stone in the past, “My dad was the artsy-fartsy guy who did a lot of cocaine and had weed all over the house.”
When Seth was a teenager, he sold weed and harder drugs. When he was 18, he robbed another drug dealer with a gun and went to jail for 90 days.
In the beginning of the band, which was then known as the Brimstone Sluggers, he remembered them writing songs while going on marathons of cocaine and speed. In 1997, they were sent to rehab for their behavior.
After a year, Seth joined Alcoholics Anonymous. Before shows, the band would often say the AA prayer, “God grant me the peace to accept the things I cannot change.” The guts to change what I can.
By 2000, he had lost his way and was arrested for throwing a chair out of a window while drunk. This meant that Crazy Town had to cancel Ozzfest, which would have been a huge chance for the band.
It was the start of a ten-year rough patch for the star, who went on what he called a “rampage” and even stole money from the band.
He told her, “I was a big ball of chaos.” I ran away from my feelings and became more and more psychotic. And I love it. Before I can save myself, I have to scrape my behind along that bottom.
In an interview in 2001, Seth said that he had been in prison for three months for trying to break into a house and that he regularly sold and used drugs for fun.
The band broke up in 2003 because their second album Darkhorse and the singles “Drowning” and “Hurt You So Bad” did not do as well as Butterfly.
Terrible deaths
Guitarist Rust Epique, whose real name was Charles Lopez, was found dead in his Las Vegas home in 2004—just one year after the band broke up. He had an aortic rupture and was 36 years old.
Rolling Stone called the musician a “famous and well-loved eccentric in the Hollywood music scene.” He or she had been dealing with addiction for a long time.
Rust first went into a music studio when he was three years old. At the time, his dad was managing Billy Joel’s career in the 1970s, and Rust remembered seeing huge amounts of cocaine on drum kits.
He told Rolling Stone, “There were a lot of addicts around.” I didn’t find anything mysterious or cool about taking drugs.
In order to write songs, he said they would drink Coke and Speed and then drink Red Bull before going out to party for months at a time.
Adam Goldstein, better known as DJ AM, died of a drug overdose at the age of 36 in 2009. His death was also very sad.
He quit Crazy Town in 2001 because it was hard for him to stay clean in the band. He had been hooked on crack cocaine since he was 20 years old.
DJ AM has worked on songs for Will Smith, Papa Roach, and Babyface. In 2008, he worked with Travis Barker, who used to be the drummer for Blink 182.
Travis and DJ AM were on a Learjet 60 when it crashed, killing six people and leaving DJ AM with third-degree burns on his head and arms. They almost died that same year.
It’s thought that the painkillers and anti-anxiety drugs he was given after the almost fatal crash caused him to start using drugs again. As famous doctor Drew Pinsky put it, it “opened the floodgates.”
He was found dead in his New York apartment in 2009, with drug paraphernalia around him, such as a crack pipe and a bag of crack.
His death was caused by taking a lot of drugs and cocaine together.
Before, when talking about his nine years of sobriety, DJ AM said, “At any given moment, I’m five seconds away from walking up to someone, grabbing their drink out of their hand, and downing it. If I do that, I’ll be smoking crack within a week, at most.”
Five stays in rehab
On the reality TV shows Celebrity Rehab 1 and 2 and Sober House 1 and 2, Seth tried to get help for his addiction in the 2000s.
His drug problems made him and his first wife, Melissa Clark, break up. They got married in 2002 and got a divorce nine years later, saying they couldn’t get along anymore.
Seth and Melissa had a son together named Halo. It’s not clear when they broke up, but in 2008, he dated Tracy Selor and had another boy named Gage with her.
In 2010, he began dating British model Jasmine Lennard, who had a one-night stand with Simon Cowell. They had a son named Phoenix together. They broke up after two years.
During their relationship, Seth had been arrested more than once. The first time was in 2011 when he was accused of causing a disturbance at home and fighting with a security guard outside of a nightclub.
A shop worker called the police after seeing the singer hit Jasmine in public the next year and he was arrested for battery.
While Seth was being held by the police, cocaine was found on him. In 2012, he was given three years of probation for the charges.
In the same year, Seth was taken to the hospital after losing consciousness and slipping into a coma. At the time, sources said it was “probably drug-related.”
“The participant in Celebrity Rehab may have lost it because they could go to jail,” a source told Perez Hilton.
Later, Seth’s agent said that he was going to a “highly regarded” rehab center and that he had “completely changed his life around” since the events.
Around that tough time, his relationship with Jasmine ended, and the mother was asked by the court to have sole custody of their son Phoenix the next year.
She told the judge that Seth had smoked crack in front of their child and left a crack pipe in his room.
In 2017, Jasmine gave Seth bad marks for not being a good dad. She told The Sun, “In six years of our son’s life, he hasn’t contributed one dollar.” It seems like his only goal in life is to make another hit record.
“They wanted him to pay £500 a month, but he said he owed money on dental bills because he was a famous musician and needed a “Hollywood smile.”
Tracy, Seth’s ex-wife, told The Sun a similar story in 2022. She said he was a “deadbeat dad” who didn’t see his son and owed him more than $64,000 (£50,500) in back child support payments.
On social media, the singer often posted pictures with his partner Soleil Moon Frye, from the show Punky Brewster, on vacations, including at a beachfront home in Malibu. This made her angry.
While they were together, Tracy talked about his “rock star lifestyle” and how he would buy cocaine and “use pretty much anything he could get his hands on.”
She also said, “He would spend a lot of money, empty our bank accounts, steal my things, and pawn everything we owned.” It has taken me ten years to rebuild everything.
moose crash and bloody fight
After Crazy Town’s break in 2003, the group got back together more than once with different members.
On the Make America Rock Again tour in 2016, they were with other bands that were big in the 2000s.
After co-founder Bret “Epic” Mazur stopped performing a year later, they changed their name to Crazy Town X.
The group wrote on Facebook, “Gangs use the X to mark territory they’ve just taken over.”
The band was on tour in 2019 when their bus hit a moose on Route 17 in Ontario, Canada. Luckily, no one was hurt.
“By God’s grace, we’re all okay, just cuts and bruises,” Seth wrote online, posting a picture of his and Elias Tannous’s bloody faces.
Many of them said they were lucky to be alive because four people had died on that highway the year before. The band played a show in Greater Sudbury just 24 hours later.
Crazy Town had to leave a tour with the nu-metal band Hed P.E. in 2023 because Seth and Bobby Reeves, who was also a singer, got into a fight outside of a venue in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
They were both hurt and bloodied, and the fight is said to have started because Seth didn’t show up to their gig until the end of the set, leaving Bobby to play by himself.
Bobby was heard saying, “I’m so mad at f***ing Shifty right now.” Seth then punched him in the face and said that Bobby had stolen from him.
Bobby later showed a video of himself with a black eye and several cuts above his eyes. In it, he told fans, “Me and Shifty got into a little fight, but it’s all good.” “We are brothers.”
Even though they made up, Jared Gomes, the lead singer of Hed P.E., kicked them off the tour because “Seth needs help.”
He went on, “We can’t just stand there while he’s on the road killing demons.” He needs to get off the road and take care of that.
“You saw the video.” If it was just a fight between band members, I might be the first person to step in and calm things down. But this goes much deeper.
After being seen weaving in and out of lanes in a black SUV just a week after the fight, Seth was arrested for driving while drunk.
The band put out an EP called Flirting With Disaster in March of this year. Bobby had quit the band, leaving only Seth, Mark White, Rick Dixon, and Sean Heenan.