10 Lesser-Known Music Artists Whose Stories Should Be Made Into Movies

The music industry is no country for weak-willed people. Blinded by the innocence of creating art, many folks pursue recording careers in hopes of simply making powerful tunes, gaining respect from peers and critics, and earning enough cash to keep doing what they love—if only it were that easy. With success comes all of its spoils, most of which aren't conducive to a positive, productive life: drugs, alcohol, groupies' booties, and other negative, professionally hurtful vices often derail once-promising artists into lives of mental anguish and financial hardship.

And then there are the guys who are just plain nuts. Take Ginger Baker, the London-born drummer who played in Cream and Blind Faith and garnered a wild reputation for his heroin use, violent mood swings, and uncontrollable on-stage antics. Filmmaker Jay Bulger examines the controversial rocker's life in the new documentary Beware of Mr. Baker (opening in limited release this Friday), complete with commentary from the likes of Eric Clapton and Carlos Santana.

Fortunately for Baker, he overcame the many dramas surrounding him and survived the music industry with a pulse—something that, sadly, can't be said for too many others. Watching Beware of Mr. Baker, it's fascinating to wonder how his trials and tribulations would play out in a narrative format, a la Walk the Line. It's also interesting to think about all of the other singers and musicians who'd provide Hollywood with similarly intriguing stories. For a few of those, check out the following list of 10 Lesser-Known Music Artists Whose Stories Should Be Made Into Movies.

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Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)

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He's one of the rock-and-roll's most important figures, yet you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who's able to cite one of his songs, let alone multiple records. Those who've seen 2008's Beyoncé-starring Cadillac Records should recognize him as the guy played by Cedric the Entertainer, though that uneven film did little to convey Dixon's essential qualities within the world of the blues.

Throughout the 1950s and early '60s, Dixon penned influential records for some of the Chicago blues world's biggest acts, like Muddy Waters, Little Walter, and Howlin' Wolf. During that time, the tireless and prolific songwriter also worked with Chuck Barry and Bo Diddley, writing tunes that helped give birth to rock-and-roll as we all know it today.

Until the long-in-development biopics about folks like Marvin Gaye and James Brown get made, a Willie Dixon movie seems highly unlikely. To see one of music's great unsung talents finally get his due would be poetic justice, though.

The Who's legacy is unquestionably prolific, from their 1990 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to their 100 million records sold, 27 top 40 singles, and the iconic status of their 1969 rock opera album Tommy. Individually, the band's recognition is mostly attributed to the sterling reputations of lead singer Roger Daltrey and guitarist Pete Townshend. Anyone who knows their Who trivia, though, realizes that the band's most fascinating member was drummer Keith Moon, who died from a pill overdose in 1978. He was only 32.

During his short yet impactful life, the uniquely eccentric Moon left future movie directors with a plethora of unforgettable scenes to shoot. One time, on live television, he stuffed his drum set with gunpowder; another time, he ran naked around a bus occupied by young schoolgirls. And who can forget the time he walked around a Jewish neighborhood in London wearing a Nazi uniform? In hotel rooms, Moon was notorious for destroying everything in sight and flushing explosives down toilets.

Outside of The Who, Moon was a proud member of The Hollywood Vampires, a boys' club of sorts in which fellow vamps like Alice Cooper, John Lennon, and Ringo Starr would drink excessively while laughing at an intoxicated, always costumed Moon. His connection to The Beatles extended to September 6, 1978, when he left a party thrown by Paul and Linda McCartney—after having just announced his engagement to Swedish actress Annette Walter-Lax—and swallowed the 32 pills that ultimately killed him.

Equal parts comedy and tragedy, a "Moon the Loon" biopic seems like a no-brainer. Our choice to play him: James Franco, at his least hinged.

In the playful but predominantly lightweight new film Hitchcock, Anthony Hopkins' Alfred Hitchcock is seen adding some finishing touches to his 1960 horror flick Psycho alongside a somewhat anonymous Bernard Herrmann (played by Paul Schackman). Together, along with Hitch's influential wife, Alma Reville, they accentuated Psycho's now-infamous shower scene with Herrmann's terrifyingly simple score, an explosion of shrieking strings. It's an all-too-brief moment that doesn't do the late Mr. Herrmann much justice.

The New York City native—an Academy Award-winning composer who also received four additional nominations—worked closely with the greatest and most important filmmakers of all time: In addition to Hitchcock (with whom he worked eight times), Herrmann collaborated with Orson Welles (the seminal Citizen Kane, 1941), Robert Wise (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951), Francois Truffaut (Fahrenheit 451, 1966), and Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, 1976). Within the TV community, Herrmann even teamed up with Rod Serling to score several of the best episodes of The Twilight Zone.

Imagine his biopic as a Forrest Gump-like journey through some of Hollywood's greatest moments, with Bernard Herrmann as the viewers' tour guide.

Only 36 years old when he died in January 1986, from longtime heroin and alcohol abuse, Irish rock 'n' roll stalwart Phil Lynott has a similarly tragic legacy to guys like Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain: an enormously talented, young musician robbed of bigger successes by deadly narcotics. So why don't more people know about him?

In the eyes of Ireland's music fans (namely U2's Bono, an outspoken admirer of Lynott's), he's a certifiable rock god. Always dressed flamboyantly and able to shred a mean guitar and sing with the best of them, Lynott lived and breathed the flashy, all-eyes-on-me lifestyle of a master showman. And with his group, Thin Lizzy, he released chart-toppers like "Whiskey in the Jar" and "The Boys are Back in Town."

If anything, the Irish film industry should've put together a Lynott biopic by now. In September, his name caught a newspaper resurgence when his widow, Caroline Lynott-Taraskevics, ordered Mitt Romney's presidential campaign to not use "The Boys are Back in Town" anymore following its use during the Republican National Convention. "Absolutely in no way would Philip have supported Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan," said Lynott-Taraskevics. "He would have been so happy about Obama becoming U.S. president." It's time the world got to know even more about Phil Lynott.

OK, so a Bedřich Smetana movie would be pure, shameless Oscar bait—perhaps of the same stuffy quality of, say, The King's Speech. But, hey, The King's Speech won several awards, didn't it? We might be onto something here.

In his native Czech Republic, Smetana is fondly remembered for composing patriotic tunes that motivated his country's citizens to fight for independent statehood from the Habsburg Austrian Empire's monarchistic reign. Once those tensions ceased, he turned his attention to overseeing hugely successful operas, namely the internationally acclaimed The Bartered Bride (1866).

Here's where Smetana's story really becomes an awards season contender: For the last 10 years of his life, Smetana created popular music despite the fact that he'd gone completely deaf. Impressively, he defied the limitations of a soundless lifestyle to make music, and continued to do so until bouts with dementia led to time spent inside an insane asylum and, ultimately, his death in 1884.

If Shia LaBeouf ultimately gets his way, you'll see this biopic before any of the others included here. For years, since he was first given a Vanity Fair cover story platform in 2007, the actor has been discussing how his dream project would be to direct a movie about notorious underground rapper, and close friend, Chris "Cage" Palko. And it's legitimately a dynamite idea.

As an MC, Cage's career is one that's been perennially underrated since the early 2000s, when mainstream heads first heard his name amidst a beef with then-underground spitter Eminem. Combining morbid punchlines with truly demented storytelling and a perverse sense of humor, Cage's verses always hit with a visceral force. They're so raw, in fact, that you'd think he's lived one very fucked-up life, and you'd be correct.

Born in Germany to a drug addict father, Palko's childhood was marked by episodes in which he'd hold the tourniquet while dad injected heroine, physical abuse from his stepfather, and dependencies on PCP, LSD, and cocaine. Several arrests led to an 18-month stint inside the Stony Lodge psychiatric hospital, where he became a test subject for the antidepressant drug Fluoxetine. Suicidal thoughts provoked the mentally fractured Palko to try offing himself numerous times, none of which, of course, worked, and all of which led to his 2002 song "Suicidal Failure."

Out of Stony Lodge by age 18, Palko adopted the Cage moniker and gave rap music a shot. In '02, he dropped the dark, angry LP Movies for the Blind, ripe with allusions to his nightmarish past and psychologically nihilistic subject matter. Three years later, with the release of the much more sobering Hell's Winter, though, Cage revealed himself to be free of drugs and clearer of conscience.

Oystein "Euronymous" Aarseth was one really screwed-up dude. The lead singer of the Norwegian death metal band Mayhem, Euronymous earned sufficient respect for his guitar-playing abilities and helped to put Norway's black metal scene on the map. But admirers could only give the guy so much credit before questioning themselves, since he was an outspoken Satanist who believed in "a horned devil." Thus, an Euronymous biopic would need a director like Simon Rumley, the British filmmaker behind the bleak, entirely discomforting knockouts The Living and the Dead and Red, White & Blue—someone who's not afraid to show humanity's darkest sides.

The film would veer into full-on horror movie land during what would most likely be its most controversial scene: the moment when Euronymous finds the body of a bandmate who blew his own head off with a shotgun, takes photographs of it with a disposable camera, and makes necklaces with bits of the man's skull.

Although, the biopic's most unpleasant sequence could be its climax, in which, following an argument, his Mayhem bandmate Varg "Count Grish" Vikernes stabbed Euronymous to death 23 times, including two to the head and five to the neck.

No major Hollywood studio would go anywhere near Judee Sill's life story, mainly because the tragic folk singer's music didn't catch on until years after her death in November 1979. She's not a bankable name, yet, in the hands of an independent filmmaker and underrated character actress like Judy Greer, Sill's unpleasant experiences could make for riveting cinema.

In 1971, Sill's self-titled debut album was released on Asylum Records, an upstart label founded by a then-unknown mogul-in-the-making named David Geffen. The album's release marked a positive upswing for Sill, who spent her pre-music years committing armed robberies, using heroin, and engaging in prostitution. A Rolling Stone magazine cover, tours with Crosby, Stills & Nash, and brief work as a cartoonist helped curb the aforementioned heroin addiction, which was exasperated by a car accident and subsequent back pains.

Before she could ever truly appreciate the respect her music would eventually command, Sill died at the age of 35 from a cocaine and codeine overdose.

Come on, you know you'd paid to see a movie that details the creative process behind jams like "Suck a Cheetah's Dick," "I Whipped Spider-Man's Ass," and "Birdman Kicked My Ass" (not Cash Money's Bryan "Baby" Williams, though).

It's the role that The Office's Craig Robinson was born to play. Hailing from Chicago, the cult-followed Wesley Willis remains one of independent music's strangest and wildest figures nine years after his death, at the age of 40. On his 50-plus albums, the chronic schizophrenic filled ditties like "Drink a Camel's Cum" with multiple catchphrases (i.e., "The band got down like a Magikist"), Technics KN keyboard breakdowns, and closing product slogans ("Polariod… See what develops!"). It was always bizarre, at times incoherent, and never less than entertaining.

In songs, Willis grappled with countless superheroes (including Superman and Batman), professed his love for Alanis Morrisette, and went on hilariously vulgar rants about animals' genitalia. In real life, though, his schizophrenia battled against "demons" that harassed him on Chicago's city buses and tried their hardest to get him to "hit people in the street with bricks." How's that for a tortured soul worthy of in-depth, cinematic examination?

Though she was born in Cairo, Egypt, Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti (better known, simply, as Dalida) truly came into her own as a French citizen. Living in Paris, the beautiful songbird released 55 gold records and brought down houses with her powerful voice. She's regarded as one of France's most influential entertainment figures, and that alone should warrant a major movie treatment. But when you take all of her off-stage dramas into account, Dalida's story becomes even heavier.

Before she committed suicide in May 1987, via an overdose of barbiturates, Dalida was married three different times, and all three unions had one awful thing in common: Each of her husbands killed themselves, two by shooting themselves in the head and the third by inhaling a car's exhaust gas. When her body was discovered in 1987, there was a suicide note found along with it, which, translated into English, read, "Life is unbearable for me… Forgive me."

Clearly, a Dalida biopic wouldn't be a crowd-pleaser. A fascinating, bleak look at how superstars battle ferocious demons when the cameras turn off, though? Absolutely.