Swiss Watch Mens | Stylish Discount Watches | Hot Sale Replica Watches

The children of rock dads

Having a babysitter called "The Sulphate Strangler"; being forsaken by your tour bus; having a father who'd rather grease party-guests' palms with opiates than grip your mother's clammy paw during childbirth. If you thought everyday kid-rearing was difficult, then blaze through a guide to rock'n'roll parenting and prepare to baulk.

Except, well, there is no official guide. If only there was an instruction leaflet prescribing parenting tips to famous musicians; the best they have is How's Your Dad?, a new book by the rock journalist Zoë Street Howe, which outlines the excesses of rock stars and how they impact on their sprogs. From the tumultuous childhoods of the Geldof children to the bizarre childcare arrangements of Baxter Dury, a chip off the old Blockheads' frontman Ian Dury, being privately schooled and given access to a bulging address book doesn't always yield fame, power and an open door to greatness. It can force people into the public eye before they have anything to say.

"The expectation must be immense," says Howe, sitting in a cinema in Soho (where, Lordy be, Bobby Gillespie is propping up the bar). "Maybe a lot of them do follow in their parents' footsteps, but I wonder if that's a subconscious thing. In some people's cases there is a void inside them and they crave instant attention. Media approval is better than being ignored. It's a kind of love."
Nascent personalities have been skewed by famous parents for decades. John Lennon was a lot better at nurturing tunes than Julian Lennon's self-esteem. In 1963, barely a fortnight into his first-born's life, John disappeared on holiday with Brian Epstein, who had a crush on him. Lennon later said: "I wasn't going to break the holiday for a baby. I just thought what a bastard I was and went."

Lennon was a bully throughout his son's childhood. One visitor to his Surrey house recalls him shouting at Julian: "No, I won't mend your fucking bike."

Exhibit B is the case of Baxter Dury's babysitter, "The Sulphate Strangler", whose trademark was "grabbing people by the throat, lifting them up and biting their noses". Within The Blockheads' entourage he was known for his ability to sink a bottle of vodka in one go.

"There were a lot of lunatics and drugs around," says Baxter, now 37. "The whole process of Dad suddenly becoming famous affected me in a funny way. I became rebellious and didn't go to school. I was eventually in Dad's control and he couldn't handle that responsibility, so there were these odd people looking after me."

If there were such a thing as a parenting licence, you'd wonder if Ozzy Osbourne would qualify. When his third child, Jack, was born in November 1985, the former Black Sabbath singer blacked out on the hospital floor as cognac miniatures spilled out of his vampiric pockets. Calico Cooper, the 28-year-old actress and singer offspring of Alice Cooper, realised what a princess she had been until she was abandoned at a truck-stop by her father while on tour in Europe. "I just realised nobody here knows who I am and they're not going to do me any favours."

On Halloween 1976, Ronnie Wood's son Jessie was born into a party. In Wood's 2007 autobiography, Ronnie, the Rolling Stone writes of his first wife Krissie's labour: "I said to her, 'I'll be downstairs with our guests, just yell when it gets really bad.' She stayed upstairs to deal with the pain. I kept partying because I didn't want to be rude."

drive from www.independent.co.uk