15 Rock And Metal Musicians Who Became College Professors

There was a time when it was (falsely) believed that a career in rock or metal music would lead to a life of debaucherous behavior before eventually burning out.

These 15 rockers prove that life in a rock or metal band may actually lead you to the classroom instead. For some, their love of music directly impacted their career path as a college professor.

Don Anderson, guitarist for black metal band Agalloch, became an English professor at SUNY Westchester Community College in Valhalla, New York after earning his Ph.D. in literature. It's something he credits to hearing Iron Maiden as a child.

Anderson told Variety that he heard Maiden's musical version of the late 1700s poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and immediately went to the library to learn more about the original author. He was simultaneously hooked by metal and literature in that moment.

That duality is something that has carried on throughout Anderson's career.

"I think they see me as kind of having a split personality," he told Variety when asked what his colleagues at the school think of his background in dark, brooding metal.

Greg Graffin, vocalist for veteran punk band Bad Religion, started as a graduate teaching assistant for a comparative anatomy course while attending UCLA in the 1980s. Even after his band found success, Graffin continued to further his education.

He would go on to earn his Ph.D. in zoology from Cornell University, where he later took a co-teaching position for an introductory course on evolution.

"Even though the genre we belong to is called punk rock, we've always considered ourselves songwriters, [and] I've always considered myself a singer," Graffin said in a 2020 interview with The Cornell Daily Sun. "In order to do that well, you have to really construct ideas in a critical fashion. It's very similar to academic pursuits – putting together a good research paper, for instance, or putting together a good composition in English, or whatever language you do."

Here is a look at 15 rock and metal artists who became professors and the stories behind how they ended up there.