Cleveland Rock School: Enlightenment Comes to the Rock Hall of Fame
13 February 2006
I cannot say when I first heard The Beatles’ "Drive My Car." I can tell you when I first learned it. The twang guitar and that diggit-diggit-dat snare that cuts into the opening lyrics: "Asked my girl what she wanted to be..." The cowbell. The repetitive chorus, with that progression on the piano, up and down a major chord. I learned it while clapping and snapping along on the beats: an elementary school class. I was 22 at the time.
I was also at Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – not the first place you go for elementary education. It was the summer of 2005. A weeklong seminar put on by the Ohio Music Educators Association in a theater five floors up, right next to giant, inflated, bug-eyed figure of "The Wall"s schoolteacher (somewhere, Roger Waters is laughing through his most famous chorus, "We don’t need no education"). And, as I am not a music educator, I was not there for the class itself. Rather, for the teacher.
Mark Robertson is a stocky man: low to the ground. Short and bald, with only a subtle fringe of hair around the cuffs of his head, he is not someone you would see first in a crowded room. But he surprises you – coming out of a quiet corner with a wide grin, firm handshake, and an ability to speak with knowledge on several subjects. His favorites are rock music and the Civil War. To ease the burdens of the latter, he works reenactments, a regular in a Columbus, Ohio, fife and drum corps. To support the former, he has been a schoolteacher for more than twenty-five years.
Robertson is a percussionist by trade – and rumor has it he was once offered an audition with Journey, but turned the possibilities of a road gig down to be with his wife. He now has two children. His daughter is my girlfriend.
So, I was not attending this class just for the class. And having just seen in the basement of the Rock Hall Jim Morrison’s cub scout uniform, John Lennon’s green card, and Buddy Holly’s grades from his senior year at Lubbock High School, I was in a bit of a euphoric daze. Nevertheless, walking into the fifth-floor theater – an unsurprising room with red theater seats, a high-platform wooden stage, and screen where a repeating museum movie usually gets shown – the master educator Robertson had from his crowd only rapt attention.
Robertson is an Orff instructor. Orff meaning Carl Orff, the 20th century German composer who, among many famous compositions, developed an instructional method for teaching young children music: Orff Schulwerk. In its current form, the method means encouraging musical ears, rhythmic senses, and the willingness to cooperate in an ensemble first, notes and notation second. In simpler terms, Orff classes are the ones where children clap, snap, run, skip, jump, and bang on xylophones and tambourines, all to recorded music.
"Drive My Car," meanwhile, is the lead track on The Beatles’ 1965 record "Rubber Soul," the George Foreman of Beatles albums; the perennial odds-on favorite to win the debate over which is best, it seems to always be outlasted within the tastes of music aesthetes by an Ali in the form of "Revolver."
"Drive My Car" is not a perfect song: fairly simple, a stone groove and not much more. It even includes a famously mucked bass solo by Paul a minute, 46 seconds in.
But to Robertson, "Drive My Car" is the perfect song – for his purposes, at any rate. Orff instruction is aimed at true beginners: three to six-year-olds. Given its repetitiveness, popular sound, accessible I-V-VI-I structure, and – not to be overlooked – family-friendly lyrics, "Drive My Car" can do no wrong. And when his stereo chimed in with that familiar guitar twang halfway through his speech at the Rock Hall, Robertson forced in his audience of twenty-something freshman music teachers a subtle change. At first reluctant and slow to stand, they began to participate, digging the show.
"I’m not gonna stand up here talking at you the whole time," Robertson said, "Pat your thighs on one. Snap on two. Clap on three." And repeat. A three beat pattern in a four-four song.
"Told my girl that my prospects were good." Pat. Snap. Clap. Pat. Snap. Clap. Pat. Snap. "She said baby, it’s understood." Clap. Pat. Snap. Clap. "Workin’ for peanuts is all very fine. But I can show you a betta time." Pretend to drive a car on the chorus. "Baby, you can drive my car..."
It became a rollicking lecture. Teachers became students, engaged, clapping and snapping, quick to volunteer for later assignments, asking questions, smiling, full of compliments when all was said and done.
Robertson discovered something in his audience that day – perhaps something that, through years of experience, he already knew existed: a childishness connecting each audience member, unabashed and willing to try any silly little thing. Indeed, that moment on the fifth floor of the Rock Hall speaks to the heart of "Drive My Car," a simple, imperfect song that grabs. It speaks more broadly to qualities rock music itself: pure and sweet and energizing and – ultimately, grandly, coolly – a child’s game. Maybe that is why we listen, the music reminds us of what we were when we first heard the notes. Children, after all.
Pat. Snap. Clap. Pat. And repeat.
4 comments: 1. It's "I can't show you a better time"; 2. it's an anteroom (from the Greek, "ante" means "before") not an anti-room; 3. I liked your Sin City review, though I disagreed with one or two minor specifics, since the thoughts about film noir gave it heft; and 4. the hat guy reminded me of taking my daughter to the ballet, where we listen to the guy in the lobby selling the souvenir programs: different guys make different sounds, sometimes like a baseball stadium program-seller, sometimes a little jaded, sometimes trying to put a bit of a cultural spin on it (although none of them has yet tried "souvenir programs, what?").