Shifty Shellshock's wild life: How Crazy Town singer battled crippling addiction, a turbulent love life and multiple arrests - as he becomes THIRD member of band to die young

Early 2000s rap rock sensation Shifty Shellshock has tragically died after decades battling crippling drug addictions, fighting for child custody and stints in celebrity rehab. 

The Butterfly hitmaker - born Seth Binzer – passed away from as yet unknown causes at home on June 24 aged 49. 

Binzer began his long and tortured road to fame in 1992 when he met his Crazy Town co-founder Bret Mazur, struggling for the best part of a decade to make music and only finding mainstream success with the release of Butterfly in 2000. 

Success didn't bring Binzer happiness, and the singer was in and out of rehab with a crippling drug and alcohol addiction for decades, appearing on reality TV shows in an attempt to get better. 

He was arrested multiple times prompting furious rows and break-ups with his then-partners and leading to custody battles over his youngest child. 

Binzer was a Rock & Roll love child: his father, Rollin, was a graphic artist while his mother Leslie was a former model.  

Growing up in Boston, Binzer would help himself to his father's drug stash, and learned to roll joints when he was just five years old. He told Rolling Stone: 'My dad was the artsy-fartsy guy who did lots of cocaine and had weed all over the house.'

He took up dirt biking, grew a mohawk and skateboarded, hanging out with girls two grades above. 

When he was 11, the family moved to LA and a few years later his parents split, prompting him to party even harder and start selling weed and then harder drugs. 

Aged 18, he had his first run-in with the law, when he and a friend robbed another drug dealer with a gun - landing him in jail for 90 days.  

He carried on his party lifestyle until he was ordered into rehab in 1997, cleaning up his act for 1998 to attend AA meetings and work on the formation of Crazy Town. 

Throughout the summer of 1999, Binzer and Mazur recorded nonstop. He told Rolling Stone at the time: 'We were out of our f***ing minds'. 

The rest of the band formed and toured the US, reciting an AA prayer - 'God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can.' - before going on stage.   

When they came off, they would down a Red Bull and make out with local groupies. 

Then in 2000, Binzer fell of the wagon, months before they were supposed to perform at Ozzfest in what would have been their big break. 

After months of partying, Binzer slept through the show. 

The band left him behind and he moved back to LA, broke up with his then-girlfriend, stole money from the band and went on a rampage. 

He told Rolling Stone: 'I was just a big fireball of chaos. I was running from my emotions, just submerging myself in psychoticness. And loving it. I have to scrape my ass along that bottom before I can save myself.'

It was the start of a darker decade that saw Binzer repeatedly battle with addiction.  

Throughout the 2000s, Binzer appeared on four reality TV celebrity rehab programs: Celebrity Rehab 1 and 2 and Sober House 1 and 2.

He repeatedly ran away, broke his sobriety and was pulled back in, before eventually being told he wasn't allowed to take part in the show anymore. 

He married Melissa Clark in 2002 and had his first son, Halo. They divorced in 2011 and Binzer went on to have another son, Gage, with a woman named Tracy and a third son, Phoenix, with Jasmine Lennard. Lennard is also famed for having a fling with Simon Cowell.

Benzer's relationship with Lennard broke down in 2012 when he was arrested after a Los Angeles shop employee spotted him fighting with his girlfriend and called police. 

When they arrived, he was searched they found he was carrying cocaine.

He apologized to his friends and family for the embarrassment he caused them at the time and was sentenced to three years' probation after entering a no contest plea to both counts in court.

In 2013, Lennard went to court seeking full custody of their son, claiming Binzer smoked crack in front of him and once left a crack pipe in the child's room. 

Lennard later slammed him as an absent father, telling The Sun: 'In six years of our son being alive he hasn’t contributed one dollar. It feels like all he cares about in life is trying to get another hit record.

'He was asked to pay £500 a month but he said he was in debt with dental fees because he needed to have a ‘Hollywood smile’ because he was a musician and in the public eye.'

In 2022, he was arrested again for a DUI in Los Angeles.  

Binzer had many friends in the music world, revealing in 2001 that Red Hot Chili Peppers' Anthony Kiedis had been a huge support when he relapsed following a bad break-up. 

He told Rolling Stone at the time: 'Anthony found me and took me to lunch — where I tried to borrow money from him so I could get high. 

'I didn’t finish my rampage for a couple of days, but he showed me that I had people who were worried and cared about me. Anthony’s this angel who appeared in my life.'

Binzer is the third member of Crazy Town to die young.

The former bandmates were beset by issues with drug abuse, addiction and domestic violence over the years after the band broke up in 2003.

In March 2004, guitarist Rust Epique was found dead in his home from an apparent heart attack aged just 36 after reportedly leaving Crazy Town because he was too crazy for his bandmates.  

After his death, Rolling Stone characterized him as a 'notorious and well-loved eccentric in the Hollywood music scene.'

Five years later, another bandmate, DJ AM, died from an overdose also aged 36.