Queens Of The Stone Age Bassist Walks Away From S.W.A.T. Standoff With A Slap On The Wrist

We’ve seen rich and famous people get away with everything from drug charges to jail time to domestic violence for years. Hello, Chris Brown! Hello, Lindsay, Courtney, Paris, the list never ends. That’s called having good lawyers who know how to please a court. Even B-list stars have lawyers smart enough to get them out of trouble. Wait, what would you call Nick Oliveri, former bass player of Queens of the Stone Age? B-list? C-list? Metal famous? Whatever.

Since dropping Queens of the Stone Age from his to-do list, Oliveri has worked with many bands, including The Dwarves, Tubronegro, and Kyuss Lives! He also started his own project, Mondo Generator, which enabled him to talk openly about his cocaine and meth usage simply by titling one album Cocaine Rodeo. On the follow-up album, A Drug Problem That Never Existed, songs like “Meth, I Hear You Callin’” and “So High, So Low” kind of confirmed that Oliveri might, might have an issue with cocaine and methamphetamines. It was all rumored, but nothing was confirmed.

Then, last year, poor old Oliveri had a very serious run-in with a Los Angeles S.W.A.T. team when the bassist had allegedly trapped his girlfriend in their home. When police arrived on the domestic violence call—surprise, surprise!—they found cocaine, meth, and a loaded high-power rifle in Oliveri’s possession. The stand-off with the police lasted four hours and left Oliveri with four felony charges.

Which brings us to the good lawyer thing. Yesterday, it was reported that Oliveri‘s 15-year jail sentence was twiddled down to only three years of felony probation, a few weeks of anger management classes, and 200 hours of community service. The judge also said that if Oliveri stays clean during his probation, the incident would be wiped from his criminal record.

Does Oliveri have a twitter account? It must be taking all his strength to not tweet “LOL FOOLS!” over and over. Community service and anger management? So, he’s going to pick up trash on the L.A. freeway for, like, a few afternoons and then fake his way through a class? Compared to the 15 years in prison he could have been sentenced, this is a cake walk. The rich and famous get away with everything.