UK University Offers Masters In The Beatles

LONDON — The city of Liverpool already has a Beatles museum and its airport is named after John Lennon. Now a local university says it rolling out a graduate program entirely devoted to the Fab Four.

Liverpool Hope University said Tuesday that its new master's program, "The Beatles, Popular Music and Society," would give students the opportunity to analyze music and culture through the band's work.

"There have been over 8,000 books about the Beatles but there has never been serious academic study and that is what we are going to address," said Mike Brocken, who is directing the program at the university, which is in the band's hometown in northwestern England.

Brocken said students would be expected to study the Beatles' songs, stardom, hometown and cultural impact through four 12-week courses and a dissertation.

Brocken said studying the band was really a way of examining society as a whole.

"If popular music is about anything, it's about people," he said. "If we look at popular culture, it simply provides us with a very complex mirror of ourselves."

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On the Net:

Liverpool Hope University: http://www.hope.ac.uk/

Comments

[1sparrow]

you mentioned frank zappa... how many people know the mothers of invention put out an album (right after sgt. pepper) mimicking the beatles album cover. the album was titled "we're only in it for the money". my mother forced my sister to take it back to W.T. GRANTS- and get her money back.

[sizogee]

Mark my words:

Thirty years from now the most important 60's-and-later artist in music curriculum will be Frank Zappa, the most prolific composer-g­uitarist-b­andleader-­recording engineer of his era. And to give just one example of his influence, when the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper McCartney stated that "this is going to be our Freak Out!", in reference to Zappa's first album. That's right, McCartney got giddy because he made something that sounded a bit like Zappa. At least McCartney has good taste in what he listened to. :P

Zappa composed full-orchestra music before even attempting a career in rock music. Paul McCartney still can't read music.

[swellsoire]

Would it be possible to minor in Wings, Ringo Starr's various projects, the sitar experiments of George Harrison, John Lennon's career, or the screech of Yoko Ono?

[Bitsko]

Didn't England used to be an intelligent country?

[TheBaffler]

The prototypical boy band. The middlebrows just love 'em, though! Maybe we can get courses on New Kids on the Block, Star Wars, and Seinfeld next.

[TheBaffler]

Beatles fans are like religious zealots who can't fathom that not everyone worships at the same altar.

They made simplistic children's musics of no aesthetic merit. The Velvet Underground, The Stooges, John Coltrane, The Kinks, Telonious Monk, and countless others were far more advanced.

[Pyfagorus]

I'm curious...since you bring up Coltrane, what do you have to say about the "aesthetic merit" of his "Ascension" and other free jazz works by artists like Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and Anthony Braxton? For that matter, what would you say about the "aesthetic merit" of the indeterminate works of John Cage, or the electroacoustic creations of Pierre Henry or Jean Debuffet? And while we're comparing "far more advanced" to "far less advanced" types of music, how would you compare Boulez's "Pli Selon Pli" and Stockhausen's "Gruppen" and "Momente" to Tuvan throat singing, a Bulgarian lullaby, or the Ramayana Monkey Chant?

[applehead]

you left out: you like apples? how do you lke THEM apples?

(good will hunting)

ps.
i don't know what you said, but i loved it. cuz i think the betles changed the wold, --- for the better ---whether one aknowedges or agrees with that or not.

[TheBaffler]

A Beatles fan pretending to know something about music is like a laissez-faire capitalist pretending to understand economics. It's hilarious.

[1sparrow]

john isn't laughing he is chanting "smoke pot, love pot, everybody smoke pot/smoke pot, love pot everybody--- EVERYBODY LOVES POT/EVERYBODY LOVES POT -- they want you to believe they were saying oompa oompa stick it up your jumper--- which is european stuff HA

[1sparrow]

i'm really pissed that huffpo censored my comments about the beatles. O.K. (it's all in peter brown's book yu cretans) O.K. question for the cretins: what did john lennon say at the end of "strawberry fields"--- "i buried paul", or "i'm very bored", or "cranberry sauce"---- it's a million dollar question...HE SAID " I' M VERY BORED" it was a time of heavy drugs, your a bunch of idiots and you will not - get it.

[43P04T34]

The biggest single thing the Beatles did was take a lot of the music that the Black artists had written and performed, and played it for us the best that they could. The Stones did the same thing, and so did several of the UK groups. They also took a lot of the music that several White artists had written and performed. That's what they did in the beginning. The radio stations wouldn't play this music for many years until the Beatles turned this virtual 'ban' upside down and inside out. THAT's the biggest thing that the Beatles did.

Twist & Shout, Anna, Cains, Boys, Baby It's You, Rock & Roll Music, Everybody's Trying to Be my Baby, Little Child, Please Mr. Postman, Roll Over Beethoven, Money, Matchbox, Long Tall Sally, Slow Down, Honey Don't, Dizzy Miss Lizzy, Words of Love, Kansas Citty/Hey-­Hey-Hey-He­y, Bad Boy, Act Naturally, What Goes On, Soldier of Love, A shot of Rhythm and Blues, That's All Right Mama, Carol, I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry, To Know Her Is to Love Her, Too Much Monkey Business, Johnny B. Goode, Memphis, Lucille and on and on.

[johnnyjust]

Majored in Beatles, Minored in Monkees.

[KCFreedom]

But flunked out of Turtles.

[43P04T34]

And skipped the class in The Crickets

[Pyfagorus]

Has anyone bothered to ask the one remaining living Beatle (Ringo) what he thinks about this?

[43P04T34]

He's not giving autographs or answering Beatle mail any more so how about you let us know when you get your next interview with him...

[Pyfagorus]

I'll make sure to schedule my next interview with him the second you buy yourself a sense of humour.

[Pyfagorus]

Once Paul turned 64 for real, all bets were off.

[wellingtonian]

Isn't Brian May a chancellor in a university in Liverpool?? He's always said what a huge effect the Beatles have had on his career, so that might also explain it.

[Sparty1]

I love, love, love the Beatles. I think this sounds pretty cool. When I was a little girl, I'd dress up in my mom's pageboy wig and dance to my favorite Beatles movie, 'A Hard Days Night' or their cartoon.

[jl4141]

And in the end
The degree you earn
Is equal to the tuition
You burn.