Colleges across the country offer a variety of courses that focus on specific genres of music or musicians who had an enormous impact on history. The Beatles are one of those acts that can be studied at different campuses across the world. Paul McCartney has mixed feelings about this. He revealed in a Q&A recently that John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and himself never actually studied the music they loved. They just listened and played what felt right to them.
"For me it's ridiculous, and yet very flattering," McCartney said when asked how he felt about Beatles courses. "Ridiculous because we [The Beatles] never studied anything, we just loved our popular music: Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, etc. And it wasn't a case of 'studying' it. I think for us, we'd have felt it would have ruined it to study it."
The band members studied by listening to the music: That was all they needed.
"We wanted to make our own minds up just by listening to it. So our study was listening. But to be told — as I was years ago now — that The Beatles were in my kid's history books? That was like, 'What?! Unbelievable, man!' Can you imagine when we were at school, finding yourself in a history book?" he added.
He also cautioned students who think that studying popular music in college will help make them a successful artist. Case in point: Bob Dylan.
"To think that you can go to a college and come out like Bob Dylan? Someone like Bob Dylan, you can't make," he said.
Colleges that offer courses on the Fab Four include Skidmore College in New York ("The Beatles: An Introduction"), the University of Southern California ("The Beatles: Their Music and Their Times") and Liverpool Hope University ("The Beatles, Popular Music & Society").
