10 guitar hero hobbies
Angus Young
After duck-walking, writhing and feigning electrocution, AC/DC’s 57-year- old schoolboy retires from stage to hotel room for a more conservative pursuit. Landscapes are his speciality, but as Young once said: “I’ll have a crack at anything. I’ve even been given a paint brush and told to do a little bit of wall painting.”
Jack White
The art of ramming sand into dead animals gained its first poster boy when Jack White appeared on US television haggling over an elephant head. “I’ve got a zebra head,” he proudly told one interviewer, “two gazelles, an eland, a kudu, a giant white elk...”
Ronnie Wood
In snatched moments between Russian cocktail waitresses and three-day Guinness benders, the Rolling Stone unwinds with the world’s geekiest leisure pursuit. Wood started his stamp collection post-rehab to “stay on the straight and narrow”.
Neil Young
Young’s 750ft setup in a 2,800ft barn on his San Francisco ranch is the ultimate. No attic-room collector, the Canadian rocker was part-owner of the Lionel model company and patented seven inventions, including the CAB-1 remote control.
Dave Mustaine
Megadeth’s main man was appointed goodwill ambassador by the World Taekwondo Federation in 2007. “Taekwondo helped me to eliminate a bad lifestyle of drugs and alcoholism,” says the first dan black belt. “It helped me to find the strength in myself that I never knew that I possessed.”
Rivers Cuomo
The Weezer guitarist’s über-geek credentials were given a boost by the tweeted confession that he spends his downtime knitting in bed (it “couldn’t be cosier”, apparently). He’s not the only one: Kelley Deal from The Breeders has written a book titled Bags That Rock: Knitting On The Road.
Slash
We know about Slash’s early ‘hobbies’ – the smack, the spirits, the strippers – but in his 30s, he fell for the silver ball, co-designing the official Guns N’ Roses machine and still boasting a 10-strong private collection. “There’s something very rock ’n’ roll about pinball,” he notes. “There’s energy in it...”
Steve Vai
Dubbing himself the “bee whisperer” and flogging his colony’s Fire Garden Honey for charity, the shredder learned not to remove his veil the hard way. “One time, I was capturing a wild swarm,” he told Spinner. “A ball of bees the size of a basketball fell on my head and stung the piss out of me!”
Lemmy
Pick your way through Lemmy’s Hollywood pad, and you’ll find his Nazi weapons collection, taking in everything from Hitler Youth daggers to Luftwaffe swords. “Just because you collect something doesn’t mean you are one,” stresses the Motörhead man. “It’s a collection: that’s it.”
Ted Nugent
“People who don’t hunt don’t realise how spiritual it is to hunt with a bow,” roars the veteran lunatic on his one-man crusade to cull our furry friends. “I’ve got a message for all those people who think that hunting is so terrible. They can kiss my ass!” We’ll pass thanks, Ted.
