In the lobby of the School of Rock in Gowanus, a 16-year-old girl sits alone on the couch quietly rehearsing Jimmy Page\u2019s solo in Led Zeppelin\u2019s \u201cHeartbreaker\u201d on her unamplified electric guitar. She seems lost in concentration as she learns to nail the notes of this sleazy 1970s rock song. In another life, she might have been puzzling over the notes of a fugue.<\/p>\n
At the front desk, a young female employee with a lip piercing explains the nuances of sludge metal, doom metal, and psych metal to a flustered-looking mother who asked a question about scheduling. Meanwhile, the descending riff of the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” blares from the practice rooms behind the glass door. It\u2019s a song that the School of Rock treats a bit like the Suzuki Method treats \u201cTwinkle, Twinkle, Little Star\u201d \u2014 a standard, a building block.<\/p>\n
I grew up studying classical violin in the early \u201990s, a time when learning to play rock music was done on a kid\u2019s own time, if at all. So it continually disarms me to enter into this genial parallel universe \u2014 one in which teachers expound eagerly on the relative merits of pre- and post-Bruce Dickinson Iron Maiden as class lets out.<\/p>\n
The School of Rock has come far since its beginnings in 1998, when a man named Paul Green taught full-band curriculum to high school-aged students out of a former dentist’s office in Philadelphia. Green also had a reputation for fostering a sexually charged, frequently abusive environment among his students, and in 2025, allegations of more serious abuses surfaced. Green had already separated from the School of Rock corporate entity in 2010; the allegations stem from the schools he personally ran, which have all since closed.<\/p>\n
The School of Rock now boasts more than 300 locations across the United States. There are six locations spread out across the five boroughs, with three in Brooklyn alone. My 10-year-old son has been attending School of Rock for two years, during which he has met many like-minded kids \u2014 ones who, according to the unfailingly cheerful head of the Gowanus branch, \u201cmaybe don\u2019t succeed in sports generally, or who are maybe not feeling empowered in their traditional school environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea of rock and roll as “dangerous” music has long been waning. But even as recently as two decades ago, to play dangerous music you needed to be seen as dangerous. Prep school kids like the Strokes were still expected to be spotted partying downtown, coke ringing their nostrils and booze oozing out their pores.<\/p>\n
Today, New York’s biggest rock band is undoubtedly Geese, a group of brownstone Brooklyn kids whose parents are authors and musicians. Geese met and formed under the auspices of two institutions: The Park Slope Rock School (no relation to the School of Rock, confusingly), and the School of Rock. They are products of this endearing new world, one in which rock music is not just harmless, but wholesome.<\/p>\n
What happened to make the devil\u2019s music so approachable? Time does its part, for sure. We sometimes edit out the more salacious biographical details from our treasured artists\u2019 lives, and the classical canon is not so saintly after all: Mozart once wrote a ditty called \u201cLeck mich im Arsch\u201d (run it through Google Translate, if you dare). My third grade choral instructor also left out Louis Armstrong\u2019s brief tenure as a pimp from her speech to our assembled families before leading the children in our rendition of \u201cWhat A Wonderful World.\u201d No matter the era, musicians rarely mix well with polite company.<\/p>\n
But in the sleeve tattoos, greying hair, and Sub Pop T-shirts of the parents dropping their kids off at School of Rock, I spy another possible reason. These are Gen X parents who came of age during the moral panic around punk, rap and heavy metal. These were the Tipper Gore years of music censorship, leading to congressional hearings and the birth of the Parental Advisory sticker. It\u2019s not hard to imagine this generational cohort eager to prove the music they loved is no more toxic or dangerous than any other generation. A generation into the School of Rock universe, where classes have names like \u201cMy Chemical Romance vs. Paramore\u201d and Black Sabbath is Beethoven, what have we learned?<\/p>\n
Dominic DiGesu, the bassist of Geese, attended School of Rock’s Manhattan location, first on Ninth Avenue in Midtown and then on the East Side, when he was 10 years old. His first memory of the classes is belting out Aerosmith\u2019s \u201cCryin\u201d (\u201ca fan favorite,\u201d he remembers.) He credits one of his School of Rock teachers, Nick Llobet, who went on to form the New York indie band youbet, as crucial to his development as a musician.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe told me, \u2018You can take this seriously if you want to,\u2019\u201d DiGesu remembered. \u201cNo one had ever said that to me before.\u201d<\/p>\n