When you're a weird rock star, animals in unusual situations are just par for the course, whether they're hanging out in your recording studio, stuffed for display, or accidentally slaughtered.
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00:00When you're a weird rock star, animals and unusual situations are just par for the course,
00:05whether they're hanging out in your recording studio, stuffed for display, or accidentally
00:08slaughtered.
00:10One of the songs on Jack White's 2018 album Boarding House Reach was based on music that
00:14Al Capone composed by hand while doing time in Alcatraz.
00:17But that weirdness was just par for the course for a guy who became famous for being in a
00:21band with his sister Meg, until it became clear that they weren't siblings, but actually
00:25ex-spouses.
00:26In 2012, a reporter from The New York Times visited an industrial corner of Nashville
00:30where White had purchased a building and turned it into an office, music venue, record store,
00:34and more.
00:35On display were plenty of taxidermied animals, which White loves to collect.
00:39Even appeared on an episode of American Pickers where he purchased a taxidermied elephant
00:43head.
00:44I really do love animals, and I love the majesty of taxidermy.
00:48White's other odd traits include a serious dislike of nurses and an appreciation for
00:51scrapbooks from old insane asylums.
00:55Stephen Morris was a drummer for Joy Division and New Order.
00:57As it turns out, he's also notable for his collection of old tanks and armored vehicles.
01:01He actually takes them out for drives in the English countryside and has pretend battles
01:05with post office vans.
01:06He once tried to convey the draw of this hobby to a reporter from Electronic Beats by explaining,
01:10"...some people like roller coasters.
01:12It's a bit like that.
01:13It's an adrenaline thing, but it's a slow sort of adrenaline thing because they don't
01:16go very fast."
01:17Morris originally really wanted a vintage car, but his wife wasn't a fan of the idea.
01:22When he saw someone selling a tank, however, she was much more on board with that plan
01:25— although it doesn't sound like he recommends it to anyone else.
01:28As he put it,
01:29"...I always wondered what it was like inside one, and now I can tell you it's not very
01:32nice."
01:34Tom DeLonge's obsession with extraterrestrials was pretty evident on Blink-182's third album,
01:38Enema of the State, which includes the track,
01:40"...Aliens Exist."
01:42Since then, his belief in visitors from outer space has taken over his life in a big way.
01:46Not only does he own hundreds of hours of interviews with government workers who allegedly
01:50know about aliens, but he also claims to have had contact with them himself.
01:54As he told Paper Magazine in 2015,
01:56"...my whole body felt like it had static electricity.
01:59It sounded like there were about 20 people there talking, and instantly my mind goes,
02:02okay, they're not here to hurt us, but they're working on something."
02:05"...I think you'll start to hear the pressure building to have congressional hearings on
02:10this."
02:12DeLonge has also claimed that his phone was tapped by the government for years, and that
02:15he has been contacted by scientists who know aliens are real.
02:18DeLonge's efforts did help lead to the declassification of some UFO videos in 2020, and now that more
02:23people are open to the idea of UFOs being alien crafts, he's moved on to trying to prove
02:27that Bigfoot exists.
02:29In addition to his music, Prince was famous for his outrageous fashion, androgynous looks,
02:33and that time he changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol.
02:36But when it came to the enigma that was Prince, those qualities were downright banal.
02:41As an example of further weirdness, while Prince was on tour, he would bring his own
02:44hairdresser and have them rent out a local salon for his personal use.
02:48Windows were also newspapered up to keep his presence a secret, but one time when someone
02:52saw him in Washington, D.C., it almost led to a riot.
02:55This obsessive love from his fans wasn't exactly reciprocated, as Prince often sued or threatened
02:59to sue people who shared images of him or video from his concerts on blogs or social
03:03media.
03:04Prince also owned two doves as pets, and even credited them as singers on one of his albums.
03:09They lived at his iconic Minnesota home-slash-recording studio, Paisley Park.
03:13Perhaps the most unexpected thing Prince had in his recording studio was a swear jar,
03:17a policy that he rigorously enforced.
03:20Alice Cooper is well-known for his wildly theatrical stage persona.
03:23Although offstage, he claims to be rather boring, especially since he stopped drinking.
03:27However, back in the day, he and his band became famous for a tragic incident involving
03:30a chicken being killed during a gig in 1969.
03:34According to legend, the crowd threw the bird onstage.
03:36Cooper tossed it back, but then the crowd proceeded to rip it apart.
03:39I took the chicken and tossed it, thinking, it had feathers, it should fly.
03:44Well, it didn't fly as much as it plummeted.
03:47Subsequent reports added ritualistic elements to the tale and claimed that Cooper himself
03:51had killed the chicken.
03:52Bassist Dennis Dunaway wrote about the incident in his memoir, and according to his telling,
03:56it turned out that the only reason there were chickens around to begin with was because
03:59the band was traveling with two of them.
04:01They were named Larry and Pecker, and they were treated like pets.
04:04The legend that built up around the chicken incident actually worked in the band's favor.
04:08As Dunaway recounted,
04:09It got us off the hook with animal protection organizations, who, after the chicken incident,
04:13showed up at every Alice Cooper gig to prevent our murdering chickens, which we never did.
04:18Late ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill was in showbiz for most of his life, so during a long break
04:22from touring, he once decided that the best way to keep it real would be working a manual
04:26labor job at an airport.
04:27He had to change his look, although this was before he grew out his iconic beard so it
04:31was easier to pull off, and he also had to go by a false name in order to get away with
04:35it.
04:36Even back then, some people still recognized him, but he always denied that he was famous.
04:40He ultimately seemed pretty happy with the results of his experiment.
04:43As he told Ultimate Classic Rock,
04:45I did not want other people to think that I thought I was full of myself, but the main
04:48thing is that I didn't want to start feeling full of myself.
04:50So I did it to ground myself."
04:52Hill was no stranger to unusual jobs before this, as he and future ZZ Top bandmate Frank
04:57Beard were recruited to be part of a group that toured the United States pretending to
05:00be the British band the Zombies.