rock stars who went back work.

Where?

More Chicago musicians:

Janet Bean of Eleventh Dream Day and Freakwater works at a law firm. Tim Kinsella of Joan of Arc and Johnny Herndon of Tortoise have both bartended at the Rainbo Club in Wicker Park. John Navin of the Aluminum Group is a public school teacher; his brother Frank waits tables at the restaurant in the Hancock Building.

I remember Steven working in the music department of John Smith' before they sold up to Starbucks. Alan Rankine helped get Belle and Sebastians career off the ground.

on the pylon website, there's information about all the current occupations of its members.

i almost never hear of musicians / artists in general existing without some sort of dayjob.

Mark Perry (Alternative TV) worked in WH Smiths for a while
Vic Godard (Subway Sect) is a postman
Manic Esso (Lurkers) was last seen working as a drayman
Viv Albertine (Slits) works (vaguely) in television
Topper Headon (Clash) is apparently a taxi driver
Gaye Advert (Adverts) works (vaguely) in personnel / admin
Pauline Murray (Penetration) I believe works in Social Services
Jayne Casey (Big In Japan / Pink Industry / Pink Military) works for Liverpool Council
Howard Devoto (Buzzcocks / Magazine) works / worked for a picture archive library
Paul Jones (drummer with Killing Joke protegees Red Beat) works for High Wycombe council; as, I believe does Howard (also form High Wycombe but no relation afaik) Jones' mime-artist chum Jed Hoile.

If you follow the link in my first post....

dave allen from gang of four and shriekback is in the digital/computer/music/whatever biz in some capacity.

john s. hall from king missile is an entertainment lawyer.

as for M4rk 1bold of Pavement -- hell, he was working as the mersh guy for other bands even when pavement was at the height of their success. i'm not sure he ever went back to work inasmuch as i'm not sure he ever didn't work.

You worked at sonicnet, fcc? Was that what used to be Addicted to Noise?

sonicnet and addicted to noise were two separate companies that merged in the late '90s and continued using both identities; i started not long after the merger and essentially worked for both.

must ... fact-check ... self. for the historical record: sonicnet was on broadway. damn close to bleecker, though.

in the late 1980s or early 1990s, i no longer remember, i visited friends who lived in a squatted flat in brixton. I was introduced to a couple that was temporarily staying in one of my friends rooms. they guy looked like a heroin addict. he was introduced to me as topper headon, the clash drummer. i had no idea of his or the clash's fame and had certainly not heard their music before. topper told me he works as a cab driver. not sure if he still would be as some of their songs were successfully rereleased.

re: mid-level indie bands -- lots of them work temp jobs in between tours. this also explains why bands like that tour a lot: its one of their few sources of income.

That would be Tim Quirk: He went on to become editorial director of Listen.com, now a part of Real.com. Great, great guy. TMJ unfortunately didn't make him much money due to the ol' demon RECOUPMENT.

But as for others: Bobby Sherman became a California EMT; and of course Pete Best made donuts at a bakery after becoming an ex-Beatle.

Does becoming a preacher count as "going back to work"? If so, we can add Vanity, Little Richard, Ma$e, and a ton of others.

That's awesome.

actually, i was talking about sandy smallens. tim was tmj's singer and might have had a desk awfully close to the sonicnet office in san francisco, but never inside it. sandy was the tmj's bassist and his desk was inside the sonicnet office in new york. apparently, being in tmj was an excellent background for getting back to work in the digital music biz! (and tmj, of course, had a song back in the day that celebrated noted getting-back-to-worker hugo burnham of gang of four.) ((and if you spend your time in music tv/video circles, you're likely to run into a third member of too much joy.))

Somebody once told me they had met a lawyer at a business meeting who told them he had been in Looking Glass, if not the lead singer
himself.

And what about the bass player in Huey Lewis's old (and for one album, Elvis Costello's) band Clover, who has been known to play with Lucinda Williams but also got a day job as a chiropractor, Dr. John Ciambotti?

Paging Al Green.

guess those stock options never quite paid off, huh? ;-)

Last I heard (a couple of years ago) he was living somewhere down near (Dover?) and still driving a taxi.

Anton Fier was working as a counterman at a local sandwich shop in downtown Brooklyn until recently.

.. or maybe I've got the wrong bloke (opps)

From that Guardian piece:

When 10,000 Maniacs’ Natalie Merchant grew tired of being a marketable commodity, she quit for the quieter life of a solo artist, and was then duly horrified when her debut album, 1995’s Tigerlily, sold 5m copies, because “then came the treadmill again”.

Kira (Black Flag) - computer programmer

Actually she went into the film/TV business - currently a dialogue editor with two Emmy Awards.

Also, it was mentioned in another thread, but when Jonathan Richman isn't doing music, he makes a steady living building and installing pizza ovens.

Best story I've heard is Philip Glass - from The Guardian:

...Glass supported himself as a New York cabbie and as a plumber, occupations that often led to unusual encounters. “I had gone to install a dishwasher in a loft in SoHo,” he says. “While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to find Robert Hughes, the art critic of Time magazine, staring at me in disbelief. ‘But you’re Philip Glass! What are you doing here?’ It was obvious that I was installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be finished. ‘But you are an artist,’ he protested. I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well and that he should go away and let me finish.”

Forgot, I looked into the Gang of Four after catching their reunion. Turns out Hugo Burnham went into academia to teach art, Jon King became the chief executive of World Television, which produced news reports, webcasts and corporate video for clients from Greenpeace to Nestlé, and for awhile Dave Allen went into advertising and brand marketing, first with a division of Overland Agency and then co-founding the digital strategy firm Fight.

when I read that Guardian piece I did think that his was not an accurate take on Róisín Murphy's recent career:

After singer Róisín Murphy had navigated the end of her pop duo, Moloko, and then attempted to steer an idiosyncratic solo career with a determination Orson Welles might have admired, she moved to Ibiza to focus on two things: motherhood and the Mediterranean. “Sometimes it’s nice to just relax, you know,” she says.

I saw something about how after her solo album tanked, Jemina Pearl from Be Your Own Pet was overseeing open mics and karaoke nights in Nashville.

Forgot, I looked into the Gang of Four after catching their reunion. Turns out Hugo Burnham went into academia to teach art🕸, Jon King became the chief executive of World Television, which produced news reports, webcasts and corporate video for clients from Greenpeace to Nestlé, and for awhile Dave Allen went into advertising and brand marketing, first with a division of Overland Agency and then co-founding the digital strategy firm Fight.

Kira (Black Flag) - computer programmer

Actually she went into the film/TV business - currently a dialogue editor with two Emmy Awards.

Update yr info. Kira won an Oscar for sound editing on Mad Max Fury Road.

When I last checked on him, in the 90s, Arthur Brown was doing this:

In the 1980s, Brown moved to Austin, Texas, where his wife came from, and obtained a master's degree in counselling.[28]...Together with former Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black, he also became a painter and carpenter for some years,[10] and released an album with him, Brown, Black & Blue (1988). In 1992, Brown and fellow counsellor Jim Maxwell founded Healing Songs Therapy, a service that culminated in Brown creating a song for each client about their emotional issues.[30]

Update yr info. Kira won an Oscar for sound editing on Mad Max Fury Road.

Hah, even better! I just pulled everything from the opening paragraph on Wikipedia - I was surprised it's not in there. (It actually is, but buried towards the bottom.)

Bit of a niche interest this, but Michael McGuire, from 80s' conceptualists/ pranksters Sudden Sway, is now Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Surrey.

https://www.surrey.ac.uk/people/michael-mcguire

And if you doubt it's the same guy then about one seconds worth of hearing him talking about cybercrime on YouTube will convince you it's definitely him!

my brother-in-law is in advertising, used to live in portland, and would run into dave allen at things regularly. It took him a few times before he realized it was the guy from GoF and not just some random advertising guy

Xpost I have a home made box off all the "sing song" bits, so "Yes, yes, I did know that actually..."

Inspired by that latest Dandy Warhols thread, I fell into a clickhole and discovered Zia McCabe is/was a realtor.

Nice interview from 2017: https://www.wweek.com/music/2017/12/26/when-zia-mccabe-got-tired-of-touring-with-the-dandy-warhols-she-became-a-licensed-real-estate-agent/