Disturbing Allegations Emerge Against School of Rock Founder Paul Green

School of Rock founder Paul Green, who has been accused of inappropriate behavior with students, photographed for Philly Mag in 2017 (photo by Claudia Gavin)

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Disturbing Allegations Emerge Against School of Rock Founder Paul Green

This isn’t an easy thing for me to write about. With a side job as a musician and concert producer, I’ve worked with School of Rock founder Paul Green on more than one occasion. I’d produce a concert, and he’d send a talented band of teenagers to open the show. I wrote about his return to Philly in 2017, long after he and School of Rock parted ways and just as he was opening the Paul Green Rock Academy, which still exists in Manayunk… at least for now. I’ve seen him work with numerous kids over the years. And now: there’s an absolute bombshell of a story by journalist Ezra Marcus in the publication Air Mail.

You definitely need to read this investigative report in full, and you can do so via this link. But the most damning thing to come out of the report is that multiple former students — male and female — have accused Paul Green of inappropriate contact.

Marcus interviewed dozens of people for his article. According to Marcus, Green did not respond to multiple requests for comment. When reached via text on Tuesday morning, Green responded to me: “Hello Victor. No comment.”

“Unfortunately, this article rings true to me,” says one Philadelphia woman who studied under Green for several years. (She insisted on remaining anonymous, because she doesn’t want her name used in the same sentence as “Paul Green,” as she put it.) “I was so turned off by the whole ‘Paul Green School of Rock’ experience that I’d rather just forget the whole thing. I’ve suppressed so much, but reading it, these things come back to you. And I hope that the people who contributed to the article feel validated.”

Another former female student of Green, who also chooses to remain anonymous, tells me that she personally witnessed “highly inappropriate behavior between [Green and] underage female students,” and she declined to provide further details. But she said she was “absolutely not surprised” by anything in the Air Mail piece.

“It has taken me years to unpack all of this,” says 40-year-old South Jersey resident Gina Randazzo, who started studying at the Paul Green School of Rock when she was 15 and Green was in his mid-20s. “He would ask all of us about our sex lives, and it felt cool. It made you feel special. I think we saw him as just a big kid, but looking back, he wasn’t a kid. He was an adult in power. He was responsible for our safety. Paul had so much power over us, and we wanted to please him.”

And the current School of Rock was quick to distance itself from Green, sending us the following shortly after we published this story: “School of Rock has not been affiliated with Paul Green in any way since 2010.”

More on this as it develops.

Pot’s Potential

Yes, it’s 2025, and we are still talking about legalizing recreational marijuana in Pennsylvania, even though it’s legal in all of our neighboring states except frigging West Virginia. Well, Pennsylvania’s Democratic legislators just advanced a bill that would allow for recreational marijuana sales in state-run stores, similar to how the state deals with the sale of wine and spirits. So the good news? Recreational weed just became a bit more of a reality. The bad news? It’s going to be run like the LCB. Either way, sounds like a real uphill battle from here, so you’ll still have to get your fix from your neighbor like you’ve been doing for years and like you’ll probably continue to do even when it becomes legal.

By the Numbers

2: Bankruptcies that Navy Yard-based Rite Aid has filed for in as many years. The company is at least $1 billion in debt. Gotta admit: I have a Rite Aid two blocks from my house in West Philly and haven’t been to it more than once in the last three years. CVS is light years better. It just is.

$10 million: Gift just bestowed upon Villanova University so the school can renovate its student center. I guess that bad publicity didn’t hurt with the donor community.

14: Days left until the primary in Pennsylvania. And it sounds like mail-in ballots are finally on their way to you after an unfortunate delay. Yes, there is an election this year. No, we’re not voting for President of the United States, mayor of Philadelphia, or City Council. Yes, you should still vote.

Local Talent

I know I am a couple of days late with this, but my family watches SNL on Mondays. And I just have to say: I bow down to you Quinta Brunson. You are a true Philly treasure. Didn’t catch the episode? You can watch her killer opening monologue/showstopper of a song here.