North America, all over Europe,
everywhere basically. We never really
earned a living from it, but it didn’t
matter because we didn’t really have
any responsibilities either.”
While Chris is reluctant to share any
juicy stories about rock star excess –
“everything needs censoring,”
he teases – he is also philosophical
about the realities of a musicians life
on tour, one that largely constitutes a
single hour of excitement on stage
and 23 hours of waiting around.
“To be honest, it was like living
in a bubble,” he says of that period.
“It didn’t really matter what day of the
week or what month it was half of the
time. We used to say every night was
like a Friday night: you’d be playing a
gig, there’d be a rider with beers and
so on. It’s quite a weird lifestyle.
I miss playing drums but there’s a lot
of other stuff that I don’t miss at all.”
It was during his time on the road
that Chris reconnected with a
childhood love of art. On a day off in
Chicago, he went to an art shop and
bought a set of oil paints to entertain
himself on the tour bus during the
long drives between gigs. He made
his first painting on an old drum skin
and later started working on old orbroken cymbals as well, enjoying the
way the oil paint looked on the metal.
Doodles soon turned into more
illustrative works and new cities
would inspire paintings. Chris was
soon stashing art supplies in the
band’s American lock-up and spending
all of his downtime at the easel.
A set of portraits of David Bowie
followed, while a series of character-
based illustrations were adapted into
two children’s books, Zak and Jen’s
Astronomical Adventures: The Petal
Planet and Tinsel Town.
“I just persisted at [painting] and it
paid off to the point where I could call
it my full-time job,” he says. “Money
wasn’t my motivation for doing it, I’dpaint anyway regardless of what
I did for a job, but I guess the
music industry taught me to throw
everything into it and take a risk.”
In fact, his previous career has
helped in more ways than one. Unlike
many artists that are just starting out,
Chris was alive to the need to be
setting up a website and promoting
himself through social media, just as
he had done with the band. “I think
there are a lot of artists who miss
a trick with that and it’s a shame.
You see a lot of amazing painters out
there and if they put a bit more time
into that stuff, it’d be worthwhile.”
Chris was quick to find a “practice
room” as well, his studio at FalconLEFT Strawberry
Skies, oil on
canvas, 110x90cm
RIGHT Chris Rivers
takes a break from
his painting
BELOW A bird’s eye
view of his studio in
Bolton, Lancashire
Five years ago, if someone would’ve
told me I would be painting every
day, I wouldn’t have believed them.