Welcome to the real-life School of Rock

Tony Greenway meets some young bands in the making at a music school and learns that there's more to the sessions than meets the eye . . .

Tutor Matthew Roberts with his students

There are two Schools of Rock in this world. There’s the fictitious one from the cult movie, School of Rock, starring Jack Black as a deadbeat musician who – for reasons far too convoluted to mention here – winds up secretly teaching rock guitar to a class full of wide-eyed 10-year-olds.

Then there’s the real one – called The School of Rock and Pop – which has a base in York, and is run by Andrew Meadowcroft and Keith Perbedy.

Unlike Jack, Andrew and Keith are not musical deadbeats. Far from it: Keith, who specialises in bass guitar, has performed alongside the likes of Sting, The Rolling Stones, Phil Collins, Jools Holland, Squeeze, Anastacia, Robbie Williams, Travis, Eurythmics, Lulu, Chris Rea, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury and The Pretenders.

He also played on the Number One Comic Relief single, Is This the Way to Amarillo?, and recently toured with Tony Christie.

Andrew, meanwhile, went to Hull University to study music as the Housemartins were coming to prominence. After graduation, he sang and played with members of the Housemartins and the Beautiful South and made a number of TV appearances.

A musical all-rounder, his teaching career spans 18 years, and he’s delivered and managed a number of acclaimed music programmes in the north and north-east.

Three years ago, Andrew (45) had the idea to start his own rock school. “I’d always liked the idea, but shied away from it because of the pressures of maintaining the upkeep of a building,” he says.

“But then we thought: ‘What if we make it a peripatetic school? What if it travels around and rents out existing spaces?’ That was more appealing because it meant we could go wherever we wanted, so we first announced it as an after-school activity for young rock musicians that would be funded by parents.

“Then we put it out there to see if anyone was interested. And they were.”

So now, The School of Rock and Pop appears, out of school hours, in colleges and schools across the north and north-east. The first-ever class kicked off in Darlington in 2005; but other branches have now set up in Durham, Yarm, Newcastle, and Leeds – and, more recently, Blackpool.

When I stroll into the York School of Rock and Pop – which pitches up every Monday night at Archbishop Holgate School on the Hull Road – it really is like walking into the Jack Black movie.

There are three rooms, full of 11 to 18-year-olds, all making a noise. But this is an impressive, structured noise, and each band is being tutored by an expert member of Andrew and Keith’s staff. The sessions are £20.75 – which, argues Andrew, is the price of a piano lesson. “I’m not going to tell you it’s a middle-class pursuit,” he says. “We have a lot of people who wouldn’t typically fall into that bracket.”

Tutor Amy Stead with her York student band, Oriental Emergency

In one studio, someone – who can’t be more than 14 – is absent-mindedly playing the riff from Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water on the electric guitar. Someone else – aged 15, maybe? – is playing keyboards. Another teenager is sitting on a desk, microphone in hand, about to sing. They all have one thing in common: These kids are GOOD.

“They have to be,” says Andrew. “Because it’s ensemble work, we can’t have absolute beginners: You’ve got to have something to share. If you can’t join in, you won’t be happy and the people around you won’t be happy.

“But as soon as you do have something to share – and that might just be some power chords – and can play in time, we can take you.”

At present, there are 19 youngsters in the Monday night lesson, and many of these will be playing a live gig soon at legendary York music venue, Fibbers, in front of a real audience. Andrew and Keith’s students – and they ARE students, not just a group of teens messing about with electric guitars – learn reading and understanding music notation, improvising, songwriting and rock and pop styles. The School of Rock and Pop also works with the London School of Music to deliver nationally-recognised music grades – which means that students are entered for graded music exams. The results have been excellent.

Even so, I wonder if there’s some snobbery in the musical establishment with regards to rock and pop musicians. You know: Flute and cello = good. Anything you have to plug in = time-waster.

Certainly, as a youngster, Andrew remembers being ferried around to youth orchestras and brass band practice . . . but he didn’t have rock music lessons and learnt guitar by playing in a church folk group.

“If you play the ‘right’ instrument and sing, there are lots of opportunities out there for you,” he says. “If you’re a young guitar-player or bass player, however, there simply aren’t. You have to have the wit to team up with like-minded people . . . and even then you’re not being taught by anyone.

“That limitation is partly down to logistics: With a French horn or a trumpet, you can play anywhere. You don’t have to worry about amps, microphones and having the right jack lead. Plus, there’s a ratio issue, too: You’re not going to get more than six or seven people in a rock band, whereas you can have 30 in a brass band. So there are a whole host of reasons why rock and pop isn’t a ‘mainstream’ subject.”

Andrew says the band his students mainly aspire to be is the hard-rocking AC/DC. But . . . hang on. Their glory days were 30 years ago. How have these talented teens even HEARD of AC/DC?

“Classic rock has such cache,” laughs Andrew. “But, yes, that is perverse, isn’t it? Yet they love Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy, Motorhead and Aerosmith – iconic bands with quasi-operatic frontmen and hero guitarists. We do play modern stuff, too: Green Day, Foo Fighters, The Killers, Blink 182 . . .”

So why is this music important to learn? “Good question,” says Andrew. “In Private Eye, there’s a section called Pseud’s Corner which is full of pretentious quotes from people usually talking about the arts. Well, I’m afraid, as soon as I talk about creativity, there’s a danger I might appear in that.

“In fact, not so long ago, when we were planning a flyer for the school, we tried to encapsulate what the kids got out of it in a short, pithy sentence. And we couldn’t do it. In the end, we chose pictures to illustrate what we couldn’t express in words.”

Andrew has a stab at summing the school up anyway: “It’s about connection – connecting your own creativity with other people’s. You don’t get into rock and roll to play it to yourself, after all; you play it because you want to be with other people. It’s about accessibility and inclusion and it’s about achievement – and excellence. It’s also about building self-confidence. You discover a real sense of self through making music.”

He laughs. “There you go: Pseud’s Corner.”

Andrew and Keith are impressed, pleased with and proud of their students. “But that doesn’t surprise me,” says Andrew, “because this is great music that is fun to play. But the deal is, it’s structured study. It might be the study of rock music, but that doesn’t mean bouncing off the walls and being daft. We’re working towards concerts and exams. We’re not just here to jam or busk. We’re here to help the kids improve as musicians.”