Music

From center stage to behind bars, 9 musicians who have gone to jail

You wouldn’t know it from their angelic harmonies and doo-wop vibe, but the members of the Four Seasons had criminal pasts, as the biopic “Jersey Boys,” opening Friday, shows.

Both Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi did time for various offences, including theft.

“When I was a kid, I was locked up. I was in six or seven jails,” DeVito told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “I went to prison one time. But my teenage years were a son of a bitch. I was a hell-raiser.”

DeVito is hardly alone. Here are nine musicans who’ve also done time.

Lauryn Hill

WireImage (left); AP (right)
Served three months in a federal pen for tax evasion. Was released in October 2013.

Merle Haggard

AP
In 1957, while drunk, the country star attempted to rob a restaurant. He was caught and sent to jail. He escaped and was later sentenced to 15 months at San Quentin.

Steve Earle

Getty Images
The singer-songwriter was busted for drug possession in 1994. He spent 60 days in the clink and later turned the hardship into a Grammy-nominated album.

David Crosby

Don Halasy (left); Getty Images (right)
Crosby busted for drugs? You don’t say. The singer spent nine months in a Texas prison in 1992.

Chuck Berry

EPA
The “Maybelline” singer was thrown in the slammer for 20 months after being arrested in 1959 on charges of transporting a 14-year-old girl across state lines for “immoral purposes.” Berry claimed he was offering legitimate employment to the girl, whom he’d met at a Mexican bar. The jury didn’t buy it.

Ozzy Osbourne

Startraks Photo
As a young man, Ozzy spent a few weeks in the clink for breaking and entering ,as well as for assaulting a police officer. It was inside the Winson Green Prison where he had the O-Z-Z-Y letters tattooed across his left hand.

James Brown

AP (2)
The Godfather of Soul had several run-ins with the law, including a 1988 incident where he barged into an insurance seminar waving a pistol and shotgun. He later became inmate #155413 at a South
Carolina prison.

Ike Turner

AP
Tina Turner’s former partner was busted in 1987 for trying to sell cocaine to an undercover cop. He served 18 months.

Gary Glitter

AP (left); Getty Images (right)
In 2006, the “Rock and Roll (Part 2)” singer was arrested in Vietnam for molesting two girls, ages 10 and 11, and thrown in prison. He’s back in the UK and reportedly working on new music, but on Thursday in London, he appeared in court, charged with eight counts of sexual offences.