Acknowledgements

I’d like to send my heartfelt appreciation and love to everyone who contributed, encouraged, assisted, enabled and bravely bared their soul for this project. I hope it serves to shine a light on what’s important and raises a few smiles in the process.

Special love in particular to Dylan Howe, my wonderful husband, the man who accidentally inspired the whole project and became the perfect advisor for it – I hope you like the result.

For contributing wit, wisdom, memories and insights: Charlie Harris, Cosmo Landesman, Aaron Horn, Baxter Dury, Calico Cooper, Pete Townshend, Callum Adamson, Celeste Bell, Christian Davies, Dylan Howe, Georgia Howe, Trev Lukather, Crosby Loggins, Eliza Carthy, Galen Ayers, Jack Gahan, Jazz Domino Holly, Julian Lennon, Lovella Ellis, Maria Gallagher, Natasha Eleanore, Keeley Bolger, Will Hunt, Zoë Clews, Harry Waters, Harleymoon Kemp, Chris Welch, Elizabeth Curran.

For linking me up (or at least trying to), coming up with ideas and generally being eggs of the good variety: the fabulous Street family and the marvellous Howe family; Jacqui Black, Charles R Cross, Steven Rosen, Steve Lukather, Gavin Martin and John Robb for encouragement, and giving me a platform to preview this book in its embryonic state at Talking Musical Revolutions 3, Ken Hunt, Johnny Sharp, Joel Mclver and all on the NBT forum who shared their thoughts, Harriet at Glass Ceiling PR, Dave Clarke at Planet Earth Publicity, Zoë Stainsby and Andrew Soar at Idea Generation, The Beatles Story (White Feather launch), Trish De Rosa at Roots Rockers, J. Thompson, Erika Thomas, Alice Harter, the perfervid Griff Mellhuish, Nigel Price, Tim Cooper, Nicola Joss, Scott Steele, Sarah Gillespie, Craig at Hootananny, Wilko Johnson, Tessa Pollitt, Damian Rafferty, Vincent Hazard, the Quietus … basically everyone who has taken an interest and helped where they can.

I’d also like to thank my very hard-working laptop for its faithful round the clock service on this intensive project. I have completely flat thighs and fingertips now, but it’s worth it.

Appreciation to those who chose not to be interviewed but still took the time and courtesy to respond and let me know.

And of course, Chris Charlesworth and Omnibus Press for taking on this project with such enthusiasm.

Last but absolutely not least, thank you for picking up this book – I hope you enjoy it. (You are going to buy it, aren’t you? Just checking.)

Introduction

Rock star kids, A-list offspring, celebrity brats – they’ve got it easy. Effortlessly turning their unblemished hands to whatever artistic pursuit they desire, cushioned from the hardships and realities of everyday life, and gorgeous, obviously, thanks to the fact that Rock Star Dad hooked up with a doe-eyed model (or Rock Star Mum had to look like a model to even make it to be a Rock Star Mum).

If the above paragraph sums up your general feeling about the children of famous musicians, then this book is here to prove you wrong in some cases, right in others and encourage you to at least try to view the likes of Stella, Jack and Pixie with a bit of compassion and understanding rather than writing them off as a bunch of spoilt wasters. While some of the children of our heroes might indeed be sunning themselves in reflected glory as they attempt once more to get into Boujis without having to pulling the old ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ trick, there are many more still who do quite the opposite, striking out on their own and, get this, paying their own way.

Whether struggling to escape or basking in the shadow of a famous parent, the situation of a rock ‘n’ roll heir or heiress can be uniquely complex, and sometimes troublesome. (There is a book to be written about the parents of celebrities too of course – at the time of writing I happened to notice on Twitter that the ever PR-savvy Mitch Winehouse, Amy Winehouse’s taxi driver dad for the few of you who have up to now been blissfully unaware, is ‘finishing my album in January, number one priority’. Oh right. Well, I did think he was dragging his heels a bit.)

One of the issues with being the child of any well-known figure is the fact that whatever you do is automatically upstaged by the fact that your parent merely exists. They might not even be there, but a healthy percentage of people, say, at your own gig will be there just to corner you at the end to say, ‘How’s your dad?’ in a slightly over-familiar way. (And the reason I am using ‘dad’ instead of ‘mum’ is that, if you’ll forgive my generalising, this does seem to be a predominantly male thing – fans of male stars are keen to be matey with their idols and their families, proving that they know a bit about them. Fans of female stars tend to take a different approach and, apart from this, if a female celebrity becomes a mother, this often pulls them out of the public eye anyway.)

Indeed, the very question – ‘How’s your dad?’ – provided the inspiration for this book: I have heard it posed by well-meaning fans to my husband, Dylan Howe, at his own gigs. These fans would not be Dylan’s, specifically, but those of his father, Steve Howe, the virtuoso guitar hero from prog rock titans Yes.

There’s a sense that, if the diehard fan’s approach is anything to go by, they do in some way own a bit of your parent, they certainly feel their relationship with them predates yours, and whether it’s an attempt to make you like them or subconsciously remind you of your place and that you’ll never escape that legacy, not even at your own gig, wording one’s opening gambit in this way doesn’t always go down well.

No matter if your parent was a Stock, Aitken and Waterman pop confection and you are making your mark in the world of free jazz, after your blistering gig, the highlight of your career so far, you will see a group of people coming towards you. ‘That’s strange,’ you’ll say to yourself. ‘They don’t look like your average beatniks … Hang on, is that a Rick Astley T-shirt? ‘Your adoring audience is not your adoring audience at all. It’s your parent’s adoring audience. But this book is, among other things, an important opportunity to shine a light on what many of these figures are doing in their own individual rights, with respect earned as a result of their own gifts and hard work.

My intention is not just to provide an A-Z of every single famous musician’s child in the entire world ever (that would be impossible; there are new ones popping up all the time anyway, and not just those fathered by Rod Stewart or Mick Jagger). It is more a study of a phenomenon, an attitude we have towards the children of rock stars, an opportunity to look at the preconceptions we have and why.

We’ll be hearing their stories, which range from the amusing to the lurid to the eye-crossingly weird; we’ll learn about their individual journeys, how they developed because of or despite their upbringing; their reflections on their birthright, their plans and hopes. It also doesn’t matter whether these children continued in the family business or not; I am as interested in those that didn’t as much as those that did. (The assumption that the child of a musician must surely be musical too is “so boring”, Steve Howe’s daughter Georgia tells me. “People always ask, ‘What do you play?’ But it’s fair enough, I suppose.”)

Spoken to and discussed within these pages are also the children of Joe Strummer, Poly Styrene, Ian Dury, Alice Cooper, Trevor Horn and Jill Sinclair, Jack Bruce, Jimmy Page, John Phillips, John Lennon, Alton Ellis, Quincy Jones, Martin Kemp, Dave Gahan, the Geldofs, Woods, Osbournes, Starkeys, Zappas, Wainwright/McGarrigle, Buckley, Waterson/Carthy, Jackson, Gainsbourg, Cash and Presley. All have their unique standpoint, all are connected in some ways, disparate in others. To paraphrase John Peel’s description of The Fall, they are different and yet in many ways the same. There is definitely a thread running through every example. Sometimes it’s a smooth, golden cord, sometimes it’s tough like wire, or rough and frayed, chafing your fingers if you don’t handle it with delicacy. But it’s basically the same thread.

We are naturally interested in the children of our heroes, but while society may more readily accept the notion of an acting dynasty, often viewing a distinguished theatrical bloodline as a guarantee of quality, to a seemingly greater extent the rock royal will, no matter what they do or don’t do, have every move scrutinised and judged with gluttonous enthusiasm by tabloid readers, gossip lovers and even contemporaries with varying levels of resentment. As Bob Geldof once observed: “Their mums and dads were famous people in a country where rock ‘n’ roll is the Hollywood. Britain doesn’t have a Hollywood. So the glamour is in rock, rock stars are all over the tabloids, and those kids were born into that sort of atmosphere.”

How many times have Sun readers gone online, become irresistibly drawn to a picture story – maybe of Kelly Osbourne, Nicole Richie or Peaches Geldof doing something exciting like talking on the phone or getting into a car – and commented thus: ‘What a nobody! / wannabe! / spoilt brat! She’d be nowhere if it wasn’t for (fill in blank with famous parent name).’ This is irrespective of what the story might (not) be about. Maybe there really is nothing of interest about these well-groomed characters. So why click on the story?

What is of greater concern is that this bilious attitude spills over and affects those of a similar parentage who couldn’t be more different from their tabloid darling contemporaries. In the main, people see the most immediately media-friendly examples, make their minds up (with a bit of help from the press) and that creates the blueprint for how they perceive all children of celebrated musicians across the board.

So are these preconceptions fair? Not always. Are they just lazy, resentful assumptions? Not always. But where sometimes being a second-generation rock aristo is fabulously beneficial – great schools, guaranteed popularity (when there’s a gig coming up) and an intriguing menu when you come home for tea – you also might be well versed in the ways of touring or being in a studio because that’s just how you grew up. Or you may be so used to seeing Pop smoke a doobie that drugs aren’t too glamorous as far as you’re concerned (or you have fantastic access to drugs, and again are, therefore, hugely popular). But there are other elements that create the sort of barriers that those of us from more conventional backgrounds never need consider.

The word ‘nepotism’ hangs like a cloud over every rock offspring, even if their chosen path is a million miles from mum or dad’s career. The mythical and never-ending list of contacts that said child supposedly inherits isn’t always the door-opening influence outsiders like to imagine it is. And the public’s knowledge or idolatry of Rock Star Parent can overshadow a career to the extent that some people might just attend your gigs or buy your work because you are seen as a kind of rock ‘n’ roll souvenir (we’re back to the ‘How’s your dad?’ factor): these punters are more interested in the association with their real hero, and this might be the closest they get. They love Ronnie Wood, say, and as far as they’re concerned, you’re just another Wood to collect, another step closer to the REAL star. Jeff Buckley might have eclipsed his father, Tim’s, success, but he still had plenty of people turning up at shows just to ask questions about Buckley senior, a man he never really knew and rarely wanted to discuss.

Of course, there are those who happily accept, as they whizz up the freeloading freeway, that the only reason they are famous or outwardly interesting is because of their connections, they are cool by association and are doing rather well out of it – whether simply getting stoned and watching Miss Marples all day, knowing that funny thing called rent (something to do with Monopoly?) is magically taken care of, or breezing into exclusive parties and TV work without ruffling an eyebrow. But how long can this last? What is the public’s view of this? Should it even matter?

Peaches Geldof has, to date, been granted her own column, a TV show and the post of editor at a trendy magazine. Capability and personality aside, why wouldn’t she snap these offers up when they’re dangled in front of her face? The fact is these opportunities can come at a price – the givers are crossing their fingers that you make a blithering berk of yourself. They will then beam your monstrous clangers and tantrums (after some nifty editing) out on prime-time TV. We pillory the likes of Peaches for her ill-advised musings and posy soundbites, but who didn’t sound stupid and pretentious when they were a teenager? The difference is, we of the non-famous variety were allowed to grow out of it without having everything we did recorded and exposed. (There was also less opportunity to come out with any pretentious insights because no one was shoving a microphone in front of us and making us believe our opinion was interesting or valid anyway.)

Whenever I told anyone I was writing this book, the first question they would ask invariably included the words ‘Peaches Geldof’. Peaches wasn’t the first person I thought of when I started working on this, but I do think the way we view people like her affects how we make snap judgements about others – they must be rich, it must be easy, they must be brattish and unapproachable, they’re living off their parents. So yes, she is an important example, but there is a lot more to this subject, and the raison d’etre of the project is to try to add a bit of perspective to how we view it. It might even alter your perception of the ‘rock stars’ themselves. In some cases it might confirm what you already thought, of course.

Many of the interviewees and figures featured in this book don’t get showered with TV shows, columns and the like – those are quite extreme cases. But most were brought up on the road, and some would experience the ‘rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle’ at first hand from an early age (Charlotte Gainsbourg was taken to nightclubs by Serge and her mother, Jane Birkin, as a baby in a basket, for example). Others had a determinedly down to earth upbringing, normal schools (perhaps with a flashy car picking them up at the gates), normal friends and encouragement to do their own thing, protected from the limelight. Some go down the same career path as their mum or dad and make a success of it in their own right. Although we won’t pretend that the surname (Starkey, Bonham, Wakeman.) didn’t help draw a little attention to them.

Happier examples contrast painfully with those whose unconventional childhoods caused them to go off the rails, or fight to escape a destructive relationship. What must it be like to be forever associated with someone who, in some cases, took away your childhood or has no real emotional connection with you? There are, of course, plenty of wonderful parents within these pages too, and while I have no wish to taint our perceptions of certain ‘stars’, I do believe many of us view celebrities in an often unrealistic way: we like to think Ian Dury or John Lennon were ‘likeable’ because their work excites us, we love what they stand for; if we identify with their music or concepts, it jars if we can’t identify with them as people. But this book’s intention is rather to take what is relevant in their characters, behaviour and legacies and look at how those things affected their children, positively or negatively.

This is an attempt to bring balance and fairness to this subject, with affection and humour, but also honesty. If nothing else, I hope it will break some of our conditioning and encourage us to look beyond the stigma and appreciate that the situation is not always as simplistic as it looks.

CHAPTER 1

The N-word

If the average person, should there be such a thing, played a word association game commencing with the phrase ‘rock star offspring’, it wouldn’t take long for the word ‘nepotism’ to come up. So what exactly does it mean? We should start our journey by looking this beast right in its N-shaped face if we’re going to mutter it whenever we see a greater-spotted Geldof. We talk about it enough, particularly in this age in which rock ‘royalty’ seems to have replaced real royalty. Once, decorative aristocrats were ubiquitous in glossies like Tatler and Hello!, doing the Highland Fling with ruddy-cheeked young shavers. Now we’re more likely to see pictures of Coco (Sumner) and Theodora (Richards) stalking up a red carpet or hanging out with society’s elite.

They’re not so different from each other when it comes down to it. Both examples are there, first and foremost, because of an inherited cachet, and this is what causes the rest of us to cry ‘nepotism’ when we see another opportunity seemingly being flung their way. But media saturation is such that even the more broad-minded among us can project these judgements onto those who don’t always deserve it.

We should start by looking up the very word that brings most rock heirs out in hives, or at least a familiar sense of dread. I tapped it into my computer’s dictionary and thesaurus, and this is what came up.

As Steve Howe’s son Dylan is the inspiration for this book, I shall hand over to him first for his take on the concept in how it, and assumptions of it, affect him: “If there’s a family business and there are people in your orbit, you might hire them on trust and hopefully affection as well. (Producer) Trevor Horn would not have so readily known me as a drummer from an early age if I hadn’t met him in a social situation through my dad. If you take that as a template people will think, ‘He’s going to be calling you all the time! You’re going to be rich, doing sessions for him all the time.’ No. He’s always been very supportive, but I think he’s really only called me for sessions a couple of times in the past 20 years. He recommends me for projects sometimes, and now maybe I’m good enough to be called by him, but there are other people out there.

“There’s a small pool of the A-list players but how does everyone hear about them? It’s word of mouth, it’s association, it’s somebody going, ‘I know someone …’ Not dissimilar to having a well-connected father in the furniture business or whatever. But even after you’ve been recommended, you have to be able to cut it. This made me work twice as hard to be twice as good.”

Familial partiality is obviously everywhere, in every field, but in this case, whatever happens is to varying extents public fodder, and perceptions of it spread to the point that we assume every child of an iconic figure has got it made. Quincy Jones’ rapper son QD3 (Quincy Delight Jones III) grew up in public housing in Sweden with his drug-addicted mother. Meanwhile his half sister Rashida grew up in luxury in Los Angeles with her father, who taught her how to orchestrate and arrange. The gulf between siblings was considerable, but when QD3 moved to LA himself as a young man, he was immediately presumed to be a super-brat, which couldn’t have been further from the truth.

“Having grown up in Sweden where not a lot of weight is placed on famous or wealthy people, I always looked at (Dad) as a human being, not his persona,” he said. “I don’t think I really ‘got it’ until I was much older. It was harder to deal with the ‘kid of a famous person/silver spoon’ projections I got hit with once I moved to the US. It was a strange transition.”

An entry on Wikipedia explains ‘nepotism’ as a favouritism granted ‘without regard to merit’. It goes on to reference The Kevin Bishop Show, a satirical sketch show that spoofed Peaches Geldof in a mock perfume advert: ‘Nepotism – the smell of Peaches Geldof’, after a voiceover from ‘Peaches’ proclaimed: “I’m a fashion model, a TV presenter, and I’m a journalist as well … did I mention my dad’s Bob Geldof?”

In 2008 Peaches became the editor of a magazine, the perhaps inauspiciously titled Disappear Here, and was filmed by MTV strutting about in chic clothes and being bossy to a collection of fresh-faced, trendy-haired writers who spent most of the time quivering, glancing nervously at each other, and occasionally crying. The whole shebang was produced by Ten Alps, a company owned by Bob Geldof, who had the final say in what was eventually broadcast. Although the amount of good that did Peaches was negligible – MTV content director Heather Jones openly called Peaches a “monster. Everything that comes out of her mouth is horrendous, and that will still show through” They said it …

The pervading feeling while watching this programme was that we were seeing a child pretending to be a grown up, and getting rather carried away. She’d been handed a big toy and was tossing it about like a psychopathic kitten. Aspiring journalists observed with rage, magazines and newspapers looked on with a mixture of amusement and intense irritation.

Not all famous parents dish out fabulous jobs to their kids. A lot of them deliberately do the opposite in order to get them used to the ‘real world’, whatever that is, but Geldof also ensured his eldest daughter, Fifi, bagged a sought-after place at MTV. (Fifi, who now works in PR, is the Geldof girl you might not be so immediately aware of, because she isn’t skinny with blonde hair extensions, nor does she dress like the sugar plum fairy; prerequisites for media attention for one in her position.)

“She doesn’t look like her sisters,” an old friend of Fifi’s tells me. “Sometimes magazines even cut her out of pictures with her sisters. But on the other hand she doesn’t want to be in the photos. She holds those cards close to her chest, I don’t think she’d want to talk about them. It must be difficult having siblings like that.”

Whispering Bob Harris’ husky-voiced (naturally) daughter Charlie, a music-publishing PR executive, sat next to Fifi during her time at MTV, and remembers the eldest Geldof had plenty in common with Sir Bob. “I’ve never known a girl swear as much as her, it cracked me up. Absolutely her father’s daughter.

“There was an immediate edge as soon as she walked in because everybody knew she was there because of who her dad was, and a lot of people probably fought quite hard to get their job there,” explains Charlie. “I know she was immediately judged because she was Geldof’s daughter.

“She could come in late, she could do what the fuck she wanted. If you’re an hour late and you’re Bob Geldof’s daughter, no one’s going to have a go at you. Bob’s so important to MTV, so she had that on her side, but I don’t think she milked that.

“While we were at MTV a TV programme approached her to be the host. She just point blank said, ‘No,’” continues Charlie. “Not what she’s interested in at all. She wanted to work at MTV, she’s obviously passionate about music, she keeps out of the limelight. I respect that, she’s a proper, down to earth, really nice girl.

“When she started her own PR company, a lot of my contemporaries immediately judged her, ‘Oh, so Geldof’s starting up her own PR company, we’d all like to do that … isn’t it easy for her?’ which is sad, it goes against them basically.”

Geldof senior often describes Fifi as most similar to him in many ways, having inherited his belligerently independent streak, so it makes sense that she made her own luck in the competitive world of PR before long, even if she was in more of a position to than most. But sometimes gigs of quite a staggering nature are pushed determinedly the way of the rock baby whether they want it or not. When you’ve got a mother like Sharon Osbourne, you don’t always have much of a choice.

Kelly Osbourne (in the book Ordinary People): “In all honesty, I didn’t want to do the awards show. My mum was the real force behind it. As smart as MTV is at creating new projects, my mother is smarter. Somewhere inside her conniving mind was a vision of using the success of the series to launch me into my own career.”

It was the early Noughties, the MTV series The Osbournes had taken off (after everyone’s favourite dysfunctional family proved a hit on Cribs), reality TV was born and so were the series’ stars. (Black Sabbath casualty Ozzy was more reborn, admittedly.) The kids, Kelly and Jack, had become cult figures after charming the world with their whiny teen antics – they were ripe for exploitation. Before long Sharon had engineered a performance slot for Kelly to sing Madonna’s ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ (of course) at the MTV Awards, against the advice of even hardbitten Sony tycoon Tommy Mottola.

“Tommy kept telling me. ‘She’s going to need a psychiatrist after this is all done,’” recalls Sharon. “So many people thought it was too much pressure to put on a child. But I knew she was going to love it.”

The pressure was indeed gargantuan. But the performance went ahead and Brand Osbourne had served another ace. And Kelly? “I felt like sobbing. I wanted to sit in a chair and cry.” She spent most of the time prior to the show shouting, ‘Don’t fucking touch me!’ at stylists and make-up artists. See? Loved it.

To plonk the poor girl in front of a star-studded crowd and order her to sing is tough enough. But what is possibly even tougher is the choice of song, ‘Papa Don’t Preach’, anchoring her profile ever more to Ozzy. Good gimmick and an easy reference point, but from her individual perspective, would it not have been more helpful to have been allowed to sing something a little less parentally focused? We all accept she’s famous first and foremost for being the daughter of Ozzy, but had her burgeoning singing career really been a priority, it would have been kinder to allow her to make her own mark after being handed, nay, coerced into, this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

‘Mystery’ big sister Aimee has deliberately resisted any opportunities that may be linked to what she refers to as the ‘Osbourne hysteria’. She refused to be part of the show in the first place (prompting a vicious battle with her own mother about it, resulting in Aimee having to leave home). Yes, she wants to make music, but without being labelled a ‘wannabe’ forever linked with her father.

“It’s taken me a while,” she explains in Ordinary People. “I think I’ve found the right people I want to work with who understand me and don’t want to turn me into another money-maker off this reality madness.”

However, so far, by trying to escape the Osbourne circus, she is still largely known for being the one that ‘got away’. So she didn’t really get away. And trying to carve a niche entirely away from your parents’ celebrated name but in the same field can put one in a strange position. People like the association, it’s an easy pigeonhole (people like pigeonholes too). She might keep her integrity and turn certain jobs down, but what next? Some would advise her to choose another path, but why should she? It’s not a straightforward situation.

Alice Cooper’s daughter Calico works directly with her father on his horror-themed vaudevillian ‘Cooper Show’ for most of the year, performing various gruesome skits with him to a baying audience of (mostly) men in leather jackets. She is also an actress, keen to break through on her own merit. PMA (that’s Positive Mental Attitude for the … well, I was going to say miserabilists among us, but let’s just say Brits) must always be readily galvanised for whatever the day may bring.

Luckily Calico, 28 at the time of writing, is practically bursting with positivity, or at least she certainly seems to be during our phone conversation. (I sincerely hope it wasn’t all an act and that, once our cheery goodbyes had been said, she didn’t slump into a chair and pour a bottle of gin over her head in desperation.)

Yes, she who has graced such movies as Rob Zombie’s Halloween with her spirited presence, comes across as a seriously dynamic character. She’s also banged her head against the fact that whatever she wants to do is viewed with a critical eye because of her background, and sometimes she is pushed aside because of that. But when she is allowed to shine, that’s right, it’s supposedly all down to daddy.

“I’ve been trying to put a tape together to audition for Saturday Night Live,” Calico explains. “It’s not like it was a whim; I worked really hard for it. If I get it, the average person is not going to look at me and say, ‘Oh well, she worked really hard to get on there,’ they’ll say, ‘Of course she’s on SNL, she’s Alice Cooper’s daughter.’ You know?

“Or if I don’t get it, it will be like, ‘Well, she wasn’t talented enough!’ So I lose either way. But you have to get past it. I’ve been talking to my younger sister about it. I say, ‘People are never going to give you the benefit of the doubt.’ I used to take it personally, but you have to let those comments go.

“My parents are so supportive but they also let me fall on my face, I wasn’t coddled. Something is so much better and more worth it when you’re standing in front of a wall and you’ve pounded your head into it a few times and gone, ‘COME ON!’”

Striking out alone is tough when you’re so rooted in Cooper-world most of the time. It’s almost as if you have to make a firm decision – stay within the confines of the world in which you were born or make your escape in a big way.

Guitarist Trev Lukather, son of Toto guitarist Steve, has also found battling the issue of being taken seriously as an individual is particularly difficult in Los Angeles. “It’s all about entertainment and everyone wants to make connections,” he says. “Everyone wants to meet as many people who can somehow benefit them. I understand, it’s hard out there – I know for a fact, I’m going through it – but just to find real people sometimes & it’s really hard, you know?”

“Leave home!” suggests Callum Adamson, son of Big Country guitariast and singer Stuart. Callum left his native Scotland as a teenager to live with Stuart in Nashville for several years. “I had to leave home to do it – so should they. I’m going to impose all my hardships on everyone else. Get the fuck out of LA. I like Nashville. Every single person’s mum or dad was a musician and no one gives a shit, all that counts in Nashville is talent.

“If you’re ever on stage with your dad, wrong. There you go. Dissociate and you can be your own person. If you work with your famous dad then you will be forever known as the kid who works with his/her famous dad. If you’re going to do that you have to take the breaks that come with it.

“When your dad’s famous you have to go twice as far to do your own thing, their aura is huge. I couldn’t do anything in Scotland – can you imagine the nightmare that would be? Although I didn’t spend enough time in Scotland to be Scottish anyway, plus I never spoke to anyone, I stayed in my room and played guitar and listened to Muddy Waters.”

Although rock photographer Scarlet Page, the daughter of Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, has taken a different path from her father, she still operates within the same world. She is proud she never used her name to get where she is, although in a way she didn’t have to, starting her career assisting photographer Ross Halfin, famous for photographing, that’s right, Led Zeppelin. She remained more or less in the sphere she was born into, and perhaps that is the most sensible route; she won’t come up against as much judgement, and she won’t be as much of a curio.

Her acclaimed exhibition ‘Your Child’, which opened at the Royal Albert Hall several years ago, featured celebrities and their children, including images of Shaun Ryder, Keith Allen and Sadie Frost. It’s a subject she is undoubtedly wedded to, and while she doesn’t ‘use’ her name, it can’t be denied that many who attended that exhibition probably did so because the name ‘Page’ caught their eye. But once they were in, her work could only have spoken for itself.

“People want some kind of angle,” says Dylan Howe. “What’s the story on this person, what sets them apart? When that’s included in your name, it’s an advantage, or at least it’s something … it could be a disadvantage. They might think you’re a brat, that you’re going to be crap, but it certainly puts your name up in bold font.”

One exception to the love/hate fascination we have with the children of famous parents is surprisingly on The X Factor – contestants have to be seen to come from ‘nothing’ to be held in the public’s affection. Any link to showbiz or previous professional experience seems to be met with outrage and a sense of betrayal. 2008 winner Alexandra Burke kept the fact that her mother, Melissa Bell, was in Soul II Soul quiet until several rounds in. Any criticism was allayed when it was revealed that Melissa was in poor health and on benefits. Lest we forget, the sob story is king on TV talent shows.

How To Win The X Factor author Keeley Bolger: “Alex didn’t want people to focus on (Soul II Soul). But when it came out, people appreciated the fact that Melissa had to struggle, bringing up four children alone, people just shifted any thoughts of nepotism or musical privilege they might have had. And the papers liked the ‘fallen star’ thing.”

Singer-songwriter Galen Ayers, daughter of Soft Machine’s psychedelic maverick Kevin Ayers, has a theory about this. And it’s a good one. “People love stories of struggle, so when that story seemingly isn’t there because so and so is your dad or mum, it’s like they’re (deprived) of the feeling of ‘I could do it too.’

“You don’t have their parents or their genes, so you feel helpless. ‘Don’t even try.’ With a rags to riches element, you get the feeling of, ‘If he can do it then so can I.’” This definitely goes some way to explain our complicated feelings towards those who blossom forth from an already established family, regardless of their personal journey.

Let’s for a moment step away from the arena of mainstream visibility and media scrutiny (you can stop holding your stomach in for a bit) and cast our eyes over a genre in which family connections are vital to the purity and authenticity of its future: folk music. Within folk, it is accepted without question that each generation will follow the last into that musical tradition. (Although folk hero Euan MacColl’s daughter Kirsty made her musical foray initially as a punk backing singer for a band called the Drug Addix, under the name of Mandy Doubt. I’d store that one away in case it crops up in the pub quiz.)

Folk icons Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson didn’t have to encourage their singer and multi-instrumentalist daughter Eliza into the family tradition – which, by the way, Eliza can trace back centuries. According to the Carthys, the folk baton, being passed on down the years, is no burden. This is how it develops and evolves. However, it comes with its own complications when generations of folk music, represented by families like the Carthys and the Watersons, come up against the dilettantes of the scene.

“Traditional music is about continuity and pride,” Eliza explained during our phone conversation (in which her baby daughter called for her for the first time – the next generation clearly in fine voice). “I was brought up in a vision of inclusivity, all people are equal, all musics are equal. I didn’t feel like rebelling.

“I don’t know how to say this without sounding incredibly arrogant, the thing about my family is that we are a living tradition, we actually are. It’s different from people who have adopted the music for themselves.

“The people that want to work within the commercial folk scene seem to resent the family in some ways, but the folk scene isn’t about tradition, funnily enough. It’s a microcosm of the music industry; they’re like, ‘Why do these people get a leg up? Why are these people on the radio? Where’s my turn?’ I think we shouldn’t be taking work away from those people either. We shouldn’t be in the same ballpark, not that I’m saying we should be elevated above anybody – it’s just different.”

Another example of this living tradition is the Wainwright family – Loudon, Kate (McGarrigle), Rufus and Martha – also firmly rooted in folk, although Rufus in particular rebelled by throwing himself into opera and classical music, show tunes and the glittering genre that is Judy Garland.

There is a curious magnetism that forces the Wainwrights simultaneously together and apart, and it apparently stems from Loudon, already one of the few famous parents to have been superseded by their offspring. He is nowadays referred to frequently as ‘Father of Rufus and Martha, Loudon Wainwright III’, and unfortunately he doesn’t always handle this with grace. This is made particularly painful for his family because whenever he gets angry or bitter, which seems to be quite a lot, he writes a song about it. And, forget metaphors, the lyrics are wincingly literal.

His jealousy of Rufus started, famously, when his firstborn was barely out of the womb. Loudon went into an enormous sulk when he realised his baby son had first dibs on Kate’s breasts, and while some songwriters would be moved to eulogise, damp eyed, about the wonder and magic of their newborn child, he spat out the envious and fairly revolting ‘Rufus Is A Tit Man’ instead. Loudon, who was not about to win any ‘Best Dad’ or indeed ‘Best Husband’ awards, felt usurped, and would forever feel like a rival. Kate would always have Rufus’ back, but any chance of being handed opportunities by his dad seemed unlikely after this rather ill-fated start to the relationship. (Rufus apparently used to shout out a request for this song at Loudon’s gigs before he was old enough to know what it meant. He now shrugs it off, joking that Loudon clearly just read too much Freud.)

In later years there was a rather cruel suggestion at a reversal of the well-trodden path of parent-child nepotism. Throughout the late nineties, Rufus was reaching new heights as a performer, and he would boast that he was playing venues his father had never been asked to appear at himself. He knew it was tough on Loudon to see him doing well, and their brittle power struggle finally came to a head when eating together after a shoot with Rolling Stone magazine. Rufus challenged that the only way his dad could muster any interest in the hallowed rock monthly himself was if it was in some way connected to Rufus. Loudon exploded and ran him out of the house. Rufus later wrote ‘Dinner At Eight’ about this unfortunate incident, which was the prelude to months of silence between the pair.

Rufus knew his dad’s connections would help him in his early years as a songwriter, and he pushed himself forward whenever he could. Maybe the sense of paternal abandonment he felt from babyhood meant he knew opportunities wouldn’t fall into his lap, even if they weren’t too far away. He’d have to be responsible for finding and exploiting them. He’d been told his music sounded like psych-Americana icon Van Dyke Parks, so when he realised Loudon was going to dinner with Parks, he pressed his father to pass on his demo, which he did.

According to Kirk Lake’s fascinating Rufus Wainwright biography, There Will Be Rainbows, “Parks adored it, sending them on to Lenny Waronker, who had just started the Dreamworks record label (the musical arm of Spielberg’s movie behemoth). Parks: ‘It was a cut above anything I’d heard at that time, in its individual nature, its intimate interpretations of small, personal events … I decided to try and effect a contract for Loudon’s son.”

Loudon’s status never did Rufus any harm as he started establishing himself, and fortunately for him, many of Loudon’s fans were seriously powerful. Elton John invited Rufus to singing backing vocals on his album Songs From The West Coast, on the track ‘American Triangle’. Elton would later inform Rufus that he used to have ‘a terrible crush on Loudon’, flying in by helicopter to catch his gigs. At least, gigs that had helipads or large fields nearby, anyway.

You can never say never, but one megastar muso parent who is unlikely to be eclipsed no matter how brilliant his brood is Sir Paul McCartney. It may be tough to muster up sympathy for people who have grown up into the ultimate lifestyle of privilege with responsible and loving parents (and this is not always a given – more on that later), but Stella McCartney has been relentlessly judged. Although imagine what it would have been like if she’d decided to go into music herself? (Watch this space though – she recently proclaimed that she’s “got the gift” and is a frustrated musician.)

It’s tricky – you want to play the card you’ve been dealt to the max, but discretion is needed when it appears you’ve been dealt a hand of solid gold aces.

Stella applied to Central St. Martin’s College without telling her parents in case it was assumed they had used their influence to help her get in. However, people found it hard to know what to think when, for her student show, while her classmates used unknown models, Stella had Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. Even the music she had playing on her runway show was a track called ‘Stella Mayday’, which her dad had written especially for the event. I suppose it would have been difficult to turn it down. And if these are the people you grow up surrounded by, why should you go out of your way to ‘normalise’ your behaviour in order to keep the status quo? The thing is, England is the sort of place that respects you if you play things down, if you do yourself down, even. This behaviour doesn’t fit into that, and therefore: instant outrage. The press buzzed around the show, keen to portray her as ‘playing at fashion’.

One thing that can be a considerable benefit when it comes to being the child of a rock or pop star is that you tend to know what you want to do a lot earlier, you’re surrounded by inspiration, by interesting adults, maybe you’re encouraged to be a bit independent and more questioning. This, tempered maybe paradoxically with a sense that there ‘isn’t a rush’ (a phrase I’ve heard in most of my interviews for this book, interestingly), makes for a healthy combination of focus without panic about advancing years. This possibly also has something to do with, in some people’s cases at least, the fact that there is often a financial cushion. But not always.

Zak Starkey is a case in point – his father, Ringo’s, influence loomed large over his life (as it did most people’s during the Sixties) and, from an early age, a future playing drums seemed inevitable. Zak has rather bitterly claimed that his father did nothing to help him further himself as a musician, Ringo admitting once that he’d have preferred it if his firstborn had become a doctor or a lawyer. But Starr did introduce Zak to his real drum idol – Keith Moon.

Moon rather sweetly acknowledged Zak’s obsession with him by giving him an expensive drum kit in one of his many spontaneous moments of generosity. He apparently had no memory of this act of kindness when it was later mentioned to him but that didn’t matter. Zak might not have been interested in becoming his dad, the way people might have expected him to, but he was damn well going to turn into Keith.

Zak, according to Alan Clayson’s book about his Beatle father, was disappointed that Ringo was wary of his son embracing the often inconsistent life of a musician, his own experience being somewhat exceptional, but this was interpreted by Zak as mere lack of support. Add to this the persistence of people “only talking to me because of who my dad is”, and you’ve got one angry young man.

In his early twenties he started drumming for punk band The Next. Zak would then announce, as I suppose he felt he should (particularly seeing as he was a punk now): “I don’t want any help from my dad, he hasn’t done a thing to help me, and I don’t want him to.” Ringo let them use the studio at his lavish Tittenhurst home, where Zak lived in the lodge house, but that was probably taken a bit for granted, like being allowed to practise in your parents’ garage. It’s all relative (no pun intended).

He was careful to ensure no one assumed he was getting any handouts or special treatment from his father too, insisting, “I’m every bit as hard up as the rest of the band. I have to get a train from the station (like everyone else).”

If Zak felt he wasn’t encouraged by Ringo, ‘Uncle’ Keith Moon made up for it. Starr’s wild drinking buddy would ensure that his PA Pete ‘Dougal’ Butler acted as manager for Zak’s post-Next band Monopacific, according to Clayson, and he also brought the young musician to the attention of the rest of The Who. Bassist John Entwistle in particular took him under his wing.

Alan Clayson: “Through Entwistle, Zak was employed for what he did rather than what he was on many lucrative sessions. Zak soon felt ready to record his debut album, a musical version of Wind In The Willows. For all Zak’s desires to be accepted on his own merits, pragmatism ruled and he’d acceded to his father’s trick of giving the record more than an even break by garnering a shoal of whatever well-known names could be trawled to sing on it, Donovan, Entwistle and Joe Fagin….”

Clayson’s book swipes at Julian Lennon being a “howling example” of how a famous name can open doors (and in Lennon’s case, secure him a Top 10 hit), but it didn’t seem to matter how many names were thrown at this particular project – it was not a commercial success.

Zak’s trump card, however, turned out to be his passion for his beloved Keith Moon, whose picture apparently adorned the walls of his lodge house. He taught himself to play by listening to records, on his father’s advice (this is how Ringo learnt), Who records mainly. His concentrated study of Moon’s style and technique since childhood meant he was morphing into a mini-Moon himself, which turned out to be quite useful when The Who employed his services in 1996 and on a regular basis thereafter. Pete Townshend himself hailed Zak’s playing as “the most accurate emulation of Keith’s style … many have been moved when listening to his explosive solos to say, ‘My God, it’s him’.” Maybe it’s just as well Ringo encouraged him to go his own way at such a formative age.