TV

*The Voice* coach Joel: The love that saved me

Joel Madden and Nicole Richie

Joel Madden traded his rock star lifestyle to become a full-on family man, and he adores it, writes Emma Vidgen

Don’t be fooled by Joel Madden’s tough guy appearance. Behind the coloured hair, studs and tattoos, the American muso is more a devoted dad than a hard-partying heart-throb.

“My wife and my children are the most important things in the world to me… I care way more about these things than I do about any job I could ever do, song I could ever write, or success I could ever find in what I think is the silliest business in the world,” he says.

So he was ecstatic when his wife, Nicole, 30, daughter Harlow, 4, and son Sparrow, 2, touched down in Sydney last week. “We are looking at schools and we are talking about maybe leasing a place for the next year,” Joel recently told The Sunday Telegraph.

Good schools may not be the sort of talk you’d expect from a tatted-up rocker, but a troubled childhood has left 33-year-old Joel valuing family above all else. Joel, his identical twin Benji, their brother and sister, were left heartbroken when their father walked out on the family when Joel was 16.

Read more about Joel, Nicole, and The Voice in this week’s Woman’s Day on sale Monday May 21, 2012.

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