Metal And Hard Rock Musicians With Surprisingly Soft Hobbies

In a 2007 post on the Megadeth website, singer and guitarist Dave Mustaine shared news of a new arrival in his family: a black colt he named Zane de Mustaine. The musician already had a history with horses, starting with a pregnant mare he received and bonded with years prior.

Mustaine shares an 11-acre ranch with his wife, Pam, that holds stables and room for their horses. They breed and show their horses, and in 2012, Mustaine shared his miniature horse Rocky with SPIN magazine. He told SPIN how he saved the animal from a junkyard and brought him back to roam his large equestrian estate.

Metallica's frontman James Hetfield shared in 2017 that he keeps bees at his home. In a 2016 episode of the podcast Joe Rogan Experience, Hetfield shared that he began raising bees for a few years at his ranch in California. He considered the time spent with the bees as "me time" when he isn't touring or recording. He picked up the hobby from his father who also kept bees.

Hetfield shared some insider secrets, like the fact that dressing in black makes the bees think you're a bear and eating bananas makes them aggressive toward you. If nothing else, his beekeeping proves there's more to Hetfield than Rock & Roll Hall of Fame-worthy music. 

The "School's Out" horror rocker Alice Cooper prefers to leave his heavy eyeliner and creepy onstage costumes behind when indulging in his preferred hobby of golf. According to Cooper himself, he's been playing the game since the 1980s and never leaves his home without his beloved golf clubs - lest a chance to play presents itself. When talking to Golf News in 2018, the rocker shared that he plays nearly every day and won't even vacation without access to the green.

He's a member of several golf clubs across the world, including some in Arizona, one in Germany, and even Maui, but his favorite course to play is Jack Nicklaus's Muirfield Village in Ohio.

Tool first hit the scene in 1990, coming up in the clubs with bands like Rage Against the Machine before finding huge commercial and critical acclaim with their music. When not fronting Tool or A Perfect Circle, Maynard James Keenan owns Caduceus Cellars and Merkin Vineyards, as well as a co-op called Four Eight Wineworks, and has been part of the Arizona Winegrowers Association since 2009. 

In a 2006 interview with Keenan, Wine Spectator learned he is a hands-on owner and winemaker:

It's crush right now, and I missed all the Sangiovese inoculation, and most of my Syrah. But I just made it home in time for the Cab. It cooled down in California and I just got off the road two days ago, so I'm going to have all my Cab coming in the next two weeks and I'll get to be here for all that: inoculation, pressing, barreling. I'll be doing it with three or four other people here, not watching somebody do it.

Roger Daltrey provides vocals for The Who and has since 1964. When not touring and singing hits like "Baba O'Riley" or "Who Are You," Daltrey spent his time raising trout on his 400-acre estate in East Sussex.

The singer began raising trout in 1979 before he and a friend dug several lakes on the property of his Holmshurst Manor for fishing with his friends, eventually opening the four connected bodies of water to the public as Lakedown Trout Fishery.

Faith No More's former guitarist decided to experiment with some pumpkins and their size while on break from the band. In his yard in Castro Valley, James Martin put in the work and created huge, award-winning pumpkins that tip the scales and boggle the mind.

In 2005, Martin won a contest in Santa Rosa with a pumpkin weighing 1,087 pounds. The pumpkin was the product of five years of raising the gargantuan gourds in an effort to top his previous efforts. He won seventh place in 2002 with an 877-pound pumpkin, and took fourth in 2003 with a 1,064-pound pumpkin.