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Written by Dan England
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Thursday, 07 February 2008 |
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Before she sat in the Aims Community College class “The Beatles Impact on the 60s,” Jean Otte looked at the legendary group through the eyes of 16-year-old.
That was OK. The year was 1964, and Otte was that 16-year-old finally getting to see The Beatles, at Red Rocks. She remembers saving enough money from her 25-cent-an-hour baby-sitting gig to buy the $6.60 ticket.
She remembers getting up early from her home in Denver and driving to the show with her friend, who just got her driver’s license, and her younger sister. She remembers the park wasn’t open, so dozens of cars lined up on the road that led to Red Rocks, and she remembers singing with the show-goers all day long to their car radios. She remembers the crowd exploding when The Beatles hit the stage for their 28-minute concert.
She remembers all that with a deep, longing sigh.
“It was magic,” she said.
Now Otte is the director of online learning at Aims, and she wanted a different perspective of The Beatles, one from an intellectual perspective and another from the students in her class — “outsiders,” she calls them — mostly young adults who weren’t even born when she went to that first, magical show. And, as a bonus, the Aims class came on her lunch hour.
That’s exactly the kind of perspective the instructor, Rick Busson, hopes to offer in the new class. Busson wants to explore the influence The Beatles had from 1964-70, how artists in the late ’50s influenced the Fab Four, and how their music helped shape the music of today.
Busson will also give the 15-20 “outsiders” a chance to offer their own perspective, by assigning each of them a presentation they will put together on a piece of Beatles history. They’ll do other exercises such as acting out an early press conference given by The Beatles — George Harrison, John Lennon, Ringo Star and Paul McCartney (for you “outsiders” who didn’t know) — one that showed their wit and charm and helped make them famous.
“Some just wanted to see what the fuss was all about,” Busson said. “A few others were fanatics. All of them are coming up with some really interesting stuff to talk about in their presentations.”
Busson, who also teaches music theory and guitar at Aims, offered a class on the history of rock last year and found there was never enough time to cover The Beatles. Busson grew up in the ’60s and was a huge fan of the Beatles, thus he has a sizeable appreciation for the band. There’s also a wealth of culture surrounding the band, which changed as dramatically as the times during its seven-year existence.
“This gives me the chance to teach something that really inspires me,” Busson said.
Besides the tumultuous time period, The Beatles were simply a great band, Busson said, and the music will stand the test of time for a few reasons.
Their songs, first of all, usually featured beautiful and simple melodies, Busson said, which is harder to do than it seems. The quartet played with great finesse, second of all, and their recordings were extremely detailed, with layers of sound and intricate guitar parts and harmonized vocals and, later, orchestrations. Finally, they grew tremendously as a band, from a group that sang simple pop songs to a complex rock band, in just seven years. Oh, and their lyrics were cool, too.
Busson got a few books from the library, but he put together the class based on DVDs, his own knowledge and, of course, the music. He enjoys playing songs and showing how the blues musicians of the late ’50s and artists such as Little Richard influenced the band.
Busson can only teach the class one more time, according to Aims rules, before he’ll have to drop it for a while. He’s considering the history of rock class again, and maybe he’ll do a class on another band, such as Pink Floyd. His boss, the dean of the School of Music, wants him to teach one on Led Zeppelin, so he may do that next.
Michelle Rice, 18, grew up listening to The Beatles thanks to her father, Bob, who loved the group enough to name her after a Beatles song (guess which one?). She took the class to learn more about them. (If you weren’t able to guess, the song was “Michelle” off the the 1965 album Rubber Soul.)
“I really did get into them for awhile,” Rice said. “I loved listening to Dad’s records when I was younger.”
She continues to get into the culture of the ’60s, the love culture, as she calls it, and attended a Rainbow Gathering a year or two ago. She’s enjoying learning more about the time when her father grew up. Bob, it turns out, grew up in a strict, Christian household and listened to The Beatles as a way to rebel. He was a bit of a firecracker.
By learning more about the Beatles, she’s learning more about her father as well.
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