All musicians are more than the persona they reveal to the public. They have hobbies, interests, side professions, and even entire lives they maintain in the shadows of the spotlight. Many also possess hidden talents and secret skills that have little to do with their onstage antics. Can you guess which belongs to these six rockers?
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1. Jack White
For rocker Jack White, before there was music, there was furniture upholstery. Ahead of the former White Stripe’s success, he was an upholstery apprentice. It’s a skill he’s held onto throughout the years of touring and recording.
“You have to learn like a thousand different tasks” to work on furniture, White told GQ in an interview about his passion. “You have to basically be a carpenter, you have to know about fabrics, you, in turn, end up being a de facto interior designer by the end of it, you need to know how to sew like a seamstress. I mean, you’re turning all these disparate fields into one package. It’s wild.”
Watch him rock out beside one of his creations.
2. Tool’s Maynard James Keenan
Not only is he the frontman of renowned rock bands like Tool, A Perfect Circle, and Puscifer, but Maynard James Keenan also knows his way around a grapevine. The rocker is a vinter and owns and operates Merkin Vineyards and Caduceus Cellars where he lives in Arizona.
3. Cherie Currie
Former Runaways frontwoman Cherie Currie is also an award-winning chainsaw artist, known for carving elaborate wooden sculptures with the power tool. “Getting into chainsaw carving was a fluke,” she told CNN, but now a wide range of her impressive art can be found HERE.
4. Roger Daltrey
With decades of rock stardom under his belt, the only thing left to do for The Who’s Roger Daltrey was take a step back and invest in his childhood pastime of angling.
While trout farming isn’t the first thing that comes to mind where the topic of hidden talents is concerned, the frontman has become skilled in the profession since he created his Lakedown Trout Fishery in 1981.
5. Steve Vai
Over the years, guitar virtuoso Steve Vai’s stringed skills have garnered quite the buzz, but few know about his secret talent in beekeeping.
“It’s an opportunity to get away from everything—because nobody’s going to come near me when I’m with the bees,” he once told Classic Rock Magazine of his hobby. “And you’re focused on nature – focused on something that is outside of anything else that you do. Bees are fascinating creatures.”
6. Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is many things, a renowned singer-songwriter, an influential cultural figure, the voice of generations … and a metal artist?
Dylan has long been a visual artist, but his most unique creative foray has been in the medium of metal. “I’ve been around iron all my life ever since I was a kid,” he explained of his draw to the art form. “I was born and raised in iron ore country where you could breathe it and smell it every day. And I’ve always worked with it in one form or another.”
Photo by FRED TANNEAU/AFP/GettyImages
