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

[RadicalRepublican]

You say you've gone to school
You've done it long e-nou-ough
The Bachelors took six years
This Master's not too t-ou-ough

I love it, yeah yeah yeah.
I love it, yeah yeah yeah.
I love it, yeah yeah yeah yeah.

[fredisfred]

What's next, a degree in the Bee Gees? Sorry, I'd rather see a degree in someone like Nat King Cole or Oscar Peterson. But the Beatles? That's just silly. I can see them as part of a larger study in popular music of the 60s and its effect on the culture and the anti-war movement. But just the Beatles by themselves? Nope.

I remember this one Professor teaching a course about all the clues in Beatles songs pointing towards Paul's death (he actually believed they replaced him with a lookalike). Nutso.

[Michael7843853]

The affect of The Beatles on society will be studied at least through the centuries. I can't decide which I love more their music or their amazingly complex everyman story. The article indicated that the masters program is about more than Beatles minutia.

[Mort]

Speaking as one who bought the albums, listened to the songs backwards and found every clue possible, Paul's "death" was a hugely successful, and amazingly well orchestrated, marketing campaign. And probably the only reason people outside of the UK would ever hear the name Billy Shears. Nutso? Nope. Crazy.... like a fox.

[vant]

This makes me want to go back to college. I've read more than 40 books on the Beatles. I didn't realize there were 8,000, however. I don't think I'm going to be able to get through them all.

[mmsaretasty]

"What's that? Oh yes, that's right, I do have a Master's Degree in the Beatles. Yes, my concentration was Ringo..."

[ZenCrusader]

Groovy ! Saw the Beatles twice - that wave of joy & fun lifted us - we need it again !

[Michael7843853]

Wow, not many can say that. By the way, could you hear them?

[Gasparilla]

I have nieces and nephews from 14 to 31. They love the music of the Beatles and classic rock groups from many years ago. My 23 year old nephew and his friends consider most of the music today to be commercial garbage. Rock radio is terrible in general. It's all formula, guitar, bass, drums. A band like the Beatles who changed with every record wouldn't get played.

[elr50]

I would rather live in a place that names their airports after John Lennon instead of Ronald Reagan. I think Liverpool has the right priorities.

[spiderbucket]

Word.

[Tropiholic]

It's wonderful that the beatle's music still endures decades later and is still relevant today.

[YeOldeTyme]

this is a BS degree. what a joke.

[Dukedraven]

It beats a degree in basketweaving. Probably just as useless.

[All4ME]

Disagree. Degree in basketweaving results in ability to make baskets.

[KCFreedom]

We might need to learn how to weave baskets again, the way things are going.

Also, we might have to learn how to cook for ourselves again and hunt/gather.

[lovethesinner]

It's just my opinion, but... I'd argue that the Beatles, and particularly John Lennon, did more for the progressive movement worldwide than any politician or political party, since. I might be pushing the envelope here, but... I might also argue that they were one of the first truly GLOBAL cultural commodities.

(sorry, I'm 57 years old... I was there, and it still hasn't worn out for me. It's like your first... you know... you never forget your first)

[RepugsOut08]

I'm 55. I was there too, and I know exactly what you're saying.
It really is a joy to me that The Beatles keep finding new young fans to this day.
I suspected that they were going to be for the ages when I was experiencing their music in the sixties, and I'm glad to have lived long enough to see them still moving young audiences.

[mcamp52]

Really good point. I'm 56. All You Need Is Love. War Is Over, If You Want It. Give Peace A Chance.

[wellingtonian]

Larstein has the right idea, the Beatles weren't just a band, they were a cultural revolution. It's sad that people think that if a paper isn't physically teaching practical things like engineering, then it's pointless. Can't we just study something because it's interesting?
It would make a good cultural history paper. So far the most facinating thing I've studied at Uni is America in the 70's, so a paper on the Beatles would be very cool indeed.

[KCFreedom]

Don't worry; studying engineering won't get you a job anymore, either.

Especially if you're a white domestic male over 40. You're done.

[toypiano]

Ok, but then I want to get a Ph.D in Pete Seeger.

[RepugsOut08]

Actually, I think a study of Pete Seeger's remarkable life would be quite appropriate for a Ph.D.
He goes all the way back to Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan's early influence.
What a life that man has led, and what amazing revolutions in music and culture he's be both a part of and witness to.

[rini]

He is ninety years old and he actually jogged off the stage after performing at the inauguration. That accomplishment itself is amazing. Yet, he has not lead a timid or overly careful life. Peter Seeger has been in the face of the establishment since way before most of us were born and he has created so much.

wow.

[toypiano]

Exactly right. I was actually serious and I do think he merits serious academic study.

[KCFreedom]

Pete Seeger is playing at the New Orleans Jazz Festival this year:

www.nojazzfest.com

A don't-miss show!

I have a DVD set of "Playboy After Dark", the old series that Hugh Hefner hosted that had all kinds of musical guests on. One episode with Pete Seeger, he plays a great song about Congress being corrupt. It is a hoot and I recommend ALL Americans should listen to that song. Things haven't changed much since 1960, after all.

Another cool thing for Pete Seeger fans are DVDs of his old series he hosted called "Rainbow Quest" which was on in the early 1960s. Some are better than others but the good ones are great, like the one with Mississippi John Hurt, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee and the one with the Stanley Brothers & Doc Watson.

[larstein]

Since the Beatles are central to the cultural revolution that swept the world in the 1960's it is completely appropriate to offer a graduate degree. If one traces the influences and references in their songs it forms a mosaic of virtually all the different genres and forms of music in that most amazing decade. And since the 1960's will continue to forever fascinate, the threads of research and commentary are potentially endless. Besides, what else has Liverpool got? San Francisco and it's Beat and Hippie scenes from the '50's and '60's are the American counterpart. The Beatles were deeper than mere entertainment. They produced real and worthy art, and they connected to an aggregate of scenes so global, so complex and amazing that it would be a shame if it were allowed to be forgotten. The Swinging '60's during the hey-day of the Beatles and the Stones put a stamp on the history of English style as indelible as Shakespeare's. The sounds, the look, everything about that time gets more magical as nostalgia sets in. By all means, more research, more books, more study, more graduate degrees.

[Winthorpe]

About whom did they write "Dear Prudence?" Too easy?

Her sister's ex-husband has been favorite fodder around here.

[Pyfagorus]

Actually, he isn't her ex-husband, since they were never married. Maybe you could have made it more challenging by asking it like this: "Who is the husband of the adoptive daughter of the sister of the woman about whom "Dear Prudence" was written?"

[Gasparilla]

Norwegian Woody

[KayoFrisco]

Follow up essay question for mid-term paper: "Who is really the "fifth Beatle" and why?"
Please include at least 2 pop culture references demonstrating your fifth Beatle's importance to the group.

[KayoFrisco]

The correct answer is "Frank Sinatra", if you are talking about a real ex-husband.