Before They Were Rock Stars

The average rock star did not start out shredding a guitar at age five. Their first check didn’t come from royalties or ticket sales. Furthermore, some jobs held by a few famous artists called for getting their hands pretty dirty. For example, Ozzy Osbourne worked in a slaughterhouse. Sting held a string of jobs working as a bus conductor, tax officer, and a teacher. The following artists kept food on the table with occupations that could serve as reminders of humble beginnings.

Mick Jagger: Psychiatric Hospital Porter

While living with Brian Jones and Keith Richards in the early 1960s, the “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” singer had dreams of becoming a politician or a journalist and enrolled in the London School of Economics. During this time, Jagger earned four pounds and ten shillings a week working at the Bexley Psychiatric Hospital as a porter.

The gig did not last long due to Jagger and the Rolling Stones taking the world by storm. Ironically, in the 1970s, Jagger’s ex-girlfriend Marianne Faithfull would spend time in rehab at the same hospital.

Rod Stewart: Cemetery Worker

Despite rumors of having worked as a gravedigger, Stewart does own up to working a couple of Saturdays at England’s Highgate Cemetery, earning a few quid by measuring out plots and marking them off with string. After Stewart dropped out of school at age fifteen, he worked as a screen printer printing wallpaper.

In his 2012 autobiography, the “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” singer wrote: “You learn a lot about yourself, doing physical work. And what I learned about myself was that I didn’t like doing physical work.”

Jack White: Upholsterer

The White Stripes co-founder landed an early job in upholstery when he was 15 years old; he formed a band called The Upholsterers. At age 21, White opened his own shop, Third Man Upholstery, with the slogan: Your Furniture is Not Dead. Carrying the sentiment over into music, his record label is called Third Man Records, with the slogan “your turntable’s not dead.”

White spoke about hiding messages in the furniture in a 2011 interview with NPR, saying, “I started to write a little bit about, well, this is where I got this chair and the person who hired me to do it — a little bit of that. [And] maybe on the other side, underneath, I’d hide a poem or something like that. The zenith of that [was when] Brian and I had a band called The Upholsterers [and] for the 25th anniversary of his shop, we made a hundred pieces of vinyl. We made a record we stuffed into furniture that you could only get if you ripped the furniture open.”

Other early careers include David Bowie, who worked as a delivery boy for a butcher when he was 13 in order to pay for a saxophone (he wanted to play in Little Richard’s band. Jon Bon Jovi earned a living creating Christmas decorations. Ironically, his first professional recording (as John Bongiovi) was a song called “R2-D2 We Wish You a Merry Christmas” on Christmas in the Stars: The Star Wars Christmas Album.