As a youngster sitting in the Southern Baptist Church, I’ll never forget a preacher telling us about the dangers of rock and roll. “The first thing that starts to move when you hear it,” he intoned, “is your pelvis.” Personally, my foot started tapping but . . . .
Of course, almost all the kids in the congregation were already listening to rock. I began, as almost everyone I knew who ever played music, listening to the Beatles. “Meet The Beatles” was not my first album—-that was “Dave Brubeck Quartet: Bossa Nova USA.”
But the “Meet The Beatles” was my first rock album. By then I had a snare drum, bass drum, hi-hat, and a cymbal. Maybe a tom-tom. Pretty simple. I put on my record player (er, kids, do you remember those? It was a device that played these vinyl discs that spun around . . . never mind) and played along with Ringo for hours at a time. He was a superb teacher. Never forget Sly & the Family Stone’s “Dance to the Music”:
”All we need is a drummer, for people who only need a beat, yeah.”
Anyway, I later went full hard rock, though never “metal.” I always had a more melodic streak in me that enjoyed the singing. But always the words of that old Baptist preacher kept coming back.
As I began to study the Bible more, I began to wonder, where did rock and roll come from? Was it bad? Was it good? How was it any different than Bach, or Brahms, or any so-called “religious” music, for that matter? My study led me into the nature of Satan, where Lucifer was described as the most beautiful of all angelic beings. He had precious stones imbedded in his body. Moreover, it appears his very body was a musical instrument that amplified the praise of the angels and blasted it to God, like a super Fender Bassman or Marshall Stack.
It was only natural that he would try to corrupt music—-the very medium he was responsible for—-after his fall. But then we would hear sermons about “if one person is saved” . . . . And I thought, so, if one person is saved through rock and roll, it can’t be all bad, right?
In 2010 we made a film called “Rockin’ the Wall,” about music’s part in bringing down communism. We interviewed dozens of rockers who played behind the Iron Curtain, as well as ordinary music fans from the East Bloc who loved rock. One of the most amazing interviews in our film was a woman from Moldavia, then a part of the USSR.
She said, “I was an atheist. I was not a communist, but I was atheist. For some reason they let in the rock opera (three syllables strung out: “op-er-a”) ‘Jesus Christ Superstar.’” She said, “I become Christian because of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ and am bap-tiz-ed.” I began to wonder how many others were introduced to the Word through rock.
As a post-script, when I lived in Ohio, there was a church off I-75 called Solid Rock Church. I drove down to a service there one morning. They were well named. The drummer came out first and began laying it down, followed by the bassist, then the guitarist, and after 10 minutes the whole band and choir was on stage and they were, to use Rick Derringer’s phrase, “Layin’ it down.” It struck me that God wasn’t going to allow a form of his praise to be taken over by the evil one. Oh, of course, the old devil could infiltrate anything: food, drink, movies, plays, opera. But he can’t have it all.
Rock and roll hootchie koo, devil. Rock and roll hootchie koo.
Larry Schweikart
Rock drummer
Film maker
NYTimes #1 bestselling author
Political pundit
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