I’ve often found it interesting to hear a little about the off-stage lives of my favorite musicians and although most rockers seem to be easily stereotyped as hard drinking party animals, quite often, just the opposite is true.

A little bit about how the Rolling Stones appear and behave off-stage is revealed in an article in The Gazette out of Canada.

Apparently some security guard at the venue where the Stones were performing was unable to believe that the short, skinny, old dudes that were standing a short distance from him were, indeed, the Rolling Stones in the flesh.

That security guard’s experience mirrors my limited personal experience with a few personalities I have met after watching them perform on the stage.

Back in the 1970’s and early 1980’s there was a local band in the Boston area called Image. They were one of the best (if not the best) local bands working in the area at the time. And since myself and the people I traveled with to see the band were all involved in music, we were not driving around New England to see these guys just because these guys played cover tunes that we liked – it was because they played cover tunes we liked and they played them superbly. They were all amazing musicians.

Since a couple of my relatives knew the band members personally, we met and spent a little time with both the guitarist (Joe) and drummer (Dave).

What struck me at the time (I was about 18 years old) was how soft-spoken, polite and generally quiet these guys were. So very different from their “cool” on-stage rock musician persona. Frankly, I was kind of happy to see that they were more like regular guys than I would have imagined.

Surely, there are wild-eyed, party animal rockers out there who live up very admirably to the stereotype. There are also famous performers that leave the stage and return to lives as more regular folk who you might never associate with rock music if you saw them on the street.

Given the chance to hang out with and get to know some famous rockers, I’d have to choose the latter classification of “rock star” every time.