Offstage, rock stars are just ordinary-ish people.
When the party ends, and the hangover subsides, they still need to pick the kids up from school,
hit the grocery store, and vacuum up.
You might say they're, in many ways, just like us.
So what do rock stars really look like?
In the '90s, Marilyn Manson was painted as something akin to the Antichrist, a man hellbent
on destroying the impressionable youth of America with his insidious industrial beats.
In reality, Manson, aka Brian Warner, was just a guy who loved music and mascara and
wasn't afraid to use both of them to cause a scene.
But over time, Manson has made it a point to reinvent himself, pushing his grotesque
image to the breaking point, while also popping up on some of your favorite TV shows in nearly
unrecognizable roles.
Whether it was his turn as a white supremacist on Sons of Anarchy, or his role as a dweeby
surgeon and barber on Salem, if you didn't know who you were watching going in, there
was little chance you'd recognize him.
His acting isn't so much transformational as it is un-transformational, turning him
back into the mere human who's existed underneath his public persona for so long.
There's a joke halfway through Wayne's World in which Wayne Campbell encounters Alice Cooper
post-performance.
He discovers that this rocker famous for blood and guts is actually a soft-spoken intellectual,
as friendly offstage as he is ferocious on it.
"Actually, it's pronounced Mill-ee-wah-kay, which is Algonquin for 'the good land.'"
"I was not aware of that."
It was a classic bit of comedy, but it also happens to be true.
According to a 1997 Telegraph article, Cooper likes eating chocolate chip cookies and watching
TV before he takes the stage, and he kicks back in an unlikely place.
After a dark episode in a sanatorium while trying to get rid of his drinking habit, he
headed out to the links.
As he put it,
"Some people turn to God, I turned to golf."
Cooper's even written a book about the journey called Golf Monster: My 12 Steps to Becoming
a Golf Addict.
And with one of rock and roll's greatest handicaps, he's no tourist.
So the next time you see someone out on the fairway and feel like you've seen him before
with a snake wrapped around his neck, belt out a few bars from "School's Out" and see
what happens.
While most rock stars do, in fact, do it all for the nookie, guitarist Wes Borland and
his band Limp Bizkit are the only ones willing to just admit it.
Merging rap, rock, and the regret that a majority of 30-somethings feel for buying their albums,
Limp Bizkit were one of the biggest bands of the late '90s and early aughts, and Borland
was a big reason why.
No matter your thoughts on the lasting power of lyrics like "so you can take that cookie
and stick it up your yeah," there's no doubt that Borland was an ace on the ax.
And he's been shredding while buried under a mountain of makeup, masks, and elaborate
costumes that make him unrecognizable.
That's why, offstage, it's jarring to see that he looks like a typical guy, as comfortable
sporting a polo shirt as a monster mask.
Before his untimely death in 2014, David Brockie was the lead singer of Gwar, the horror-infused
heavy metal band as famous for their costumes as they are for their music.
But some fans may have never heard the name "David Brockie."
That's because for 30 years he performed as Oderus Urungus, the band's intergalactic barbarian
front man, complete with a head-to-toe alien outfit that transformed him into a hellion
from outer space.
The chances of Brockie, or any of his bandmates for that matter, being recognized offstage
are in the slim-to-none category, unless you were a die-hard fan or willing to do a Google
deep dive.
Since his passing in 2014, the devious duties of belting out Gwar hits like "Womb with a
View" and "Lust in Space" have fallen to Michael Bishop, aka The Berserker Blothar.
Daft Punk are a Grammy-winning electronic duo from Paris who are as famous for their
oversized helmets as they are for their hard-hitting beats.
Tracking down shots of the boys behind the helmets can feel like a fool's errand.
Despite reaching the pinnacle of the music industry, few pictures actually exist of them
without their masks.
Having spent the last 25 years performing in various disguises, few people, even their
fans, know what they look like.
That's why the few on-camera moments we have of them without the disguise, like when Thomas
Bangalter was at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, feel like someone finally snapped a picture
of Bigfoot.
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