Category: Music

They talk now.

Dozens of former students of the Paul Green School of Rock Music, most long out of touch, have reconnected to talk about their past. They had rock and roll childhoods most kids could only dream about. The epic road trips and European tours. The performances with rock stars like Eddie Vedder and Billy Idol.

But the alumni of the lauded former Philadelphia musical education program are not simply reminiscing about the music. They are coming to terms with the physical, psychological, and emotional abuse they say Paul Green subjected them to while they were children.

Their conversations revolve around a report Air Mail magazine published in May about Green, a former punk rocker who styled himself a brash tastemaker, and the school he founded in 1998. Based on interviews with more than 60 former students, the story described how Green often flew into violent rages, struck students, and fostered a sexually charged environment for his teenage students.

Although Green did not respond to the allegations in the Air Mail story at the time, he announced through a spokesperson soon after that he would not join his students on a summer tour in the U.S. and Europe.

Since, two dozen of Green’s former students and staff members have spoken with The Inquirer to share additional allegations of misconduct. They include a woman who said Green initiated frequent sexual contact that lasted nearly two years with her in 2007, when she was his 17-year-old student.

It is the first time Green, who was the vulgar and volatile subject of a 2005 documentary Rock School, has been publicly accused of having sex with a student enrolled at his school.

Green declined to be interviewed for this story. After The Inquirer emailed Green this week with a list of allegations it would be reporting, Green responded Thursday and denied having sexual relations with anyone underage or who had been a student at the time. He added that he will close his current children’s music academies, including one in Roxborough, and will retire from teaching.

Green said in a statement Thursday, “I want to be very clear, however, that some of the more serious allegations being made, particularly those that are sexual in nature, are not accurate. I have never shown students pornography, and while I admit to extramarital relationships with women connected to School of Rock, I have never had a romantic or sexual relationship with anyone under legal age or anyone who was a current student, during that time frame, or ever. I also deny any sexual harassment.”

The age of consent in Pennsylvania is 16, but sexual contact by a person in a recognized position of trust or authority — such as a teacher or school administrator — with someone under 18 is considered a third-degree felony punishable by up to seven years in prison. This was the law in 2007, and it remains the same today.

The woman, who The Inquirer agreed not to name because of the nature of the claims, said Green first began flirting with her when she was 15, with “inappropriate jokes or comments about my appearance.”

As she got older, it escalated.

“Then, winking, touching, hugging,” the woman said. “He would put his hand on my leg and see how high he could go before I stopped him.”

She was a member of the All Stars, the most talented musicians who toured as a band and performed at professional venues and festivals. She said that during her junior year in high school, when she was 17, Green invited her to meet him for sex at a hotel near the former Race Street school, asking if she was going to “chicken out” before texting her his room number.

The ongoing sexual contact that began that day lasted for almost two years, only ending after the woman graduated and moved away, she said.

During their time together, the woman said, Green sometimes provided her with marijuana, Champagne, or cocaine. He rented porn for them to watch and attempted to arrange a threesome with a former student working at the school, she said.

He would joke, “You’re my teenage mistress,” she said.

Two of Green’s former students and two former staffers told The Inquirer they had known that Green was engaged in sexual conduct with the woman while she was his student and after graduation. Two of them said Green himself had told them at the time about the sexual contact — both of whom asked not to be named for fear that it could affect their current employment. One former staffer said Green and the student had been intimate on a European tour bus, under a blanket, while chaperones sat rows ahead.

That staffer said they were afraid at the time to speak out against Green, who ruled the school he created like a self-proclaimed “Überlord.” But staying silent is a regret they’ve carried for nearly two decades.

“I didn’t protect her at all,” the former staffer lamented.

‘Total manipulation’

Many of the 60-plus students who described Green’s physical, verbal, and inappropriate behavior to Air Mail, a weekly news and culture newsletter launched in 2019 by alums of the New York Times and Vanity Fair, are now connected in a WhatsApp group. After an Inquirer reporter contacted the former students, they responded with an open letter to explain why they had decided to continue speaking out.

“We entered his programs with trust and hope, but too many of us left with wounds and trauma we’re still working to heal. Some of us have never played music again.”

And despite bonds of life-forming musical experiences, many of them told The Inquirer they went their separate ways after graduation, hoping to forget the pain.

“It was total manipulation,” said Carolyn Satlow, 37, an All Star who attended the Downingtown branch of the Paul Green School of Rock Music from 2004 to 2006, and is now chief of staff of the Vetri restaurant group. “This web of secrets that kept us all silent.”

Satlow had turned 18 and graduated from rock school when Green began a monthslong sexual relationship with her in 2007. At the time, she was working at the school as an administrator.

Now married with two children, Satlow said Green also told her about his sexual contact with the then-teenage student.

“I thought this adult person was the authority in the room,” she said of Green. “We all trusted him. I was an insecure teenager and Paul knew that and preyed on it.”

Satlow says being able to talk about what happened, and reconnect with other students who went through similar experiences, has been healing.

“We found lives for ourselves, and we’ve become successful in music and outside of music, and just being great human beings,” Satlow said. “Because we’re all just actively trying not to be him.”

‘Paul being Paul’

By constantly discussing his own sex life and the sex lives of students, who were mostly 12 to 18 years old, Green created an environment where even his most outrageous behavior could be normalized, former students and staffers said.

Jen Bowles, an administrator at the school from 2005 to 2007, told The Inquirer that Green had sent her texts asking if she would have sex with him if he booked a fancy hotel, like the Rittenhouse Hotel or the Sofitel Philadelphia at Rittenhouse Square.

Serious about her job at the school, which she initially saw as an empowering, punk rock space for young musicians to express themselves, Bowles, who was then 24, said she had tried to ignore Green’s messages as inappropriate jokes.

Bowles, who now lives in Vancouver after earning a doctorate in public health from Drexel University, recalls attending a postshow work dinner Green arranged in 2007 at the former Abbaye bar and restaurant in Northern Liberties. Bowles had hoped the dinner would be an opportunity to discuss a potential promotion to manage the Philly school.

After they had just ordered dinner, she said, Green asked her to have sex with him.

“‘It’s finally happening,’” she recalls Green saying, adding that he assumed that they would have sex.

When she rejected his proposition, she said, Green berated her over dinner, referring to her as a “tease,” shouting that he would find a way to fire her. During his tirade, Bowles said, Green told her that her rejection didn’t matter. He had other options for sex, including students, staff, and sex workers, she recalls him saying.

Bowles said Green then bragged about his sexual conduct with former students and staff he had taught since childhood.

“I wait till they’re 18,” Bowles recalls him saying.

Bowles said she did not report back to work the following Monday and resigned within a week.

“I was broken at this point,” Bowles said. “I thought my future was crumbling into a million pieces, and I learned that the young people I cared about were in the hands of a horrible person.”

Bowles’ longtime friend, Ruth Scullion, recalls Bowles telling her about the experience with Green shortly after it happened in 2007.

“She had told me about the culture at the school — and that she felt preyed on,” Scullion. “She told me about going out to dinner with Paul for what she thought was a work dinner, and how he started being overtly sexual with her and propositioning her. She said when she refused, he said, ‘Well, you’re too old for me anyway.’ It still gives me chills thinking about it.”

Julia Rainer, 37, a former All Star guitarist who now lives in South Philly and works as a therapist, also recalled Bowles detailing the incident to her at the time.

Paul Green School of Rock Music emails shared with The Inquirer show that two months later, Green strategized with a staffer on how best to attack Bowles’ credibility if she filed a sexual harassment lawsuit. By then, the circumstances surrounding the popular employee’s departure had started to spread among staff, even as Bowles decided against pursuing legal action.

Green wrote to the staffer in 2007 about the alleged advances, saying of himself, “Once again: Paul being Paul.” Then later adding, “Here is EXACTLY what I need from you: keep your ears way to the ground, do what damage control you can do.”

‘Always part of rock school’

For many former students, the nearly two years since the Air Mail reporter’s initial contacts have included painful revelations to family members, therapists, and each other.

Last year, people who had long avoided reckoning with their past at the Paul Green School of Rock Music began to reconnect on Zoom.

A.Z. Madonna, 32, a former All Star, who originally grew up in Maplewood, N.J., and now writes about classical music for the Boston Globe, said for years she had distanced herself from her rock school friends.

“I didn’t want to be reminded of how Paul made me feel, which was that I was a failure who deserved to fail,” she said to The Inquirer.

But Madonna is now part of the private WhatsApp group chat, where for months the 60 former students shared stories about their experience at the Paul Green School of Rock Music. Some still talk daily, offering messages of support to friends picking up their instruments again.

There have been park meetups and coffee shop get-togethers. In May, a bunch of the former students attended a Metallica and Limp Bizkit concert, the latter a band they say Green would have berated them for listening to as kids, always emphasizing the classics.

“It’s been very healing,” said Emilia Richman, 33, a South Philly musician and former All Star who now works as a mental health administrator. “So many of us had stayed away from each other because of our shame.”

While some former students said Green’s school unlocked opportunities, they also said that he taught them through fear and humiliation.

Allie Hauptman, 38, who attended the Philly school from 1998 to 2005, and is a founding partner of Rowhouse Grocery, a boutique corner store in South Philly, said she would often turn down the volume on her keyboard all the way so that Green wouldn’t be able to hear any possible mistakes so she was “in the clear from the yelling and swearing.”

Rainer recently played her first show after returning to music in the months after the Air Mail story published.

“The culture of humiliating you, bullying you, isolating you — that was always part of rock school,” she said.

So was Green’s controlling behavior, the students said.

“He really became addicted to that power and control he had over all of us,” said Gina Randazzo, 40, of Collingswood, who began guitar lessons with Green in 1999, was an All Star, and eventually worked at Studio House, a now-closed recording studio for students and young people in suburban New York that Green opened in 2010. “It was almost like he couldn’t help himself.”

The former students say they are not after revenge.

“This is about ensuring that no child is ever again put in a position where they are vulnerable to this kind of manipulation, control, and abuse,” they said in their letter. “While he has released a statement closing PGRA and retiring from teaching ‘in this capacity,’ our primary concern is that PG is never again placed in a position of power over children.”

In their open letter against Green, the 60 former students spoke directly to his most-recent students.

“We hope you are safe,” they said.

That’s something Aaron Sheehan, 33, an All Star from 2007 to 2009 and member of Studio House, tried to tell the students himself when he chanced upon Green’s new pupils jamming to Yes at a South Philly street festival three years ago.

Walking toward the music, he decided to confront Green for telling him he was no good until he finally believed it.

But Green hadn’t come. Sheehan tried telling the parents, but they brushed him away. He must’ve had a bad experience, they told him. They love Paul.

It was hard watching the kids play.

“It was like looking at us all over again,” he said.

‘I was an overgrown teenager’

In 2009, Green sold the company he had formed out of his living room to an investment fund in a deal worth $10 million. In 2023, the School of Rock, which now includes 500 schools worldwide, was purchased by Youth Enrichment Brands, a leading youth activities platform.

Stacey Ryan, the current School of Rock president, stressed that the institution has had no affiliation with Green for over 15 years.

“Student safety is our highest priority, and our mission has always been to provide an empowering space where young people can grow — not just as musicians, but as individuals,” she said.

As part of the 2009 deal, Green retained leadership of the All Stars program, but left within a year after a final meltdown with students, when Green allegedly mocked a student’s Catholic faith, threw a metal chair, and referred to Mother Teresa with a vulgar term for a woman’s vagina, said Sam Mercurio, a South Philly musician and former All Star from 2007 to 2010.

“By the end, he had made it all feel so normal,” said Mercurio, who told The Inquirer Green once whipped him with a mic cable during a rehearsal.

After living in Woodstock, N.Y., for a time, Green returned to Philadelphia in 2017, opening up a new venture, the Roxborough-based Paul Green Rock Academy. The academy, which also has locations in Connecticut and the Bay Area, offered students the same chances to tour and jam with musicians, like the former Zappa band members, that the original rock school kids did 20 years ago.

Shortly after the Air Mail article, the academy’s social media went dormant. Scott Thunes, the academy’s longtime assistant musical director and former Frank Zappa bassist, would be in charge of tours and the entire program, according to a spokesperson at the time. Green said that the school would be renamed the Thunes Institute for Musical Excellence.

In late June, the North Philly performance space PhilaMOCA canceled the students’ scheduled performance of “We Love Zappa.” A spokesperson for the venue said that Green’s continued involvement with the school, along with a push from a former student, led them to shut the show down. Thunes said the cancellation only hurt the students.

Despite his statement, when reached by The Inquirer on Monday, Green was with the Thunes Institute students on an August European tour, alongside Gibby Haynes, the lead singer of the Butthole Surfers and a longtime collaborator with Green’s schools. Videos show him in the front row.

In a statement to The Inquirer, Green said he was stepping in for Thunes, who had to leave citing a “personal issue” halfway through the tour. “The students worked so hard and had already experienced so much turbulence heading into the tour, so we weighed the backlash of me attending versus the fallout of canceling,” Green said. “The current parents unanimously requested that I return to ensure a smooth transition until we could implement a suitable replacement.”

Green, who graduated from Temple University Beasley School of Law in 2021, said he did not speak out sooner about the Air Mail allegations because, “I have been reflecting on that time period, gathering my thoughts, and trying to find the right words. I have been balancing how to genuinely apologize and take accountability for my actions from over 15 years ago, while also unambiguously denying the allegations of things that never occurred.”

Long open about his battle with addiction, he had his own dysfunctional childhood — he grew up fatherless in Port Richmond, joined the Philly punk scene by 13, lived on his own by 15, and formed the original school when his music career failed. Green said drug rehab and years of therapy and meditation have helped him grow.

“I started School of Rock in my living room because I love teaching music, and I wanted to create a fun and intensive atmosphere for students,” he said in his statement to The Inquirer. “I had no idea that it would be successful, and I was not at all prepared for that success at such a young age. I was an overgrown teenager when those students needed a responsible adult. That said, despite how it may appear, my inappropriate behavior or language never came from a place of predatory intent as has been insinuated.”

He added that closing the schools “was not an easy decision, as teaching music has been my life’s work and greatest passion. But I believe this is the right moment to close this chapter with gratitude and integrity.”

‘Nobody does what Paul Green does’

Ten parents, who contacted The Inquirer through a spokesperson for the Paul Green Rock Academy, said they never witnessed Green cross a line. None of the children ever told them he did, they said.

“I have seen countless rehearsals and performances in the last seven years,” said one parent, whose child is a longtime student at the academy. “I’ve never witnessed any of those alleged behaviors, nor has my child ever reported inappropriate conduct.”

When speaking to The Inquirer, the parents, whose children are current or former students of the Paul Green Rock Academy, were only responding to the questions about the allegations already published by Air Mail. The Inquirer did not make them aware of the new sexual allegations detailed in this story.

Though Green, in his statement, says he’s changed, parents of current students at the Rock Academy tell The Inquirer that Green didn’t run from his bad boy image.

While assuring them he’s mellowed, he still makes it part of his selling point — and a new generation of parents believe him.

“Paul’s teaching style was addressed right from the very beginning,” said one parent, whose daughter graduated from the academy, in a statement provided to The Inquirer through a school spokesperson after a reporter had contacted the academy about Green. “In my mind there was no question that we all knew what we were signing up for.”

One parent said Green recommended that families considering the Paul Green Rock Academy watch Rock School, which shows him berating and humiliating students busy mastering some of the most complicated rock compositions ever written. In the film, Green also presents a student who described being suicidal with an award for “most likely to kill himself.”

Green can still be “arrogant,” “rude,” and “foulmouthed,” the parents said. He sometimes still screams and storms out of rehearsals, they said. One parent said she had met with Green for throwing a rattle shaker at her child, but that they had moved past it.

The parent, who stressed she did not want to dismiss the former students’ experiences, credits Green’s “grittier” and “edgier” approach for helping her son, who is neurodiverse, flourish socially and musically.

His current students appear heavily devoted. On Instagram, they praise classic rock and quote Zappa. They take each other to prom and form bands. They post tour updates and photos from past performances, where Green could often be seen in the front row.

Green addressed the allegations months ago, they said, removed himself from rehearsals, and met with parents individually.

“Paul’s a pretty open guy — and I was aware that there was stuff in the past he wasn’t proud of,” said one parent, whose two sons are Rock Academy grads. “But I can certainly say this: Nobody does what Paul Green does. No rock school does what the Paul Green Rock Academy does. Nobody offers that experience.”

‘Like Whiplash’

But some of the most successful musicians to emerge from the Paul Green School of Rock Music say nothing was worth the verbal and emotional abuse they experienced from Green.

Eric Slick, 38, a former All Star and now drummer of the Philly-formed rock band Dr. Dog, was also featured in the Air Mail story. A drumming prodigy who grew up in Fairmount — his grandfather was a jazz trombonist who played with Billie Holiday — he had been bullied for his weight at the Masterman School before hoping he found a sanctuary at rock school in 1998.

His talent only made him more of a target with Green. Like on his 12th birthday, when Green suddenly exploded in rage over his Pink Floyd drum solo, spitting, cursing, throwing mics, and kicking amplifiers.

“It’s this Whiplash moment where I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not safe here,’” said Slick, who now lives in Nashville, referring to the 2014 film about a young jazz drummer and his explosive teacher.

At his birthday dinner with his parents at Spaghetti Warehouse after practice, Slick said nothing.

“We were these misfit toys who didn’t fit in, who weren’t jocks, who weren’t popular. And then suddenly we have this opportunity to jam and grow as musicians together,” he said. Talking, he thought as a kid, would jeopardize that.

“I would be out of this friend group, and I would be done,” Slick said.

It’s a sentiment shared by many former students.

“I feel like I really shut down,” said Lauren Cohen, 37, of Doylestown, an All Star from 2002 to 2005, and a classical musician who performs regularly in Philadelphia. “I feel like I shoved my emotions down and everything that was telling me, “This isn’t safe.” I kept ignoring it because I made friends.”

The bullying from Green grew constant, according to Slick. About his weight, his appearance, his high school sex life.

“I remember stuffing down all of these extreme sad feelings I was having after the rehearsals,” he said. “You just realized that every facet of your life is manipulated in order for him to get what he wants, which is to sell schools.”

He’s shared stories of the school with his current bandmates. “That’s not normal,” they tell him.

Even now, while playing to tens of thousands, Slick finds himself looking stage left, where Green stood so long judging his every drum groove and fill, set to erupt.

“The fear of his wrath still haunts me,” Slick said.

Kaleen Reading, 33, an All Star from 2006 to 2009 and drummer for the Philly-based punk band Mannequin Pussy, said Green also often denigrated her about her weight, and left her fearful of pushing the tempo during performances to this day.

In May, shortly after the Air Mail article was published, Reading announced she would not travel with her group on a series of European summer tour dates. At the time, Reading wrote on Instagram that her absence was due to “mental health concerns” — and that the move was necessary for the “longevity of me remaining in the music industry.”

Reading later told The Inquirer she needed the time to process her own memories of the Paul Green School of Rock Music, including verbal abuse.

“Paul Green is not a teacher,” she said. “He is an abuser who can get results from yelling at already talented kids he selected to advertise his school.”

‘Just a child’

Sitting in a car outside her home before work on a gray morning in July, the former student who said Green began ongoing sexual contact with her when she was 17 said she saw Green as more than a teacher. At the time, Green represented the only real adult male figure in her life. Familiar with her battles with depression, anxiety, and an eating disorder, Green encouraged her dreams of becoming a professional guitarist, she said.

“I would have done anything for his approval,” the woman said.

At 17, she and Green would meet at a hotel blocks from the former Race Street school. Or Green would pick her up a short distance away, so no one would see, and drive to a roadside, budget motel with pirate and Hawaiian-themed rooms called the Feather Nest Inn just over the Ben Franklin Bridge. On tour, Green would sometimes sneak her into his room, she said.

The woman tried burying the memories of her experience with Green, but struggled with ongoing depression and feelings of inadequacy. She said she suffered a nervous breakdown “for weeks” last year, after she was first contacted by the Air Mail reporter. Although not ready to speak publicly at the time, the query forced a reckoning.

“If I hadn’t been forced to confront it, I was prepared to bury it forever,” she said.

Instead, with the help of a therapist, the woman began to grapple with what she said Green had put her through when she was underage.

“I let it all out,” said the woman.

She, too, has found strength in her old friends from rock school, whose friendship she packed away with the trauma. For years, she said could not enjoy the experience of music without memories of Green. She’s just now playing again.

“I always thought it was my fault,” she continued. “Still, I have to remind myself that I was just a child.”