Rock Stars With Unusual Side Hustles

It's often been said that actors secretly want to be rock stars, and that rock stars secretly want to be actors. There is, in fact, a lot of evidence to back that up. Actors such as Kevin Costner, Billy Bob Thornton, Russell Crowe, and others have their own bands, while rock icons including Mick Jagger, David Bowie, and Tina Turner have all appeared on the silver screen. Meanwhile, there are numerous rappers who have become better known for their acting work than their music, a lengthy list that including Snoop Dogg, LL Cool J, and both Ices, Cube and T. 

Acting, of course, isn't the only vocational sideline that rockers have established for themselves over the years. From the legendary rock guitarist who moonlights as an astrophysicist to the Fab Four member who once designed his own line of furniture, these non-music gigs have really run the gamut. For proof, here's a rundown of rock stars with unusual side hustles.

It's no secret that former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr pursued a parallel career as an actor, nabbing starring roles in such films as "The Magic Christian" and the wacky 1981 comedy "Caveman." However, Starr had another sideline during the 1970s, partnering with furniture designer Robin Cruikshank to produce a line of stainless steel furniture. The collaboration began when Starr hired Cruikshank in 1969 to take on, among other tasks, designing a stainless steel fireplace for his home. As Starr offered his ideas for various home furnishings, the two decided to form their own company, ROR International, and share the resulting designs with the world. 

Back in 1971, Starr appeared on BBC's "Blue Peter" television show to shill his wares, including a chrome-plated table bookended by the two radiators taken from Rolls Royce automobiles. That was a prototype, the only one in existence at the time. "The radiators are very had to come by," Starr said, explaining that the company currently had about 40 different items at that time, but those offerings were expanding. Asked about his future plans for the enterprise, Starr quipped, "Well, we'll carry on until we dry off." 

ROR proved to be an impressively successful venture, landing several high-profile clients that included the Prime Minister of Britain, Sir Edward Heath, actor Christopher Plummer, and several of Starr's fellow musicians, including Harry Nielsen, Rod Stewart, David Bowie, and Elton John. The company ceased its operations in 1986.

Brian May is renowned for his unique guitar sound on such Queen classics as "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Killer Queen," but he's also carved out a niche in a vocation that's light years away from rock stardom: astrophysics. In 2007, after the death of tragedy-prone Queen front man Freddie Mercury led the band to take a lengthy hiatus, May went on to complete a PhD in astrophysics from London's Imperial College, three decades after starting. "When I was about to finish my thesis, it was just the beginnings of Queen and I had to make that choice," May told Time. Resuming his studies, he explained, was an intensive process. "I put everything, and I mean everything, on hold for a year," he recalled. "And they put me in a little office in Imperial College and I got down to it."

May's thesis focused on "zodiac dust" that collects throughout the solar system, a specialization that led him to become a key team member in a NASA mission. May created stereoscopic images for a NASA mission that allowed a spacecraft to safely land on an asteroid and obtain a rock sample in 2020. The sample finally made its way to Earth in 2023. 

"This box when it is opened of material from the surface of Bennu can tell us untold secret of the origins of the universe, the origins or our planet and the origins of life itself," May said of the sample's arrival in a statement on his website.

Dusty Hill played bass with Texas-based rock-blue trio ZZ Top since the band's founding until his death at age 72 in 2021. While the band's fans remember him for his powerful bass lines, they might not know that there was a period during the 1970s when Hill also held down a very surprising job: working as a baggage handler at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. 

As Hill explained, ZZ Top was on a forced hiatus after the band's 1977 tour while drummer Frank Beard dealt with issues surrounding substance misuse. "For me, success is a great thing ... it can also really screw with you. You don't know if people around you treat you well or badly according to who they think you are or who you really are. I just wanted to feel normal. So I got me a job at the airport," Hill once recalled (via Classic Rock). "I got me a work shirt that said 'Joe' on it, cut my hair and I worked there for a couple of months."

Looking back at that period, Hill reminisced about heading out on Friday nights to a local bar and celebrating the arrival of the weekend with his fellow working stiffs, who had no idea that their buddy was actually a rock star. "I was really happy," he said. "And everybody knew me as Joe. It gave me a sense of being grounded, I guess."

David Lee Roth parted ways with Van Halen in 1985, but the founding member of Van Halen and once-full-time lead singer of the band later returned to the fold for some reunion tours. Yet "flamboyant rock star" isn't the only item that Roth can list on his résumé; in 2007, he went to work as an EMT in the Bronx.

As he explained during a 2020 interview with "CBS Sunday Morning," it proved to be a life-changing experience for him. "I wasn't someone until I put on that 5.11 uniform and went on my first call," he recalled. "I'm not gonna kid you — I knew I was in for the humbling experience." He reiterated that statement while appearing on "The Joe Rogan Experience," stating, "Until I became an EMT and put on that uniform, I wasn't somebody," he said, jokingly adding, "Somebody clean the f***ing truck up!" Getting serious, he recalled all the people he met as an EMT, whether it was dealing with a domestic dispute or helping a homeless person in distress. "And now every one of those folks is in my voice when I sing," he mused.

In addition to Lenny Kravitz's surprising acting career and producing epic rockers such as "Let Love Rule," he also has an eye for interior decor, and so much so that he does it as a sideline. He heads up his own firm, Kravitz Design, which launched in 2003 and has flourished since then; in 2023, Kravitz Design was included in Architectural Digest's annual AD100 for his contributions to the world of design.

Not only has Kravitz designed some high-profile spaces — including the $38-million Stanley House in LA and the set for Queen Latifah's talk show — he also collaborated on a line of high-end wallpaper with Flavor Paper, which is on display in his former home in New Orleans' French Quarter and his luxurious hideaway in the jungles of Brazil.

In 2021, Kravitz collaborated with retailer CB2 on an exclusive line of home furnishings. "Home should be a place where you feel like yourself, and your spirit is comfortable," Kravitz said in a statement (via Elle Decor). "The new collection is based on a mélange of places, things, and people that I have encountered through my travels, which is evident in the design elements of the new pieces."

Rocker Ronnie Wood, formerly guitarist for The Faces and now with legendary rock band The Rolling Stones, has long been recognized for his side hustle as an artist. His paintings have been featured in exhibits throughout the world, and he even sells prints and originals on his website. Speaking with The Sunday Times, Wood explained that his artistic muse is fueled by many influences. "There are so many different styles," he said. "Being a Gemini, my appetite for inspiration is so widespread. It's a bit like my music, I go from Mozart to [Bob] Marley, you know what I mean?" 

According to Wood, his bandmates have been supportive of his pursuits with a paintbrush. "Mick hasn't seen a lot of them live but the ones he has seen he's really liked, and he knows I'm prolific," he added.

On the other hand, the general consensus with art critics is that Wood should focus on playing "Paint it Black" and ditch the actual painting. "Yikes," Artlyst founder Paul Carter Robinson told The Guardian after seeing Wood's Stones-infused take on Pablo Picasso's iconic "Guernica." "Perhaps Mr Wood should stick to making music and not cross disciplines." Oliver Basciano, editor-at-large for ArtReview, was likewise unimpressed with that particular painting. "He seems to have taken one of the greatest and most moving works of art, a desolate cry against war, and used it as the basis for terrible fan art to, er, himself," Basciano said. 

Billy Corgan may be best known as front man of The Smashing Pumpkins, but when he's not onstage or in a recording studio, he can probably be found in a wrestling ring — or at least near one. A huge fan of professional wrestling, in 2011 he co-founded his own independent wrestling league, Resistance Pro. In 2015, he joined TNA Wrestling as a senior producer, helping to shape the storylines. 

Corgan took his obsession with wrestling even further in 2017, when he purchased the National Wrestling Alliance. As he told the New York Post, he intended to exert the same creative control over the NWA that he had with the Pumpkins. "There's an old saying — live by the sword, die by the sword — I've been in the public life for 30 years," he said. "I've had everybody and their mother tell me how to make my music. I've flown against the grain for 30 years. It's worked out fine. I'm going to book the NWA the way I want to book it. That's it."

In 2024, Corgan announced he was aiming to add "reality TV star" to his already crowded résumé, thanks to an upcoming unscripted TV series focusing on his wrestling pursuits. "Rebuilding the historic NWA brand has been both an honor and challenge, and this show opens the doors wide so to speak," he said in a statement (via Rolling Stone) about the show, titled "Billy Corgan's Adventures in Carnyland." 

Front man of Tool since the band's formation in 1990, Maynard James Keenan is renowned for more than just his vocal abilities and stage presence. He's also a vintner, whose Arizona-based Merkin Vineyards produces wine under the Caduceus label. Keenan is no dilettante celebrity who simply slaps their name on a product, but is actively involved in actually producing the wine.

So how does one transition from rock star to winemaking? For Keenan, a single Arizona-produced wine, 1990-vintage Soldera Reserva, inspired him to take a closer look at the possibilities all around him. "But the terrain around my home was what reeled me in," he explained in an interview with Food and Wine Aesthetics. "Ancient limestone beds, volcanic soils, elevation, rocky soils were what suggested vines might do well here. And as it turns out there was a history of wine growing here prior to prohibition."

According to Keenan, the same principles that go into making music also apply to making wine. "Possibilities. Flexibilities. Creating something from nothing. Thinking outside the box," he recounted. In fact, there's an argument to be made that his true personality is more accurately reflected in his wine than in his music. "I've always considered myself a fish out of water in the so called Metal Music scene," Keenan said. "I've always been more into The Byrds, Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits. I think that shows in my wines. My wines are far more Pink Floyd than they are Metallica."

David Lovering has been the drummer for The Pixies since the alt-rockers first began playing Boston dive bars in the late 1980s. He also has an unlikely parallel career as a stage magician. When the group disbanded, he performed his magic act as an opener for Pixies front man Frank Black (aka Black Francis) during his solo tour. When The Pixies reunited in 2004, he opened for them as well. "If you had told me years ago before I became one that I'd be a magician, I would have rolled on the floor laughing," Lovering — who's a member of Los Angeles' famed Magic Castle — told Seven Days.

As Lovering recalled, it all began after The Pixies split up, when he accompanied a musician friend to a magic conference. "I didn't think much of it going in, but I saw a magic trick that just blew me away, and I was hooked. I couldn't explain it," he said. "So I bought every book and video. I joined the magic council, took classes. I slept on a deck of cards. Then I started doing shows at parties and developed a stage show."

While Lovering remains fascinated by magic, he also has no intention of quitting his day job as a rock star to pursue a career in illusions. "You've heard the phrase 'the starving musician,' which is true," he added. "Well, I can write the phrase, 'the dying magician.' It's hard to make a good living at it."

He's been dubbed the "voice of a generation," writer of countless classic songs that have reverberated throughout pop culture during a career that's spanned from the early 1960s to the present. Yet Bob Dylan has some other talents beyond music and poetry. Not only is he an accomplished painter, he's also a metal worker who creates artistic wrought-iron gates.

As David Aaron Greenberg wrote in Whitehot Magazine, he first learned of Dylan's metal work in the early 1990s, when famed Beat poet Alan Ginsberg was telling him about a recent trip to Dylan's Malibu home. When Greenberg asked Ginsberg if Dylan started his day with a guitar, writing songs, Ginsberg replied, "No, he spends his mornings welding." According to Greenberg, Dylan first began creating iron sculptures in the early '90s, welding together found objects. He then began creating things like wrought-iron staircases and gates for use at his home, and eventually began giving his work to others. 

His work has also been displayed publicly. In 2013, an assortment of Dylan's gates was displayed in an exhibition at London's Halcyon Dylan's Gallery. "I didn't know he was sculpting things," the gallery's president, Paul Green, told Canada's Globe and Mail. "But he had been making these gates for himself and for friends." In addition, one of Dylan's gates, dubbed "Portal," is on permanent display at the MGM National Harbor in Maryland, framing the entrance to a casino.

Joey Kramer has been behind the drum kit for Aerosmith since the legendary Boston rock band began. In 2013, Kramer launched his own line of organic coffee, Rockin' and Roastin'. "I've always been a coffee nut, a coffee fanatic. I love coffee, I always have, I always will, and this is something that I've wanted to pursue for quite a long time, but just haven't had the time or the energy to do it," he told The Enterprise of his new venture. He followed that two years later by opening up his own java joint — Joey Kramer Rockin' & Roastin' Café — in North Attleborough, Massachusetts.

Kramer ran the business for more than a decade until announcing in late 2024 that he was shutting it down. In a message appearing on his company's website (via Billboard), he explained the key factors that underpinned his decision to cease operations, stating: "After the years of working to recover from the devastation to our business from the impact of Covid, significant increases in the cost of doing business and the tragic, painful loss of my wife, Linda, there just is no realistic alternative but to close our proverbial doors."