EDUCATION Who gets a master’s degree in the Beatles?
Band’s effects on commercial sectors, culture explored
On Wednesday morning, as a new semester began, students eagerly headed into the University of Liverpool’s lecture theaters to begin courses in archaeology, languages and international relations.
But in lecture room No. 5 of the university’s concrete Rendall Building, a less traditional program was getting under way: a master’s degree devoted entirely to the Beatles.
“How does one start a Beatles M.A.?” asked Holly Tessler, the American academic who founded the course, looking out at 11 eager students. One wore a Yoko Ono T-shirt; another had a yellow submarine tattooed on his arm.
“I thought the only way to do it, really, is with some music,” she said.
Tessler then played the class the music video for “Penny Lane,” the Beatles’ tribute to a real street in Liverpool, just a short drive from the classroom.
The yearlong course — “The Beatles: Music Industry and Heritage” — would focus on shifting perceptions of the Beatles over the past 50 years and on how the band’s changing stories affected commercial sectors like the record business and tourism, Tessler said in an interview before class.
For Liverpool, the band’s hometown, the association with the Beatles was worth more than $110 million a year, according to a 2014 study by Mike Jones, another lecturer on the course. Tourists make pilgrimages to city sites named in the band’s songs, visit venues where the group played — like the Cavern Club — and pose for photos with Beatles statues. The band’s impact was always economic and social as much as musical, Tessler said.
Throughout the course, students would have to stop being simply Beatles fans and start thinking about the group from new perspectives, she added. “Nobody wants or needs a degree where people are sitting around listening to ‘Rubber Soul’ debating lyrics,” she said. “That’s what you do in the pub.”
In Wednesday’s lecture, which focused almost entirely on “Penny Lane,” Tessler encouraged students to think of the Beatles as a “cultural brand,” using the terms “narrative theory” and “transmediality.”
Then she applied those ideas to a recent Beatlesrelated event. Last year, Tessler said, street signs along the real Penny Lane were defaced as Black Lives Matter protests spread across Britain. There was a long-standing belief in Liverpool, she explained, that the street was named after an 18th-century slave trader, James Penny. (The city’s International Slavery Museum listed Penny Lane in an interactive display of street names linked to slavery in 2007, but it now says there is no evidence that the road was named after the merchant.)
“What would happen if they did change the name to — I don’t know — Smith Lane?” Tessler asked. That would deprive Liverpool of a key tourist attraction, she said: “You can’t pose next to a sign that used to be Penny Lane.” The furor around the street name showed how stories about the Beatles
can intersect with contemporary debates and have an economic impact, she said.
The course’s 11 students — three women and eight men, age 21 to 67 — all said they were long-term Beatles obsessives. (Two had named their sons Jude, after one of the band’s most famous songs; another had a son called George, after George Harrison.)
Dale Roberts, 31, and Damion Ewing, 51, both said they were professional tour guides and hoped the qualification would help them attract customers. “The tour industry in Liverpool is fierce,” Roberts said.
Alexandra Mason, 21, said she had recently completed a law degree but decided to change track when she heard about the Beatles course. “I never really wanted to be a lawyer,” she said. “I always wanted to do something more colorful and creative.”