the kids are alrlht
PAUL GREEN, the man behind new documentary ROCK SCHOOL, may have screamed and shouted at his young pupils, but he Clearly got their mojos working. Here, he tells Paul Dale how they started to roll with it.
‘ e’d open with [.ed Zeppelin‘s “The Song Remains the Same" and then they would do “Shine On
You (‘razy Diamond Part II" by Pink liloyd; then “If (i Was 9" by Jimi Hendrix; followed by “Paranoid Android" by Radiohead (that‘s a number the kids do really well) and they would wind up with Zappa‘s “Inca Roads".’ Paul Green sighs. He is imagining out loud the most perfect gig he could ever be at. Where Green differs from most people is that in his mind's eye he is seeing lots of little people manning the drtun kits. guitars and tambourines.
The Paul Green School of Rock began in Philadelphia in l‘)‘)8 where Green. a low-rent
gigging musician and guitar teacher. decided to
open up the one-on-onc format of his music lessons. ‘I started having my students jam with
each other. which I noticed was much better for
teaching. A friend of mine asked us to play a show and the whole process of preparing for it
14 THE LIST ti- 7? Sup
was the best education in music that I had ever come across. So what I realised is if you give kids an opportunity and the chance to work towards something. and don't let them settle for anything but their best. then all of a sudden you have a pretty good recipe for teaching music.‘
The following year Green set up his School of
Rock on a $7000 loan. His agenda. as he saw it at the time. was to offer an after-school programme on a subject generally left off the average school syllabus: that of classic rock. But Green was far from populist: his interest lay not in popular rock and pop but more in the experimental jazz. rock and blues canons: Sabbath. the '/.ep. Hendrix and Zappa were his bag and he had every intention of making his frail interns learn the lessons of his volatile passions. ‘People always ask. “How many students did the school start with?" And the smart—ass answer is “one.” Green laughs coughin at what seems to be a music tutor‘s
Paul Green's pupils give it some welly in
the classrooms which inspired Jack Black's School of Rock
private joke. ‘I was just too stupid to know any different. so I ran up my credit card and hired my friends and just worked harder than the next guy. First up we got 25 students. and then it pretty much doubled every year until we got to the 180 we have in Philadelphia now.‘
Life seems good for Green now. but the last few years have been something of an emotional rollercoaster ride for this chunkily ebullient yet oddly threatening son of Pennsylvania. in 2002. television director/producer Don Argott approached Green to ask if he would mind being shadowed at his school by a small film crew for a possible documentary. ‘Yeah. Don was just this local filmmaker who saw my flyers around town. came to one of my shows and asked if he could do a movie. I said “sure”. and a week later he was filming. He was actually the fourth or fifth person to approach me with a similar idea. but for some reason I trusted and believed Don could do something special.‘ Throughout 2003 Argott filmed in the corridors and classrooms of Green‘s then singular. under-funded. well- attended. under—staffed and unique school. The result was Ruck School. an immensely amiable verite-style documentary feature which follows Green and his assorted bunch of young nerds. freaks. loners and outsiders from intensive practise sessions to playing at the prestigious Zappanale music festival in eastem Germany.