Rock Stars Truly Lived The Lives We Thought They Did Behind Closed Doors
Rock stars live in the posters on our walls and in the albums on our shelves, they're not supposed to live normal lives. But the truth is that rockers like The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and even Johnny Cash did their best to live quasi-normal lives when they weren't onstage, even if it was impossible to do so at the height of their fame.
Most photos from the glory days of rock n' roll are in stark black and white, and as cool as they look, seeing the photos in full color makes them look closer to real life, or at the very least as close to real life as you can get when you're in front of thousands of adoring fans.
By 1964, the Beatles were four of the most famous people on the planet. They couldn't go anywhere without being mobbed, and their every move was subject to intense fan speculation. They may have been lads from Liverpool, but following their appearance on Ed Sullivan they were legitimate superstars who could only confide with one another about how strange their lives were. This odd kinship brought the band closer together than anyone can imagine, but it's also what played a catalyst in pulling the band apart at the seams.
LSD opened the Beatles' minds but it didn't help them write songs
Being the four most famous people on the planet couldn't have been easy, especially when you've got no one to talk to about it other than yourselves. This forced-closeness led to fighting over songwriting credits and musical direction, but it also created a breeding ground for personal experimentation.
From their early days playing in Hamburg, The Beatles used uppers to cope with their long sets and longer nights, but it was LSD that took the band to new heights. John Lennon and George Harrison dove into LSD in the late '60s, and while there's speculation about which songs the band wrote on psychedelics Paul McCartney says that most of their tracks were written sober with "Tomorrow Never Knows" being the lone druggy holdout.
Led Zeppelin kick back on the Starship
In 1973 Led Zeppelin was the biggest band in the world. By this point in time they were far from being real people, they weren't even rock stars, they were gods. Zep's private 747 was dubbed the Starship and it had everything that the band with a stairway to Heaven could want: a king sized waterbed, a drawing room, a fireplace, and an actual bar. The Starship allowed Zeppelin to not only fly in style, but to play more shows while barricading themselves from the rest of the world.
Rock n' roll debauchery
By this point in the band's career, Zeppelin was deep into rock n roll excess. Known as a "flying gin palace" and a "rock n' roll Air Force One," the band could literally do whatever they wanted on their plane without anyone being the wiser. Zeppelin's decadence during this era saw them commit unspeakable acts with groupies while thousands of miles high in the air. The plane underscored the debauchery of the '70s, but it also showed just how cool Led Zeppelin was in their heyday.
The Monkees and Jack Nicholson, a friendship forged in Laurel Canyon
The Monkees were ahead of their time. Sure, they were the pre-fab four, an early boy band put together to cash in on the Beatles craze by recreating A Hard Day's Night on television on a weekly basis, but The Monkees were more than just a creation. They had great songs, and the guys in the band could actually play their instruments.
Their friendship with Jack Nicholson came about through the Laurel Canyon scene of the 1960s when musicians and artists of all stripes just hung out and vibed. In 1968, Nicholson was one of the people who saw the potential in just how weird The Monkees could be and helped them go from a goofy prime time act to serious avant-garde film stars.
Head didn't work out the way The Monkees thought
Okay so maybe they didn't become stars with Head, the film that Nicholson co-wrote and co-produced with The Monkees in 1968, but the film didn't just help break the band out of their cookie cutter mold, it gave them a kind of depth that they didn't have before. With Head, the band showed themselves to be aware of their legacy and how they were viewed by their fans. At the time the film was seen as the death nail in their career, but it's aged incredibly well and it's worth a watch if you've never seen it.
KISS acting normal in 1974
When this photo was taken in 1974, the world had no idea what they were in for. KISS released their debut album in 1974, and in the first year of their existence they were nothing more than a rock n roll oddity. The band may have had its kabuki themed on-stage spectacle, but offstage and outside of photo shoots the band was anything but the demonic, ladykillers that they claimed to be.
KISS meet the phantom of Central Park
Today, we know Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, and Peter Kriss as a rolling foursome of debauchery. Even though most of their fans were sci-fi loving teenage boys, they still had groupies filling up their hotel room, and while Kriss and Frehley were famously drinking and doing whatever drug made its way backstage, Simmons and Stanley were as close to straight edge as you could get while still being considered rock stars. It's fascinating to see just how cool the band looks in black and white and color.
Jimi Hendrix waiting to go on stage in 1967
With the "feedback-soaked" howl of his Stratocaster, Jimi Hendrix came onto the scene in the late '60s not as one of many psychedelic blues guitarists, but as a legitimate force of nature. It was at the Monterey Pop Festival where he gave the most important performance of his career, bringing the Jimi Hendrix Experience to the United States for the first time, and soundtracking the summer of love.
America wasn't ready for Jimi Hendrix
When Hendrix made his American debut in 1967, no one knew what to expect. He was a mysterious guitar genius who never did his best to hold onto his mystique. Even though he was from Washington state, Hendrix spent most of the last yers of his life in England, and rather than party with groupies, most stories about Hendrix discuss his love for music (and drugs) for hours on end. It wasn't long after this photo was taken that Hendrix became a star, and sadly he passed away just a little after that.
Jim Morrison and Pamela Courson photographed by Edmund Teske in 1969
In 1969, Jim Morrison was at odds with everyone in his life. He was becoming increasingly erratic, turning Doors concerts into pure chaos as he let his band play as he chanted and howled, inspired by whatever substances he was on at the time (it depended on the day).
No longer simply famous as a kind of rock guru, Morrison was now known more for his onstage antics than anything else. Fans no longer came to a Doors concert to see one of the greatest psychedelic blues bands of the 60s, they came to see a train wreck.
The shaman of rock
The same year that this photo was taken, Morrison allegedly exposed himself to an audience at a Miami concert. The supposed exposure sent the band into a downward spiral towards their eventual demise, although it's unclear if the moment in question actually happened. Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek, who was playing while Morrison flailed onstage, claims that Morrison was simply trying to challenge the audience, and that whatever people saw was a mass hallucination. He told NPR:
They hallucinated. I swear, the guy never did it. He never whipped it out. It was one of those mass hallucinations. I don't want to say the vision of Lourdes, because only Bernadette saw that, but it was one of those religious hallucinations, except it was Dionysus bringing forth, calling forth snakes.
Freddie Mercury on a train through Japan in 1982
There's something about Freddie Mercury, whether he's photographed in black and white or vivid color, he feels like he's in 3D and technicolor. Most of the bands that Queen came up with in the 1970s weren't able to make the transition to the '80s. Queen was one of the few bands to hit the new decade like they knew what the trends would be, but Brian May says that it was dumb luck. He explained:
Everyone thought we had this huge monster plan, the Queen Machine, but it’s an illusion.
Groove is in the heart (and in Queen)
In the early '80s, Queen was moving out of the prog tinged stadium rock music of their early career and into a groove based sound that was a hit with fans of disco and R&B. While many other bands couldn't do something like, something so expansive, Queen found themselves in the lucky position of finding new fans who were interested in what was to come, not what had come before. Brian May said:
Anything with a bit of groove sounded good. We became obsessed with leaving space in our music and making songs that would sound great in the Sugar Shack.
Bob Dylan and George Harrison at Columbia Studios B in New York, 1970
source: george harrison archives
It's strange to think of two megastars like Bob Dylan and George Harrison being friends, but these two musical geniuses gravitated to one another in a way that so few superstars did. Rather than carouse with groupies or get stoned (which they were probably doing, it was the '60s after all) they mostly goofed off together, which is clear from this photo.
Two out of five Traveling Willburies
source: george harrison archives
In 1968, Harrison and Dylan wrote what would become "I'd Have You Anytime" a song collaboration that inspired Harrison to write a song about Dylan called "Behind That locked Door." Harrison said of sitting down with Dylan and a couple of guitars:
He seemed a little nervous and I felt a little uncomfortable. Anyway, on the third day we got the guitars out and loosened up and I was saying to him, ‘write some words.’
Both songs made their way onto All Things Must Pass, but it wasn't long before the artists would meet again. The two kept their friendship until Harrison's death in 2001.
Johnny Cash, 1961
Outlaw country star Johnny Cash was a tangle of contradictions. A deeply religious man, Cash was addicted to pills and booze for most of his life, with drugs and alcohol ruining his first marriage and nearly killing him again and again. Cash held things together for the press, but in 1965 he caused a forest fire in the Los Padres National Forest in California when a stoned Cash fell asleep after starting a fire to stay warm.
Ring of fire
Even though Johnny Cash had his ups and downs both personally and in his career, his fans never went away. Even after he passed, Cash held onto a mystique that's hard to quantify. He may have been a country star, but he carried himself like a rocker long before bands like Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones fell into '70s debauchery. It's hard to think about him living a normal life, but even though he was rock star who howled at the moon with the best of them, he managed to be a family man as well. It's one of the many contradictions of this 20th century phenomenon.
