What Are the ‘Big 4′ of Rock Star Sex Tape Scandals?

Rock star sex tapes generated big business, salacious headlines and numerous court battles in the '90s.

Credit or blame for that trend can easily be assigned to the then-quickly growing and largely unregulated power of the internet. Home computers and websites made it easy - if often not legal - for fans around the world to watch once-private videos of their favorite musicians engaging in some very adult behavior.

Here's a look at the Big 4 of rock star sex tape scandals:

 Kid Rock and Creed's Scott Stapp 

In 2006, a 40-second clip of a sex tape that showed Kid Rock and Creed frontman Scott Stapp receiving oral sex from two women in Rock's mobile home in 1999 was made public.

Stapp, who was both newly married and in the process of promoting his debut solo album at the time the clip was released, was not happy. "Obviously someone wants to hurt me and doesn’t want me to be successful in my solo career,” he told AP Radio at the time.

"You think it's part of your rock 'n' roll memories," Stapp lamented. "I should have burned that tape."

Although he was quick to point out that nobody should be surprised by rock stars engaging in such behavior, Rock put the blame for losing the tape squarely on Stapp. "He's the idiot because it's out. I'm holding him responsible," the "American Bad Ass" singer told the Associated Press.

He also cast doubt on Stapp's sabotage theory. "What are you talking about? This tape gets out — it’s your tape — and you’re [saying] someone’s trying to sabotage your career?”

Rock moved quickly, obtaining a restraining order from a federal judge to keep the contents of the tape from being distributed any further. The following year, Stapp settled his lawsuit against the company that had distributed the tape, and received an unspecified payment.

Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson

The Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson saga is the gold standard of rock star sex tape scandals, one that eventually inspired an eight-episode TV miniseries.

In 1995 a disgruntled electrical contractor named Rand Gauthier sought revenge for getting fired by Lee and Anderson by stealing a safe full of valuables from the couple's house.

Among the safe's contents was a homemade and highly explicit sex tape of Lee and Anderson, which Gauthier and a friend began selling via mail order. But their illegal low-tech sales efforts were quickly overtaken - first by other bootleggers and then by the power of the internet, as a young online porn pioneer named Seth Warshavsky began streaming the tape non-stop on his website.

The tape spread like wildfire, eventually generating estimated profits of over $100 million dollars. It also caused permanent damage to Anderson's acting career.

"I was the punchline of jokes on a lot of talk shows. It was super-humiliating," she explained in the 2023 Netflix documentary Pamela, a Love Story. "After that it just solidified the cartoon image of me, you become a character. I think that was the deterioration of whatever image I had."

With Anderson seven months pregnant and the couple eager to put the scandal and legal proceedings surrounding the tape behind them, they agreed to sign ownership over to Warshavsky - wrongly thinking he would keep distribution limited to the internet only. "I'm not going to court anymore," Anderson recalled thinking. "I'm not being deposed by these horny, weird lawyer men."

Read More: Did Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee Really Sell Their Sex Tape?

Unfortunately, the contract they signed enabled Warshavsky to also set up a deal to distribute the tape at adult video stores around the world, generating even more negative publicity. To top it off, Anderson and Lee insist they never received any money from Warshavsky.

"I wish I could say we had the last laugh and financed our kids' future off someone trying to rob us," Lee explained in his book Tommyland. "But the truth is, I can't."

Nearly two decades after the tape was first released, Anderson's wounds were reopened  when Hulu aired the eight-part 2022 miniseries Pam and Tommy, bringing the entire sex tape saga back to the spotlight.

The actress claimed she was blindsided by the show, learning of it only after seeing a commercial. "I thought, 'What the hell is this?' No one called me. No one asked me."

She later demanded a public apology from the "a--holes" behind the show's creation, saying she felt "run over" by their actions. “I don’t think they really portrayed Tommy or I positively. I don’t know; I only heard that it was a very shallow representation of us. … I wish they would have called.”

 Bret Michaels and Pamela Anderson

Before meeting and marrying Tommy Lee, Pamela Anderson dated Poison frontman Bret Michaels from 1993 to 1994. Four years after their breakup, a sex tape featuring Michaels and Anderson was released by Seth Warshavsky's IEG - the same company that mass-released the Lee / Anderson tape.

How did the tape get out? "Pam had a copy. Bret had a copy. Bret still has his copy. That's all I know," Michael's lawyer told the Los Angeles Times.

However, IEG claimed to have been given a copy of the tape from a friend of Michaels, an allegation the Poison singer quickly denied. "It makes no sense to me. I can not figure out. I have the original copy," he told MTV, while claiming that he had spent nearly $100,000 to stop the tape from going public.

"No one's ever touched it. No one's ever gotten to it. I have it, period, end of story, and it's never gone out, so I'm anxious to find out who gave them this tape or a copy of this tape," Michaels continued. "And no, I've never taken a cent, not a penny. These guys have cost me a lot of money, and they're going to pay for it."

Michaels and Anderson were much more successful than Lee and Anderson were in their legal efforts to stop the distribution of this tape, obtaining a court order that blocked Warshavsky from selling the full tape.

During a legal hearing, IEG attempted to argue that Anderson's sex life was a public matter, because she had previously appeared nude in films and magazines.

But the court sided with Anderson, declaring that "the fact that she performed a role involving sex does not, however, make her real sex life open to the public."

Vince Neil

Vince Neil handled the release of his own sex tape very differently than the other rock stars on this list.

Neil's tape, released under the name Janine & Vince: Hardcore & Uncensored in 1998 by Warshavsky's IEG, features the Motley Crue singer having sex with adult film star Janine Lindemulder and Penthouse Pet Brandy Ledford.

"It was me, Janine Lindemulder and this other girl just having fun," Neil told Louder in 2015, while placing the blame for the tape being made public on Ledford. "The other chick, I can’t even remember her name, she’s the one who went and sold the video."

"There’s nothing I can do. It’s out there," Neil continued, explaining why he didn't fight the release. "There was a lot of wine involved. Was it weird that it got leaked? Nah – when it came out, I didn’t want to do what other people do and talk about it. I just said, ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s out, whatever’. I wasn’t going to go, ‘I’m fighting this’ because the more you talk about it, the bigger it gets. If all I did was acknowledge it, then it would just go away and that’s what happened.”

However, Ledford's face was pixelated out of later editions of the video, and she is not credited by name unlike Neil and Lindemulder. This suggests that she was not the source of the leak and had not given permission for her name and likeness to be used.

While being interviewed by Howard Stern, Lindemulder fired back against Neil's declarations that he was against the release of the video, saying she was certain he was involved and profiting from its sale.

"We had one copy, when it was done, he went home with it. He took the copy and sure enough five years later it shows up and he's claiming that either myself or the second girl put it out, and that's just not the case. ... It was kind of a wormy thing for him to do. I'm not saying he did it, but he was the only one who had the copy."