Lean Left

I just saw Rock School, a low-key documentary that profiles the real-life rock-music training program that inspired the Jack Black movie “School of Rock”. It’s a blast. Check it out, if it makes it to your neighborhood. It was shown at a number of major film festivals.

Basically, Paul Green was this aging bar-band guitarist who found himself holding impromptu lessons and jam sessions for neighborhood teenagers, until he decided to make it a business. Now he holds after-school sessions for kids whose parents pay monthly tuition – it’s apparently going so well that he has opened a dozen franchise schools around the country. He takes kids from 9-17 and focuses exclusively on rock music. He pushes them hard and, in many cases, they discover surprising gifts within themselves. But that all makes it sound too normal.

In reality, the movie is hilarious because you can’t believe this guy is real. It’s very obvious – but not to him – that the reason he gets along with kids so well is that he never grew up. And he obviously has no insight into how his behavior affects them. He jokes and teases, but can’t tell when he is hurting them. (The most mature girl has to point out to him that his teasing is making the depressed boy unhappy – which he then defends because “it’s or-fay the ovie-may!”.) He pushes them as hard as he can to improve their skills, but flares into screaming fits when they miss a note or don’t know a song – abusing them, kicking walls, swearing constantly, sometimes until the kids are in tears. He explains it’s his motivational technique and good-cop/bad-cop routine, but it’s obvious he just has little control over himself. The kids love him and feel hurt by him both. He’s the cool adult who’s not stuffy, takes them seriously, swears in front of them, jokes with them, and likes rock music – but the reason for that is that he’s a big child, and sometimes that doesn’t work out so well. He kids one charming, talented girl so much about her silly “rap” singing that she gives it up – angering her father who realizes she is getting a lot out of rock school but that it has also cost her something she enjoyed. He gives enough confidence to a suicidally depressed, misfit kid that the kid says, believably, that rock school literally saved his life – but he teases the kid so much that he finally leaves the school. Those two kids are clearly the most mature people at Rock School – which is not a good thing since Green is, one would think, supposed to be the adult. He’s clearly one of those people who couldn’t do what he does without being a dick about it – but it’s OK because what he does is so cool.

What he does is turn kids who like music into serious professional musicians who not only love music but understand and play it at an exceptional level – some of them absolutely outstanding. The musical star of the movie is a 12-year old who plays a guitar bigger than himself, ripping off absolutely-perfect mimics of famous Santana, Van Halen, and Zappa tunes with no effort, then, in the finale, screaming through a solo that literally had the audience of fans and professional musicians bowing at his feet! Two 9-year-old twins casually explain that “AC/DC is easy because it’s so simple” (!); their mother helps them put on their black makeup and forehead-crosses for the Black Sabbath tribute concert, then gushes on-camera about how much her little girls like rock school while one of the girls sits next to her, quietly picking her nose and sticking the finger in her mouth. Green gathers all the kids in the dark before the Sabbath concert and tells them he doesn’t want them to be really Satanic, but just a little Satanic – then leads them in a chant of “6-6-8: The Neighbor of the Beast” that I thought was just hilarious. The advanced group works on very complex Zappa arrangements, and finally earns a spot on the lineup of an annual Zappa tribute festival in Germany, where one of Zappa’s old bandmembers sits in with them. The musical ability they show is just astounding – plus which the kids all get the experience of developing their skills, earning the chance to perform, perfecting the music, travelling to Germany, and performing at a serious concert in front of a knowledgeable audience and earning sincere praise from them and from professional musicians. (It was the Zappa audience that was bowing to the 12-year-old guitar god.) Those are incredibly powerful experiences for these kids – and a lot of fun, too.

The highlights of the film are the kids talking about how much the school means to them. They all think it’s cool to learn to play rock music, and many want to be professional musicians (some of them obviously have a good chance) – but you can see, too, that what they get out of it is also a lot of confidence and a sense of who they are. Some speak openly about being misfits who found themselves when they found something they liked that they could be good at. The performance scenes are great as well – not just the advanced group, who simply fuckin’ rock, but the little kids as well,with their goofy black makeup and awkward stage antics. It’s all great. (During the closing credits, you see Alice Cooper himself – looking like a leather-clad corpse – come on stage at the Sabbath concert, belting out “School’s Out for Summer” in harmony with the 9-year-old twins while surrounded by half-pint guitarists. I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind, but that’s a scene not to be missed!)

All in all a fascinating documentary about a fascinating program. It’s appalling, hilarious, and inspirational. The movie itself has some flaws (there is no narration, and the timeline is not explained, so it’s hard to tell just what’s going on – I didn’t realize the one kid had quit the school until he started speaking about it in the past tense). The kids, however, are pure gold – and Paul Green is pure . . . something, but whatever it is, it works pretty well. The movie is worth seeing – and if you’ve got a kid who likes music, it might not be a bad idea to check out the actual Rock School – though I hope the non-Philadelphia outlets are run by people a little more centered than Green is.