Music
8 musicians you might not know are teachers
by Tyler Munro
April 2, 2015
Imagine this: You’re 19, stoked for your first day at university and you spot a familiar name on your timetable. “There’s no way that guy from Bad Religion’s my geology teacher, is there?” you’d say to nobody in particular (because you haven’t made friends yet, unfortunately).
But it’s true: Greg Graffin, punk rock dad and verbose Warped Tour pacifist leads a double life as an evolutionary zoologist with an affinity for, like, rocks or whatever. He’s not alone, either: brooding metal innovator Steve Von Till is a 4th grade teacher in Idaho, and emo-innovator Blake Schwarzenbach helps teach at a New York university. It gets weirder from there: Gene Simmons went to teachers college, both Simon and Garfunkle have taught in New York and heartthrob Chris Carrabba used to croon between the Special Education classes he taught.
Our list isn’t the most comprehensive. It’s not supposed to be. Instead, we wanted to pick out some names that might surprise you. Sure, you might have heard that Sting used to teach at a religious school in England. But did you know Agalloch’s guitarist is a tenured lit professor? Now you do.
