Beatings, bullets, glass eyes ... welcome to the glamorous world of heavy metal parenting

When Rock the Cradle—an American Idol rip-off featuring the progeny of has-been rock stars (yes, of course it's on VH1)—debuts tonight, the expectation will be that we're to root for nepotism, minimal name recognition, and perhaps another Flavor of Love or The Osbournes season to take its place. But wait, as the show's website proclaims, "We'll also show you what it's like to have a rock star mom or dad, and it's not as glamorous as you'd think." You don't say ...

Beatings, bullets, and a glass eye, Radar climbs some rock star family trees, investigating both the foibles of children sired by rock stars and the twisted parents who capitalized on the backstage cred of their offspring. Our discovery: Reality TV is the least of baby's problems.

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Joe Jackson
In the pantheon of tyrannical, abusive parents of rock stars, Joe Jackson reigns supreme. He famously micromanaged the career of the Jackson 5—"In being strict, you were able to control"—until all of his sons fired him in the early 1980s. The siblings also leveled various claims of physical abuse against him over the years, notably dramatized in ABC's The Jacksons: An American Dream. Jackson told Fox News' Roger Friedman in 2003, "You have to be strict with kids. There's nothing wrong with punishment as long as you know how to punish." An example? "Beat his back!" Is it any wonder that Jacko is now so wacko?

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Marvin Gaye, Sr.
A former cross-dressing pastor, Marvin Gaye, Sr., maintained a tumultuous relationship with his son, Marvin, Jr., all his life. He was active in the House of God church, which mixed Orthodox Judaism with Pentecostal Christianity, forbidding sports, dancing, television, and popular music. Misquoting the Bible or bed-wetting resulted in beatings, according to Court TV. Sister Jeanne Gaye once said, "From the time he was seven until he became a teenager, Marvin's life at home consisted of a series of brutal whippings." Jealous of his success and enraged over his coke habit, Marvin, Sr., shot and killed his son on April 1, 1984.

Murry Wilson
Father to three of the Beach Boys and manager of the band, Wilson certainly didn't inspire good vibrations in anyone. His parenting style allegedly consisted of forcing eldest son Brian to shit on a newspaper in front of the family as punishment and removing his glass eye to torture the children with it. Manipulative in his business dealings with the band, he clashed with Brian over their musical direction and was later fired. Against his sons' wishes, he then sold their publishing company for a fraction of its worth. Smile!

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John Phillips
After finding success with The Mamas & the Papas in the late '60s, and fathering daughters Chynna (of Wilson Phillips fame), Mackenzie, and Bjiou with three different wives, John Phillips turned his attention to cocaine and heroin in the '70s. Convicted of drug trafficking in 1981, he admitted abusing drugs "almost every 15 minutes for two years." In the book Hollywood, Interrupted, Mackenzie relates how her father taught her to roll a joint at 10 and injected her with liquid cocaine at 17. He also allowed family friend Mick Jagger to shag her at 18, which might have been his only charitable act.

Tim Buckley
The old adage "like father, like son" certainly applies here. A beloved folk-rock singer with a vocal range of five and a half octaves, Buckley rode a wave of commercial and critical success in the late '60s and early '70s. Increasingly influenced by psychedelic and avant-garde music later in his career, he released several experimental albums that tanked. Crushed by their failure, he turned to alcohol and drug binges, finally overdosing on heroin in 1975. Son Jeff would tragically follow a similar trajectory 20 years later.

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Michael Lohan
When it comes to courtroom appearances, Michael Lohan ranks second only to Robert Downey, Jr. The father of DUI-collecting pop tart Lindsay served two years of a four-year sentence for drunken driving, contempt of court, and assaulting his brother-in-law with a shoe. Wife Dina alleges in divorce papers that Michael abused her and that he once told a security guard, "O.J. Simpson has nothing on me. I know exactly how I'm going to kill [them]. I know when I'm going to do it, and I'm going to enjoy it." Add to that his arrests for violating a restraining order (twice) and dine-and-dashing on a $3,800 hotel bill. He even penned a jailhouse song to Lindsay, titled "Confessions of a Broken Heart," in a letter to New York Daily News columnist Lloyd Grove: "I loved and protected you, I was THERE through it all./I do admit, I did at times fall./But these things you know were due to "THEM"/The ones that want to have a piece of my gem!" No surprise that Lindsay is so often on the sauce these days.

Joe Simpson
It's getting harder and harder to think of Jessica Simpson as a "Christian" performer, and father Joe isn't helping. In a 2005 interview with GQ, Joe did his best creepy dad impression: "Jessica never tries to be sexy. She just is sexy. If you put her in a T-shirt or you put her in a bustier, she's sexy in both. She's got double-Ds! You can't cover those suckers up!" A Baptist minister, Joe pimps the careers of his daughters, acting as both manager (music) and executive producer (TV) in a Svengali-like fashion that would make Joe Jackson proud. After Lindsay Lohan snubbed Jessica and Ashlee from her MTV Awards after-party in 2005, papa bear reportedly got on the horn with several major tabloids to plant stories about the dis. In August of that year he also supposedly brokered a $200K, two-year Faustian deal with OK! magazine that gave them exclusive access to Jessica. Capitalizing on Jessica's, uh, "assets" and Ashlee's marketability, and despite a profound lack of talent, Joe shows stage mom's everywhere how it's done.

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Debbie Mathers-Briggs
In Eminem's introduction to the world, he famously rapped, "I just found out my mom does more dope than I do!" Things didn't get any more Hallmark friendly as Slim Shady continued to publicly disparage his mother as a crazed, drug-addled drifter. She responded with a $10 million lawsuit, later settling for $25,000. Mathers-Briggs soon became the poster mom for trailer-trash life after subsequent less-than-flattering depictions in the video of "The Way I Am" and the movie 8 Mile. She struck back again last September by publishing My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem, a memoir intended to burnish her image (loving mother, loyal supporter), and compared her son to Elvis (charging that an indulgent diet of gourmet steaks is ruining his health) in a January 2008 Daily Mail piece.

Jane Carter
Carrying on the long and storied tradition of parent/manager, Jane Carter trades accusations and recriminations with pop star son Aaron on an almost daily basis. Aaron fired his mother in 2003 for allegedly stealing $100K from him and promptly filed for legal emancipation. She in turn invoked the classic "you can't fire me, I quit!" excuse to the press and went on the offensive by outing Aaron's supposed marijuana habit in a tabloid piece. Mother and son made amends, but her marital troubles were just beginning. Her husband, Robert Carter, was arrested for supposedly shoving his wife during an argument over their separation. Then, in January 2004, Jane was arrested for breaking into Robert's Florida home and attacking his 29-year-old girlfriend. Looks like it's Mommy Dearest all over again.

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Screamin' Jay Hawkins
The Cleveland-born original shock rocker wrote a song called "Constipation Blues" and, by the time he died in 2000, was thought to have sired at least 55 children among many, many special ladies. (Hawkins was married six times—not that that begins to account for his progeny.) As one might expect, Hawkins was only one man and didn't have a lot of time to attend to all of his offspring. Recent reports say he may have forgotten at least 20 of his children, bringing that number to 75. Shortly after his death, one of Hawkins' illegitimate daughters started a website to round up her many half-siblings. Visitors to the now-defunct jayskids.com could listen to one of Hawkins' hits, "I Put a Spell on You," while they wondered about mom's lost weekend in 1972 and pondered a question posed on the front page: "Are you one of Jay's kids?"

Sabrina Jackson
Would it surprise you to know that 50 Cent's mom was one of the few female cocaine dealers in Jamaica, Queens? Probably not. Sabrina Jackson died under mysterious circumstances when he was only eight, leaving him to be raised by his grandparents. 50 remembers Jackson as being incredibly aggressive, and possibly a lesbian, and credits her with making him the man he is today. A man with nine bullet holes in him. Thanks, Mom.

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Lynn Spears
Where does one begin? Probably with Lynn Spears' book on parenting, which, if nothing else, is the very definition of irony. Put "indefinitely" on hold after the news broke that 16-year-old daughter Jamie Lynn is pregnant, and as elder daughter Britney continues to implode in front of a salivating media, one can only wonder what chestnuts of wisdom it contained. Now in a legal battle with sometime producer and full-time sycophant Sam Lutfi over access to Brit, Spears' stewardship over her daughters' lives begs the question, "Where was your mother?!" Answer: derelict.