Paul McCartney Finds Beatles Studies Ridiculous, Yet Flattering

12/31/2014
. (Gibson) Sir Paul McCartney recently participated in a Q&A that was posted to his website. One of the questions that came up was how the musician feel about the fact that you can actually take college classes on popular music that focus on the Beatles. Macca responded that "For me it's ridiculous, and yet very flattering."

McCartney expanded on his statement by saying: "Ridiculous because we 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. We wanted to make our own minds up just by listening to it. So our study was listening."

The former Beatle concedes that music studies is certainly important in terms of musical history, but it probably won't make you a better musician. "I don't think that by studying popular music you can become a great popular musician; it may be that you use it to teach other people about the history, that's all valuable. But to think that you can go to a college and come out like Bob Dylan? Someone like Bob Dylan, you can't make." Read more here.

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