Best Professor

“I thought I’d be a classical composer teaching theory. That was my assumption about my life,” said Jacobs School of Music professor Glenn Gass, who never imagined how different his path in life would be.

Instead of being the composer he expected, Gass now teaches courses on rock ’n’ roll while leading possibly the largest and most-respected rock history program in the country.

Gass looks how one might expect a professor of rock music to look — bespectacled, bearded and with longer-than-average hair. It’s as if he straddles the divide between one who loves and experiences music and one who teaches others about its many facets.

His career started almost accidentally. Gass taught rock history in a Wisconsin federal prison before starting a class at IU as a means to pay for graduate school. After its success as a Collins class, Gass was given a faculty appointment.

“It’s a career path I could never, ever have planned or even tried for. Just the right place, the right time, with the right ideas,” Gass said.

His duties include courses on the roots of rock ’n’ roll music of the ’60s and more biographical courses focusing on The Beatles and Bob Dylan. In researching for his courses, Gass has been able to meet rock legends like Frank Zappa and Neil Young.

“Back in the ’80s, I met quite a few of my heroes, and several came to class,” Gass said. “Lou Reed spent an hour and a half. Back then, rock history in a college was a real novelty.”

Rock music itself, however, is not a novelty.

“If it didn’t appeal to young people, it would have died,” Gass said. “But because each generation of young people saw themselves in the music, then as they aged, they kept the music with them. There’s still this sense that it’s a language we all still speak.”

It’s obvious from talking to Gass for just a few minutes how passionate he is about what he teaches. Every subject branches off into multiple tangents, never quite returning to the home topic, as if his wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm can never be expended.

“I think there’s a certain art to teaching, sure,” Gass said. “But what you teach, you’ve got to love. I’m lucky enough to teach The Beatles and Bob Dylan. I never have to convince myself that I really love this. I think that would be torture.”