By Sam Elliott
Butler University graduate Aaron Krerowicz has turned his love of music and the Beatles into a one-of-a-kind career.
As in, he’s the only one.
Krerowicz, who lives in Carmel near the border with Zionsville, bills himself as the country’s only full-time Beatles scholar, and fortunately for local Fab Four enthusiasts, he moved to the area in September after attending graduate school and living in New England the past seven years.
He’ll be giving his signature multimedia presentation, “The Beatles: Band of the Sixties,” at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 1 at the Hussey-Mayfield Memorial Public Library, 250 N. Fifth St., in Zionsvillle.
“That’s by far the most popular, because it’s just an overview in general scope,” Krerowicz said of the presentation. “A lot of the others are specific albums or specific songs or specific angles like Paul’s bass playing or something like that. We just go year by year, 1960 through 1970. It’s a very good survey of their career.”
While “Band of the Sixties” is Krerowicz’s most popular, it’s just one of more than two dozen Beatles presentations in his repertoire. Album- and song-specific presentations include “‘Yesterday,’ The World’s Most Recorded Song,” “The Beatles’ Alter Ego, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and “Carte Blance: The Beatles’ ‘White Album.’”
Krerowicz has also prepared presentations analyzing the structure and harmony of Beatles music and others focusing on individual members of the group, including “‘Turn Me On Dead Man’: The Notorious ‘Paul is Dead’ Hoax,” “‘Beneath the Waves’: The Development of Paul McCartney’s Bass Playing, 1962-1969” and “Starr Time: A Celebration of Ringo Starr’s Contributions to the Beatles.”
Krerowicz has toured America and visited England giving his Beatles presentations. He visited 14 states to deliver 84 presentations in 2015, and his first English lecture tour included speaking twice in London and three times in the band’s hometown of Liverpool.
Krerowicz’s first exposure to the Beatles came as a child, thanks to his father, who had also grown up listening to the band. After graduating from Butler in 2008 with a Bachelor of Music degree in theory and composition, Krerowicz got a Master’s degree from Boston University in 2010 and in 2012 earned a Graduate Artist Diploma from the University of Hartford, where he delved into study into the Fab Four.
A grant he won through the university in November 2011 supported his thorough research.
“The way the grant worked was the university gave the university music library funds to make purchases at my request, so I could go to the library and say, ‘I want this book, this book and this book,’ which was pretty awesome,” Krerowicz said. “That’s given me kind of the foundation onto which I could start a career doing this kind of thing.”
His research has led to Krerowicz writing three books on the Beatles. His first, “The Beatles & The Avant-Garde,” was published in 2014. “The Beatles: Band of the Sixties” followed as an Amazon Kindle eBook in April 2015 and “From the Shadow of JFK: The Rise of Beatlemania in America” was published in June 2015.
Also a musician himself, Krerowicz has plans to release an album, “Odds ‘n’ Ends,” later this month. He also recently launched a series of analytical videos on his website, AaronKrerowicz.com, called “The Beatles Minute.” Each approximately one-minute video focuses on one specific element of the Fab Four and their music — music Krerowicz only becomes more a fan of as he continues his unique work.
“It’s the kind of thing where you can listen to Beatles music without knowing anything about it and really just appreciate the music as a consumer. As a listener, you can really get into the music. What I found is the more I listened, the more I wanted to figure out — why is this music so good?” he said. “Analytically, what’s going on here? Musically, structurally, harmonically, how does all this work together to create this great music? So, the more I liked the music, the more I listened to the music, the more I liked it, the more I wanted to study it, which gave me greater appreciation for the artistry, which made me want to listen that much more, which made me want to analyze that much more.”
“The Beatles: Band of the Sixties”
What: One-hour multimedia presentation, part history and part musical analysis, spanning the full 1960s career of The Beatles, beginning with the band’s seminal visits to Hamburg, continuing through Beatlemania and concluding with the release of “Abbey Road.” The program will be supplemented with audio clips of music and excerpts from interviews with the band members.
Where: Hussey-Mayfield Memorial Public Library, 250 N. Fifth St., Zionsville.
When: 6:30 p.m., Feb. 1.
Admission: Free, but registration required by visiting the library in person, calling 873-3149 or visiting ZionsvilleLibrary.org.
