Home Sweet Homes
When rock musicians aren’t living in tour buses, trashing hotel rooms or riding proverbial steel horses from gig to gig, most live in proper homes — and some of those homes are quite impressive. In the following slides we feature the homes of hard rockers, young and old. Some of the residences were just completed this year, while another one was built using materials from the 18th century.
We have houses from two rockers who go by single names and the homes of two members of one massively influential band, one of those belonging to a performer who claimed to originate the traditional heavy-metal devil-horns hand gesture, known as “throwing the goat.”
Many of these houses have rooms specially designed for making and recording music, while others have features that are less directly about music making and more about catering to the rock-and-roll lifestyle. They’re almost all on the real-estate market at prices that range from around $2 million to a duplex penthouse with an astounding rumored price tag of $45 million.
Click ahead to see 10 homes of hard rockers, including numerous suggestions from Realtor.com, starting with the rock legend who calls himself the Prince of Darkness.
By Colleen KanePosted 13 October 2011
Ozzy Osbourne
Location: Hidden Hills, California
Price: $12,999,000
Beds / Baths: 6 / 10
Square Footage: 11,000
Ozzy’s mansion in the celebrity-packed gated community of Hidden Hills was featured in Architectural Digest and has interior decoration by celebrated designer Martyn Lawrence-Bullard. The home has Travertine flooring (limestone formed by mineral springs), a guest apartment and a formal dining room where the buyers can feast on whatever winged beasts they fancy, whether it’s turkey, chicken, dove or bat. An outdoor terrace area features a pool and spa, barbecue island, commode and outdoor shower. The terrace is well-suited for viewing the 2.5-acre grounds, the city and the mountains, or simply for passing an afternoon of snorting a line of ants.
The Osbournes also have a beach house on the market just about 15 miles away in Malibu. Neither of these residences appear to have a home-recording studio but the couple’s former home, familiar to viewers of their reality TV series, did have one.
Ronnie James Dio
Location: Encino, California
Price: $3,333,000
Beds / Baths: 5 / 5
Square Footage: 5,057
This English-style mansion was the home of the diminutive singer with the big voice who temporarily replaced Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath, and who was also famous for fronting Rainbow, Dio and other bands.
The home went on the market a few months after Dio’s death in 2010, but it didn’t sell and was taken off the market this spring. It wasn’t for lack of cool features: The house, which was built in 1981, has 200-year-old wood flooring imported from France, stained glass windows imported from a 1790 English cathedral, a custom music studio and even a 1820 pub bar imported from Essex, England.
Jon Bon Jovi
Location: New York, New York
Price: approx. $45,000,000
Beds / Baths: 6 / 6.5
Square Footage: 7,400
The New York Post recently reported that Jon Bon Jovi is quietly shopping around his duplex penthouse condo (post- multimillion-dollar renovation), which he bought for $24 million in 2007. It’s located in the SoHo district’s swank New Museum building (also the former home of Bernie Madoff’s late son Mark).
Bon Jovi is shopping this property so quietly, in fact, that no photos are widely available, but do take a look at its features in this floor plan first posted by The Real Estalker, including the massive terrace space amounting to the size of several entire New York apartments. Don’t miss “Kitchen 1” and “Kitchen 2.” In New York City real estate, seeing two kitchens in one apartment is equivalent to spotting a unicorn.
Although he owns real estate in New York, Bon Jovi continues to keep it real in New Jersey, still residing in his compound in Middletown.
Travis Barker
Location: Los Angeles
Price: $8,999,999
Beds / Baths: 8 / 11
Square Footage: 12,184
This Mediterranean mansion is the former home of Travis Barker, the drummer of the California rock band Blink-182, as well as +44 and other projects. After Barker, it changed hands to become the home of Canadian musicians Deryck Whibley, the frontman of Sum 41, and his now ex-wife, singer Avril Lavigne. Despite all this musical past, the house is only eight years old.
The home features hardwood floors, Venetian plaster, a gourmet kitchen and wood-framed doors and windows. On the lower level is a wine cellar and tasking room, a gym, a 10-car garage and staff quarters. Outside you’ll find a covered living room, pool, spa and kitchen, as well as canyon views.
Slash
Location: Beverly Hills, California
Price: $9,500,000
Beds / Baths: 7 / 8
Square Footage: 10,971
The Mediterranean Beverly Hills mansion that the former Guns ’n Roses guitar god shares with his wife Perla Hudson is decorated in a rock-appropriate palette of dark woods, with upholstery and wallpaper in black and jewel tones.
The Real Estalker blog details some of Slash's and Perla’s rather frequent real estate comings and goings. As for this house, however, the Velvet Revolver guitarist’s digs feature a game room with poker table and arcade games, a hidden flat-screen TV in the master bedroom that rises from a mirrored cabinet, and a kitchen with two fridges, four ovens, and four dishwashers.
Flea
Location: Malibu, California
Price: $3,150,000
Beds / Baths: 3 / 4
Square Footage: 3,066
The hyper bassist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers recently sold this stunning modern home, which was rebuilt in 2011 after Flea’s former home burned in 2007’s Malibu, Calif., fires.
It features high ceilings, cement floors, outdoor fireplaces and ocean and water views from inside and out, as well as views of Sycamore Meadows.
Brandon Boyd
Location: Venice, California
Price: $3,495,000
Beds / Baths: 3 / 3
Square Footage: 3,500
This converted space was built in 1905 and was formerly a hotel until around the 1940s. It is now the industrial-chic residence of Incubus singer Brandon Boyd. The Curbed blog reports he bought the home from “Prime Suspect” actress Maria Bello.
The house has many luxe details including exposed brick, 12-foot-high pressed-tin ceilings, concrete and cork floors, a chef’s kitchen, a 640-square-foot soundproofed music studio/guest quarters with kitchenette, and a rooftop deck that’s plumbed for a spa, which has with what the real estate listing coyly terms “peek-a-boo ocean views.”
Cliff Williams
Location: Savannah, Georgia
Price: $1,950,000
Beds / Baths: 4 / 4
Square Footage: 4,008
Cliff Williams, the bassist and backing vocalist for ACDC, bought this 1872 townhouse in Savannah’s historic district so he could visit his son while he attended college nearby. Williams’ son must have graduated and moved on because the singer put the property on the market last year. He also sold a house in Fort Myers, Fla., for $1.08 million in June.
The property came with a private side yard with English-style garden hedge accents. Williams also added a mini-British pub as well as a two-bedroom carriage house.
Rick Rubin
Location: Malibu, California
Price: $2,000,000
Beds / Baths: 4 / 3
Square Footage: 4,449
Rick Rubin is much better known for his producer credits and co-founding Def Jam and American Recordings than his early work as a punk musician. The music world would be much poorer without his production skills on albums by Slayer, Metallica, Slipknot, the Mars Volta, Danzig, the Cult, Rage Against the Machine, and System of a Down, not to mention Johnny Cash’s final six “American Recordings” albums.
Rubin bought the Shangri-La recording studio and ranch property in August, and the property adds even more cultural history to his extensive resume. The home was formerly owned by actress Margo Albert, and later became the home of TV’s Mister Ed (which was taped on the property). Afterward, music legend Bob Dylan bought it and brought numerous other musicians into the mix. Read more of its history on the Shangri-La website.
Joel Madden
Location: Glendale, California
Price: $5,950/ month
Beds / Baths: 4 / 4
Square Footage: 4,800
The lead singer of Good Charlotte’s 1930s remodeled Spanish Colonial house, once featured on MTV Cribs, was recently up for rent.
The house came fully furnished, and has vaulted ceilings and two enormous walk-in closets. It has a big entrance patio and a large covered lanai out back.