The Paul Green School of Rock Music - History

History

Paul Green began giving traditional individual music lessons in his home in 1996. He invited a group of his students to sit in, or "jam", with his own band with disappointing results. But by the third week, he found that the students who played in a group had advanced much more than the students who received only traditional solo instruction. He modified his teaching method to supplement traditional instruction with group practice, with the goal of putting on a concert. He compared it to the difference between "...shooting hoops and playing basketball". In 1999, the most advanced students played their first public concert at an art gallery.

He took out a loan for $7000 in 2002 and established a permanent location for the first Paul Green School of Rock Music in a dilapidated building at 1320 Race St, Philadelphia that has since been demolished. The location had a number of small rooms for individual instrumental instruction as well as larger performance spaces for full band practices. Spin magazine sent Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha to profile Green and the school for the May 2002 issue. Green chose to name the school after himself to avoid both to confusion with the Herbie Hancock television program and to use his measure of local fame, but always referred the program as "Rock School" and answered the phone using the phrase. Additionally, Green established the domain SchoolofRock.com in 2001, first archived May 24 2002.

In 2002, a crew from the Viacom television channel VH1 filmed for four days at the Philadelphia location for a proposed reality TV series. After the shoot, the producers stopped returning Green's phone calls. In January 2003 filmmakers Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce attended a concert by the students, and decided to make a documentary about the school five minutes after the concert started. They met with Green the next day and began shooting video one day later, intending to follow an entire school year. Midway through the nine months of shooting what became Rock School, they learned that the Viacom movie studio Paramount would be releasing a fictional film to be called School of Rock featuring Jack Black as Dewey Finn, a would-be rock star teaching children to play rock music. Many critics claimed that Black's characterization was based on Green's man-child persona though screenwriter Mike White claimed that he had "...never heard of Paul Green before". Green preferred the documentary, saying it "...opened a lot of other doors, corporate partnerships, and given us access to the rock stars that we play with. It was like Jack Black was the nationwide commercial for us and our movie was the industry cred." He considered a lawsuit, but decided against it, reasoning that the School benefited from the film saying "I considered suing, but what are you going to do? It's better, in a karmic sense, to just reap the rewards."

In 2002 Green had more than 100 students, and in order to maintain an acceptable student to teacher ratio, opened an additional location in Downingtown, PA. Expansion continued in counties around Philadelphia, then into southern New Jersey and Delaware. Green's dentist, Dr. Joseph Roberts, became Chairman of the Board of the School and provided funding to expand to San Francisco, CA; New York City, NY; Austin, TX; Cherry Hill, NJ; Salt Lake City, UT and Sandy, UT.

Green was bought out in 2005 by investor Sterling Partners and the management team he had brought in, headed by former Clear Channel executive Matt Ross. Ross remained Chief Executive Officer until 2010, managing the company's expansion and private equity acquisition, when he was replaced as CEO by former McDonald's Ventures executive Chris Catalano, who had previously led the expansion their Chipotle and Redbox businesses. The name was shortened to School of Rock. In January 2012, the headquarters relocated from New Jersey to the Chicago suburb of Burr Ridge, IL with a staff of 14, and an additional 11 employees in Denver, Colorado. The company has 1,500 part-time employees, primarily music instructors in its owned and franchised locations.

In April 2006, Guitar Player magazine publisher MPN announced a quarterly School of Rock magazine intended to focus on classic rock and musical tips for readers age twelve to eighteen. It lasted less than a year, closing during a contraction of the publishing industry.

Green's non-compete agreement expired in 2013, and he announced plans to open a Paul Green Rock Academy in Woodstock, NY to serve ages 8 to 18, as well as a Woodstock College of Music in Ulster County with Woodstock Music Festival promoter Michael Lang.