1. Martha (Paul McCartney)
"Martha My Dear," on the Beatles' White Album, is about an Old English sheepdog, his first-ever pet, not a human girl. "Our relationship was platonic, believe me," Paul McCartney joked. "I remember John being amazed to see me being so loving to an animal. He said, 'I've never seen you like that before.' I've since thought, you know, he wouldn't have. It's only when you're cuddling around with a dog that you're in that mode, and she was a very cuddly dog."
2. eep (Eric Clapton)
Eric Clapton's Weimaraner Jeep, famous for looking mournful on the cover of his 1975 album There's One in Every Crowd, was his first dog since childhood. At Clapton's Hurtwood courntry estate, the guitarist let Jeep and his golden retriever Sunshine both "crap in the house because we were too stoned to clear it up." And just as Clapton wrote a song about George Harrison's wife ("Layla"), Harrison wrote a song about Clapton's dog ("I Remember Jeep," on All Things Must Pass).
3.Delilah (Freddie Mercury)
Freddie Mercury paid tribute to his favorite cat with the song "Delilah" on Queen's album Innuendo: "You make me so very happy/ When you cuddle up and go to sleep beside me/ And then you make me slightly mad/ When you pee all over my Chippendale suite." (Remarkably, the song hit Number One in Thailand.) Mercury spent hours with watercolors trying to paint a portrait of the tortoiseshell Delilah — and when he was dying in 1991, one of his final actions was stroking her fur.
4.Pandora (Slash)
Slash, an avid herpetologist, is given many snakes by other people who don't know what to do with them. Pandora, a six-foot red-tailed boa constrictor, was one such creature: She was passed on to Slash by Lisa Flynt, Larry Flynt's daughter. Pandora ended up starring with Slash in the video for Guns N' Roses' "Patience." "He's a real sweetheart," Slash said of the male snake. "I named him Pandora because I thought it was a she. I didn't really check him out that well when I got him."
5. Strider (Robert Plant)
"Ain't but one thing to do/Spend my natural life with you/You're the finest dog I knew," Robert Plant sang on Led Zeppelin III's "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp." The dog in question was called Strider (one of the aliases for Aragorn in Lord of the Rings), a collie with blue eyes and a mottled merle coat. Live, Plant was known to follow the song's final line of "Hear me call your name" by shouting out "Strider!"
