Rock stars have thrown piles of money away on all sorts of weird things, including tanks, hovercraft, and lion cubs. But you'll never guess which one spent a fortune on his model train set.
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00:00Rock stars have thrown piles of money away on all sorts of weird things, including tanks,
00:05hovercraft, and lion cubs, but you'll never guess which one spent a fortune on his model
00:09train set.
00:10A 2001 jam session between legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen and rock band Limp Bizkit
00:16gave the Van Halen founder an excuse to utilize one of his favorite toys, a small tank.
00:21In his book, Eruption in the Canyon, 212 Days and Nights with the Genius of Eddie Van Halen,
00:26Andrew Bennett revealed that Van Halen wasn't impressed with Limp Bizkit's incessant weed
00:31smoking and bolted from the jam, leaving his equipment behind.
00:34When Van Halen's subsequent calls to Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst to return his gear
00:38were ignored, the guitarist escalated the situation.
00:42Eddie once bought an assault vehicle from a military auction.
00:45Eddie drove that assault vehicle through L.A. into Beverly Hills, then parked and left it
00:50running on the front lawn of the house Limp Bizkit was rehearsing in.
00:53When Durst answered the door, Van Halen reportedly held a handgun to his head and ordered the
00:58singer to retrieve his gear.
01:00Eddie Van Halen stood on the front lawn of a residential home in Beverly Hills in broad
01:04daylight, smoking a cigarette while holding a gun on Fred Durst as he went back and forth
01:08from the house to the assault vehicle, lugging amps and guitars.
01:13After his 2009 death, reports emerged that Michael Jackson was close to a half-billion
01:17dollars in debt.
01:19That wasn't surprising given the way he burned through money, including the creation of a
01:22theme park and zoo at his Neverland ranch, and his reported attempt to purchase the remains
01:27of John Merrick, aka the Elephant Man, from a London medical school.
01:32Back in his pop star heyday, Jackson spent $125,000 on a hyperbaric chamber after he
01:37was accidentally set on fire filming a Pepsi commercial.
01:41In 1986, Jackson's manager, Frank DiLeo, confirmed to USA Today that the singer was planning
01:46to sleep in it in order to slow down his body's aging process, even though doctors had advised
01:51against it.
01:52Michael says it is good for his body.
01:54I can't figure him out sometimes.
01:57Jackson later told Oprah it was just a weird rumor, but a decade after his death, the device
02:01was discovered in a shipping container housed within a warehouse.
02:05Elvis Presley spared no expense when furnishing his iconic Memphis estate, Graceland.
02:10Along with Presley's famed Jungle Room, there was a lesser-known room entirely devoted to
02:14his collection of talking mynah birds.
02:17Graceland archivist Angie Marchese told the Express that the mynah birds living in the
02:21bird room would overhear Graceland maids discussing Presley and repeat what they heard.
02:26The funniest story I've ever heard about the mynah birds is that when they would hear that
02:30Elvis wasn't home, they would say,
02:31"'Elvis isn't home right now.
02:33Elvis isn't home right now.'"
02:34But then when Elvis was home, the mynah birds would continue to tell people,
02:38"'Elvis isn't home right now.
02:39Elvis isn't home right now.'"
02:41Even though he was home, which was kind of funny.
02:43These days, there are no longer any mynah birds living at Graceland.
02:47Graceland's bird room is now used as a storeroom for supplies.
02:50When Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash made enough money to purchase a Los Angeles mansion, he
02:55outfitted the place with a unique array of pets.
02:57In his autobiography, Slash wrote,
03:00"...I installed a full-on reptile zoo over there.
03:03Just a gazillion snakes and all kinds of stuff."
03:10In addition to reptiles, Slash also had a pet mountain lion, whom he'd named Curtis.
03:15Pinball machine creator John Borg recalled meeting Curtis when he was about eight months
03:20old, telling Far Out,
03:21"...he was as friendly as your average house cat.
03:24He was much larger than a house cat, a little bigger than a German Shepherd."
03:28When Slash's home was heavily damaged in an earthquake, he decamped to a hotel with Curtis
03:32in tow.
03:33What happened next was like a scene straight out of The Hangover.
03:37Slash wrote,
03:38"...we snuck him into the Four Seasons in his cage and locked him in our bathroom."
03:41But not for long.
03:43As Slash left his room and headed out to dinner, he saw Curtis following him down the hall,
03:47having somehow managed to escape from his cage and open both the bathroom door and the
03:51hotel room door.
03:53Slash wrote,
03:54"...I realized that we had to deal with him immediately, so I called a friend who was
03:57an animal caretaker who picked him up and took him up to Canyon Country, where a friend
04:01of mine had a facility that housed exotic animals."
04:05Slash's bandmate Axl Rose also became infamous in the music business for a strange expense
04:10of a very different sort.
04:12On one occasion, he discovered that his favorite yellow jacket had been accidentally left behind
04:16in England while Guns N' Roses was touring.
04:18With the big show coming up on an entirely different continent, a rock star-level plan
04:22was hatched to get that jacket back.
04:25While discussing his TV series Roadies, rock journalist-turned-movie director Cameron Crow
04:29told Entertainment Weekly,
04:31"...so a roadie was given the job to get on a plane as fast as possible, go to London,
04:36find Axl Rose's yellow jacket, and come back so he could play the show."
04:40Sending a roadie on back-to-back transcontinental flights to retrieve a jacket is so extreme
04:45that the incident has become legendary among the tight-knit roadie community.
04:48Crow said,
04:49"...the best part about that story is not that somebody had to go get a yellow jacket
04:53for Axl Rose, but that it became such lore among other roadies that it became a verb
04:58to yellow jacket."
04:59Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page has long been fascinated with British occultist Alastair
05:04Crowley.
05:05Page collected artifacts once owned by the so-called Wickedest Man in the World, including
05:10his manuscripts and other memorabilia.
05:12The most expensive piece of Crowley's history that Page purchased, however, was Crowley's
05:17house.
05:18"...that sort of love of all things mystical and magical, all things bright and beautiful,
05:23really."
05:24Sitting on the banks of Scotland's Loch Ness, the sinister history of Boleskine House extended
05:29far earlier than Crowley.
05:30According to lore, the home was built upon the site of a church that burned to the ground
05:34while full of worshipers.
05:36Page told Rolling Stone in a 1975 interview,
05:39The bad vibes were already there.
05:41A man was beheaded there, and sometimes you can hear his head rolling down.
05:45Of course, after Crowley, there have been suicides, people carted off to mental hospitals.
05:51Page's efforts to restore the decaying home to its former glory cost him thousands over
05:54the years, until he eventually sold the property in the early 1990s.
05:59Two subsequent fires had left the place a complete ruin by the time a foundation purchased
06:03the home, spending millions more in restoration efforts.
06:08While Rod Stewart is widely known for his love of soccer, he's such an aficionado that
06:12he had his own soccer pitch built in the sprawling back garden of his British country estate.
06:16He's just as passionate about model trains.
06:19In fact, his home in Beverly Hills features a special room housing his massive train set.
06:24Stewart told The Mirror,
06:25"...it can never be moved.
06:26I have 13 trains running at once.
06:29For me, the pleasure has been in the building of it."
06:32"...does it help me sweat off?"
06:33"...it really does.
06:35It's the finest hobby."
06:37Model trains are surprisingly popular in rock star circles.
06:40Neil Young has his own elaborate setup at his Northern California ranch, while Roger
06:44Daltrey, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, and Bruce Springsteen are also model train buffs.
06:49Stewart, however, has taken his love affair with trains to a whole other level, as he
06:54rents out a second hotel room while on tour, which he uses to work on his model trains.
06:59He said,
07:00"...when I'm on the road in hotel rooms, like the Ritz-Carlton in New York, they clear out
07:04a room for me.
07:05All my cases come in, and they set up tables and lamps, and it becomes my workshop."
07:10U2 frontman Bono took a page out of Axl Rose's playbook when he remembered that he'd left
07:14his favorite hat in London, and wanted to wear it during a performance in Modena, Italy,
07:19alongside famed tenor Luciano Pavarotti.
07:22According to The Telegraph, Bono plunked down more than $1,200 for a first-class plane ticket
07:28so that his hat could make it to Modena in time for the show.
07:31Legend has it that the flight crew was so fearful that the hat might become damaged
07:35in transit that it was taken from its first-class seat and placed in the cockpit with the captain,
07:40where it safely sat for the remainder of the flight.
07:43A driver picked it up and delivered it to Bono before the show.
07:46ZZ Top's 1976 worldwide Texas tour was an elaborate production intended to bring Texas
07:52to the rest of the country, as the trio bought an assortment of wildlife from the Lone Star
07:57State on the road with them.
07:59This traveling menagerie included a Texas longhorn steer, a buffalo, a few buzzards,
08:04some rattlesnakes, and a howling wolf that was actually just a German shepherd backed
08:08by a tape recording of an actual wolf.
08:11All that livestock reportedly cost the band a hefty $140,000, but the complications involved
08:17in touring with all those critters were more than just monetary.
08:20That was the case when one of the buzzards got free and began flying above the audience,
08:24resulting in the band halting the show so its trainer could attract its attention and
08:28convince it to swoop down and land on his white hat.
08:31Even worse, however, was the time the buffalo made a break for it.
08:35ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons told the Los Angeles Daily News,
08:38"...the only time it got sticky was when the buffalo made his escape.
08:42One afternoon, we played Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, and I'll never forget seeing
08:47the trainer in a golf cart trying to catch up to the buffalo stampeding and zigzagging
08:51across third base to home plate."
08:54Prior to Keith Moon's tragic death at the age of 32, the drummer for The Hoop was renowned
08:58for his displays of rock star excess, famed for such antics as driving a Rolls-Royce into
09:03a swimming pool and trashing so many hotel rooms that he was permanently banned by Holiday
09:08Inn.
09:09So when people say, Keith, have you ever smashed up a hotel room, I say, yes, well, three in
09:14one fell swoop."
09:16Moon also once purchased a small hovercraft that had been designed to carry a single person.
09:21He would often pilot the vehicle to places where a hovercraft typically wouldn't go,
09:25including the bedroom of houseguest George Lazenby, best known for playing James Bond
09:30in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
09:32Perhaps the most infamous anecdote involving Moon's hovercraft was the time he flooded
09:36his engine and stalled the vehicle on a set of railway tracks while dressed in a Nazi
09:41uniform.
09:42His daughter Mandy told Universal Music,
09:44"...what I mostly remember is going down to the pub on the hovercraft."
09:48That wasn't Moon's only out-there purchase.
09:51He also bought an open-sided milk truck, known in British parlance as a Milkfloat, which
09:55he customized by transforming it into a portable living room, complete with telephone, furniture,
10:01and record player.
10:02Mandy Moon said,
10:03"...the Milkfloat had a couch on it, and it was like a living room.
10:07It was so funny."
10:09Lady Gaga isn't just an internationally famous pop star and Hollywood actor, she's also a
10:13committed believer in the paranormal.
10:16It's been evident in her well-known contention that she's the reincarnated embodiment of
10:20her late aunt Joanne.
10:21She claimed her mother saw a light enter her belly while she was engaged to Gaga's father.
10:26Gaga told Vanity Fair,
10:27"...she believes that Joanne came into the room and sort of okayed her for my dad and
10:31that Joanne transferred her spirit into my mom."
10:34According to a 2010 report from Ireland Online, Gaga's belief in the spirit realm extends
10:39beyond mere reincarnation.
10:41In fact, she is reportedly so terrified of encountering malevolent supernatural entities
10:46that she brings in a hired team of paranormal investigators to scan hotels, and will only
10:50stay in places that have been given the all-clear.
10:53She supposedly shelled out nearly $40,000 on electromagnetic field meters designed to
10:58detect the presence of ghosts.
11:00A source told the outlet,
11:01"...she believes in paranormal activity and won't take any risks when she is on the road.
11:06It's important to her to be safe from spirits."