Random Rock Stars Who Were Nerds When They Were Kids (18 items)

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  (#1) Dave Grohl

  There's almost nothing nerdier than being your high school's freshmen class vice president. You have to make announcements, hang out with teachers and administrators, and pretend to make school rules that won't actually matter. Well, that's exactly what rock star Dave Grohl did when he was a freshman at Bishop Ireton High School in Alexandria, Virginia.
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  (#2) Jim Morrison

  One of the most brooding and interesting rock stars of all time was very much the same as a child. Growing up Jim Morrison was always a dedicated reader, and showed an interest in advanced philosophical works early on. As a high school graduation present, he even asked his parents for the complete works of Nietzche!
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  (#3) Adam Levine

  Even Adam Levine wasn't always the cool, good-looking guy he is today. In 2012, the Maroon 5 frontman told Access Hollywood: "I was very uncool, had disgusting long hair, and shorts down to [to my knees], cut off shorts -- I desperately wanted to be Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam really badly, and I was just a nerdy, awkward kid and I was obsessed with music."
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  (#4) Marilyn Manson

  Manson was a nerdy kid and a fan of fantasy when he was young. He wrote in his autobiography, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, "Most of my education took place after class, when I escaped into a fantasy world immersed in role-playing games." Manson also stated in an interview that he was constantly bullied while growing up.
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  (#5) Flea

  Despite being known for his audacious style, Flea (whose incredibly nerdy real name is Michael Balzary) likes to relax with a game of chess in his down time. In fact, while in Rio on tour a few years ago, Flea took on a chess master. The results were what you'd expect, but those who saw it claimed he performed pretty well.
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  (#6) Jack White

  Jack White said he spent most of his childhood at home "watching The Godfather and listening to Hank Williams and reading about the Second World War." The fact that Jack White defied expectations as a musician is no surprise, considering he's been doing it all his life.
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  (#7) Taylor Swift

  Taylor Swift has a powerful squad of friends and celebrities now, but she didn't have many friends when she was growing up. As a kid, she was ostracized by her classmates and once said, "I remember when I was in school, the whole reason I started writing songs was because I was alone all the time. I'd sit there in school and I'd be hearing people like, 'Oh my god, this party that we're going to is gonna be so awesome on Friday. Everyone's invited except for Taylor.'"   
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  (#8) Eddie Van Halen

  While growing up, Eddie Van Halen was not the rocker we later knew him to be. In fact, when he was a child, he studied classical piano and played mostly improvised classical music.
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  (#9) Tommy Lee

  Tommy Lee was never a great student, but he was very involved with the marching band throughout middle and high school. He even joined a marching band in the short-lived reality show Tommy Lee Goes to College.
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  (#10) Travis Barker

  Before Travis Barker was the badass drummer for Blink-182, he was in Fontana High School's madrigals choir, marching band, and jazz ensemble. 
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  (#11) Dexter Holland

  Dexter Holland, the lead singer for the punk band The Offspring, was valedictorian of his high school class in West Garden Grove, California, and he was even a pre-med student in college. After all his music industry success, Holland went back to school and began working toward his Ph.D in virology from the University of Southern California.
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  (#12) Kanye West

  • Hip hop

  Kanye West, the acclaimed, enigmatic, and oftentimes very annoying rapper and producer, is actually a huge fan of Japanese anime and something of an anime nerd. In fact, 'Ye once got into a bit of a heated Twitter debate over a tweet in which he said, "No way Spirited Away is better than Akira...NOOO WAAAY... sorry was just looking at a youtube of top 10 anime films." He also once tweeted that Akira and There Will Be Blood are his two favorite movies of all time.
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  (#13) Steven Tyler

  Before Steven Tyler was the frontman for Aerosmith, he was Steven Tallarico: a singer in the church choir and a member of the high school marching band. Perhaps it was the marching band director who first told him to "walk this way."
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  (#14) Natalie Merchant

  The singer-songwriter and 10,000 Maniacs member described herself as an "out-of-the-closet nerd" in an interview with the Huffington Post. She also said that she "love[s] research", and that she "really enjoys learning about the lives of the poets who were more obscure."
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  (#15) Justin Timberlake

  When Justin Timberlake was given the Innovator Award at the 2015 iHeart Radio Awards, he gave a heartwarming speech about the perils of growing up. In it, the pop star said, "Growing up in school, no one ever called me anything close to an innovator. They called me different, they called me weird. So, thankfully my mother taught me that being different was a good thing."
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  (#16) Kurt Cobain

  The grunge rocker who spoke for a generation began as an outsider in school. Cobain once said he had few friends growing up, and that he "felt so different and so crazy that people always left [him] alone."
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  (#17) Dave Mustaine

  In an interview for Metal Mayhem, Megadeath frontman Dave Mustaine said that he was constantly bullied when he was growing up because he was a redhead. In the same interview he said, "I didn't have a lot of friends and the guitar was the one friend I had." 
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  (#18) Chris Cornell

  In an interview with Radio.com, Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell said that musicians "are mostly nerdy guys that weren't good at sports, or were socially awkward somehow and ended up in a bedroom listening to records and playing an instrument." I don't know if that sums up every musician on this list, but it seems pretty accurate.

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