COLLEGES OF ROCK KNOWLEDGE

Two guys in their early 20s are standing in front of a bank of lockers at a school on Hollywood Boulevard. Instead of holding textbooks and calculators, however, they have electric guitars strapped to their backs. Their hair is long and feathery, and colorful earrings dangle from their earlobes.

“What you doing after Sight-reading class, man?” one of them asks.

“Gotta ‘nother class, man,” replies his friend. “Intermediate Theory. We’re dealing with 13th chords today. Or trying to.” They share a laugh.

Thirteenth chords?

Sight reading?

And what are guys with electric guitars doing in school in the first place? Hasn’t rock ‘n’ roll spent 25 years distancing itself from the classroom? Can you imagine Jerry Lee Lewis stoppin’ shakin’ long enough to take music theory lessons?

Believe it.

According to various instructors and musicians, rockers are flocking to music schools in record numbers, eager to learn more advanced musical formulas than three-chord crunch-rock progressions and how to down a fifth of Jack Daniels.

“Rock ‘n’ roll ain’t what it used to be,” says Pat Hicks, president and co-founder of the Musicians Institute, a “trade school for popular music” in Hollywood. “The three-chord thing and the punk thing are gone. It’s really a very complex format now, and the people who come here are aware of that--and they’re looking to gain that competitive edge with increased knowledge.”

Hicks’ campus is one of several schools and universities around the nation offering music education programs specifically geared to rock ‘n’ roll. Once scoffed at by aspiring rockers, music classes have become increasingly accepted--and sought after--by young musicians in the ‘80s.

The Musicians Institute offers one-year courses for rock guitarists and percussionists (cost: $4,100). Its instructors include such prominent musicians as Toto’s guitarist Steve Lukather and drummer Jeff Porcaro, former Vanilla Fudge bassist Tim Bogert and session guitarist Larry Carlton.

On the East Coast, the highly regarded Berklee School of Music in Boston--a traditional training ground for many of the outstanding jazz and jazz-rock-fusion players on the scene today--provides a four-year curriculum, including practicums in heavy metal and “1980s Los Angeles-style rock,” whatever that might be. Dramatically, more than 50% of Berklee’s 2,600 students now enroll in rock classes.

Locally, the Grove School of Music in Studio City is also shifting its jazz concentration slightly to allow for streams of incoming students eager to study rock.

Most of these fledgling rockers want to learn basic musicianship: how to sight-read music (playing from written scores or lead sheets), an overall grasp of music theory, the relationships of intervals and harmonic progressions--and, of course, how to deliver that blistering Eddie Van Halen-style solo.

Does this all sound too clinical? What about the primitive rock ‘n’ roll attitude?

“Having the attitude is really pretty unimportant,” maintains guitarist Michael Nelson, 22, a student at the 10-year-old Musicians Institute.

“Most all of us have a desire to play in a working band, and to be, you know, ‘bad.’ But what a lot of the guys before us had to learn by trial and error, we’re taking a year out to learn in school. I want to be as prepared as I can when my band’s chance to make it comes. That might be the difference between us and some other clowns.”

Down the hall from Nelson, a class of about 30 bassists are reading a simple line of music in concert, plunking along with the volume way down.

In the next classroom, two dozen guitarists are analyzing the intervals their instructor is picking out on an electric piano, writing them down and--in some cases--shaking their heads in bewilderment.

“At first, I thought I was just being kind of lazy, taking the academic route instead of going out there and bleeding in small clubs, in front of bored audiences,” says Phil Cassenes, a percussion student at Musicians’ Institute.

“But I’m beginning to see that this is really the smart way to go. After doing this thing for a year, I’ll be so much better tuned in to what I’m playing, and what the other guys in the band are up to, that the emotional high of playing up there will be that much more focused.”

There are certainly die-hards who think this whole education bag is for sissies, but they appear to be in the minority.

Asked if the academic approach to rock might just diminish the damn-the-torpedoes energy rock music has come to represent, Nelson--who has been in bands since he was 16--replies: “Hell, no.”

A heavy-featured guy with long hair who looks like a trim version of Meat Loaf, Nelson adds, “Man, you do a better job if you know what you’re doing . . . . If I can accelerate that process, I’m better off. As for the rebellion . . . well, I don’t think (there’s any way that) playing in a rock ‘n’ roll band is like working for Xerox and having a wife and kids, do you?”

Those popsters who have “grown up” and become teachers of the genre are actually somewhat envious of the chances the younger generation has to round out its musical experiences.

a “There are still a lot of things a young player can do on his own, but an instructor can help them with their weaknesses in a way they can’t really get at,” says guitarist/teacher Gary Mandell. He works out of McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, whose showcasing of acoustic music has influenced a whole generation of local rock talent--from Ry Cooder to Peter Case.

“I know I wish I’d had something like that when I was starting out,” he continues. “It would have saved me about five years of groping around while I learned the basics, and I mean basics --like what a treble clef or a perfect fifth (a musical interval) was.”

Both Mandell and fellow rocker-turned-teacher Steve Brodie insist that the tried-and-true method of learning one’s rock licks--to listen to and copy from records or tapes and jam out in your dad’s garage--is still around, but that young musicians are discovering the limitations of the format.

“I have had guitar students who still just work from records,” says Brodie. “But I think because of the fusion of rock and jazz, and the kinds of musical demands that makes on the player, that they really need to know more. So I think what the schools are up to is really to the benefit of the student.

“But the garage thing is not at all history. Even guys with careers, guys who work all the time, are playing on some Saturday night in some little hole in the wall. The whole jamming thing is alive and well, seems to me, because musicians just love to play.”

What the “rock schools” say they’re really up to is trying to create rounded musicians--people who can not only play rock ‘n’ roll, but also salsa, jazz-rock, pop or whatever else might be required of them.

“Time tells and tastes change,” notes Dick Grove, founder of the 13-year-old Grove School. “The guy that starts out as a rock player might just find himself at a TV show music session and not know which way was up. In this business, you got to be able to do windows, and that means having as complete a musical grounding as you can get.”

But the guys gathered around the lunch table near the small snack shop at the Musicians Institute regard session playing of the kind Grove is talking about as rather remote.

“We just want to be real players , man,” says drummer John Franciosa, 19, with a grin. “And whatever that takes, is what I’ll do. I mean, if I’d wanted to become some kind of poseur, I would’ve become an actor.”