As a young boy, he was raised to believe women were “evil,” taught that violence at home was normal, and lived through trauma most kids could never imagine But this kid from the Midwest pushed past the strict, closed-in “corn belt” rules he’d been raised under – and became one of the top-selling artists in music history.

Until he was 17, he thought Bailey was his real father. He never met his biological father as an adult; he was murdered in 1984 in Marion, Illinois.

The Bailey household was intensely religious. Our future star attended a Pentecostal church several times a week and even taught Sunday school. Looking back, he described the environment as suffocating:

”We’d have televisions one week, then my stepdad would throw them out because they were Satanic… Women were evil. Everything was evil.”

”Rejected” by his mother since he was a baby
The rock icon has said that his father was physically and emotionally abusive to him. When Barry Manilow’s song Mandy came on the radio, the young boy sang along, only to have his stepfather cuff him over the song because it was deemed “evil.”

Adding to his anger, he said his mother let the abuse happen, something he later drew on in his songwriting. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he reflected:

“I’ve been doing a lot of work and found out that I’ve had a lot of hatred for women. Basically, I’ve been rejected by my mother since I was a baby,” he said.

Bureau of Prisons/Getty Images
“She picked my stepfather over me ever since he was around and watched me get beaten by him. She stood back most of the time. Unless it got too bad, and then she’d come and hold you afterward. She wasn’t there for me.”

If home life was far from ideal, school wasn’t much better for the red-headed kid. By eighth grade, he already had a tough attitude. A former cross-country coach recalled in 1991 that, as a young and relatively unknown kid, he was bullied by classmates on the team. His teammates once taped his mouth shut and, on another occasion, shoved him into a locker because he wouldn’t stop talking about his future ambitions.

“All of us sat back and laughed about [his boasts] and said, ‘Sure, Bill, we’ve heard this before,’” the coach told the AP. “He said, ‘No, you watch, I’m going to make it.’”

His anger toward his home state ran deep; he once even compared it to a prison — and to Auschwitz. In his late teens, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a psychiatrist viewed his rebellious and delinquent behavior as signs of psychosis.

Truth about his biological father
But music offered him an escape. From the age of five, he sang in the church choir and performed alongside his siblings as the Bailey Trio. William also joined the chorus and began studying piano.