Sir Paul McCartney slams ‘ridiculous’ Beatles university course

Sir Paul McCartney says it is “ridiculous” that The Beatles are now the subject of a university course as he doesn’t think becoming a pop star is something that can be taught. The 72-year-old musician was answering a question on his website from a student doing an MA in Popular Music at university in Liverpool, asking how he felt about the work of The Beatles being studied. Sir Paul replied: “For me it’s ridiculous and yet very flattering. 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.”

To be told – as I was years ago now – that The Beatles were in my kids’ history books? That was like ‘What?! Unbelievable, man!’ Can you imagine when we were at school, finding yourself in a history book?!

Sir Paul McCartney

He added “It’s also very flattering, and I think it’s a kind of cool idea really, you know, like in LIPA (Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts). At the same time, 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 you can’t tell them how to become a Bob Dylan or a John Lennon, because you know, nobody knows how that happens.”

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