Music's Top 5 Dubious "Dr. Feelgoods"

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To say that Dr. Conrad Murray had a bad day in court yesterday is probably something of an understatement. In addition to veiwing graphic pictures of Michael Jackson's autopsy, jurors in the involuntary manslaughter trial of the King of Pop's former physician heard damaging testimony from L.A. County Medical Examiner Christopher Rogers, who told the court he found Jackson to be healthier than most 50-year-old men, and not directly responsible for the overdose that killed him.

The pathologist went on to call the basis of the doctor's defense -- that the patient had self-administered the fatal dose of Propofol while Murray was in the bathroom -- highly implausible due to the fact that Jackson was already too heavily sedated to perform the act unassisted, and even had he been able to self-administer, the drug would have taken longer to circulate through his system than the two minute period the physician admits to being out of the room.

Rocks Off learned enough from the Casey Anthony trial to know that juries can be unpredictable, but between the EMT testimony, the audio tapes, the character-assaulting parade of mistresses, and the Murray's questionable behavior immediately following Jackson's death, well, suffice to say things do not look promising for the Houston-based cardiologist.

Sadly, Conrad Murray and the outlandish quantity of drugs he dispensed are nothing new, prominent musicians having a long sordid partnership with "Dr. Feelgoods" -- personal physicians and other drug-pushers (both licensed and not) more interested in money and personal gain than the health of their clients. And if the jury finds Murray guilty in the coming weeks, he will no doubt take a place among the five shadiest professional pushers listed below.

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Richards and "Spanish" Tony Sanchez in the early 1970s.

5. "Spanish" Tony Sanchez
Nicknamed "Spanish" by "Keef," the late Tony Sanchez was the go-to guy fueling Richards' (massive) addictions in the early days of the Stones and a constant fixture during the '71 Exile on Main Street period at Nellcote. Marianne Faithful, who had an alleged sex-for-heroin exchange with Sanchez from time to time, described him as "a lowlife, a small-time spiv, but a weakling at the same time. He was as enchained as anyone else, completely hung up on his own particular illness."

In 1996 Sanchez published Up and Down with The Rolling Stones, a tell-all account of his days with the band. While Richards admits there are elements of truth to the book, the facts are grossly exaggerated ("I couldn't plow through it all because my eyes were watering with laughter.") Sanchez is also credited with starting the rumor about Keef's infamous blood transfusion, which Richards and other biographers would later discredit.

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4. Dr. Larry Badgely
Once the tour physician for Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones Truman Capote described as "[passing] through the plane with a big plate of pills, every kind you could imagine, everything from vitamin C to coke", Dr. Laurence Badgely is now a rural physician and holistic healer based out of California, and according to his website, "provides medical examinations and counseling services to patients with chronic pain and other conditions alleviated by cannabis." Go figure.

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Who is Dr. Robert? Apparently he's Bono, or, at least, that's who played the doctor in Across the Universe.

3. "Dr. Robert"
In The Beatles song, he's the man "who'll pick you up" with "a drink from his special cup", but there has been much speculation over the identity of the mysterious "Dr. Robert". According to Barry Miles' biography Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, the song refers to Robert Freymann, a tall, white-haired physician in New York City known as "The Great White Father" who was known to dispense B-12 shots and amphetamines to the rich and famous from his 78th Street Clinic.

At one point Lennon even came out and declared that he was the real "Dr. Robert" referred to in the track, but many theorize this was done to steer focus away from Freymann, who lost his medical license in 1968.