Just like there’s a distinct timbre to each electric guitar, a unique tone to each bass, there is a specific flair in every one of the rock star homes AD has featured over the years. They may be made of the same parts—bedrooms, a kitchen, perhaps even a recording studio—but the final products, like the records the individual musicians create, are wholly their own. Over the years, rock stars of all genres, from indie musicians to punk-oriented vocalists, have opened their doors and given us a peek inside their abodes. Here we revisit seven of these rock star homes.
Brandon Flowers’s Desert Home
Brandon Flowers has been narrating American tales to the soundtrack of rock and roll as the frontman of The Killers since 2002. Over the decades, the Las Vegas band has often glamorized the pursuit of a dream that is bigger than the quintessential small hometown, setting the scene for a lifetime of anthems rooted in the crossfire of faith and freedom. So for those familiar with his catalogue, which includes seven full-length albums and two solo records, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Flowers’s home in Park City, Utah, is an extension of this idealistic vision. With its all-black exterior and Western-themed interiors, it’s not so much an escape as a refuge that is the appropriate amount of over-the-top.
The home was designed by architect Cristof Eigelberger, whom Flowers first hired in 2015 to work on his Las Vegas residence. After settling on this particular house, which is about an hour from the musician’s childhood home in Nephi, Utah, Eigelberger spent approximately a year and a half changing the exterior façade and fully gutting the drywall interior. The five-bedroom home includes a media room, ski room, and a four-car garage—among (many) other attributes.—Sydney Gore
Travis Barker’s Tranquil Calabasas Abode
It’s been a busy spring for perpetually in-demand musician Travis Barker. In just one four-week period, the Blink-182 drummer finished work on Machine Gun Kelly’s latest album, Mainstream Sellout, then performed with Reba McEntire at the Oscars for an audience of millions. He also played a fiery set with Lenny Kravitz and H.E.R. at the Grammys in Las Vegas before returning to the studio to wrap Blackbear’s newest release, In Loving Memory. Oh, and yes, he also married his formidable fiancée (now wife), Kourtney Kardashian, in a “practice” wedding—the couple had not yet procured a license—officiated by an Elvis impersonator at a Vegas chapel. “It was a perfect month,” says the quintessential rock star, who is regularly featured on lists of the greatest drummers of all time.
When Barker needs some downtime to relax with family and friends, his exit off the fast lane leads straight to a surprisingly serene, understated refuge in Calabasas, which he shares with his three children, Landon and Alabama Barker and Atiana De La Hoya. Three years ago, in an effort to instill a greater sense of calm and order to the capacious residence he’s owned for 15 years, Barker decided it was time for a refresh. At the suggestion of his mother-in-law, Kris Jenner, the musician reached out to the inimitable Waldo Fernandez, a perennial fixture on the AD100, who has stood at the crossroads of design and celebrity for five decades. “I loved the simplicity and zen quality of his work. We connected immediately,” Barker says of his initial meeting with the design legend.—Mayer Rus
Blink-182 Rocker Mark Hoppus’s LA Home
Mark Hoppus knows music. After all, he’s one third of Blink-182, the pop-punk band which exploded in 1999 with hits like “What’s My Age Again?” and “All the Small Things,” and that—despite breakups, makeups, and member shake-ups—remains a prominent part of the millennial cultural lexicon. What the bassist and singer did not know when shopping for a home in Los Angeles with his wife Skye Hoppus back in 2004 was anything about the architect Harold “Hal” Levitt. It was only after the couple fell in love with and purchased a midcentury-modern house by Levitt that they learned about his legacy.
“We lucked into this amazing architect that we didn’t really know anything about,” Mark tells AD. “We’re really happy to have fallen into that.” Nearly two decades later, after raising their 19-year-old son Jack in the home and holding onto it through a three-year stint in London, they’re still enamored with its abundance of windows and sweeping curves, including a round sunken den. What Skye never loved, however, was the home’s original rectangular terrazzo bathtubs. “While they looked stunning and were super interesting architecturally, they just were not comfortable,” she says. “I really always wanted a bathtub that was usable. It’s kind of like my one moment, at the end of the day, to just chill.” This desire for a more comfortable place to soak created a ripple effect. Finally, in 2015, Mark and Skye brought in Marmol Radziner to give the entire house a facelift.—Rachel Wallace
Lenny Kravitz’s Brazilian Compound
Lenny Kravitz knows a thing or two about seduction. As a Grammy Award–winning musician—and as a designer—he has crafted an extraordinarily idiosyncratic vision that fuses disparate genres, periods, styles, and influences. The 54-year-old rocker remains one of the coolest cats on the planet, constantly upending expectations and forging new paths of artistic expression.
In the 16 years since founding Kravitz Design, he has fashioned public spaces and suites for hotels in Miami, Las Vegas, and Toronto and developed products ranging from furniture and door hardware to wallpaper and ceramic tile. He even devised a camera for Leica and a watch for Rolex. And he is currently overseeing the interiors for 75 Kenmare, a new condo building in New York’s Nolita neighborhood. One of his most intriguing personal projects has been the ongoing reimagining of an 18th-century Brazilian coffee plantation outside Rio de Janeiro.—Mayer Rus
John Mellencamp’s Remote Montecito Home
On his 1983 album, Uh-Huh, John Mellencamp sang, “Little pink houses for you and me, oh yeah, for you and me.” But, in 2022, the iconic musician is humming about a little white house in Montecito, California.
“Quite honestly, I see it as a place for me to go with an invited guest,” he explains, from his suite at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles. “It does have a very romantic feel to it. I’m above the clouds. The view is like, wow.”
Put more specifically, the former ranch is positioned on one of the peaks of Santa Barbara’s Toro Canyon, a perch which yields bracing views all the way out to the Pacific Ocean. Situated on six acres, the retreat is a remote one. “You get this thing, particularly at night when the winds blow. . . it takes a certain kind of colorful person to want to be up there [at the very top].”—Elizabeth Quinn Brown
Debby Ryan and Twenty One Pilots’ Josh Dun’s Home
Columbus, Ohio, is perhaps not where one might expect to find a sparkling young actor and her rocker husband setting up their first house. But Debby Ryan and Josh Dun relish an impulsive departure from the script. Fans will recall the couple’s surprise New Year’s Eve wedding in 2019, planned in just 28 days.
Dun grew up in the Arch City. But when the screen star (known for Netflix series Insatiable and Disney hits like Jessie) and Twenty One Pilots drummer were in town celebrating the holidays with Dun’s family a couple years ago, it was Ryan who floated the idea: “Let’s move to Columbus.” They had been looking for a house where they could set down roots and nothing they’d seen felt quite right. Serendipitously, a brand-new listing had just popped up on Dun’s real estate apps, so they postponed their flights out and went to have a look.
The place ticked all their boxes—it was near family and old friends, spacious enough to host guests as well as their many recreational pursuits, and had a squirrel-stocked backyard that their golden retriever dog, Jim, would adore. Perched in a forested area, it called to mind one of their shared obsessions—treehouses. (Dun proposed to Ryan in a treehouse in New Zealand.) The woodland setting showed potential for whimsy and fantasy—perfect for these two dreamers. They took the place, began assembling Google Docs and Pinterest boards and, upon seeing interior designer Fawn Galli’s own rather whimsical Brooklyn home in AD, brought her on to bring it to life. The vibe they were after: fantasy treehouse.—Hannah Martin
The Cab’s Alex DeLeon and Josephine Skriver’s Nashville Home
Hygge—the Danish concept of creating a cozy home—took the decorating world by storm in recent years, calling for cedar-scented candles and chunky knit throws. But leave it to an actual Dane, Victoria’s Secret Angel and newly minted Maybelline spokesperson Josephine Skriver, to reinterpret it in an unexpected way. The Nashville home Skriver shares with her boyfriend, singer-songwriter Alex DeLeon, eschews earth tones for grayscale, but still projects a palpable feeling of comfort.
“I’ve always liked it clean and simple, but somehow still cozy,” Skriver explains. “I’m not a big fan of a lot of colors, because the design itself has to stand out.” Luckily, her partner has similar proclivities; DeLeon, who performs under the moniker Bohnes, curated the photographic art in the home, almost all of which is in black-and-white. “The house isn't supposed to be what's loud,” DeLeon explains. “The life that you live is supposed to be what's loud. I think that is represented in the house perfectly.
To that end, the couple painted nearly every room in the three-story home with Sherwin Williams’ Pure White, but softened the effect by adding shiplap and removing plaster to expose some of the original brick. They also worked with Nashville-based designer April Tomlin to create interiors that were equal parts Scandinavian and modern. “I think my entire Pinterest mood board was April's Instagram,” Skriver laughs. For DeLeon, Tomlin’s greatest skill was being able to manifest the inchoate images in his head. “The best interior designers are the ones that can take what's in your mind and somehow make it a reality,” he says. “April was great at pulling that out of us.”—Juliet Izon
