33 Things You Should Know About Sheryl Crow

1. Sheryl Crow is a foxy 40-year-old Aquarius.
The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter splits her time between homes in New York and California’s Hollywood Hills, favors leather jackets and jeans that lace up the side, and sings about drinkin’ all day and mackin’ all night. “I’m a lover, not a fighter,” she boasts.

2. Crow’s parents trained her for a career in the music business.
Mom Bernice taught piano in Crow’s hometown of Kennett, Missouri; Dad Wendell was a trumpet-tootin’ lawyer who once tried a case against the Ku Klux Klan. Both parents played in amateur swing combos.

3. Do you know what a squeezebox is?
Crow does, and she doesn’t play one. “I play an accordion,” she specifies, “which has keys and push buttons.” She also plays piano, guitar and pedal steel. “And saxophone. Not well, but I can play it.”

4. Young Sheryl grooved to her parents’ jazz LPs on a “very large” Magnavox hi-fi.
The first album she owned? A Burl Ives LP. Her first concert? Peter Frampton. “He was absolutely gorgeous, was he not?”

5. Crow learned about sex in the second or third grade.
“My best friend told me how it worked,” she says. “We were in the front yard under a bush, hiding from boys.” Her first smooch was in sixth grade. “It was a French kiss. I was really grossed out.”

6. “Run Baby Run,” from her 1993 debut, Tuesday Night Music Club, could have been her teenage theme song.
After wearing a black-and-gold skirt cheerleading for the Kennett Indians, Crow switched to the baton — she twirled onstage during the Wallflowers’ 1997 tour in a bikini and body paint — and then to track and field. “I’m built for it,” notes the five-foot-four musician. “I have really long legs.”

7. As a college student, Crow sang the hits of Quarterflash and Pat Benatar in a cover band called Kashmir.
“If you have to learn how to play somebody else’s stuff, it makes you better,” she reflects. “Most people can’t even play anymore. If you said, ‘Look, you’ve got to learn this song by Boston or Kansas,’ there’s no way half the bands nowadays would be able to learn it.”

8. Crow moved to Los Angeles in 1986, after her fiancé suggested that she should be “singing for the Lord.”
She sang for McDonald’s instead, earning more than $40,000 from a commercial jingle, which financed the move.

9. Her big break came in 1987, singing backup vocals in a blond fright wig for Michael Jackson.
“That was a crash course in the music industry,” says Crow of the Bad tour. “It was always the same show every night, so it was a little bit like being in a Broadway production. I did go all over the world in high fashion, though. It beat waiting tables.”

10. Crow on Jackson: “That’s a whole different interview.”
“A lengthy interview. Michael was interesting, but he was so reclusive I might as well have been on tour with Tom Jones, for all I saw of him.”

11. As a backup singer, Crow has worked with Don Henley, George Harrison, Rod Stewart and Sting.
Others were not so gallant. “I experienced all sorts of outlandish shit. From sexual harassment to rumors that I was paid $2 million to have Michael Jackson’s baby.”

12. After touring with Jackson, Crow fell into a deep depression.
“Days of never getting dressed, never leaving the house. Depression has been part of my existence for as long as I can remember. I miss things I never even had. I think a lot of my humor is derived from that.” Antidepressants helped; so did therapy. “It was quite a shock to my family when I first went.”

13. “I find it really interesting that some people go through their whole lives and never think about suicide.”
Crow said this in 1994. “Every day, I think about it — but I would never commit suicide, because I wouldn’t want to hurt the people in my life.”

14. In May 1996, crow’s ex-boyfriend died from what the coroner’s report called “autoerotic asphyxiation.”
Kevin Gilbert was wearing a black hood and a skirt when his body was found. Gilbert was a member of the Tuesday Night Music Club, a jamming ensemble that cowrote and played on Crow’s debut.

15. “I’ve dated nobodies and somebodies.”
In the somebodies category are Eric Clapton and actor Owen Wilson (left). “I’m usually attracted to people who are really creative,” she says with a sigh. “And creative people like me require a certain amount of independence and alone time. They can also be sort of selfish.”

16. Every day is a winding road for Crow.
She jogs daily for 35 minutes, “with nothing but thoughts of gratitude.”

17. You want to find Sheryl Crow’s room number in her hotel?
Don’t ask the clerk for Samantha Stevens or Laura Petrie — Crow used to check in under those famous sitcom names.

18. “All I want to do,” from Tuesday Night Music Club, is Crow’s least favorite video.
It was directed by David Hogan (the auteur behind Pamela Anderson’s Barb Wire), who also filmed her favorite clip, “Leaving Las Vegas,” which focused on her freshly capped teeth and luscious lips. “I’m thinking of getting some collagen implants,” she cracks, “so I can bring the puffy-lip thing back!”

19. Crow wears the pants in the family.
“I remember doing a video for ‘If It Makes You Happy’ in a short skirt, and nobody bothered to tell me you could see the crotch of my panties. It was more like a case of ‘If it makes you irritable,’ ‘If it makes you annoyed.’ ”

20. “When I cut off all my hair, I suffered a huge backlash.”
Crow chopped off her wavy tresses in 1999. “People are really weird about that,” she frowns. “Their loyalty to you ends with your hair.”

21. Crow’s film debut consisted of being murdered in the first five minutes of 1999’s The Minus Man.
The movie starred her beau, Owen Wilson, and her pal Dwight Yoakam, who convinced Sheryl to take the acting plunge. “He kept saying, ‘You’re so overemotional! You’re so dramtic!’ ”

22. Many Years on the road have taught crow one especially valuable trick.
She can catch zzzz’s anytime, anywhere. “I can sleep through flights. I can sleep standing up. I can sleep with airplanes flying through my living room.”

23. While dozing, Crow is apt to dream about being enrolled in school.
“But I can never figure out where the classroom is. I’ve never studied Jung, but I think that means there’s too much going on in your life.”

24. “No man will ever understand PMS,” Crow declares.
“And they’ll never have to experience the bikini wax. I’ve had only one, and I would have to be heavily sedated to do it again!”

25. Age ain’t nothin’ but a number.
Nevertheless, Newsweek shaved two years off Crow’s age in a 1994 profile. She is facing 40 fearlessly. “Time has no relevance,” she says.

26. “We’ve got liars in the White House/and all our pop stars look like porn.”
That was a lyric Crow had written for her new album, C’mon C’mon, prior to September 11. “Then I started to feel that it wasn’t the right time to be talking like that. But after Enron,” she adds, “I could easily change it back.”

27. Crow’s party-animal reputation precedes her.
“There used to be a time when I’d get wildly trashed just to blow out the cobwebs,” she says. “I don’t enjoy that anymore.”

28. These days, Crow’s indulgences are somewhat more domestic.
A Sheryl Crow sandwich, for instance, would consist of really crispy bacon and peanut butter on a croissant. For dessert, Sheryl Crow ice cream, which, she says, “would taste like Budweiser.”

29. Crow likes dogs even more than she likes beer.
She grew up with canines. “I wanted a pony, though,” she laughs. “I feel like it’s why I ended up in therapy.” Today she has three pups from the pound. Scout, “part Lab and part deer,” is her dog d’amour. “I hear people talk about their dogs, and I go, ‘Oh, God, I hope I’m not like that!’ Then I’ll catch myself on the floor, spooning with my dogs!”

30. Never mind the title of her bouncy new single, “Soak Up the Sun.”
Crow never leaves home without slathering on SPF 45 lotion. “I’ve already had some precancerous skin cells removed,” she divulges.

31. Despite her success, Crow still gets a knot in her stomach when anticipating reaction to her new CD.
“I don’t think any artist ever feels they’ve made it. That’s part of the pre-existing condition of artistic psychosis,” she says.

32. When nagged by self-doubt, Crow relies on a mental checklist of daily affirmations.
“I tell myself all the time to let myself off the hook. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself, Sheryl. It’s OK to say no. You can’t be everybody’s best friend.’ ”

33. Rest in peace.
On her headstone, Sheryl Crow would like this inscription engraved: UNDER THIS ROCK LIES SOMEONE WHO ROCKS.