04/25/24
April 01, 2010
Rock Jocks: 20 People Who Made the Cut in Both Music and Sports: "Joe Frazier could pack a punch as a boxer, but he was hitless as a singer. Deion Sanders was great at baseball and football, but he dropped the ball as a hip-hop act -- and let's never speak of the rapping of basketball's Shaquille O'Neal and soccer's Andy Cole. In contrast, these 20 people have had notable forays in music and athletics, proving that as hard as it is to make it in one, it's even harder to succeed in both."
posted by mr_crash_davis to culture at 11:26 PM - 7 comments
Great link. I had no idea of the sports links of some of those musicians. Julio Iglesias was a Real Madrid goalkeeper?
posted by rcade at 11:32 AM on April 02, 2010
Also - I think Brian Johnson (AC/DC) drives a race car. So does one of the ZZ Top guys.
I saw Scott Radinsky's band Ten Foot Pole when I was in high school. Skater punk. They were quite good.
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 11:40 AM on April 02, 2010
A buddy of mine played drums in Radinsky's other punk band, Scared Straight.
posted by NoMich at 12:22 PM on April 02, 2010
I have to back to the list to check but I think they forgot Alice Cooper. That guy can play some pretty serious golf.
Also, Chris Chaney from Alanis Morrisette's band and Jane's Addiction is a tough golfer.
posted by beaverboard at 03:00 PM on April 02, 2010
Robert Smith of The Cure was also a decent footballer. He was once asked to write the theme song for England's 1990 World Cup campaign, but it was rejected for being 'too gloomy'.
A related story:
When I played football for my university, the lower grades were populated by the odd senior academic. Over a post match beer, one of them (let's call him Don) told me that he studied with Mick Jagger at the LSE in the early 1960s. One of Don's student activities was organising the LSE Third XI football team, in which Mick was a pretty handy player. The following year, Mick hadn't re-enrolled so Don rang him up and asked why. Mick said he had this band out at Richmond, and thought they could make it big. Don told me that he spent the next half an hour on the phone trying to convince Mick Jagger to give up his music career, come back to LSE and play for the Thirds.
posted by owlhouse at 08:19 PM on April 02, 2010
Yeah, but the thing to remember is that some of those thirds made it onto the seconds that season. I'm not saying Mick definitely would have, I'm just saying, you know, there was a chance and he turned it down. And for what?
Related: Golf Digest's list of top 100 golfing musicians by handicap. (beaverboard: Alice is decent, plays off 5, but he's got nothing on Kenny G or Rudy Gatlin)
Slightly related: Golf Digest's list of top 100 celebrity golfers from TV and film.
posted by JJ at 05:20 AM on April 03, 2010
Doug Flutie is a capable drummer and fronts a solid band that works fairly regularly.
Here's Iron Maiden's Steve Harris on the small pitch.