He grew up in a small Indiana town, yet somehow ended up becoming the world-famous frontman of one of rock history’s most iconic bands. The journey there is almost unbelievable — especially considering the world he came from.
As a young boy, he was raised to believe women were “evil,” taught that violence at home was normal, and lived through trauma most kids could never imagine.
His father was murdered
An incredible, wide-ranging, powerhouse voice. Hailed as the greatest singer ever. One of the top-selling artists in music history. A Hall of Fame inductee.
A kid from the Midwest who pushed past the strict, closed-in “corn belt” rules he’d been raised under, determined to prove they didn’t define him.
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.
Until he was 17, he thought Bailey was his real father. He never met his biological father as an adult; he was murdered in 1984 in Marion, Illinois.
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.”
