From guitar riffs to brush strokes

Ronnie Wood claims his "day job" as a guitarist in a rock 'n' roll band is more secure than ever. But if that band - the Rolling Stones - ever splits up, he can always return to his first love: visual art.

He probably doesn't need the extra bucks, but Wood's works - mostly semirealistic depictions of fellow rock legends - command up to $200,000 for an original and anywhere from $300 to $6,000 for prints, according to Danny Stern, an art dealer in San Francisco.

Wood is just one of many musicians who can produce a drawing or painting as easily as a guitar riff or song lyric - and get paid handsomely for it.

To critics who might scoff that famous performers are just looking for one more way to cash in, it should be noted that Wood and many of his contemporaries are art-school alums, not just dabblers brush-stroking their egos to rhythms of ringing cash registers.

Mr. Stern also notes that most people don't buy these artists' works for financial reasons, either, since they almost never come up for resale.

"They're not being collected simply because they're decorative and they're beautiful," he says.

"They're being collected because people have a lifelong relationship with the genre, the music, the history, and the individual artist they depict."

Wood's printmaking partner, Bernard Pratt, says Wood knows his work might be taken less seriously because he's a rock star, but Pratt insists, "I think he's most probably a lot better as a draftsman than a lot of artists that are actually making a living out of art alone."

Wood may be one of the most visible rock artists today, but a number of his musical contemporaries from that fertile creative era of the late '50s and early '60s also trained as artists.

John Lennon's art-school friendship with original Beatles bassist Stuart Sutcliffe changed the course of music and pop culture. (Lennon talked Sutcliffe into using earnings from a painting sale to buy the bass Paul McCartney eventually would play, and Sutcliffe's girlfriend created their moptop haircuts and early look.)

David Bowie, Ray Davies of the Kinks, and the late Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia all pursued art before music. Joni Mitchell illustrates many of her album covers with Van Gogh-influenced self-portraits.

The phenomenon is hardly limited to rockers. Crooner Tony Bennett has a second career as an artist. Jazz great Miles Davis began expressing himself visually late in life, but generated a compelling body of work.

The burst of creative energy that fueled rock's British invasion seemed to incubate in art schools and is still fed by artists who revel in unorthodoxy. David Byrne and his former Talking Heads bandmates met while attending the Rhode Island School of Design.

Later-generation recording artists whose creativity can't fit within the confines of music alone include Beck, John Mellencamp, R.E.M's Michael Stipe, and Red Hot Chili Pepper John Fruscianti.

Former Jefferson Airplane/Starship singer Grace Slick isn't quite in Wood's formally trained league, but even her oil, acrylic, or penciled portraits of rock contemporaries fetch up to five figures. (She counts Sting and The Who's Pete Townshend among her fans.)

At a recent art trade show, her former Starship bandmate, Marty Balin, priced three original oils of rockers at $15,000 to $18,000.

This raises the question of whether these artists, regardless of skill level, should capitalize on images of their fellow musicians - even though they're hardly stooping to mall-kiosk levels.

Defenders say that by portraying their peers and influences, rock artists are simply painting what they know, as artists have done throughout history. Fame also increases the value of any artist's output. As Slick says, "I think you're born with every talent you've got. Just plain born with it. And then what you do is hone it."

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