From childhood trauma to rock legend: How pain fueled a superstar’s rise
Born in Lafayette, Indiana, this future stage legend entered the world on a February day in 1962 and was given the name William. His mother was just 16 when she gave birth to William, and his father was 20. Later, his father would be described as “a troubled and charismatic local delinquent.”
The couple split when little William was about two. His father then abducted him and allegedly abused him before vanishing from Lafayette. Later, his mother remarried Stephen L. Bailey and changed her son’s name to William Bruce Bailey.
The Bailey household was intensely religious. Our future star attended a Pentecostal church several times a week and even taught Sunday school. Looking back, he described the environment as suffocating:
”We’d have televisions one week, then my stepdad would throw them out because they were Satanic… Women were evil. Everything was evil.”
”Rejected” by his mother since he was a baby
The rock icon has said that his father was physically and emotionally abusive to him. When Barry Manilow’s song Mandy came on the radio, the young boy sang along, only to have his stepfather cuff him over the song because it was deemed “evil.”
Adding to his anger, he said his mother let the abuse happen, something he later drew on in his songwriting. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he reflected:
“I’ve been doing a lot of work and found out that I’ve had a lot of hatred for women. Basically, I’ve been rejected by my mother since I was a baby,” he said.
“She picked my stepfather over me ever since he was around and watched me get beaten by him. She stood back most of the time. Unless it got too bad, and then she’d come and hold you afterward. She wasn’t there for me.”
If home life was far from ideal, school wasn’t much better for the red-headed kid. By eighth grade, he already had a tough attitude. A former cross-country coach recalled in 1991 that, as a young and relatively unknown kid, he was bullied by classmates on the team. His teammates once taped his mouth shut and, on another occasion, shoved him into a locker because he wouldn’t stop talking about his future ambitions.
His anger toward his home state ran deep; he once even compared it to a prison — and to Auschwitz. In his late teens, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a psychiatrist viewed his rebellious and delinquent behavior as signs of psychosis.
