Jimmy Page Made Honorary Doctor

It’s both funny and disturbing how much we idolize our celebrities – elementary and high school teachers barely scrape by on their incomes, the doctor who cures cancer will have his name in the paper, and I couldn’t even tell you the name of the cop who arrested Lee Harvey Oswald. But Mick Jagger was named a knight of England, the Beatles have an entire Vegas show dedicated to them, and the number of honorary titles and city keys handed out to the world’s gin-consuming and groupie-tossing population would make a good coffee table book.

It isn’t that musicians don’t deserve honors – they should get recognition for creating art that moves people, opens eyes, and gets lesser guys laid. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a well-deserved institution to their greatness, as is the fact that the successful ones make enough money to buy a small nation. But some things just don’t make sense.

Jimmy Page was recently given an honorary doctorate by the University of Surrey in Guilford, UK for services to music, NME reported Friday. The Led Zeppelin guitarist received the award Friday, June 20 at Guilford Cathedral, where he signed a guitar for the university.

It’s hard to imagine why a university committee would decide to award a degree to someone – don’t they award lawns and drinking fountains for this sort of thing? What Jimmy Page is going to do with a doctorate (besides tout it to his friends – “get Dr. Jimmy a drink, John”) I have no idea.

I also imagine there are a few starving students who feel slighted to see their dream degree handed to a rock star. After they’ve spent eight years of their youth laboring over research and dissertations, they should have just partied like they wanted to, found some way to get famous, then waited thirty years.

The signed guitar will be given away at the upcoming GuilFest Festival, and Jimmy will start his second career as an orthodontist.