Hawk Tour
Band tees are product placement. With the exception of actresses who are in rock bands, Drea de Matteo is the most blatant example of an actress who is a rock chick. Ironically, she knows how to play a guitar. This is according to an old resume from a talent agency called Don Buchwald & Associates. The resume provides historical insight because it was before Drea was cast in The Sopranos circa 1998. She claims to have been blacklisted because of refusing the Covid vaccination. If you read my article titled Skirting the Line, you will find out the real reason behind the vaccine being considered especially necessary in the film and TV industries. Way before Covid, even before it became trendy to get someone cancelled, Drea told Vulture in 2014: “I prefer to be on cable TV. You can’t rein me in. I can’t be a f#ckin’ cheerleader. I’m too f#cking loudmouthed for network TV. I’m too much of a whore for network TV!”
Drea de Matteo could have been a name that you thought of when the subject of actress rock stars comes to mind. Even Jada Pinkett Smith had formed a metal band i.e. Wicked Wisdom. They were formed in 2002 - the same year when Drea teamed up with Gina Gershon to play rock musicians in a film called Prey for Rock & Roll. Drea and Gina continued to be friends long after the film was released. For example, Sunday, November 6, 2005 was when they attended a concert at The Hollywood Bowl. The band was The Rolling Stones, and it was two months after the release of their 22nd album - A Bigger Bang.
The Movieline magazine had an off-shoot called Hollywood Life. Drea de Matteo was the cover story for the September 2004 issue where Martha Frankel described her as a music-loving scenester. Four Septembers earlier, Drea was the cover story for a mag called Arena. It’s not about music, but the name should have clued her in on where her main interest lies. The cover photo, by David LaChapelle, allowed people (mainly men) to see Drea’s AC/DC tattoo.
In the September 2004 issue of Interview, interviewer Matt Diehl referenced the fact that Drea doesn’t like acting that much. To which she said: “I’m tired of the industry, tired of playing the whole game – the dressing up, the red carpet. I hate talking about myself.”
When asked what she would rather do, Drea said: “I’m a workaholic, and I have a lot of projects. We have a company where we find new writers and develop their scripts. I have Filth Mart, a clothing company and store I do with my ex-boyfriend. I like to make everything my friends are involved in a little better. I should have just become a manager.”
Back to acting, she was asked to elaborate on using music to prepare for scenes: “I had so much crying to do for The Sopranos, and certain songs that remind me of certain people or times in my life really helped. One that makes me cry is Oh! Sweet Nuthin’ by The Velvet Underground, and Loving Cup by The Rolling Stones, and anything by Neil Young.”
Another song she referenced was Please Carry Me Home from the soundtrack to The Passion of the Christ (2004). One of the singers was Shooter Jennings: a son of Waylon Jennings, and the then-boyfriend of Drea de Matteo. According to the latter, Shooter was introduced to her by a friend. Apparently, the first time that they met wasn’t exciting. As the years went by, she produced for him two children. The couple got engaged but they never married. Shooter married another woman two years after Drea gave birth to their son.
Drea de Matteo was interviewed for the March 2004 issue of Blender. It’s here that we learn that Vince Vaughn was the friend who introduced Shooter Jennings to Drea. The location was a Hollywood bar called Whisky a Go Go. This was a legendary place for bands. Later on in the article, Drea explained that the context of their meeting was the premiere for Made - a 2001 Jon Favreau film that she went uncredited in. She must have been on some substance because she couldn’t remember meeting Shooter. Here are a couple of facts from the Blender article: Drea was booted from her NYU dorm for playing Black Sabbath too loud. As a teenager, she was a fan of The Grateful Dead: “I followed them around for a while. I had really long hair on my legs and armpits.”
The theme of the issue was the ten albums that shaped her life, although there was a ridiculously long list of albums that points to one of two things - the article was a heavily compressed interview where she talked about music, or Drea de Matteo just shared her entire playlist to journalist Andrew Goldman. The actress formerly known as Andrea talked about Christiane F. (1981), whose soundtrack was composed by David Bowie: “It’s the bleakest movie ever. It was my favorite when I was a kid. It’s about a 13-year-old drug addict. I watched it over and over again until my mom took it away from me. The character reminded me of myself, even though at that point in my life I hadn’t done those kinds of drugs.”
Just when you think that things couldn’t get bleaker, here is her anecdote about Neil Young’s Live Rust (1979): “My boyfriend at the time got into a horrible accident. He was paralyzed from the chest down. I wheeled him around for a while, and the only thing we could do was go to music shows. I was still a virgin, and I’d never slept with him. I was probably about to. This is the album we always used to listen to.”
Back to her 2002 rock music film, Prey for Rock & Roll, it was referenced when Drea mentioned a Hank Williams III album called Lovesick, Broke and Driftin’ (2002): “My friend Agatha Blois, who makes clothes for rock stars, turned me on to this. I always listened to Hank Sr., but Hank III is my favorite today. My bass coach from Prey for Rock & Roll is friends with him. I met him through her. He seemed like a nice guy. He has a mohawk under his cowboy hat.”
In the January 2004 issue of Femme Fatales, there was a review of the album that was sold to promote Prey for Rock & Roll. The film had a limited release in October 2003, but the only castmate to perform on the album is Gina Gershon as the vocalist (hence why she is the only bandmate on the cover). The album was produced and mixed by a famous lesbian - Linda Perry. There are photos of Gina and Linda having attended the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center's "An Evening With Women" in Beverly Hills on two Mays i.e. 2010 and 2012.
In the October 2004 issue of Stuff, Drea said: “My mother really hated tattoos, and she kicked me out of the house when I got my first one. So I went out, got another and said - Look here, what do you think of this one?”
In the April 2010 issue of a tattoo magazine called Inked, Shooter Jennings said something that makes me wonder why marriage wasn’t an actuality given the permanence of tattooing. It’s like ink on a contract. The joke is that it’s cheaper to get a tattoo removed than to get divorced. Anyway, Shooter said: “Me and my fiancée, Drea, got matching tattoos with our initials. Mine has her initials and it’s on my right hand. We were doing South by Southwest, so I think it had to have been 2004.”
In the September 2004 issue of Blender, Drea de Matteo was mentioned in a gig review of Velvet Revolver performing at the Fantasy Island festival in New Jersey. The setting was a hotel and casino in Atlantic City. The concert/festival was organized by the people behind three magazines - Blender, Stuff and Maxim. Drea was showcased in enough issues of Blender to be unofficially known as their mascot. The July 2005 issue had a two page feature on Drea and Shooter where it was revealed that the first record that Shooter purchased was by AC/DC. Drea admitted that she had broken up with Shooter once. There was a strange case of a memory relapse when it was revealed that the first time that they actually met was a couple of years before the premiere of Made. It was backstage at a Dwight Yoakam concert. By the time that it was 2005, the couple were residing in what used to be David Bowie’s house in the Hollywood Hills.
Initially, the couple were in a long distance relationship until Drea moved from New York to Los Angeles in order to participate in the filming of a Friends spin-off called Joey. She got the job in July 2004. Ten years later, she told Bruce Fretts for Vulture: “In retrospect, I would go back and do Joey again. Strangely enough, because I had such animosity towards that whole experience at the time. I didn’t want to do it, and I kinda got pushed into it. But looking back on it, me and Matt had so much fun. And I had a blast with the crew. There was just so much pressure on the show, and I was so nervous because I hadn’t done anything like that before. I would go back and do it again, but only with Matt, because I love him.”
The sitcom had stopped airing in August 2006. In October 2007, The New York Observer had observed that Drew de Matteo attended the release party for Kid Rock’s album - Roll N Roll Jesus. The setting was a bar called Nikki Midtown. Also present was Cindy Crawford’s husband, a nightclub operator and former model by the name of Rande Gerber. When Drea was asked what she liked about Kid Rock (who still hadn’t shown up after an hour), the response was: “He’s a cocky mother f#cker and that’s cool!”
Prey for Rock & Roll began life as a New York musical. In the July 18, 2000 issue of a gay magazine called The Advocate, writer/musician Cheri Lovedog was interviewed. Drea played the role that she would later play in the film. Cheri, a lesbian, said: “You can look at Drea and see she has rock star envy. It was an opportunity to do some juicy acting but also for her to fulfill that dream.”
The October 10, 2000 issue of The Advocate referenced something that Drea said in the September issue of Arena (a British magazine): “I can’t say I’ve never been with a woman. Those really weird German ones...all tattooed and probably junkies...they’re the ones that look good to me - not the blondes with the nose jobs and big tits. I like sleaze.”
Either Drea is a truly independent woman or she is a closet lesbian. Her character in Sons of Anarchy kissed Katey Sagal’s. Drea must have been one of those people who believed that the human body completely regenerates its cells every seven years, because she once told the British press: “I can’t imagine ever spending more than seven years with someone. I want children but I have no intention of marrying. Look at Angelina Jolie. If she can do it, I can do it.”
When you see how Drea financially supported herself after she semi-retired from acting, you have to ask which dreams matter for Drea de Matteo? She claimed to have been nearly bankrupt before she joined the O.F. site. She is not that popular, so it’s possible that she kept herself afloat by participating in some sort of hock tour. For example, I was so eager to move house that I sold most of my vinyls (which were in the hundreds). Even if it meant having to live in a slightly smaller house, I was prepared to give away most of my DVDs, video and books. Desperate times call for desperature measures, especially if you’re a woman who intends to literally measure herself so as to maximize her sexiness for profit.
You would think that she would have been at least considered for a role in Tom Cruise’s Rock of Ages - a 2012 adaptation of a 2009 Broadway hit. Other sapphic actresses were cast: Julianne Hough, Mary J. Blige and Malin Åkerman. Filming began a month after Drea gave birth to her second child.
There should be a scripted TV series that should do for hard rock what Nashville did for country, and what Empire did for hip-hop.