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

[dnddays]

Very efficient, because a Beatles degree also doubles as a McDonald's degree.

[Bystander]

Huge market demand for these blokes. Ha!

[toochie]

I love The Beatles and all they accomplished, but this is silly.

[DogTown]

They changed the culture of the world.
Young people don't understand the pre-Beatle world.

[Bariis]

And what on earth can i become with that? A Beatles historian? And where will that take me?
Pardon my ignorance but do people really need to be that worshiped?

[bob72]

Most people don't do a job that their degree was originally intended. The point is that it would be cool to tell people at parties that you have a Masters in the Bea'les!

[43P04T34]

It's about the music and the culture, not about worship for anyone.

[bonerjamz]

"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,"

This is not the first serious academic study of The Beatles. Professor Glenn Gass of Indiana University has been teaching a course on The Beatles (among other music history courses) since 1982.

http://www.music.indiana.edu/som/courses/rock/beatles.html

I took the class and it was THE GREATEST academic experience I had during both undergraduate and graduate work at IU. Not just a class to screw around and get an easy A...this was about understanding music, religion, politics, drugs, fame, money, death and the impact of your choices in life.

[arspar183]

I'll enroll for sure. I'm a Beatle nut!!!!
john and paul first met on the day i was born in 1959.

[jayburd]

I would imagine that Jonathan Gould's book, "Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America" would be required reading for this course. Quite simply it is the best book about the Beatles ever.

[DJCranky]

The Gould book is okay. The best bio is the Spitz book.

[3fingerbrown]

And the best analyses of the music are Tim Riley's book and Geoff Emerick's memoir. More later ... I gotta study for my Paul Is Dead final.

[Graham7720]

re my comment I meant you did not have to work hard to become a musician.

[Chilblain]

To become a good musician is work never ceasing.

[PatBurns]

So true--you can never stop learning if you're a true musician. It isn't where you learn a couple of tricks and you're set to go; you always must grow.

[Gasparilla]

So when they played all those shows in Hamburg, sleeping in bunk beds in some tiny room, they didn't work hard?

[PatBurns]

Sometimes 12 hours a day--playing between strippers (and the crowds wern't there to hear music).

[Graham7720]

They're musically illiterate.
Maybe if there had been no Beatles and their influence our society might not be in such a mess.
People would have strived for excellence in the arts.
The Beatles and groups like them took short cuts to fame and gave a lot of young people the idea that you did have to work hard to become a musician. (I do not consider the Beatles to be musicians).
Classical music and jazz are much more interesting and substantial.
Oscar Peterson was a real musician. Bernstein was a real musician. Basie and Ellington etc.
Hopefully there might be a sea change and we can interest our kids in real music.

[mmsaretasty]

My, my. Aren't we a bit resentfully snotty here?

"Classical music and jazz are much more interesting and substantial."

Let's do an exercise in something called subjectivity. Here we go:

YOU SAY jazz is "much more interesting and substantial."
I SAY jazz is "self indulgent and boring."
Next, we both stamp our feet in dirt and kick up a lot of dust.

But then, I suppose you must have your own master's degree in classical (i.e. "real") music?

[Canuknotusa]

Ease up!
Graham7720 has a point about the 'musical' contributions made by the Beatles. Their contribution was less about music and more about social commentary, and marketing success of pop bands.
Jazz / classical music is the opposite.
It's an apple vrs orange comparison.

[JohnJames]

Ridiculous. The Beatles aren't Bach and an apple's not a banana but their music is, nevertheless, the product of sheer genius.

[ChrisR]

McCartney has stated that their musical illiteracy gave them a freedom to write music without worrying about what is acceptable or “correct.”

Your points on classical and jazz are also true, but here's the facts on just the names you mentioned:

Oscar Peterson recorded Yesterday & Eleanor Rigby, Count Basie recorded 20 Lennon/McCartney numbers, Ellington recorded I Want to Hold Your Hand and All My Loving, and Bernstein could never say enough about The Beatles as composers, and as musicians. Obviously the greats you mentioned had a bit more respect for their talent than you do.

True musicians KNOW they must work hard; The Beatles never changed that, and never claimed otherwise. I'm reminded of an early Beatle press conference, when a young boy says to Ringo how he learned drumming from him, and the reply was "You'll never get anywhere listening to me!" No pretensions. But they certainly revolutionized artistic control, the recording studio and its methods...and as McCartney said: every song emphasized love and getting along - not a bad legacy. More than worthy of a university class. Four poor boys from a backwards town no one had ever heard of, who followed their bliss and conquered all; and now there's very few people IN THE WORLD who do not know of them. More than deserving of this kind of recognition.

[Mort]

The Beatles' music is accessible on a global scale. Classical and Jazz may be more "substantial", but I can only hear Raisin Breath, by Buddy Rich, once or twice before I get tense. Hard core jazz takes effort and isn't for the casual listener. And while it was a lot of fun competing nationally in my school jazz ensemble, that wasn't what I listened to or played on my own time.

[jayburd]

Dad, is that you come back from the grave? I've missed you, you musty old musical snob, you.

[Canuknotusa]

I grew up with the Beatles' music, and hearing it now brings back pleasant memories.
The contributions of George Martin helped make their sound fresh and new, and the smart marketing of their tunes combined with tremendous good luck, resulted in them becoming a pop phenomena.
However, having a university offer a Masters degree in the study of the Beatles had better focus on the social aspect of their successes - not their contribution to serious music.
Otherwise, I would expect University schools of music to begin offering courses in 'lip--synching' a la Milli Vanilli!

[Gasparilla]

I agree George Martin contributed a lot, but to put their success down to smart marketing and good luck is nonsense. That only gets you so far. The fact that kids born thirty years after their first hits are listening to their music is proof of it's durability and seriousness. It didn't take them long to move from some of the stuff like I Want to Hold Your Hand to the introspective songs like Rain. And even the early stuff shows some remarkable talent. George's acoustic guitar on And I Love Her. Paul's singing on Things We Said Today. John's lyrics. Even Ringo's drumming that drove songs like Twist and Shout.

[PatBurns]

Plus remember that Capitol Records turned down their first singles in the US because they didn't think they were marketable! The records came out and were ignored by radio until Ed Sullivan saw the crowds going crazy at an airport in the UK and booked them for TV. Then Capitol finally realized what they had.

[shannonb2008]

I think some people here are missing the point and think the only use for education of any kind is to get a job.

Education isn't just about finding work, it's about improving your life and increasing your personal knowledge about the world around you.

As someone who has two degrees (and a steady job, so I'm not a "permanent student") and is studying a whole new field just for the heck of it, I get it. As a Beatles fan, I get it. I would love it if this was an online-based course!

[CharmiO]

I would love this master's! As I'm 58 years old and in New York, I hope the coursework can be accomplished online.

[spiderbucket]

The Beatles are the greatest artists of any time in any medium. Anyone who says otherwise is an idiot.

[fredisfred]

Greatest artists? Any medium? So I guess all those painters, sculptures, actors, writers, and filmmakers throughout history are nothing but hacks compared to the holy moptops. Yeah, that Michelangelo had nothing on the Beatles. And all those artists of the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods were just wasting their time because the electric guitar hadn't been invented yet.

Get some perspective, dude. I grew up with the Beatles and enjoy listening to their music, but they're hardly the greatest artists of all time.

[Canuknotusa]

What an utterly ridiculous comment!
Scale your hero-worship back a few notches and get a book about the history of art.

[CaveatMagnusFrater]

I love your enthusiasm, but there are a few others who can give the Lads a run for their money

[ellawensmom]

I agree...Leonardo da Vinci...Who's that? Lord Byron...Huh? Mozart, Chopin...Amateurs!

Whatever, Dude.

[filo]

In the history of Rock music, there is Elvis then The Beatles. Anything else is derivitive. The Beatles are the only group that literally changed the world. They were innovative at a time when music was opening up the world. No other group has had the influence they did.

[fredisfred]

Actually the Beatles were very derivative, John himself admitted this. And Elvis didn't write a note.

[filo]

I'm not an Elvis fan and while The Beatles may have been derivative (as everyone is to some extent ) nobody changed music and the world the way The Beatles did.

[43P04T34]

For the first several years they were white English kids playing the music that they heard on the records made by many black (and some white rockabilly) artists in the US, records which the US radio stations wouldn't play because those artists were black. After several years they began writing and recording songs that were heavily influenced by many musical genres. There is much that is creative and original in the Beatles own compositions but there is also a monumental amount that is 'derivative'. If you want that Beatles degree you're going to have to do your homework.