Julia Rainer has memories of walking through the doors of the Paul Green School of Rock Music at 13th and Race streets and feeling like the place was an "alternate reality."
Rainer began lessons there in 2000 and stayed until 2006, ultimately singing and playing guitar with the school's All-Stars, an elite band of kids under 18 that toured the country and performed around the world. School of Rock became a sort of second home to Rainer.
"For a shy and depressed 12-year-old who didn't feel comfortable at school and didn't feel comfortable at home, it was a sort of utopia at times," said Rainer, who's now 37.
But Rainer, who uses they/them pronouns, also said they have a "vivid memory" of standing with several girls outside a venue where the All-Stars were playing during a West Coast tour, and Green "yelling at us about being too fat, and that none of us are thin enough to be taken seriously as musicians."
Green also told Rainer and other students that boys were inherently better musicians than girls and more skilled at guitar because masturbation developed their arm muscles, Rainer said.
In an investigative article published in May by the news site Air Mail, journalist Ezra Marcus documented Green's misconduct towards students, which included allegations of verbally, psychologically, physically and sexually inappropriate behaviors. Green is accused of screaming at kids and throwing objects, asking prying questions about student's dating lives, showing them porn and forcing male students to make out with each other in front of peers, among other allegations.
Green has not responded to interview requests from PhillyVoice and other news outlets. He has gone dark on social media, removing his former accounts.
Since the Air Mail story broke, Rainer and other former School of Rock students and staffers have reconnected. Several said it has been upsetting, even retraumatizing, for some students to revisit what happened. But it also has been affirming.
Alec Collins, 34, who attended the school from 2001 to 2007, said he and others were "grateful that at least some of this stuff was coming out finally."
"Having endured a lot of that stuff, it felt good to finally have something that not just we knew about, but also that the world knows about and is also appalled by," Collins said.
School of Rock founder Paul Green, pictured here in 2018, is accused of verbally, psychologically, physically and sexually inappropriate behaviors during his time running the music school.
Paul Green 'got results … but at what cost?'
A Philadelphia native, Green played guitar in several bands before turning to teaching as a way to make money. He founded School of Rock in 1998; its first location was at 1320 Race St. The school emphasized performance, with students playing several shows a year. They performed covers of what Green considered to be rock canon: Frank Zappa, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath. And Green was successful.
"He knew what buttons to push to motivate kids," said a former student, Mike Cohn, 39. "He got results – the high level that so many students were able to perform at – but at what cost?"
The shows drew students to the school. A VH1 crew spent time at School of Rock filming a project that ultimately was scuttled. Then there was the 2003 movie "School of Rock," starring Jack Black as a rebel teacher with an uncanny resemblance to Green, although director Richard Linklater has denied the character is based on Green.
The music school founder considered suing, but said in a 2004 interview he decided that it was better "in a karmic sense, to just reap the rewards."
Reap the rewards, Green did.
School of Rock had expanded to more than 50 franchises by 2009, when Green sold his company to investors. The school now has 350 locations all over the world, including 12 in the Philadelphia region. Green left for New York in 2010, but moved back to Philadelphia in 2017, earned a law degree from Temple University and started the Paul Green Rock Academy in Ridge Avenue in Roxborough. That school has other branches in Connecticut and Brooklyn.
Days after Air Mail's article was published, the Rock Academy turned its tours and "sole leadership of the program" over to Assistant Music Director Scott Thunes and changed its name to the Thunes Institute for Musical Excellence. "This decision reflects our commitment to ensuring the events are focused solely on the hard-working and talented students and their unforgettable performances," a statement on the Rock Academy website reads.
The Rock Academy did not respond to multiple interview requests left via voicemail, email and Instagram messages.
Eric Slick, shown playing the drums as a teenager, is among several former School of Rock students who have accused founder Paul Green of misconduct. Slick, now the drummer for Dr. Dog, says Green inappropriately kissed him, among other allegations.
Years later, students struggle to grasp the impact
The chorus of former students recounting Green's alleged abusive behavior has grown louder over the past month.
"The reason I'm so interested in speaking out is because our relationship was so abusive, and it was so damaging to my mental health," said Eric Slick, who started at School of Rock in 1998, when he was 11. "(Green) had a stranglehold on my life for 12 years, give or take, to the point where, when I got out, I truly felt like I had escaped a cult."
Slick is now 38. He's a singer, songwriter and drummer with the Philadelphia-based band Dr. Dog and performs as a solo artist. He said he wants to make sure Green "never teaches another child, or at least does some sort of serious reform. … At this point, I'm sort of just in shock that he hasn't been held accountable."
During Slick's time at School of Rock, he said Green frequently made fun of his weight. The bullying was so extreme that the summer before his junior year of high school, Slick severely restricted his eating and lost about 50 pounds – and Green applauded him, Slick said.
"Paul was like, 'Wow! You're so much faster at the drums. You're really aerodynamic,'" Slick said. "'Wow, guys, Eric's cool!'… And then it made this super toxic thing in my mind that when I am thin, people like me. When I'm heavy, I am worthless."
The disordered eating Slick dealt with for most of his life was "100% the result of Paul," he said. Slick recalled a moment, also documented in the Air Mail story, in which Green inappropriately kissed him and ran around the school telling students that he was Slick's first kiss. Green also publicly talked about how Slick's first girlfriend had large breasts, the musician said.
Slick and several other former students described games of "Homo Chicken," during which Green would pick two boys to make out until one of them pulled away.
Collins recalled, "It would be kissing, rubbing, touching. … They were encouraged to go as far as they possibly could."
Looking back, Rainer said, they now realize this "was supposed to be humiliating to the people who were participating in it." Rainer, whose first girlfriend also was School of Rock student, said they now see how the game "really belittles queerness" and that it made the "assumption that everyone was heterosexual."
"And now, all these years later, we're remembering these things or saying them out loud to each other, and we're realizing how f—ed up it was," Rainer said.
Enduring 'so much' vs. playing sold-out shows
The 2005 documentary, "Rock School," showed Green berating kids, throwing tantrums and melting down as his All-Stars prepared for a Frank Zappa tribute performance in Germany, yet the School of Rock continued to grow.
The documentary also depicts Green talking about giving a "Will O'Connor Award" to the student most likely to die by suicide. O'Connor studied at the School of Rock and reveals in the film he had attempted suicide multiple times.
"Will was really, really tall," Collins said. "He was a little more heavyset at the time. He had thicker glasses, and he was really kind of quiet. But Paul just made fun of him for everything. He said he was going to be a virgin forever, and made fun of the way he dressed in brown corduroys and a baggy shirt."
Green even mocked O'Connor's mother's physical disability. Collins and others said they have since tried to track down O'Connor with no luck.
"I was always wondering if he was OK after that," Cohn, another former student, said.
Collins was a target of Green's mockery because his family was poor, and at the time he was an "overweight teenager with undiagnosed autism and ADHD … (who) always had trouble fitting in," he said. "Rock School" showed that Green paid Collins' younger twin brothers, Asa and Tucker to hit students who hadn't learned their songs with a plastic baseball bat, Collins said.
"It's one of those things that on the surface seems like, 'Oh, that's a little funny.' But it's a little f—ed up," he said. "And it's not the kind of thing that you go to your parents and say, 'I messed up tonight, and Paul paid some kids to beat the crap out of me.'"
Cohn said he remembers Green showing scat porn videos to him and other underage students. "Gross stuff," Cohn said. "He'd be laughing about it. 'Come check this out!'" Once, Green threw a computer printer at a student, said Cohn, who was one of the original All-Stars between 2002 and 2003. "And (printers) were bigger back then."
Green was a master at mind games, Cohn said.
"One minute he'd be my best friend, telling me how great I was, 'You're a good dude,'" Cohn said. "Then the next minute he'd be telling me how terrible I was."
Cohn, a drummer like Slick, remembers Green pitting him against Slick, who toured with renowned guitarist Adrian Belew of the Talking Heads before joining Dr. Dog.
"(Green) told me I sucked," Cohn said. "He told me I'd never be as good as Eric." Cohn said he left School of Rock "being kind of bitter" about his perception that Green had favorites, like Slick. But the Air Mail story gave him new perspective.
"Now it's coming out that those kids were treated the worst and saw the worst, and now I feel awful about it," Cohn said.
Rainer didn't speak about Green's abuse for so long felt because they felt their experience was "so small" compared that of to other kids.
"I think a lot of us also carry that guilt of, 'Why didn't we do something?' I think we knew it was wrong," Rainer said, but the young musicians didn't fully understand "how wrong it was, or what was really happening and how to stop it without creating this bigger problem, or more pain."
Collins described Green's manipulative behavior as a "weighted balance system of positives and negatives." He endured harassment and physical threats, like having objects thrown at him, in exchange for the promise of being a star.
Through Green's connections, Collins, at 15, and other School of Rock pupils performed on stage with Ramones drummer Marky Ramone at the former CBGB club in New York. Collins also recalls playing Iron Maiden's "The Number of the Beast" at a School of Rock show at the old Trocadero Theater in Chinatown.
"I remember the lights, and everyone running around on stage with their guitars, and everybody doing synchronized movements, and thinking, 'Is that what it felt like to be Iron Maiden?' You dealt with so much s— to get to that point, but that high was really high."