![Beatles inspire Skidmore prof. to pen first book]( "Beatles inspire Skidmore prof. to pen first book")
Beatles inspire Skidmore prof. to pen first book
By JUDITH WHITE, For The Saratogian
SARATOGA SPRINGS — He was just 14, sitting in front of the television with his family in Ontario, Canada on that Sunday night. They were watching the Ed Sullivan Show, and it changed the course of Gordon Thompson’s life.
The date is now indelibly recorded in music history: Feb. 9, 1964, when TV host Ed Sullivan introduced the popular British rock band: The Beatles.
Young Gordon was hooked. He might have found rock and the British music “invasion” regardless, but that show with the “Fab Four,” complete with cockney accents and bowl haircuts, remains a marker for a man who is now a Skidmore College music professor with more than a passing interest in The Beatles.
Thompson’s first book, “Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out,” was published in August by Oxford University Press, offering “an insider’s view of the British pop-music recording industry during the seminal period of 1956 to 1968.”
Without specific musical training beyond singing in his church choir, teenaged Thompson went on to become a drummer for local rock bands and then majored in music at University of Windsor, going on for graduate studies at the University of Illinois.
“I had an old style drum kit in high school, with a huge bass drum, and I just practiced for hours every day, until my parents made me stop. That was how it began,” he recalls.
The drummer became a percussionist and developed an interest in Indian folk music. He played and taught tabla (Indian drums) at UCLA while earning his doctorate, becoming known as an Indian music specialist.
Teaching at Skidmore in the ‘90s, Thompson directed the college’s London program, giving him the opportunity to revisit the music he’d loved as a teen.
“I found there was a lot I knew, and a lot I didn’t know,” he says now. “I started talking with musicians and engineers and producers, and making contacts.
“Basically, this book is what I found out.”
Thompson’s research led to his offering a seminar on The Beatles at Skidmore, and even a course comparing the various biographies of the Beatles.
He has no trouble filling his classes with enthusiastic students.
Senior Luke Santy has taken classes with Thompson since his freshman year, and believes the professor exemplifies the mission of interdisciplinary liberal arts in higher education.
“We spend all semester looking at the music analytically, and then are given the opportunity to perform it at Skidmania, exercising our creativity and originality,” Santy summarizes.
Skidmore alumni Jess Neilson agrees. A musician currently working for a Hollywood music supervisor, Neilson recalls The Beatles seminar as one of her favorite courses at Skidmore, “not only because of the subject matter, but because of the way it was taught.”
“Gordon was a huge and incredibly vital part of my Skidmore experience: professor, mentor, friend, and sometimes counselor, and I doubt very much that I would be where I am today were it not for him,” Neilson wrote in an email.
For the professor himself, teaching about the music of The Beatles is fun because there’s so much that’s been written.
“Still, I’ve found there’s lots we don’t know, or that is incorrect, so my second book will take a few Beatles songs and look at them in intimate detail.”
Thompson will host four fellow authors of Beatles-themed books in a panel discussion about lasting cultural contributions of The Beatles at 1 p.m. on Saturday in Skidmore’s Filene Hall, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the White Album.
The following day, Thompson will return to his rock-star roots and join fellow faculty members and students in performing an all-Beatles program in the eighth annual Beatlemore Skidmania. The event takes place at 3 p.m. in Filene Hall.
“This Beatlemore Skidmania is probably unique to us at Skidmore,” he acknowledges. “We’re kind of out there; we’re at the forefront.”
The popular program came about in 2001 as a consequence of his students’ interest in presenting a concert at the end of the seminar.
“It wasn’t coming together the way they wanted, so I took it on, and now it’s just something we do,” he explains, “And why not? When we study Beethoven, we do a concert of music by Beethoven. So why not this?” “As an ethnomusicologist, I think music is music, and I’m interested in getting students excited about music. If I had not watched The Beatles on that night, and gotten excited about their music, I might not be a professor of music at Skidmore today.”
http://www.saratogian.com/articles/2008/11/16/entertainment/doc491e0c9dba3c7519446192.txt
