When you think about rock stars offstage, you probably imagine debauched scenes of non-stop parties, wine and women. And perhaps a monkey or two thrown in for good measure. You probably don't think about them crouching over a toy train engine lovingly attaching a wire handrail to it, or discussing the finer points of gourmet cheeses with international chefs - which is what makes the reality of some rock stars stranger than fiction!
Some hobbies aren't too off the wall. In fact, the hobbies of some are rather on the wall. Take John Mellencamp for instance. The “Jack and Diane” singer first studied fine arts in New York fresh out of high school before his musical career took off. Eleven platinum albums and one Grammy Award later, he now seems to prefer to talk about his painting more than his music and has won high accolades for his work. He's turned out a large body of canvases that draw on European expressionist painters such as Basquiat and American street art for inspiration. His distinctive, slightly gaunt and ghoulish-looking portraits were originally done for his own interest until Bob Dylan saw some and encouraged him to show them. Since then he had a photo spread of them in Vanity Fair and a major New York show, “The Isolation of Mister” where some of his originals were fetching upto $36 000.
Another singer with an eye for art is former R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe, but a camera lens is his tool. He's always been a photo-buff and says he feels more comfortable with a camera than a microphone. “There's not a real clear dividing line between the impact that music can have and that a great photograph can have,” he once told MTV. His desolate landscapes have adorned R.E.M. album covers and he's published an entire book of photos taken of his friend and sometimes musical collaborator Patti Smith's tour (Two Times Intro: On The Road With Patti Smith). Since the demise of his band, he seems to have doubled down on his visual work and in 2014 he was an Artist and Scholar in Residence at NYU, where he taught photography.
Stipe isn't the only former R.E.M. member who retired to surprising pursuits though. Drummer Bill Berry grew tired of the traveling and press and left the band in its heyday to putter around on his Georgia farm. He's relatively retiring in his retirement so not a lot is known about his farmlife other than (according to Creative Loafing newspaper) he “enjoys his life as a gentleman in the country, riding around on his tractor. “
Berry isn't the only rocker who saw the appeal of a “Country House” - Alex James, the bassist and arguably hardest-partying member of Blur decided to turn his back on the drugs and groupies in 2003, married his sweetheart and started fresh on a 200-acre farm in Oxfordshire, England. As he puts it, the rock'n'roll lifestyle is “really hard to let go of, but thank God, being here helped me realize I just don't need it anymore.” With his rumoured fondness for excessive amounts of cocaine and liquor, it might be that buying this farm kept James from “buying the farm” in a more sinister fashion.
James champagne taste extended to foods and it wasn't long before he found a way to turn the property to his advantage for this. He began making cheese from the farm's livestock. He has some 400 sheep as well as goats and cows and makes a range of “artisan” cheeses such as Little Wallop (an award-winning goat cheese) and Blue Monday - named for the New Order song - which is a “cow's milk cheese in the style of a gorgonzola.” In recent years he's been a judge in international cheese competitions and has hosted “The Big Feastival” , a music and food fest, with one of the Big Cheeses of food TV, Jamie Oliver.
James isn't the only British rocker with a reputation who's toned it down in the country. At the height of his musical popularity in the '80s, it'd be hard to find a more wild-partying celeb than Julian Cope. Not that he likely cared too much what others thought of his lifestyle; his trademark song is “World Shut Your Mouth” after all.
But far from becoming an aging burnout suffering from just a few too many psychedelic experiences and brawls , Cope has become a serious... well, “nerd.” Not that there's anything wrong with that! He may not be one of the best known or biggest-selling musicians of the last few decades but in the world of archaeology, he's a big deal. He's long been fascinated with ancient culture and artifacts and has over time become one of the world's leading authorities on Neolithic culture. In 1998 he wrote The Modern Antiquarian, a 448-page book on pre-historic British artifacts that The Times called a “ripping good read.” Later he'd write a sequel, The Megalithic European which is considered the most comprehensive work available on the subject. He says his fascination with the subject has alienated a number of his fans but he seems nonplussed. These days when he talks of “the Stones”, he's probably referring to Stonehenge rather than Mick Jagger and Company.
Another British rocker who likes to chill out in the countryside is none other than Sir Paul McCartney. Maybe it's no surprise that the iconic, vegan artist who sang “Blackbird” (as well as a solo record called “Jenny Wren”) would be an avid bird-watcher, or birder as they prefer to be known. Years ago he told a biographer that he and his late wife Linda “just enjoy sitting out in nature.” As years went by, his passion for doing that, and for birds in particular grew until after his breakup with Heather Mills, he went to court to keep a “birding hut” on a sprawling 900-acre estate they'd owned. Friends told reporters that “Paul was a bird lover as a kid and now has become a real expert,” and that to deal with the stress of the divorce he “finds sitting down by the lake, watching all the birds and creatures really relaxing.”
Ducks and hawks might be the cure for a hard day for McCartney but it's another type of “birdie” that shock-rocker Alice Cooper looks for - a sub-par golf hole. A surprising number of rockers, from Justin Timberlake to Eddie Van Halen to Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers like to golf, but Cooper takes it to the next level. He credits the sport with saving him from his personal demons and now he likes to golf every day. A day of golf with him was once traded as a prize in return for a year's rent on a Phoenix apartment in the adventure One Red Paperclip. He's teed off with Tiger Woods, been in ads for Calloway clubs and has even written a book about it, Alice Cooper, Golf Monster. Rock's bogey-man won't shoot too many bogies mind you; he has a handicap of just 5.3, which is for the record, almost identical to Phil Mickelson's.
And while Cooper might not like getting stuck on the rough, other musicians like slightly rougher forms of sport and exercise. Billy Corgan and Bob Mould are both major wrestling fans who often show up on, ahem, “sports” programs discussing it. Even more “hands-on” is J.J.Burnel, of punk pioneers The Stranglers. As if the bassist needed anything to make his reputation tougher, Burnel has been a karate enthusiast since he was 19. Now, a good few decades later, he's one of the highest-graded practitioners of the martial art in Britain, being a 7th Dan in Shidokan karate. To give those whose hands aren't lethal weapons an idea, 10th is the highest level but after reaching the 6th level, the athlete is a Black Belt and can be referred to as a “kyoshi.” His band may not be the darlings of music magazines much lately, but in 2005, he appeared on the cover of an international karate magazine.
Not all fan musicians are quite that involved in their favorite sports, but lots are passionate about them. Like a number of Canadian males, Blue Rodeo's Jim Cuddy has been a hockey fan since he was little and not only does he watch his beloved Maple Leafs whenever he can, he's skated with pros like Paul Coffey and Mark Napier in charity games. Perhaps surprisingly, fellow Torontonian, Rush's Geddy Lee is not a hockey but a baseball fanatic.
Lee can often be seen behind home plate at Toronto Blue Jays home games and got to throw out the first pitch for them on opening day, 2013. He has written about baseball for Rolling Stone and about the Jays, specifically, for Major League Baseball's website and if you're trying to reach him online about his next prog-rock album, good luck - he says he only uses Twitter to follow baseball scores and transactions. If that isn't enough of a curveball for you, try this one: Lee, a white, Jewish, Canadian rock star has a room named for him in Kansas City's (baseball) Negro Leagues Museum! Ever the fan, Lee visited the little-known museum once and was so impressed he decided to donate part of his memorabilia collection to it. “I thought it belonged in a museum,not private hands,” he says, and now everyone can see over 400 baseballs, autographed by some of the game's biggest names on display in the Geddy Lee Collection Room.
It's possible Lee might have visited Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh at one time or another to see a baseball game, but another iconic rock star has Three Rivers in his house- in 1/87th scale. Rod Stewart gets away from it all by working on model trains, and names his layout “Three Rivers City.” While Rod the Mod has dated and even married a number of models, these days the models that consume most of his time are HO scale model trains and the buildings they roll around. He grew up with his family owning a store beside a British railway line and has loved trains ever since. His pride and joy is a 23 X 124' layout in his Beverly Hills home, an extraordinarily-detailed miniature city based on post-war New York, complete with hundreds of warehouses, wharfs and busy rail lines. Late-era steam engines and early diesels of famous lines like the New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroad cart the freight to and fro on his command. Some of the buildings and trains were assembled and detailed while Stewart was on tour in 2007. Rather than stay in different cities and party it up after each show, the “Downtown Train” singer instead stayed in a large hotel suite in Chicago with his wife and son. After every concert, he went back to that hotel, where he had an entire room devoted to the trains. The model railway is so outstanding it's earned him the cover story in Model Railroader - twice! The hobby magazine complimented his work, noting the “level of craftmanship is staggering.” A less complimentary Telegraph paper in his native land wrote about his fascination with model trains and asked “is dull the new interesting?” The singer was unperturbed and says “I pity a man who doesn't have a hobby like this- it's just the most supreme relaxation!”
So it is. And while we might like to sit back and put on Every Picture Tells A Story, 2112 or Automatic For The People to chill out, the artists that created those works will be keeping themselves busy with surprisingly more arcane pursuits.
Some hobbies aren't too off the wall. In fact, the hobbies of some are rather on the wall. Take John Mellencamp for instance. The “Jack and Diane” singer first studied fine arts in New York fresh out of high school before his musical career took off. Eleven platinum albums and one Grammy Award later, he now seems to prefer to talk about his painting more than his music and has won high accolades for his work. He's turned out a large body of canvases that draw on European expressionist painters such as Basquiat and American street art for inspiration. His distinctive, slightly gaunt and ghoulish-looking portraits were originally done for his own interest until Bob Dylan saw some and encouraged him to show them. Since then he had a photo spread of them in Vanity Fair and a major New York show, “The Isolation of Mister” where some of his originals were fetching upto $36 000.
Another singer with an eye for art is former R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe, but a camera lens is his tool. He's always been a photo-buff and says he feels more comfortable with a camera than a microphone. “There's not a real clear dividing line between the impact that music can have and that a great photograph can have,” he once told MTV. His desolate landscapes have adorned R.E.M. album covers and he's published an entire book of photos taken of his friend and sometimes musical collaborator Patti Smith's tour (Two Times Intro: On The Road With Patti Smith). Since the demise of his band, he seems to have doubled down on his visual work and in 2014 he was an Artist and Scholar in Residence at NYU, where he taught photography.
Stipe isn't the only former R.E.M. member who retired to surprising pursuits though. Drummer Bill Berry grew tired of the traveling and press and left the band in its heyday to putter around on his Georgia farm. He's relatively retiring in his retirement so not a lot is known about his farmlife other than (according to Creative Loafing newspaper) he “enjoys his life as a gentleman in the country, riding around on his tractor. “
Berry isn't the only rocker who saw the appeal of a “Country House” - Alex James, the bassist and arguably hardest-partying member of Blur decided to turn his back on the drugs and groupies in 2003, married his sweetheart and started fresh on a 200-acre farm in Oxfordshire, England. As he puts it, the rock'n'roll lifestyle is “really hard to let go of, but thank God, being here helped me realize I just don't need it anymore.” With his rumoured fondness for excessive amounts of cocaine and liquor, it might be that buying this farm kept James from “buying the farm” in a more sinister fashion.
James champagne taste extended to foods and it wasn't long before he found a way to turn the property to his advantage for this. He began making cheese from the farm's livestock. He has some 400 sheep as well as goats and cows and makes a range of “artisan” cheeses such as Little Wallop (an award-winning goat cheese) and Blue Monday - named for the New Order song - which is a “cow's milk cheese in the style of a gorgonzola.” In recent years he's been a judge in international cheese competitions and has hosted “The Big Feastival” , a music and food fest, with one of the Big Cheeses of food TV, Jamie Oliver.
James isn't the only British rocker with a reputation who's toned it down in the country. At the height of his musical popularity in the '80s, it'd be hard to find a more wild-partying celeb than Julian Cope. Not that he likely cared too much what others thought of his lifestyle; his trademark song is “World Shut Your Mouth” after all.
But far from becoming an aging burnout suffering from just a few too many psychedelic experiences and brawls , Cope has become a serious... well, “nerd.” Not that there's anything wrong with that! He may not be one of the best known or biggest-selling musicians of the last few decades but in the world of archaeology, he's a big deal. He's long been fascinated with ancient culture and artifacts and has over time become one of the world's leading authorities on Neolithic culture. In 1998 he wrote The Modern Antiquarian, a 448-page book on pre-historic British artifacts that The Times called a “ripping good read.” Later he'd write a sequel, The Megalithic European which is considered the most comprehensive work available on the subject. He says his fascination with the subject has alienated a number of his fans but he seems nonplussed. These days when he talks of “the Stones”, he's probably referring to Stonehenge rather than Mick Jagger and Company.
Another British rocker who likes to chill out in the countryside is none other than Sir Paul McCartney. Maybe it's no surprise that the iconic, vegan artist who sang “Blackbird” (as well as a solo record called “Jenny Wren”) would be an avid bird-watcher, or birder as they prefer to be known. Years ago he told a biographer that he and his late wife Linda “just enjoy sitting out in nature.” As years went by, his passion for doing that, and for birds in particular grew until after his breakup with Heather Mills, he went to court to keep a “birding hut” on a sprawling 900-acre estate they'd owned. Friends told reporters that “Paul was a bird lover as a kid and now has become a real expert,” and that to deal with the stress of the divorce he “finds sitting down by the lake, watching all the birds and creatures really relaxing.”
Ducks and hawks might be the cure for a hard day for McCartney but it's another type of “birdie” that shock-rocker Alice Cooper looks for - a sub-par golf hole. A surprising number of rockers, from Justin Timberlake to Eddie Van Halen to Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers like to golf, but Cooper takes it to the next level. He credits the sport with saving him from his personal demons and now he likes to golf every day. A day of golf with him was once traded as a prize in return for a year's rent on a Phoenix apartment in the adventure One Red Paperclip. He's teed off with Tiger Woods, been in ads for Calloway clubs and has even written a book about it, Alice Cooper, Golf Monster. Rock's bogey-man won't shoot too many bogies mind you; he has a handicap of just 5.3, which is for the record, almost identical to Phil Mickelson's.
And while Cooper might not like getting stuck on the rough, other musicians like slightly rougher forms of sport and exercise. Billy Corgan and Bob Mould are both major wrestling fans who often show up on, ahem, “sports” programs discussing it. Even more “hands-on” is J.J.Burnel, of punk pioneers The Stranglers. As if the bassist needed anything to make his reputation tougher, Burnel has been a karate enthusiast since he was 19. Now, a good few decades later, he's one of the highest-graded practitioners of the martial art in Britain, being a 7th Dan in Shidokan karate. To give those whose hands aren't lethal weapons an idea, 10th is the highest level but after reaching the 6th level, the athlete is a Black Belt and can be referred to as a “kyoshi.” His band may not be the darlings of music magazines much lately, but in 2005, he appeared on the cover of an international karate magazine.
Not all fan musicians are quite that involved in their favorite sports, but lots are passionate about them. Like a number of Canadian males, Blue Rodeo's Jim Cuddy has been a hockey fan since he was little and not only does he watch his beloved Maple Leafs whenever he can, he's skated with pros like Paul Coffey and Mark Napier in charity games. Perhaps surprisingly, fellow Torontonian, Rush's Geddy Lee is not a hockey but a baseball fanatic.
Lee can often be seen behind home plate at Toronto Blue Jays home games and got to throw out the first pitch for them on opening day, 2013. He has written about baseball for Rolling Stone and about the Jays, specifically, for Major League Baseball's website and if you're trying to reach him online about his next prog-rock album, good luck - he says he only uses Twitter to follow baseball scores and transactions. If that isn't enough of a curveball for you, try this one: Lee, a white, Jewish, Canadian rock star has a room named for him in Kansas City's (baseball) Negro Leagues Museum! Ever the fan, Lee visited the little-known museum once and was so impressed he decided to donate part of his memorabilia collection to it. “I thought it belonged in a museum,not private hands,” he says, and now everyone can see over 400 baseballs, autographed by some of the game's biggest names on display in the Geddy Lee Collection Room.
It's possible Lee might have visited Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh at one time or another to see a baseball game, but another iconic rock star has Three Rivers in his house- in 1/87th scale. Rod Stewart gets away from it all by working on model trains, and names his layout “Three Rivers City.” While Rod the Mod has dated and even married a number of models, these days the models that consume most of his time are HO scale model trains and the buildings they roll around. He grew up with his family owning a store beside a British railway line and has loved trains ever since. His pride and joy is a 23 X 124' layout in his Beverly Hills home, an extraordinarily-detailed miniature city based on post-war New York, complete with hundreds of warehouses, wharfs and busy rail lines. Late-era steam engines and early diesels of famous lines like the New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroad cart the freight to and fro on his command. Some of the buildings and trains were assembled and detailed while Stewart was on tour in 2007. Rather than stay in different cities and party it up after each show, the “Downtown Train” singer instead stayed in a large hotel suite in Chicago with his wife and son. After every concert, he went back to that hotel, where he had an entire room devoted to the trains. The model railway is so outstanding it's earned him the cover story in Model Railroader - twice! The hobby magazine complimented his work, noting the “level of craftmanship is staggering.” A less complimentary Telegraph paper in his native land wrote about his fascination with model trains and asked “is dull the new interesting?” The singer was unperturbed and says “I pity a man who doesn't have a hobby like this- it's just the most supreme relaxation!”
So it is. And while we might like to sit back and put on Every Picture Tells A Story, 2112 or Automatic For The People to chill out, the artists that created those works will be keeping themselves busy with surprisingly more arcane pursuits.