| The real Scool of Rock
School of my dreams... Quote:
The real school of rock
Jack Black's movie isn't all fiction: there really is a school where teenagers learn how to play classic prog. Johnny Davis meets the masters and willing students of Jethro Tull in Philadelphia
Sunday February 22, 2004
The Observer
It was Friday night. Dry ice was pumping out around the ankles of the band. Their hair was long; their Kohl was thick. Their clothes bought to mind the progressive rock stars of the 1970s. One of them wore a cape. The audience - packed to capacity - inched forward to get a better look. The expectation was tremendous.
The bass-player locked eyes with the drummer, and together they counted in the next song: a cover of 'Siberian Khatru', a cosmic reinterpretation of Stravinsky's 'Rite Of Spring' from Yes's 1972 LP Close To The Edge.
'One, two, three!' Then the female guitarist's strap broke. 'Oh shit,' she said. 'Madison!' came a cry from deep within the audience. 'Remember: your mother's here!'
Madison was 14. Her band mates were aged somewhere between 12 and 17. Along with the 21 other kids performing in downtown Philadelphia that night, they dispensed long-forgotten salvos from prog rock's back catalogue, spot-on renditions of some of the most arduous and unforgiving music ever committed to vinyl: King Crimson, Rush, and Jethro Tull. Oh yes, there was plenty of Jethro Tull.
'Hey,' said one dad to another during the half-time interval, 'your kid rocks.' 'Thanks,' said the second dad. 'Man, the 12-bar blues - that's what it's all about. I didn't think anyone taught that stuff these days.'
Welcome to The School Of Rock. Here, a chubby thirtysomething with an articulated forehead, independently flaring eyebrows and a madman's laugh teaches his young students to forget what they see on MTV and follow instead the heroes he has chiselled on his own personal Rushmore of Rock: Zeppelin, Sabbath and Pink Floyd. 'You want to learn how to play rock music?' he says. 'Learn the first three Black Sabbath albums and the first five Led Zeppelin albums. That's where everything comes from.'
At this school there are no final exams, no assessments. By way of graduation, the students get to present their own gig in front of a paying audience. For their sakes, they had better be ready to rock.
If this story sounds familiar, that's because it is. You'll be thinking of the movie School Of Rock, which opened at British cinemas earlier this month. In it, Jack Black stars as failed-rock-musician-turned-supply-teacher Dewey Finn, who off-roads drastically from the school curriculum to 'raise the goblet of rock' and teach his class the canon of classic Seventies guitar music. Under Finn's boggle-eyed tuition, his pupils - aged between 9 and 11 - learn to distinguish their Stevie Nicks from their Nickelback and eventually take to the stage at a Battle Of The Bands competition.
But this is The Paul Green School Of Rock and there is a lot of similarity with the movie. 'Jack Black looks a lot like Paul,' says Matt Rothstein, a 13-year old in a Slayer T-shirt. 'It's weird. If they faced each other in one room, that would be a sight to see.'
'They totally ripped us off,' says Lauren Pollock, another student. 'There are too many coincidences in that movie to what we do here.'
Paul Green and his students say that producers from VH1 - a TV channel owned by Viacom, who also own Paramount Pictures, the company behind the School Of Rock movie - spent some time filming them in 2002 for a reality series. Then they stopped returning their calls. Green may not go quite so far as to say 'God of Rock, thank you for giving us this chance to kick ass ... please give us the chance to blow people's minds with our high voltage rock,' as Dewey Finn does, but he is fond of lecturing his students in the finer points of Yes's 'Roundabout', just like a scene in the movie. 'Plus,' says Allison Jane Hauptman, who is studying singing and keyboards, 'some of Jack Black's mannerisms are identical.'
'Yeah, I heard about this guy,' says Jack Black. 'The film's not based on him. But I bet it's fun for him to teach Led Zeppelin. If he wants to sue, go ahead. Good luck.'
A spokesperson for VH1 confirmed that the channel had filmed at Green's school and added: 'That was 2000. The Jack Black film was 2003. It's just a coincidence ... We are developing programmes all the time. Not everything [wefilm] gets used.'
'I considered suing,' says Paul Green, 'but what are you going to do? It's better, in a karmic sense, to just reap the rewards.'
The karma police have been kind. Since the movie opened in America last October, Paul Green has seen enrolment figures at his school double. This year, Paul plans to open franchises in the suburbs of Philadelphia, eventually working his way up to New York City. He currently employs 16 staff. For £80 a month, students aged six to 18 are given one lesson a week in their respective instruments. Sixties and Seventies rock is the foundation of the programme.
The Paul Green School Of Rock is a shabby three-storey-building round the back of a car park, opposite a Church Of Scientology in a non-descript street in the middle of Philadelphia. One Saturday, some students are sitting about on the saggy sofas and balding carpets in the school's entrance, absentmindedly strumming their Fenders. The atmosphere is more Youth Club than Institute Of Learning. 'GET READY TO ROCK YOUR BRAINS OUT' says a poster opposite the rehearsal rooms. 'SPEAR BRITNEY' says the framed T-shirt next to the kitchen.
'Dude, did you hear Urge Overkill have reformed?' says Mike Cohn, who is wearing ripped Levi's. ;No way,' says Nick Sienna, in a Back In Black T-shirt. 'Man, they're awesome.' Then Paul Green arrives. As usual, he's in a supernaturally good mood. Then he spots the state of the rehearsal rooms. 'Aren't you guys supposed to be working today?' he bellows. 'Clear this place up!' Then he orders one of them to fetch him a cheese steak for lunch. Outside, it's minus four degrees and the streets are boot-deep in snow.
'It's constant vigilance with these kids,' Paul chuckles. 'You have to know that they're your enemy.' Most of the time, like Jack Black/Dewey Finn, Paul is perhaps most kindly described as 'childlike'. But he also has a reputation as something of a ball-breaker. 'Oh my God,' says Eric Slick, a 19-year-old former student who now teaches drums at the school, 'if you're not up to scratch, Paul will scream at you. But that's what makes you learn. Everyone else gives you positive reinforcement and he's just "no, you suck, you'll always suck." You're so ashamed you go home and you're like "I'll show him, I'll show him."'
Five years ago, Paul Green was in a band called Sweet Pussy. They were not a big success. Having traded his Ivy League education for a routine of slobbing out and 'trying to be a rock star ... but a rock star from 1972', Paul resolved to get his life back in gear. To help make ends meet, he started teaching local children guitar. One weekend, on a whim, he bought some of his students along to one of his band rehearsals and invited them to jam along, letting them put into practice what he'd taught them. 'They were awful,' he says. 'They sounded like ass.'
So he started making them turn up for rehearsals every week. 'All of a sudden, they started getting really, really good,' he says. 'I realised that when you teach guitar in the abstract, the kids are just doing exercises. There's nothing to teach them how to interact with each other, or to play in a band.' When a friend invited Paul to get his students to play at an art opening, he worked up a setlist to include 'a little Radiohead, some Led Zeppelin' and 'it was an instant sensation. A light bulb went on. Teach by performing.' He scraped together £3,500 and 17 students, and in 2000, opened the school.
As anyone who's ever formed a band as a teenager knows, you start out thinking you're going to be the greatest songwriters since Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and you wind up playing 'Wild Thing' until it makes your heart sink. Paul has little time for such inept three-chord foolishness. 'Why shouldn't my kids learn King Crimson songs?' he says. 'Most truly bilingual people pick up languages as children. You should throw as much as you can at them.'
For the first School Of Rock show, Paul's students performed Pink Floyd's The Wall . From start to finish. Recently, they've been tackling the works of Frank Zappa, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Jimi Hendrix. Is it legal, making 11-year-olds learn this stuff?
'Well,' says Paul. 'They don't really like Jethro Tull so much. Ha! But I say to these kids, "If you're into [doomy contemporary US rockers] Tool, listen to King Crimson, because that's where that stuff comes from. I chose my music academically. When you're studying philosophy, the teacher doesn't say "Okay, what philosophers do you guys like?" He says "Here's Plato, here's Descartes", that's how you start. Because today, rock music is getting worse. Stuff gets watered down. Led Zeppelin becomes Boston becomes Soundgarden becomes Nickelback. If I can get my students to go back to Zeppelin, then that's great.' There's a pause. 'Sometimes I can even get then to go back beyond that, to Robert Johnson.'
Paul is especially proud of the number of female students who have enrolled. 'You don't see girls playing guitar the way I teach them,' he says. 'I tell these girls, "If you can learn to play guitar even remotely like Eric Clapton, record companies will just 'bring' you money. Seriously, they'll fly it in helicopters and leave it at your house."'
Another Afternoon, Green's kids are due to put on a show called 'The Beatles For Beginners' at a local recording studio. At rehearsals, Frank Ermilio, 14, is having some trouble with his vocal on 'Taxman'. 'You're the lead singer,' Jon Hebert, one of Green's teachers, tells him. 'You're the front man. You've got to look like you mean it. Growl a bit. You're Paul McCartney. You're Mick Jagger. You're David Lee Roth.' Frank doesn't look like he wants to be David Lee Roth much. But 'Taxman' - and the show - is a triumph. Some of the parents have made their children Sgt Pepper costumes to wear. Victor and Max Reese, aged six and nine respectively, fall out over who is going to be Paul McCartney. The situation is resolved when Mrs Reese dresses Victor as Early Beatle Paul and Max as Late Beatle Paul. Max has a felt tip moustache. Their 'All Together Now' gets a standing ovation. During the show, Paul Green bounds about the stage, counting each song in, chewing gum and hitching up his 501s. 'Who wants some more Beatles songs?' he asks the audience. 'Come on, you've got to scream like you're Beatles' fans.'
'I want to thank you on behalf of the group,' says Mary Kate McNulty (12, vocals/guitar) at the end of the show. 'I hope we passed the audition.'
If any of Green's students has a secret hankering for any rock post-1979, or, heaven forbid, pop music, they're keeping it to themselves. 'I hate Justin Timberlake,' says Miles Grant (15, guitar). 'He's an imposter. He should die.' 'What would be the point of us learning Britney Spears songs?' says Allison Jane Hauptman. 'They're not even written by her. Like, how interesting or fun or challenging would that be to play? We play this music to learn from it, you know.'
Some students really do want to grow up to be rock stars. Some of them are already such good musicians, it's ridiculous. And Paul Green's tuition doesn't stop at mastering middle eights: he's also schooling his students in the art of giving good quote and that rock'n'roll stalwart, the impor tance of love. 'They need to have their hearts broken,' he says. 'Then go and write a song about it. What are they going to write about at the moment? Chinese food?'
'I tell these kids strike while the iron's hot,' he continues. 'For a few months my band was enjoying some success, and then it was gone. We didn't know how to push it over the edge.' And on no account, Paul says, should any of his pupils settle for performing in bars. 'Bands that are willing to play the Tuesday night circuit are going to play the Tuesday night circuit for ever.' He thinks about this. 'If I hear that any of these guys are playing cover versions in five years' time, I'm going to hunt them down and kill them.'
And there's one final thing. 'When my students are successful, I hope people will be writing articles about my school like they did about Seattle, when all the bands broke through from there.' Then he gives a grin Jack Black would be proud of. 'You know, that movie might turn out to be the best thing that's happened to me.'
| http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/featu...150967,00.html |
01-13-2005, 03:38 AM
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