Intelligent Musicians? You bet!

Published on January 31st, 2013 | by Nabeel

So we’ve already had a look at the stupid things musicians can say. However let’s be fair. Not every artist ends up living in the back of a van, playing bass for a drug-fueled megalomaniac in spandex and fathering children in every major metropolitan city in the world.

Some of them were bloody geniuses. They excelled at school, worked the daily 9-5 and are none the worse for it. Which ones you ask? We have some of ‘em right here for you. Read on

Brian May, guitarist for Queen, earned a bachelor’s degree in Science and Mathematics at Imperial College, London. He began Ph.D. work on the mysterious properties of interstellar dust — but didn’t complete it at first due to work with Queen.He created the thundering foot stomps in “We Will Rock You” through an acoustic principle called nonharmonic reverberation. In 2008, after resuming his postgraduate studies, May was awarded a Ph.D. in astrophysics.May is also an expert in Victorian-era 3-D photography and co-authored a book on the subject.Lil’ Wayne attended the University of Houston to study Psychology but had to leave to take online courses at the University of Phoenix instead because he ‘was too well known and busy to attend regular classes.’

Colin Greenwood, bassist for Radiohead studied modern American literature at Cambridge and is still a voracious reader.

Tom Scholz played almost every instrument and wrote a good number of the hit songs for Boston. Scholz went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning a B.S. and and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering. He was a product designer for Polaroid when he decided to build a home studio – leading to the production of Boston’s first album which sold an unbelievable 17 million copies. Scholz has 34 patents to his name, including the Rockman, a now discontinued headphone amplifier that was used and loved by many touring musicians.

Flava Flav got his higher education on at Adelphi University on Long Island, where he studied Business and Communications. The Public Enemy MC and clock-rocker was never once late to class.

Greg Graffin of Bad Religion earned a B.S. in zoology and an M.S. in paleontology at UCLA. He conducted field research in Mexico and the Amazon Basin. He was awarded a Ph.D. from Cornell, and currently teaches classes on the evolutionary theory there. Graffin has an extinct bird— Qiliania graffini named after him.

Dexter Holland from the Offspring has a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in molecular biology from the University of Southern California. After The Offspring experienced some success, Holland quit studying. However, recently he has earned an airline transport pilot license and became a certified flight instructor. He is now referred to as ‘Captain’ Holland.

About the Author

Nabeel Nabeel Mohan is Editor-In-Chief at Kuwait Music. As a science fiction buff, he loves robots and space aliens and if ever the world were to be taken over by robot space aliens, he would be the first to betray the human race.