THE CHARACTER AND PHILOSOPHY OF ROCK & ROLL MUSIC
Jul/22/09 07:47
Updated July 22, 2009 (first published October 8, 1998) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –
When I was converted in 1973 from a life of foolish rebellion, one of the first things the Lord dealt with me about was my music. I began listening to rock in 1959 and had lived and breathed it for many years. I started on 50s rock and country rock-a-billy and journeyed through 60s rock and part way through 70s rock before I was saved. When the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, I was in the 9th grade. The year I graduated from high school was “the summer of love.” When I was drafted into the Army two years later, the Woodstock movie was sweeping the land. During the year and a half I spent in Vietnam, I was stationed at Tan Son Nhut Airbase outside of Saigon. I was a clerk in a military police unit attached to MACV headquarters, the control center for the entire South Vietnam U.S. military operation. We lived at the R&R out-processing center, and the unit’s job was to keep drugs from leaving the country on soldiers bound for R&R and in personnel containers being shipped to the States. We had access to every conceivable luxury, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, tennis courts, racket ball, gym, movie theater, photo processing labs, you name it. I even had almost full-time use of a jeep for trips to Saigon. (Yes, it was rough duty but someone had to do it!) One of the facilities I used extensively was the reel-to-reel recording studio. The Army had a massive library of music, and soldiers who lived at or visited MACV headquarters could record as much as they wanted. I spent countless hours there recording rock music. I also utilized the PX system to purchase a sophisticated stereo system. By the time I was discharged from the Army, I was all set to stock my first hippie pad in Hollywood, Florida, with wall-to-wall rock music. My hippie heaven didn't last long, though. My buddies and I were buying and selling drugs, and two of us were arrested for possession of illegal drugs and public drunkenness. Though I got off lightly because it was my first arrest, I began to live in constant fear of being caught again and going to jail for a long time. I started to drift around. On one trip, I hitchhiked all the way to northern California and back to central Florida. Returning from California, I met some young people from India who introduced me to reincarnation and the Self Realization Fellowship Society. I began to practice meditation and study eastern religion, and I excitedly made another trip to California to visit the headquarters of the Self Realization Fellowship Society in Los Angeles. On the way there I won roughly $70 in a slot machine in Las Vegas and I thought it was an answer to my prayers!
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When I was converted in 1973 from a life of foolish rebellion, one of the first things the Lord dealt with me about was my music. I began listening to rock in 1959 and had lived and breathed it for many years. I started on 50s rock and country rock-a-billy and journeyed through 60s rock and part way through 70s rock before I was saved. When the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, I was in the 9th grade. The year I graduated from high school was “the summer of love.” When I was drafted into the Army two years later, the Woodstock movie was sweeping the land. During the year and a half I spent in Vietnam, I was stationed at Tan Son Nhut Airbase outside of Saigon. I was a clerk in a military police unit attached to MACV headquarters, the control center for the entire South Vietnam U.S. military operation. We lived at the R&R out-processing center, and the unit’s job was to keep drugs from leaving the country on soldiers bound for R&R and in personnel containers being shipped to the States. We had access to every conceivable luxury, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, tennis courts, racket ball, gym, movie theater, photo processing labs, you name it. I even had almost full-time use of a jeep for trips to Saigon. (Yes, it was rough duty but someone had to do it!) One of the facilities I used extensively was the reel-to-reel recording studio. The Army had a massive library of music, and soldiers who lived at or visited MACV headquarters could record as much as they wanted. I spent countless hours there recording rock music. I also utilized the PX system to purchase a sophisticated stereo system. By the time I was discharged from the Army, I was all set to stock my first hippie pad in Hollywood, Florida, with wall-to-wall rock music. My hippie heaven didn't last long, though. My buddies and I were buying and selling drugs, and two of us were arrested for possession of illegal drugs and public drunkenness. Though I got off lightly because it was my first arrest, I began to live in constant fear of being caught again and going to jail for a long time. I started to drift around. On one trip, I hitchhiked all the way to northern California and back to central Florida. Returning from California, I met some young people from India who introduced me to reincarnation and the Self Realization Fellowship Society. I began to practice meditation and study eastern religion, and I excitedly made another trip to California to visit the headquarters of the Self Realization Fellowship Society in Los Angeles. On the way there I won roughly $70 in a slot machine in Las Vegas and I thought it was an answer to my prayers!
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REPLY TO A READER WHO DISLIKES OUR REPORT ABOUT THE BEATLES
Apr/14/09 20:15
REPLY TO A READER WHO DISLIKES OUR REPORT ABOUT THE BEATLES
April 15, 2009 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
I received the following challenge recently:
“Dear Way of Life, I recently read a publication of some sort on your website, on the subject of the Beatles. I was struck by the extreme view it presented--that the Beatles were blasphemous, heretic, immoral, and corrupt. I was also struck by the hatred the author seemed feel not only for the Beatles, but also for all other religions. I am, of course, completely open to other people's views, and have nothing against the Baptist church. I am myself Christian, although not by baptism. However, I have to object to the way in which the article reviled other religions, as well as presenting an incredibly biased view of its subject material. It actually suggested that those associated with the Beatles died early as a result of their association. Not only that, but it compares the Beatles to Hitler--a claim that crosses the line from bias to offensiveness. I wouldn’t say that the Beatles were completely morally innocent, but this article attacks them from every angle so viciously, it comes across not as a reasoned argument, but as a piece of fundamentalist propaganda. I think what the world needs right know is more open-mindedness. This article actually does your religion a disservice, presenting it as intimidating, single-minded, and unaccepting of other's opinions. The Beatles were about love and peace, two values which should be promoted, regardless of race or religious background.”
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April 15, 2009 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
I received the following challenge recently:
“Dear Way of Life, I recently read a publication of some sort on your website, on the subject of the Beatles. I was struck by the extreme view it presented--that the Beatles were blasphemous, heretic, immoral, and corrupt. I was also struck by the hatred the author seemed feel not only for the Beatles, but also for all other religions. I am, of course, completely open to other people's views, and have nothing against the Baptist church. I am myself Christian, although not by baptism. However, I have to object to the way in which the article reviled other religions, as well as presenting an incredibly biased view of its subject material. It actually suggested that those associated with the Beatles died early as a result of their association. Not only that, but it compares the Beatles to Hitler--a claim that crosses the line from bias to offensiveness. I wouldn’t say that the Beatles were completely morally innocent, but this article attacks them from every angle so viciously, it comes across not as a reasoned argument, but as a piece of fundamentalist propaganda. I think what the world needs right know is more open-mindedness. This article actually does your religion a disservice, presenting it as intimidating, single-minded, and unaccepting of other's opinions. The Beatles were about love and peace, two values which should be promoted, regardless of race or religious background.”
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THE BEATLES
Mar/18/09 08:22
Updated and enlarged March 18, 2009 (first published October 8, 2000) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article)-
The Beatles are the most popular and influential rock band of all time. Rolling Stone magazine ranked them number one in its list of 100 “Greatest Artists.” They have sold over one billion records internationally. This is in spite of the fact that none of the Beatles could read a note of music.
Paul McCartney said, “We felt like gods” (Bob Spitz, The Beatles, p. 425).
They have been called “a revolution” and “a cultural earthquake.”
More than 8,000 books have been written about them. The Queen of England bestowed upon them the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1965 and knighted Paul McCartney in 1997. In 2009, Liverpool Hope University began offering a Master of Arts degree in “The Beatles, Popular Music and Society.”
Their music was re-released in 1987 via compact disc and continues to sell well. It is played continuously on oldies radio stations. Their 2000 album, titled “1,” debuted at No. 1 on pop charts in the U.S.A. and 16 other countries and sold more than 3.6 million copies the first week. The album contains 27 of the Beatles No. 1 singles. Read More...
The Beatles are the most popular and influential rock band of all time. Rolling Stone magazine ranked them number one in its list of 100 “Greatest Artists.” They have sold over one billion records internationally. This is in spite of the fact that none of the Beatles could read a note of music.
Paul McCartney said, “We felt like gods” (Bob Spitz, The Beatles, p. 425).
They have been called “a revolution” and “a cultural earthquake.”
More than 8,000 books have been written about them. The Queen of England bestowed upon them the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1965 and knighted Paul McCartney in 1997. In 2009, Liverpool Hope University began offering a Master of Arts degree in “The Beatles, Popular Music and Society.”
Their music was re-released in 1987 via compact disc and continues to sell well. It is played continuously on oldies radio stations. Their 2000 album, titled “1,” debuted at No. 1 on pop charts in the U.S.A. and 16 other countries and sold more than 3.6 million copies the first week. The album contains 27 of the Beatles No. 1 singles. Read More...
THE RAPPER DEATHSTYLE
Mar/12/09 09:01
A study published in the May 2003 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that students who listen to violent music are more likely to act violently. “Across five studies, we found that violent lyrics do increase violent thinking and aggressive feelings,” said lead researcher Craig Anderson of Iowa State University.
In 2007 the police in Colorado Springs issued a warning that gangsta rap is contributing to the rise in violence and murders in their area.
In a pathetic attempt to defend rap against the police charge, one rapper said: “When two cowboys got into an argument at a saloon, went outside and had a draw, nobody blamed the music that was playing at the saloon” (“Colorado police link rise in violence to music,” Goupstate.com, Sept. 3, 2007). But cowboy saloon songs didn’t wind people up into a violent rage against society and urge them to murder and rape and shoot police officers and treat women like dogs.
Rap or Hip Hop is violent music, and it is not surprising that it is accompanied by violence.
The following are some of the cases in which rappers themselves have died untimely deaths because of the violence, drug abuse, and immorality that is glorified in rap music. Read More...
THE ROCK GROUP U2
Nov/17/08 20:59
THE ROCK GROUP U2
Updated and enlarged November 17, 2008 (first published March 26, 2001) (first published December 10, 1998) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –
U2 is loved by vast numbers of professing Christians, who argue that three of the band members are believers. Christianity Today almost worships them. When Episcopalian ministers Raewynne Whiteley and Beth Maynard published “Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog,” Christianity Today’s responded with an review entitled “The Legend of Bono Vox: Lessons Learned in the Church of U2.” In fact, U2 is no church and has no church and is destitute of spiritual lessons when judged biblically.
U2, which was formed in 1978, is hugely successful. Their PopMart world tour, which ended in early 1997, earned 100 million British pounds; and the band members “were already among the richest people in the Irish Republic” (Whatever Happened to, p. 198). They were still going strong in 2004 with the release of the How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb album. In December 2004 U2 was featured on the cover of the special “People of the Year” issue of the wicked Rolling Stone magazine, and writer David Fricke enthused, “If there was any doubt that U2 is the biggest band in the world, there’s none now.” (U2 first appeared on the cover of the March 1985 issue of Rolling Stone under the headline, “Our Choice: Band of the Eighties.”)
U2 front man Bono (real name Paul Hewson), Dave Evans (“Edge”), and Larry Mullen visited a charismatic house church called Shalom and announced themselves Christians in their teenage years. U2 member Adam Clayton does not make any type of Christian profession. In my opinion, he is the most honest of the four band members. At least he does not pretend to have faith in the Bible while living a rock & roll lifestyle.
Bono, Evans, and Mullen admit that they wrestled with quitting rock & roll when they began studying the Bible. They chose to stay with rock & roll and have been moving farther and farther away from the Bible ever since. Of that early struggle Bono told a Rolling Stones magazine senior editor: “We were getting involved in reading books, the Big Book. Meeting people who were more interested in things spiritual, superspiritual characters that I can see now were possibly far too removed from reality. But we were wrapped up in that.”
This business of spiritually minded Christians being “too far removed from reality” is a common smokescreen used by rebellious types to excuse their worldliness. The Bible says:
“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:1-4).
Bono mocks as super spiritual those who reject the things of this world to set their minds on heavenly things, but the Bible says that is precisely what God wants His people to do.
U2 guitarist Dave Evans admits that it is a contradiction for Christians to play in a rock & roll band.
“It was reconciling two things that seemed for us at that moment to be mutually exclusive. We never did resolve the contradictions. That’s the truth. ... Because we were getting a lot of people in our ear saying, ‘This is impossible, you guys are Christians, you can’t be in a band. It’s a contradiction and you have to go one way or the other.’ They said a lot worse things than that as well. So I just wanted to find out. I was sick of people not really knowing and me not knowing whether this was right for me. So I took two weeks. Within a day or two I just knew that all this stuff [separating from the world] is ——- [vulgarity]. We were the band. Okay, it’s a contradiction for some, but it’s a contradiction that I’m able to live with. I just decided that I was going to live with it. I wasn’t going to try to explain it because I can’t” (Bill Flanagan, U2 at the End of the World, pp. 47,48).
Note that Evans does not base his decision upon the Word of God. Contrary to Proverbs 3:5,6, he leans on his own understanding and follows his own desires.
U2 is frequently mentioned in CCM Magazine in a positive light. For example, the December 1998 issue contained a review of U2’s “Best of 1980-1990” release. The reviewer said: “...U2 has epitomized the question, ‘Is this a Christian band or are its members Christians playing in a band?’” The reviewer praises U2 for its “vivid religious imagery.”
In fact, there is very little, if any, evidence in U2’s lives, music, or performances that they honor the Word of God. They have been at the heart of the wicked rock & roll scene for two and a half decades. They are one of the most popular rock & roll groups alive today and this certainly would not be the case if they were striving to obey the Bible in all things. Their record sales are in excess of 70 million. They have won five awards on wicked MTV. They have often won Rolling Stone magazine’s reader’s poll titles for most popular rock group. In 1992 “Bono was named premier male sexpot” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. xxxvi).
In 1990 Bono said: “More than any other group that ever was, the Who were our role models. I love them and hate them for that” (cited in Rock Facts, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, p. 107). As we have documented in our book Rock Music vs. the God of the Bible, the Who was a very wicked rock band and it is impossible for a person who loves the holy God of the Bible to consider the members of the Who as role models.
Because of their popularity in the rock music field, the members of U2 have had countless opportunities to testify plainly of their faith in Christ, but Bono says they don’t like to discuss their religious beliefs in public. I have read dozens of U2 interviews, but I have never heard them give a clear testimony of the new birth or warn that those who are without Christ are on their way to eternal Hell.
The members of U2 don’t support any denomination or church. In fact, they rarely attend church, “preferring to meet together in private prayer sessions” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. 21). Bono says that he would like to be able to go to a Catholic church or a Protestant one (Ibid., p. 20). They are “not rabid Bible thumpers” (Ibid., p. 14). In the song “Acrobat,” Bono sings, “I’d join the movement/ If there was one I could believe in ... I’d break bread and wine/ If there was a church I could receive in.”
One church Bono does attend from time to time is Glide Memorial United Methodist in San Francisco. “When he’s in the area Bono is a frequent worshipper at Glide...” (Flanagan, U2 at the End of the World, p. 99). Bono attended Glide Memorial during a special service to honor Clinton’s 1992 presidential election. Speaking at a meeting connected with the 1972 United Methodist Church Quadrennial Conference, Cecil Williams, pastor of the Glide Memorial Methodist Church, said, “I don’t want to go to no heaven ... I don’t believe in that stuff. I think it’s a lot of - - - - [vulgarity].” Long ago William’s church replaced the choir with a rock band, and its “celebrations” have included dancing and even nudity. A Jewish rabbi is on William’s staff. After attending a service at Glide Memorial, a newspaper editor wrote, “The service, in my opinion, was an insult to every Christian attending and was the most disgusting display of vulgarity and sensuousness I have ever seen anywhere.” In spite of William’s apostasy and immorality, his bishop has continued to support him. This is U2’s type of Christianity.
The members of U2 do not believe Christianity should have rules and regulations. “I’m really interested in and influenced by the spiritual side of Christianity, rather than the legislative side, the rules and regulations” (Edge, U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. 21). The Lord Jesus Christ said those who love Him would keep His commandments (John 14:15, 23, 15:10). The Apostle John said, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:3). There are 88 specific commandments for Christians in the book of Ephesians alone, the same book that says we are saved by grace without works. Though salvation is by grace, it always produces a zeal for holiness and obedience to God’s commands.
The lives of the U2 rock stars illustrate their no-rules philosophy. Bill Flanagan, a U2 friend who has traveled extensively with the group, in his book U2 at the End of the World, describes them as heavy drinkers and constant visitors to bars, brothels, and nightclubs. He says, “If I wanted to I could fill up hundreds of pages with this sort of three-sheets-to-the-wind [drunken], navel-gazing dialogue between U2 and me” (p. 145). Bono describes their life on the road as “a fairly decadent kind of selfish-art-oriented lifestyle” (Flanagan, p. 79). Their language is interspersed with the vilest vulgarities and even with profanity. Of basketball star Magic Johnson’s widely publicized sexual escapades, Bono flippantly says: “Be a sex machine, but for Christ’s sake use a condom” (Flanagan, p. 105). When Clinton won the 1992 presidential election, U2 had just traveled from the United States to Canada. Bono said: “Jesus, isn’t that just like us! It’s a hell of a night to have just left America” (Flanagan, p. 99). Thus he uses the Lord’s name in vain. Much of Bono’s statements cannot be printed in a Christian publication. The cover and lyric sheet to their Achtung Baby album contained photos of the band in homosexual drag clothing (men dressing like women), a picture of Bono in front of a topless woman, and a frontal photo of Adam Clayton completely nude. Bono said the band enjoyed dressing like homosexual drag queens. “Nobody wanted to take their clothes off for about a week! And I have to say, some people have been doing it ever since!” (Bono, cited by Flanagan, p. 58). Bono told the media that he and his bandmates planned to spend New Year’s Eve 2000 in Dublin, because “Dublin knows how to drink” (Bono, USA Today, Oct. 15, 1999, p. E1). Bono has simulated sex with women during his concerts. Their concerts have included video clips portraying nudity and cuss words. One U2 concert series featured a belly dancer. The band members have had serious marital problems and Dave Evans is divorced. Of sex, Bono says: “You know, if you tell people that the best place to have sex is in the safe hands of a loving relationship, you may be telling a lie! There may be other places” (Flanagan, p. 83). People magazine described Bono’s “nine-hour binge which left him brainless.” “The U2 star ... got struck into beer, wine, cocktails and bubbly celebrating the American release of the band’s Rattle And Hum film. ‘He was slobbering, shouting and showing off,’ said a bartender at the Santa Monica niterie that hosted the bash. ‘Even the rest of the band told him to calm down. They should have been kicked out but because of who they are we let them stay...’” (The People, Oct. 23, 1988, p. 15, cited by Jeff Godwin, What’s Wrong with Christian Rock, p. 70).
A couple of U2 fans have written to me to claim that Bono has changed; but if that is so, let’s hear him publicly renounce the things documented in the previous paragraph and publicly acknowledge that he has determined now to live a holy life and to obey the Word of God. No one has ever documented such a statement by Bono. In fact, he still talks about the band’s drinking and worldly partying; he still cusses in interviews; he still absents himself regularly from the house of God; he still describes careful Christian living as “legalism.” Appearing on the Golden Globe Awards broadcast by NBC television in 2003, Bono shouted a vile curse word. The incident was investigated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which deemed his language “profane” but decided not to fine the stations. Imagine an alleged Christian shouting such vile things on the public airwaves that he is investigated by the FCC!
In October 2008, Fox News reported that Bono and rocker friend Simon Carmody partied with teenager girls on a yacht in St. Tropez. The report, which was accompanied by a photo of Bono holding two bikini-clad teenagers on his lap at a bar, said, “Bono, Carmody and the girls partied into the night on the yacht” (“Facebook Pictures Show Married U2 Singer Bono’s Rendezvous with Sexy Teens,” Fox News, Oct. 27, 2008).
U2’s ambiguous lyrics do not present a clear Christian message, and many of the few songs that do mention Christ do so in a strange, unscriptural manner. “The listener senses something religious is being dealt with but can’t be quite sure what” (Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 172). They never preach the gospel of Jesus Christ in a plain manner so that their listeners could be born again. They pose moral questions in some of their songs, but they give no Bible answers. “U2 don’t pretend to have the answers to the world’s troubles. Instead, they devote their energies to letting us know that they are concerned and to creating an awareness about those problems” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. 10). What a pitiful testimony for professing Christian musicians who COULD be preaching the light of the Word of God to a dark and hell-bound world.
Consider, for example, the lyrics to “When Love Comes to Town”:
“I was there when they crucified my lord/ I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword/ I threw the dice when they pierced his side/ But I’ve seen love conquer the great divide. When love comes to town I’m gonna catch that train/ When love comes to town I’m gonna catch that flame/ Maybe I was wrong to ever let you down/ But I did what I did before love came to town.”
This is typical of U2 songs. It intermingles thoughts about a girl at the beginning with thoughts possibly about the cross of Christ at the end, but nothing is clear. Listeners can interpret the ambiguous lyrics in a multitude of senses.
From the song “All Because of You” from U2’s 2004 album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb we see that U2’s lyrics have not become any plainer. “I’m alive/I’m being born/I just arrived, I’m at the door/Of the place that I started out from/And I want back inside.” The New Evangelical Christian and the pagan New Ager can both find their religion in U2’s lyrics.
One of U2’s most popular songs even proclaims that they haven’t found what they are looking for.
“You broke the bonds/ You loosed the chains/ You carried the cross/ And my shame/ You know I believe it/ But I still haven’t found/ What I’m looking for” (“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” U2).
This is a strange message for an alleged Christian rock band to broadcast to a needy world! During a Dublin concert, Bono paused in the middle of singing “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and shouted, “I hope I never find it!” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. xl).
The group is active in political causes, but they are liberal, humanistic ones. For example, in 1992 they played a benefit concert for the environmentalist/pacifist group Greenpeace and joined Greenpeace in protesting against a nuclear power plant. One of their hits, “Pride,” is a tribute to the civil rights leader Martin Luther King; and in 1994, U2 received the Martin Luther King Freedom Award. King was an adulterous, modernistic preacher who taught a false social gospel. U2 supported the adulterous, abortion-homosexual supporting Bill Clinton in his 1992 run for president. Clinton conversed with them on a national radio talk show during the election campaign and met them in a hotel room in Chicago. At the same time they mocked George Bush during their USA concerts that year. They featured a video clip depicting Bush chanting the words to “We Will Rock You” by the homosexual rock group Queen. Members of U2 performed at Bill Clinton’s televised inaugural ball on MTV. Bono said he was glad that Clinton’s election was a victory for homosexuals (Flanagan, p. 100).
Bono’s passion in recent years has been AIDS and poverty in Africa. He has petitioned Western governments such as America and Britain to cancel the debts of African nations and to increase foreign aid. While Bono does call upon African leaders to “practice democracy, accountability, and transparency,” he does not tie this in with foreign aid and does not put the blame of Africa’s AIDS and poverty problem where it truly and solely belongs, which is government corruption, pagan religion, and its corollary, the lack of moral character, and immorality. If the entire wealth of America and Europe were transferred to Africa tomorrow, it would not result in significant and lasting change unless these factors were first addressed, and Bono’s plan does not significantly address them nor require any such radical systemic change. Instead, Bono puts the largest part of the blame for Africa’s ills upon the unfair trade practices of and lack of aid by Western nations and the lack of compassion on the part of Christians. Speaking before Wheaton College in December 2002, Bono said, “Christ talks about the poor [and says] ‘whatever you have done to least of these brothers of mine, you've done to me.’ In Africa right now, the least of my brethren are dying in shiploads and we are not responding. We're here to sound the alarm” (Christianity Today, Dec. 9, 2002). Bono thus grossly misapplies Christ’s statement in Matthew 25:40, applying it to the unsaved in general rather than to the nation Israel. The is the Fatherhood of God heresy that Mother Teresa also held, that all men are the children of God regardless of whether they have faith in Christ. Further, if Matthew 25:40 is a reference to the unsaved in general, the apostles and early Christians failed miserably, for there is no record that they attempted to relieve the social ills of the Roman Empire in general. In fact, the context of Matthew 25:32-46 is immediately following the return of Christ at the end of the Tribulation, and it describes how Christ will judge the nations on the basis of how they treated His people the Jews, which will be so viciously persecuted during that period. Compare Rev. 7:4-14.
At Wheaton Bono also said, “It’s a remarkable thing, the idea that there’s some sort of hierarchy to sin. It’s something I can never figure out, the idea that sexual immorality is somehow much worse than, say, institutional greed. Somewhere in the back of the religious mind is this idea that we reap what we sow is missing the entire New Testament and the concept of grace completely” (“Backstage with Bono,” Christianitytoday.com music interviews, Dec. 9, 2002). Bono’s speeches are as ambiguous as his music lyrics, but the Christianity Today reporter understood that Bono was saying that reaping what we sow is not a biblical teaching and is contrary to grace. In fact, the Bible plainly says, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7), and that was stated in the very context of Paul’s teaching about grace. God’s grace through Christ is offered to all men, but its reception requires repentance and faith (Acts 20:21). Nowhere in the New Testament do we find Christ or the apostles fretting about “institutional greed” or rebuking the Roman government for its institutional sins; but the New Testament says a LOT about personal sin and sexual immorality!
Bono’s christ appears to be a false one. He says he is “attracted to people like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Christ, to pacifism” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. xxviii). The Lord Jesus Christ of the Bible is not a pacifist. He is not anything like the adulterous, theologically modernist Martin Luther King or the Hindu Gandhi. Christ did instruct His people not to resist evil in the sense of taking up arms for religious causes. When persecuted, we are to endure it (1 Cor. 4:12); but Christ did not teach pacifism. Christ’s forerunner, John the Baptist, warned soldiers to be content with their wages, but he did not rebuke them for carrying arms as soldiers (Lk. 3:14). Before his death, Christ instructed his followers to provide swords for themselves (Lk. 22:32-38). Christ said he came not to send peace but a sword (Mt. 10:34). In fact, the Lord Jesus Christ will return on a white horse to make war with his enemies (Rev. 19:11-16). The Christ of the Bible is no pacifist and He did not establish a pacifist movement.
At U2’s Madison Square Garden concert in 2005 Bono led the crowd in the chant “Jesus, Jew, Mohammed--all true. Jesus, Jew, Mohammed--all true” Tara Cobble, who attended the concert, testified that this chant destroyed her ill-placed devotion to Bono. “He repeated the words like a mantra. Was Bono, my supposed brother in Christ, preaching some kind of universalism? As I looked around, I saw all the people standing and chanting with him--it was disgusting ... When he stated that lie so boldly, it devastated me. It was, without question, the most disturbing experience of my life; I felt like I’d been covered in bile. The reality is that Bono held too high a place in my heart. And I don’t think I’m alone there. I’ve wrong held him up as the heroic ideal--the cool representative for Christianity; he may have been my ‘Christian idol’, but he was my idol nonetheless” (Tara Leigh Cobble, “How to dismantle an Idolized Bono,” Relevant magazine, Dec. 19, 2005).
We are glad that at least one U2 fan has seen the light about Bono. From a biblical standpoint there is no such thing as a cool representative of Christianity. If a man takes the Bible seriously, all of it, he will not be cool by any worldly standard!
Other quotations demonstrate that U2’s “spirituality” is not based on the Bible:
“... Bono dislikes the label ‘born-again Christian’—and he doesn’t go to church either. ‘I’m a very, very bad advertisement for God...’” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files).
“A U2 concert aims to raise people’s sense of their own worth. ‘Its a celebration of me being me and you being you,’ as Bono once put it. The music soars and swirls but never bludgeons. ... ‘I want people to leave our concerts feeling positive, a bit more free,’ says Bono” (Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 28).
“People expect you, as a believer, to have all the answers, when really all you have is a whole new set of questions” (Bono, cited by Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 173).
“The link between rock ‘n’ roll and gospel is not at all tenuous. In my walking into walls spiritually I’m not as alone as I once thought I was. When I look back there’s Patti Smith and Bob Dylan and Van Morrison and Elvis Presley—right the way down the line” (Bono, cited by Steve Turner, p. 28).
“Once I thought rock ‘n’ roll didn’t have a place for spiritual concerns. But I’ve since discovered that a lot of the artists who have inspired me—Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Patti Smith, Al Green and Marvin Gaye—were in a similar position ... that’s why I’m more at ease” (Bono, cited by Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, back cover).
Bono points to rock stars Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Elvis Presley, Patti Smith, and Marvin Gaye as an inspiration for spiritual concerns. This is most amazing, as not one of these has possessed a biblical faith in Jesus Christ as God and Redeemer. Not one has accepted the Bible as the infallible Word of God. Dylan went through a brief phase of professing faith in Christ in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but he has long since repudiated that. An article in the San Luis Obispo (California) Register for March 16, 1983, quoted Dylan as saying: “Whoever said I was Christian? Like Gandhi, I’m Christian, I’m Jewish, I’m a Moslem, I’m a Hindu. I am a humanist.” Van Morrison follows a New Age sort of hodgepodge theology formulated from his studies in Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Scientology. He calls himself a “Christian mystic” but does not trust Jesus Christ as God and Savior. Punk rocker Patti Smith curses and blasphemes God on her 1978 Easter album. In her song “Gloria” she says: “Jesus died for somebody’s sins/ But not mine.” She says, “I’ve been called a blasphemer a thousand times but I said that [in the song ‘Gloria’] because I refuse to accept that I came into this world as a sinner” (Patti Smith, cited by Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 143). Her heroes in the Bible are Cain, Eve, and Lucifer. Marvin Gaye combined his vile immorality with a vague religiosity. “On his album Sexual Healing he recites a list of credits, including one for ‘our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,’ and then glides straight into a song about wanting some woman’s body. That’s the way he would have liked it to be. He would like to have been able to obey his darkest passions and purify himself at the same time. ... On stage he would strip down to a jock strap” (Hungry for Heaven). Elvis Presley did love gospel music and even professed faith in Christ, but he gave no evidence of being a Bible-believing Christian. He constructed “a personalised religion out of what he’d read of Hinduism, Judaism, numerology, theosophy, mind control, positive thinking and Christianity” (Hungry for Heaven, p. 143).
I recently read the book “Bono on Bono: Conversations with Michka Assayas” (Hodder & Stoughton, 2005), which contains an interview with a music reporter that extended over a long period of time. Nowhere in this 337-page book does Bono give a scriptural testimony of having been born again, without which Jesus said no man can see the kingdom of heaven. He says that he believes Jesus is the Messiah and that He died on the cross for his sins and that he is holding out for grace, but the pope says that much. Bono’s “grace” is a grace that does not result in radical conversion and a new way of life; it is a grace without repentance. Nowhere does he warn his myriads of listeners to turn to Christ before it is too late and before they pass out of this life into eternal hell. In fact, the only thing he says about heaven or hell is that both are on earth. “I think, rather like Hell, Heaven is on Earth. That’s my prayer ... that’s where Heaven for me is...” (Bono on Bono, p. 254). It sounds like Bono has been listening more to John Lennon than the Bible, and in fact, he says that when he was 11 years old he listened to Lennon’s album Imagine and it “really got under my skin, the blood of it” (p. 246). On this album Lennon sang, “Imagine there is no heaven above and no hell below.”
As for church, Bono says that the older he gets the more comfort he finds in Roman Catholicism. “Let’s not get too hard on the Holy Roman Church here. The Church has its problems, but the older I get, the more comfort I find there. ... murmuring prayers, stories told in stained-glass windows, the colors of Catholicism--purple mauve, yellow, red--the burning incense. My friend Gavin Friday says Catholicism is the glam-rock of religion” (p. 201).
Though he speaks positively of Romanism, Bono has nothing good to say about “fundamentalism,” falsely claiming that it is a denial that God is love (p. 167) and calling it vile names (p. 147).
He praises singers who have produced some of the filthiest music, such as Prince and Mick Jagger, insinuating that they are good people who only making innocent art (pp. 153, 156).
He says his favorite lyric in a song is Kris Kristofferson’s immoral “Help Me Make It through the Night” (p. 129). He admits that U2’s music is “sexual” and even pretends that “erotic love can turn into something much higher,” admitting that he seems “to segue very easily between the two” (p. 120).
The truth is that Bono’s Christianity is a heretical mixture of Bible (the smallest part) and rock & roll philosophy (the largest part). He is a study in contradictions. On one hand he says that Jesus is the Messiah who died on the cross for man’s sins, while on the other hand making statements by his mouth and lifestyle that blatantly deny the Jesus of the Bible.
In fact, he says that Jesus and Mohammed are both true. At U2’s Madison Square Garden concert in 2005 Bono led the crowd in the chant “Jesus, Jew, Mohammed--all true. Jesus, Jew, Mohammed--all true” Tara Cobble, who attended the concert, testified that this chant destroyed her ill-placed devotion to Bono. “He repeated the words like a mantra. Was Bono, my supposed brother in Christ, preaching some kind of universalism? As I looked around, I saw all the people standing and chanting with him--it was disgusting ... When he stated that lie so boldly, it devastated me. It was, without question, the most disturbing experience of my life; I felt like I’d been covered in bile. The reality is that Bono held too high a place in my heart. And I don’t think I’m alone there. I’ve wrong held him up as the heroic ideal--the cool representative for Christianity; he may have been my ‘Christian idol’, but he was my idol nonetheless” (Tara Leigh Cobble, “How to dismantle an Idolized Bono,” Relevant magazine, Dec. 19, 2005).
We are glad that at least one U2 fan has seen the light about Bono. From a biblical standpoint there is no such thing as a cool representative of Christianity. If a man takes the Bible seriously, all of it, he will not be cool by any worldly standard!
U2 is exalted as “the biggest band in the world,” and they are praised by everyone from Christianity Today to Rolling Stone. The world loves U2, and that brings some Scriptures to mind.
“If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:19).
“I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:14).
“They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them” (1 John 4:5).
“And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness” (1 John 5:19).
The world loves U2 because U2 is of the world, and the world recognizes its own. The love that Bono sings about is the world’s love. U2’s philosophy is the world’s philosophy. Consider this line from the song “Vertigo” from How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb: “A feeling is so much stronger than a thought.” Bono quoted this in an interview with the wicked Rolling Stone magazine, and it summarizes the rock & roll philosophy. Do what feels right, regardless of what the Bible or some other authority says about it. The Bible says we are to live by God’s laws, but rock & roll says, “Live by your feelings.” The Bible says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, but rock & roll says, “Just follow your heart.” The Bible says we can only know God through the sound doctrine of His revelation in the Scriptures, through right thinking that comes by the right understanding of God’s word; but rock & roll says, “Feelings are more important than thoughts.” This is why the world loves U2.
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Updated and enlarged November 17, 2008 (first published March 26, 2001) (first published December 10, 1998) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –
U2 is loved by vast numbers of professing Christians, who argue that three of the band members are believers. Christianity Today almost worships them. When Episcopalian ministers Raewynne Whiteley and Beth Maynard published “Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog,” Christianity Today’s responded with an review entitled “The Legend of Bono Vox: Lessons Learned in the Church of U2.” In fact, U2 is no church and has no church and is destitute of spiritual lessons when judged biblically.
U2, which was formed in 1978, is hugely successful. Their PopMart world tour, which ended in early 1997, earned 100 million British pounds; and the band members “were already among the richest people in the Irish Republic” (Whatever Happened to, p. 198). They were still going strong in 2004 with the release of the How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb album. In December 2004 U2 was featured on the cover of the special “People of the Year” issue of the wicked Rolling Stone magazine, and writer David Fricke enthused, “If there was any doubt that U2 is the biggest band in the world, there’s none now.” (U2 first appeared on the cover of the March 1985 issue of Rolling Stone under the headline, “Our Choice: Band of the Eighties.”)
U2 front man Bono (real name Paul Hewson), Dave Evans (“Edge”), and Larry Mullen visited a charismatic house church called Shalom and announced themselves Christians in their teenage years. U2 member Adam Clayton does not make any type of Christian profession. In my opinion, he is the most honest of the four band members. At least he does not pretend to have faith in the Bible while living a rock & roll lifestyle.
Bono, Evans, and Mullen admit that they wrestled with quitting rock & roll when they began studying the Bible. They chose to stay with rock & roll and have been moving farther and farther away from the Bible ever since. Of that early struggle Bono told a Rolling Stones magazine senior editor: “We were getting involved in reading books, the Big Book. Meeting people who were more interested in things spiritual, superspiritual characters that I can see now were possibly far too removed from reality. But we were wrapped up in that.”
This business of spiritually minded Christians being “too far removed from reality” is a common smokescreen used by rebellious types to excuse their worldliness. The Bible says:
“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:1-4).
Bono mocks as super spiritual those who reject the things of this world to set their minds on heavenly things, but the Bible says that is precisely what God wants His people to do.
U2 guitarist Dave Evans admits that it is a contradiction for Christians to play in a rock & roll band.
“It was reconciling two things that seemed for us at that moment to be mutually exclusive. We never did resolve the contradictions. That’s the truth. ... Because we were getting a lot of people in our ear saying, ‘This is impossible, you guys are Christians, you can’t be in a band. It’s a contradiction and you have to go one way or the other.’ They said a lot worse things than that as well. So I just wanted to find out. I was sick of people not really knowing and me not knowing whether this was right for me. So I took two weeks. Within a day or two I just knew that all this stuff [separating from the world] is ——- [vulgarity]. We were the band. Okay, it’s a contradiction for some, but it’s a contradiction that I’m able to live with. I just decided that I was going to live with it. I wasn’t going to try to explain it because I can’t” (Bill Flanagan, U2 at the End of the World, pp. 47,48).
Note that Evans does not base his decision upon the Word of God. Contrary to Proverbs 3:5,6, he leans on his own understanding and follows his own desires.
U2 is frequently mentioned in CCM Magazine in a positive light. For example, the December 1998 issue contained a review of U2’s “Best of 1980-1990” release. The reviewer said: “...U2 has epitomized the question, ‘Is this a Christian band or are its members Christians playing in a band?’” The reviewer praises U2 for its “vivid religious imagery.”
In fact, there is very little, if any, evidence in U2’s lives, music, or performances that they honor the Word of God. They have been at the heart of the wicked rock & roll scene for two and a half decades. They are one of the most popular rock & roll groups alive today and this certainly would not be the case if they were striving to obey the Bible in all things. Their record sales are in excess of 70 million. They have won five awards on wicked MTV. They have often won Rolling Stone magazine’s reader’s poll titles for most popular rock group. In 1992 “Bono was named premier male sexpot” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. xxxvi).
In 1990 Bono said: “More than any other group that ever was, the Who were our role models. I love them and hate them for that” (cited in Rock Facts, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, p. 107). As we have documented in our book Rock Music vs. the God of the Bible, the Who was a very wicked rock band and it is impossible for a person who loves the holy God of the Bible to consider the members of the Who as role models.
Because of their popularity in the rock music field, the members of U2 have had countless opportunities to testify plainly of their faith in Christ, but Bono says they don’t like to discuss their religious beliefs in public. I have read dozens of U2 interviews, but I have never heard them give a clear testimony of the new birth or warn that those who are without Christ are on their way to eternal Hell.
The members of U2 don’t support any denomination or church. In fact, they rarely attend church, “preferring to meet together in private prayer sessions” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. 21). Bono says that he would like to be able to go to a Catholic church or a Protestant one (Ibid., p. 20). They are “not rabid Bible thumpers” (Ibid., p. 14). In the song “Acrobat,” Bono sings, “I’d join the movement/ If there was one I could believe in ... I’d break bread and wine/ If there was a church I could receive in.”
One church Bono does attend from time to time is Glide Memorial United Methodist in San Francisco. “When he’s in the area Bono is a frequent worshipper at Glide...” (Flanagan, U2 at the End of the World, p. 99). Bono attended Glide Memorial during a special service to honor Clinton’s 1992 presidential election. Speaking at a meeting connected with the 1972 United Methodist Church Quadrennial Conference, Cecil Williams, pastor of the Glide Memorial Methodist Church, said, “I don’t want to go to no heaven ... I don’t believe in that stuff. I think it’s a lot of - - - - [vulgarity].” Long ago William’s church replaced the choir with a rock band, and its “celebrations” have included dancing and even nudity. A Jewish rabbi is on William’s staff. After attending a service at Glide Memorial, a newspaper editor wrote, “The service, in my opinion, was an insult to every Christian attending and was the most disgusting display of vulgarity and sensuousness I have ever seen anywhere.” In spite of William’s apostasy and immorality, his bishop has continued to support him. This is U2’s type of Christianity.
The members of U2 do not believe Christianity should have rules and regulations. “I’m really interested in and influenced by the spiritual side of Christianity, rather than the legislative side, the rules and regulations” (Edge, U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. 21). The Lord Jesus Christ said those who love Him would keep His commandments (John 14:15, 23, 15:10). The Apostle John said, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:3). There are 88 specific commandments for Christians in the book of Ephesians alone, the same book that says we are saved by grace without works. Though salvation is by grace, it always produces a zeal for holiness and obedience to God’s commands.
The lives of the U2 rock stars illustrate their no-rules philosophy. Bill Flanagan, a U2 friend who has traveled extensively with the group, in his book U2 at the End of the World, describes them as heavy drinkers and constant visitors to bars, brothels, and nightclubs. He says, “If I wanted to I could fill up hundreds of pages with this sort of three-sheets-to-the-wind [drunken], navel-gazing dialogue between U2 and me” (p. 145). Bono describes their life on the road as “a fairly decadent kind of selfish-art-oriented lifestyle” (Flanagan, p. 79). Their language is interspersed with the vilest vulgarities and even with profanity. Of basketball star Magic Johnson’s widely publicized sexual escapades, Bono flippantly says: “Be a sex machine, but for Christ’s sake use a condom” (Flanagan, p. 105). When Clinton won the 1992 presidential election, U2 had just traveled from the United States to Canada. Bono said: “Jesus, isn’t that just like us! It’s a hell of a night to have just left America” (Flanagan, p. 99). Thus he uses the Lord’s name in vain. Much of Bono’s statements cannot be printed in a Christian publication. The cover and lyric sheet to their Achtung Baby album contained photos of the band in homosexual drag clothing (men dressing like women), a picture of Bono in front of a topless woman, and a frontal photo of Adam Clayton completely nude. Bono said the band enjoyed dressing like homosexual drag queens. “Nobody wanted to take their clothes off for about a week! And I have to say, some people have been doing it ever since!” (Bono, cited by Flanagan, p. 58). Bono told the media that he and his bandmates planned to spend New Year’s Eve 2000 in Dublin, because “Dublin knows how to drink” (Bono, USA Today, Oct. 15, 1999, p. E1). Bono has simulated sex with women during his concerts. Their concerts have included video clips portraying nudity and cuss words. One U2 concert series featured a belly dancer. The band members have had serious marital problems and Dave Evans is divorced. Of sex, Bono says: “You know, if you tell people that the best place to have sex is in the safe hands of a loving relationship, you may be telling a lie! There may be other places” (Flanagan, p. 83). People magazine described Bono’s “nine-hour binge which left him brainless.” “The U2 star ... got struck into beer, wine, cocktails and bubbly celebrating the American release of the band’s Rattle And Hum film. ‘He was slobbering, shouting and showing off,’ said a bartender at the Santa Monica niterie that hosted the bash. ‘Even the rest of the band told him to calm down. They should have been kicked out but because of who they are we let them stay...’” (The People, Oct. 23, 1988, p. 15, cited by Jeff Godwin, What’s Wrong with Christian Rock, p. 70).
A couple of U2 fans have written to me to claim that Bono has changed; but if that is so, let’s hear him publicly renounce the things documented in the previous paragraph and publicly acknowledge that he has determined now to live a holy life and to obey the Word of God. No one has ever documented such a statement by Bono. In fact, he still talks about the band’s drinking and worldly partying; he still cusses in interviews; he still absents himself regularly from the house of God; he still describes careful Christian living as “legalism.” Appearing on the Golden Globe Awards broadcast by NBC television in 2003, Bono shouted a vile curse word. The incident was investigated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which deemed his language “profane” but decided not to fine the stations. Imagine an alleged Christian shouting such vile things on the public airwaves that he is investigated by the FCC!
In October 2008, Fox News reported that Bono and rocker friend Simon Carmody partied with teenager girls on a yacht in St. Tropez. The report, which was accompanied by a photo of Bono holding two bikini-clad teenagers on his lap at a bar, said, “Bono, Carmody and the girls partied into the night on the yacht” (“Facebook Pictures Show Married U2 Singer Bono’s Rendezvous with Sexy Teens,” Fox News, Oct. 27, 2008).
U2’s ambiguous lyrics do not present a clear Christian message, and many of the few songs that do mention Christ do so in a strange, unscriptural manner. “The listener senses something religious is being dealt with but can’t be quite sure what” (Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 172). They never preach the gospel of Jesus Christ in a plain manner so that their listeners could be born again. They pose moral questions in some of their songs, but they give no Bible answers. “U2 don’t pretend to have the answers to the world’s troubles. Instead, they devote their energies to letting us know that they are concerned and to creating an awareness about those problems” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. 10). What a pitiful testimony for professing Christian musicians who COULD be preaching the light of the Word of God to a dark and hell-bound world.
Consider, for example, the lyrics to “When Love Comes to Town”:
“I was there when they crucified my lord/ I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword/ I threw the dice when they pierced his side/ But I’ve seen love conquer the great divide. When love comes to town I’m gonna catch that train/ When love comes to town I’m gonna catch that flame/ Maybe I was wrong to ever let you down/ But I did what I did before love came to town.”
This is typical of U2 songs. It intermingles thoughts about a girl at the beginning with thoughts possibly about the cross of Christ at the end, but nothing is clear. Listeners can interpret the ambiguous lyrics in a multitude of senses.
From the song “All Because of You” from U2’s 2004 album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb we see that U2’s lyrics have not become any plainer. “I’m alive/I’m being born/I just arrived, I’m at the door/Of the place that I started out from/And I want back inside.” The New Evangelical Christian and the pagan New Ager can both find their religion in U2’s lyrics.
One of U2’s most popular songs even proclaims that they haven’t found what they are looking for.
“You broke the bonds/ You loosed the chains/ You carried the cross/ And my shame/ You know I believe it/ But I still haven’t found/ What I’m looking for” (“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” U2).
This is a strange message for an alleged Christian rock band to broadcast to a needy world! During a Dublin concert, Bono paused in the middle of singing “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and shouted, “I hope I never find it!” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. xl).
The group is active in political causes, but they are liberal, humanistic ones. For example, in 1992 they played a benefit concert for the environmentalist/pacifist group Greenpeace and joined Greenpeace in protesting against a nuclear power plant. One of their hits, “Pride,” is a tribute to the civil rights leader Martin Luther King; and in 1994, U2 received the Martin Luther King Freedom Award. King was an adulterous, modernistic preacher who taught a false social gospel. U2 supported the adulterous, abortion-homosexual supporting Bill Clinton in his 1992 run for president. Clinton conversed with them on a national radio talk show during the election campaign and met them in a hotel room in Chicago. At the same time they mocked George Bush during their USA concerts that year. They featured a video clip depicting Bush chanting the words to “We Will Rock You” by the homosexual rock group Queen. Members of U2 performed at Bill Clinton’s televised inaugural ball on MTV. Bono said he was glad that Clinton’s election was a victory for homosexuals (Flanagan, p. 100).
Bono’s passion in recent years has been AIDS and poverty in Africa. He has petitioned Western governments such as America and Britain to cancel the debts of African nations and to increase foreign aid. While Bono does call upon African leaders to “practice democracy, accountability, and transparency,” he does not tie this in with foreign aid and does not put the blame of Africa’s AIDS and poverty problem where it truly and solely belongs, which is government corruption, pagan religion, and its corollary, the lack of moral character, and immorality. If the entire wealth of America and Europe were transferred to Africa tomorrow, it would not result in significant and lasting change unless these factors were first addressed, and Bono’s plan does not significantly address them nor require any such radical systemic change. Instead, Bono puts the largest part of the blame for Africa’s ills upon the unfair trade practices of and lack of aid by Western nations and the lack of compassion on the part of Christians. Speaking before Wheaton College in December 2002, Bono said, “Christ talks about the poor [and says] ‘whatever you have done to least of these brothers of mine, you've done to me.’ In Africa right now, the least of my brethren are dying in shiploads and we are not responding. We're here to sound the alarm” (Christianity Today, Dec. 9, 2002). Bono thus grossly misapplies Christ’s statement in Matthew 25:40, applying it to the unsaved in general rather than to the nation Israel. The is the Fatherhood of God heresy that Mother Teresa also held, that all men are the children of God regardless of whether they have faith in Christ. Further, if Matthew 25:40 is a reference to the unsaved in general, the apostles and early Christians failed miserably, for there is no record that they attempted to relieve the social ills of the Roman Empire in general. In fact, the context of Matthew 25:32-46 is immediately following the return of Christ at the end of the Tribulation, and it describes how Christ will judge the nations on the basis of how they treated His people the Jews, which will be so viciously persecuted during that period. Compare Rev. 7:4-14.
At Wheaton Bono also said, “It’s a remarkable thing, the idea that there’s some sort of hierarchy to sin. It’s something I can never figure out, the idea that sexual immorality is somehow much worse than, say, institutional greed. Somewhere in the back of the religious mind is this idea that we reap what we sow is missing the entire New Testament and the concept of grace completely” (“Backstage with Bono,” Christianitytoday.com music interviews, Dec. 9, 2002). Bono’s speeches are as ambiguous as his music lyrics, but the Christianity Today reporter understood that Bono was saying that reaping what we sow is not a biblical teaching and is contrary to grace. In fact, the Bible plainly says, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7), and that was stated in the very context of Paul’s teaching about grace. God’s grace through Christ is offered to all men, but its reception requires repentance and faith (Acts 20:21). Nowhere in the New Testament do we find Christ or the apostles fretting about “institutional greed” or rebuking the Roman government for its institutional sins; but the New Testament says a LOT about personal sin and sexual immorality!
Bono’s christ appears to be a false one. He says he is “attracted to people like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Christ, to pacifism” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. xxviii). The Lord Jesus Christ of the Bible is not a pacifist. He is not anything like the adulterous, theologically modernist Martin Luther King or the Hindu Gandhi. Christ did instruct His people not to resist evil in the sense of taking up arms for religious causes. When persecuted, we are to endure it (1 Cor. 4:12); but Christ did not teach pacifism. Christ’s forerunner, John the Baptist, warned soldiers to be content with their wages, but he did not rebuke them for carrying arms as soldiers (Lk. 3:14). Before his death, Christ instructed his followers to provide swords for themselves (Lk. 22:32-38). Christ said he came not to send peace but a sword (Mt. 10:34). In fact, the Lord Jesus Christ will return on a white horse to make war with his enemies (Rev. 19:11-16). The Christ of the Bible is no pacifist and He did not establish a pacifist movement.
At U2’s Madison Square Garden concert in 2005 Bono led the crowd in the chant “Jesus, Jew, Mohammed--all true. Jesus, Jew, Mohammed--all true” Tara Cobble, who attended the concert, testified that this chant destroyed her ill-placed devotion to Bono. “He repeated the words like a mantra. Was Bono, my supposed brother in Christ, preaching some kind of universalism? As I looked around, I saw all the people standing and chanting with him--it was disgusting ... When he stated that lie so boldly, it devastated me. It was, without question, the most disturbing experience of my life; I felt like I’d been covered in bile. The reality is that Bono held too high a place in my heart. And I don’t think I’m alone there. I’ve wrong held him up as the heroic ideal--the cool representative for Christianity; he may have been my ‘Christian idol’, but he was my idol nonetheless” (Tara Leigh Cobble, “How to dismantle an Idolized Bono,” Relevant magazine, Dec. 19, 2005).
We are glad that at least one U2 fan has seen the light about Bono. From a biblical standpoint there is no such thing as a cool representative of Christianity. If a man takes the Bible seriously, all of it, he will not be cool by any worldly standard!
Other quotations demonstrate that U2’s “spirituality” is not based on the Bible:
“... Bono dislikes the label ‘born-again Christian’—and he doesn’t go to church either. ‘I’m a very, very bad advertisement for God...’” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files).
“A U2 concert aims to raise people’s sense of their own worth. ‘Its a celebration of me being me and you being you,’ as Bono once put it. The music soars and swirls but never bludgeons. ... ‘I want people to leave our concerts feeling positive, a bit more free,’ says Bono” (Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 28).
“People expect you, as a believer, to have all the answers, when really all you have is a whole new set of questions” (Bono, cited by Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 173).
“The link between rock ‘n’ roll and gospel is not at all tenuous. In my walking into walls spiritually I’m not as alone as I once thought I was. When I look back there’s Patti Smith and Bob Dylan and Van Morrison and Elvis Presley—right the way down the line” (Bono, cited by Steve Turner, p. 28).
“Once I thought rock ‘n’ roll didn’t have a place for spiritual concerns. But I’ve since discovered that a lot of the artists who have inspired me—Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Patti Smith, Al Green and Marvin Gaye—were in a similar position ... that’s why I’m more at ease” (Bono, cited by Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, back cover).
Bono points to rock stars Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Elvis Presley, Patti Smith, and Marvin Gaye as an inspiration for spiritual concerns. This is most amazing, as not one of these has possessed a biblical faith in Jesus Christ as God and Redeemer. Not one has accepted the Bible as the infallible Word of God. Dylan went through a brief phase of professing faith in Christ in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but he has long since repudiated that. An article in the San Luis Obispo (California) Register for March 16, 1983, quoted Dylan as saying: “Whoever said I was Christian? Like Gandhi, I’m Christian, I’m Jewish, I’m a Moslem, I’m a Hindu. I am a humanist.” Van Morrison follows a New Age sort of hodgepodge theology formulated from his studies in Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Scientology. He calls himself a “Christian mystic” but does not trust Jesus Christ as God and Savior. Punk rocker Patti Smith curses and blasphemes God on her 1978 Easter album. In her song “Gloria” she says: “Jesus died for somebody’s sins/ But not mine.” She says, “I’ve been called a blasphemer a thousand times but I said that [in the song ‘Gloria’] because I refuse to accept that I came into this world as a sinner” (Patti Smith, cited by Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 143). Her heroes in the Bible are Cain, Eve, and Lucifer. Marvin Gaye combined his vile immorality with a vague religiosity. “On his album Sexual Healing he recites a list of credits, including one for ‘our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,’ and then glides straight into a song about wanting some woman’s body. That’s the way he would have liked it to be. He would like to have been able to obey his darkest passions and purify himself at the same time. ... On stage he would strip down to a jock strap” (Hungry for Heaven). Elvis Presley did love gospel music and even professed faith in Christ, but he gave no evidence of being a Bible-believing Christian. He constructed “a personalised religion out of what he’d read of Hinduism, Judaism, numerology, theosophy, mind control, positive thinking and Christianity” (Hungry for Heaven, p. 143).
I recently read the book “Bono on Bono: Conversations with Michka Assayas” (Hodder & Stoughton, 2005), which contains an interview with a music reporter that extended over a long period of time. Nowhere in this 337-page book does Bono give a scriptural testimony of having been born again, without which Jesus said no man can see the kingdom of heaven. He says that he believes Jesus is the Messiah and that He died on the cross for his sins and that he is holding out for grace, but the pope says that much. Bono’s “grace” is a grace that does not result in radical conversion and a new way of life; it is a grace without repentance. Nowhere does he warn his myriads of listeners to turn to Christ before it is too late and before they pass out of this life into eternal hell. In fact, the only thing he says about heaven or hell is that both are on earth. “I think, rather like Hell, Heaven is on Earth. That’s my prayer ... that’s where Heaven for me is...” (Bono on Bono, p. 254). It sounds like Bono has been listening more to John Lennon than the Bible, and in fact, he says that when he was 11 years old he listened to Lennon’s album Imagine and it “really got under my skin, the blood of it” (p. 246). On this album Lennon sang, “Imagine there is no heaven above and no hell below.”
As for church, Bono says that the older he gets the more comfort he finds in Roman Catholicism. “Let’s not get too hard on the Holy Roman Church here. The Church has its problems, but the older I get, the more comfort I find there. ... murmuring prayers, stories told in stained-glass windows, the colors of Catholicism--purple mauve, yellow, red--the burning incense. My friend Gavin Friday says Catholicism is the glam-rock of religion” (p. 201).
Though he speaks positively of Romanism, Bono has nothing good to say about “fundamentalism,” falsely claiming that it is a denial that God is love (p. 167) and calling it vile names (p. 147).
He praises singers who have produced some of the filthiest music, such as Prince and Mick Jagger, insinuating that they are good people who only making innocent art (pp. 153, 156).
He says his favorite lyric in a song is Kris Kristofferson’s immoral “Help Me Make It through the Night” (p. 129). He admits that U2’s music is “sexual” and even pretends that “erotic love can turn into something much higher,” admitting that he seems “to segue very easily between the two” (p. 120).
The truth is that Bono’s Christianity is a heretical mixture of Bible (the smallest part) and rock & roll philosophy (the largest part). He is a study in contradictions. On one hand he says that Jesus is the Messiah who died on the cross for man’s sins, while on the other hand making statements by his mouth and lifestyle that blatantly deny the Jesus of the Bible.
In fact, he says that Jesus and Mohammed are both true. At U2’s Madison Square Garden concert in 2005 Bono led the crowd in the chant “Jesus, Jew, Mohammed--all true. Jesus, Jew, Mohammed--all true” Tara Cobble, who attended the concert, testified that this chant destroyed her ill-placed devotion to Bono. “He repeated the words like a mantra. Was Bono, my supposed brother in Christ, preaching some kind of universalism? As I looked around, I saw all the people standing and chanting with him--it was disgusting ... When he stated that lie so boldly, it devastated me. It was, without question, the most disturbing experience of my life; I felt like I’d been covered in bile. The reality is that Bono held too high a place in my heart. And I don’t think I’m alone there. I’ve wrong held him up as the heroic ideal--the cool representative for Christianity; he may have been my ‘Christian idol’, but he was my idol nonetheless” (Tara Leigh Cobble, “How to dismantle an Idolized Bono,” Relevant magazine, Dec. 19, 2005).
We are glad that at least one U2 fan has seen the light about Bono. From a biblical standpoint there is no such thing as a cool representative of Christianity. If a man takes the Bible seriously, all of it, he will not be cool by any worldly standard!
U2 is exalted as “the biggest band in the world,” and they are praised by everyone from Christianity Today to Rolling Stone. The world loves U2, and that brings some Scriptures to mind.
“If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:19).
“I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:14).
“They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them” (1 John 4:5).
“And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness” (1 John 5:19).
The world loves U2 because U2 is of the world, and the world recognizes its own. The love that Bono sings about is the world’s love. U2’s philosophy is the world’s philosophy. Consider this line from the song “Vertigo” from How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb: “A feeling is so much stronger than a thought.” Bono quoted this in an interview with the wicked Rolling Stone magazine, and it summarizes the rock & roll philosophy. Do what feels right, regardless of what the Bible or some other authority says about it. The Bible says we are to live by God’s laws, but rock & roll says, “Live by your feelings.” The Bible says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, but rock & roll says, “Just follow your heart.” The Bible says we can only know God through the sound doctrine of His revelation in the Scriptures, through right thinking that comes by the right understanding of God’s word; but rock & roll says, “Feelings are more important than thoughts.” This is why the world loves U2.
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ROCK MUSIC VS. THE GOD OF THE BIBLE (D.W. Cloud) [ISBN 1-58318-066-4] An extensive examination of rock music and its evil influence on society. Chapters include "My Experience with Rock Music" (the author's testimony), "The Roots of Rock" (focusing on the blues, jazz, black spirituals, and Southern Gospel), "The Pioneers of Rock" (the families and lives of pioneer rockers, the influence of 50s rock on society, etc.), "The Character of Rock Music," "Rock and the Occult," "Rock and Spirituality," "Rock and Violence," "Rock and Love," "Rock and Voodoo," "Rock and Drugs," "The Rock & Roll Deathstyle" (a list of more than 500 rockers who have died young due to the rock & roll lifestyle), "Rock and Rebellion," "Rock Music and Insanity," "Rock Musicians as Mediums," "Rock Music and Pagan Religion," "Death Metal Rock Music," and "How to Raise a Rock and Roll Rebel." 430 pages, 7X8, perfect bound. $19.95 + 10% S/H.
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THE CHARACTER AND PHILOSOPHY OF ROCK & ROLL MUSIC
Oct/20/08 18:57
THE CHARACTER AND PHILOSOPHY OF ROCK & ROLL MUSIC
Updated October 20, 2008 (first published October 8, 1998) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –
When I was converted in 1973 from a life of foolish rebellion, one of the first things the Lord dealt with me about was my music. I began listening to rock in 1959 and had lived and breathed it for many years. I started on 50s rock and country rock-a-billy and journeyed through 60s rock and part way through 70s rock before I was saved. When the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, I was in the 9th grade. The year I graduated from high school was “the summer of love.” When I was drafted into the Army two years later, the Woodstock movie was sweeping the land. During the year and a half I spent in Vietnam, I was stationed at Tan Son Nhut Airbase outside of Saigon. I was a clerk in a military police unit attached to MACV headquarters, the control center for the entire South Vietnam U.S. military operation. We lived at the R&R out-processing center, and the unit’s job was to keep drugs from leaving the country on soldiers bound for R&R and in personnel containers being shipped to the States. We had access to every conceivable luxury, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, tennis courts, racket ball, gym, movie theater, photo processing labs, you name it. I even had almost full-time use of a jeep for trips to Saigon. (Yes, it was rough duty but someone had to do it!) One of the facilities I used extensively was the reel-to-reel recording studio. The Army had a massive library of music, and soldiers who lived at or visited MACV headquarters could record as much as they wanted. I spent countless hours there recording rock music. I also utilized the PX system to purchase a sophisticated stereo system. By the time I was discharged from the Army, I was all set to stock my first hippie pad in Hollywood, Florida, with wall-to-wall rock music. My hippie heaven didn't last long, though. My buddies and I were buying and selling drugs, and two of us were arrested for possession of illegal drugs and public drunkenness. Though I got off lightly because it was my first arrest, I began to live in constant fear of being caught again and going to jail for a long time. I started to drift around. On one trip, I hitchhiked all the way to northern California and back to central Florida. Returning from California, I met some young people from India who introduced me to reincarnation and the Self Realization Fellowship Society. I began to practice meditation and study eastern religion, and I excitedly made another trip to California to visit the headquarters of the Self Realization Fellowship Society in Los Angeles. On the way there I won roughly $70 in a slot machine in Las Vegas and I thought it was an answer to my prayers!
Everything I was doing and thinking was supported by rock music--drugs, eastern religion, rebellion against parents and government, licentious living, long hair, communism (I collected Mao's Red Book and other communist propaganda during my stay in Vietnam and was very sympathetic to that philosophy). Rock music never encouraged me to be an obedient, submissive, God-honoring person. It taught me, rather, that I was “born to be wild,” born to follow my natural impulses, born to live without rules.
After I was saved I understood that rock music is intimately associated with everything that is evil and rebellious and anti-christ, that rock music perfectly fits the biblical definition of the worldliness which the Christian is not to love: the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life (1 John 2:15-17).
The first book I wrote as a young Christian was Mom and Dad Sleep While the Children Rock in Satan's Cradle, a warning about the dangers of rock music (not currently in print). Thirty-two years later I am more convinced than ever that secular rock music is spiritually destructive and that “Christian rock” is a misnomer. Rock music is not a proper medium for singing the praises of a holy God.
I have given my own testimony about the evils of rock music. Now consider the following statements from a wide range of other people about the character and philosophy of this music. Most of these are NOT fundamentalist Christians. In fact, many of these statements are from rock stars, and they are not naive about the nature of rock as many Christians are and they do not have an agenda to whitewash rock as some Christians do.
The book Rock Facts, which is published by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, admits that rock is not just a type of music, IT IS A LIFESTYLE. “… rock and roll has truly become a universal language … rock and roll also refers to an attitude, a feeling, a style, a way of life…” (Rock Facts, 1996, p. 7).
“I’m free to do what I want any old time” (Rolling Stones).
“The main ingredients in rock are … sex and sass” (Debra Harry, Hit Parader, Sept. 1979, p. 31).
“Rock is the total celebration of the physical” (Ted Nugent, rock star, Rolling Stone, Aug. 25, 1977, pp. 11-13).
“That’s what rock is all about--sex with a 100 megaton bomb, the beat!” (Gene Simmons of the rock group Kiss, interview, Entertainment Tonight, ABC, Dec. 10, 1987).
“Rock and roll’s corrupt degenerate lifestyle is fueled by the language of a certain kind of music” (Leonard Seidel, Face the Music, Springfield, VA: Grace Unlimited Productions, 1988).
“At the very least, rock is turning sex into something casual” (James Connor, Newsweek, May 6, 1985).
“Sex has been rock music’s number one message since the medium was born” (Why Knock Rock? P. 67).
“The whole Beatles idea was to do what you want … do what thou wilst, as long as it doesn’t hurt somebody” (John Lennon, cited by David Sheff, The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, p. 61).
“The best rock & roll music encapsulates a certain high energy--an angriness--whether on record or onstage. That is, rock & roll is only rock & roll if it’s not safe. … Violence and energy--and that’s really what rock & roll’s all about” (Mick Jagger, as told to Mikal Gilmore, Night Beat, p. 87).
“The truth is that rock ‘n’ roll is a moral hemlock. It is by nature a music of demonic rebellion and protest. Drugs and sex are its arsenal” (David Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, p. 19).
“Rock ‘n’ roll is all sex. One hundred percent sex” (Debbie Harry of the rock band Blondie, cited by Carl Belz, “Television Shows and Rock Music,” as it appeared in The Age of Communication, William Lutz, Goodyear Publishing Company, 1974, p. 398).
“The themes of rock 'n' roll include rebellion, homosexuality, satanism, the occult, drugs, murder, suicide, incest, vulgarity, sadomasochism, anti-patriotism and above all, free sex” (Fletcher Brothers, Rock Report, Lancaster: Starburst Publishing, 1987).
“... the whole idea of rock 'n' roll is to offend your parents” (Rock drummer King Coffey, The Truth about Rock, p. 30).
“Its admirers want to make rock appealing by making it respectable. The thing can’t be done. Rock is appealing because it's vulgar ... Rock is the quintessence of vulgarity. It’s crude, loud, and tasteless” (Robert Pattison, The Triumph of Vulgarity, 1987, preface, p. 4).
“Rock concerts are the churches of today. Music puts them on a spiritual plane. All music is God” (Craig Chaquico, Jefferson Airplane guitarist, Why Knock Rock?, p. 96).
“[Our music is intended] to change one set of values to another … free minds … free dope … free bodies … free music” (Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane, cited by Ben Fong-Torres, “Grace Slick with Paul Kantner,” The Rolling Stone Interviews, 1971, p. 447).
“At base and at its best, rock 'n' roll is a celebration of human sensuality” (Gail Pellert, Christian Rock, New York: Gannett, 1985, p. 23).
“… rock ‘n’ roll is more than just music--it is the energy center of a new culture and youth revolution” (advertisement for Rolling Stone magazine).
“There is no question in my mind about the hypnotic effect of these songs” (Dr. Granville Knight, cited by John Blanchard, Pop Goes the Gospel, Durham: Evangelical Press, 2nd ed. 1989, p. 20).
“Rock music is an ideal vehicle for individual or mass hypnosis” (Andrew Salter, Pop Goes the Gospel, p. 20).
“Rock music in particular has been demonstrated to be both powerful and addictive, as well as capable of producing a subtle form of hypnosis in which the subject, though not completely under trance, is still in a highly suggestive state” (John Fuller, Are the Kids All Right?, New York: Times Books, 1981).
“Pop music is the mass medium for conditioning the way people think” (Graham Nash of Crosby Stills & Nash, Hit Parader Yearbook, No. 6, 1967).
“What is undeniable about rock is its hypnotic power. It has gripped millions of young people around the world and transformed their lives” (William Schafer, Rock Music, Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1972, p. 79).
“Atmospheres are going to come through music, because the music is a spiritual thing of its own ... you hypnotize people to where they go right back to their natural state which is pure positive the subconscious what we want to say ... People want release any kind of way nowadays. The idea is to release in the proper form. Then they'll feel like going into another world, a clearer world. The music flows from the air; that's why I connect with a spirit, and when they come down off this natural high, they see clearer, feel different things...” (Jimmy Hendrix, rock star, Life, Oct. 3, 1969, p. 74).
“An incessant beat does erode a sense of responsibility in much the same way as alcohol does. ... You feel in the grip of a relentless stream of sound to which something very basic and primitive in the human nature responds” (David Winter, New Singer, New Song).
“Rock music involves a neurophysiological conditioning in connotation or felt meaning, linking aggression and sexuality. aggression linked with sexuality. ... Our basic claim is that the rock music itself induces a behavioral link between aggression and sexuality” (Drs. Daniel and Bernadette Skubik, The Neurophysiology of Rhythm).
“Rock'n roll doesn't glorify God. You can't drink out of God's cup and the devil's cup at the same time. I was one of the pioneers of that music, one of the builders. I know what the blocks are made of because I built them” (Little Richard, The Dallas Morning News, Oct. 29, 1978, p. 14A).
“Rock 'n' roll is 99% sex” (John Oates of the rock duo Hall & Oates, Circus, Jan. 31, 1976).
“Listen, rock 'n roll AIN'T CHURCH. It's nasty business. You gotta be nasty too. If you're goody, goody, you can't sing or play it...” (Lita Ford of heavy metal group The Runaways, Los Angeles Times, August 7, 1988).
“Rock music is sex. The big beat matches the body’s rhythms” (Frank Zappa of the Mothers of Invention, Life, June 28, 1968).
“Rock ‘n’ roll is pagan and primitive, and very jungle, and that’s how it should be! The moment it stops being those things, it’s dead … the true meaning of rock … is sex, subversion and style” (Malcolm McLaren, punk rock manager, Rock, August 1983, p. 60).
“In a sense all rock is revolutionary. By its very beat and sound it has always implicitly rejected restraints and has celebrated freedom and sexuality” (Time magazine, Jan. 3, 1969).
“Rock 'n' roll is a beast. Well-intentioned people thought you could pick it up and cuddle it. They forgot it had claws of the bands--The Slits, The Damned, Bad Manners, The Vibrators, The Stranglers and Meat Loaf. ... I know, because I was one of them. Behind every sweet doowop and bebop is an unfettered sexuality and sympathy for the devil: a violently anarchic--in the face of all harmony, peace and progress. People could see that when it first happened and it hasn't changed. Anybody with a penn'orthy of grey matter could see it was trouble” (Ray Gosling, BBC Radio 4 program “Crooning Buffoons,” The Listener, Feb. 11, 1982).
“Most of it [rock music] is used as a vehicle for anti-Christian propaganda” (Graham Cray, appendix to J. & M. Prince, Time to Listen, Time to Talk, cited in Pop Goes the Gospel, p. 86).
“Rock music has got the same message as before. It is anti-religious, anti-nationalistic and anti-morality. But now I understand what you have to do. You have to put the message across with a little honey on it” (John Lennon, spoken not long before his death in 1980, Pop Goes the Gospel, p. 84).
“Heavy rock is body music designed to bypass your brain and with an unrelenting brutality induce a frenzied state amongst the audience” (Dave Roberts, Buzz columnist, Christian rock magazine in Britain, April 1982).
“Rock is the perfect primal method of releasing our violent instincts” (Ted Nugent, rock musician, Circus, May 13, 1976).
“Don’t listen to the words, it’s the music that has its own message. ... I’ve been stoned on the music many times” (Timothy Leary, New Age guru and promoter of LSD, Politics of Ecstasy).
“Rock 'n' roll, if not actually inventing the teenager, split the pop followers into the under twenties and the rest” (Bob Dawbarn, Melody Maker, Feb. 10, 1968).
“Rock music has widened the inevitable and normal gap between generations, turned it from something healthy--and absolutely necessary to forward movement--into something negative, destructive, nihilistic” (George Lees, music critic, High Fidelity, February 1970).
“The [rock] medium is so anti-Christian in its ethos--libertarian, anti-authoritarian, equating infatuation and sexual attraction with love, and on the drug-culture fringe--that when Christians assume that ethos to communicate the message of self-denial, cross-bearing and following Christ then it utterly mangles the message” (Colin Chapman, “Modern Music and Evangelism,” Background to the Task, Evangelical Alliance Commission on Evangelism, 1968).
“... rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal to sexual desire--not love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored. Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later” (Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987, p. 73).
“Although the music has changed over the years, the rebellious urges that created it remain the same. ... I was reminded once more of the basic appeal of rock and roll--its irreverent, nose-thumbing quality” (Ellen Willis, TV Guide, January 1979, p. 15).
“We respond to the materiality of rock’s sounds, and the rock experience is essentially erotic” (Simon Frith, Sound Effects, New York: Pantheon Books, 1981, p. 164).
“There is a great deal of powerful, albeit subliminal, sexual stimulation implicit in both the rhythm and [the] lyrics of rock music” (Dr. David Elkind, chairman of the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study at Tufts University in Massachusetts, The Hurried Child, Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley Publishing Co., 1981, p. 89).
“[The Rolling Stones] are raw, sloppy, savage, oppressively intense, base, bolsh, scurvy, mean, mesmerizing, cold, perverse, raunchy, decadent, and self-indulgent revolutionaries. ... Their music is rugged, sinewy, insinuating ... IT REFLECTS THEIR WAY OF LIVING” (Michael Ross, Rock Beyond Woodstock, p. 13).
“The [hippie] counterculture is the world’s first amplified music” (Timothy Tyler, “Out of Tune and Lost in the Counterculture,” Time, Feb. 22, 1971, pp. 15-16).
“Rock is visceral. It does disturbing things to your body. In spite of yourself, you find your body tingling, moving with the music. ... To get into rock, you have to give in to it, let it inside, flow with it, to the point where it consumes you, and all you can feel or hear or think about is the music. ... Such open sensuality” (Tom McSloy, rock music performer, “Music to Jangle Your Insides,” National Review, June 30, 1970, p. 681).
“If any music has been guilty by association, it is rock music. It would be impossible to make a complete list, but here are a few of the 'associates' of rock: drug addicts, revolutionaries, rioters, Satan worshippers, drop-outs, draft- dodgers, homosexuals and other sex deviates, rebels, juvenile criminals, Black Panthers and White Panthers, motorcycle gangs, blasphemers, suicides, heathenism, voodooism, phallixism, Communism in the United States (Communist Russian outlawed rock music around 1960), paganism, lesbianism, immorality, demonology, promiscuity, free love, free sex, disobedience (civil and uncivil), sodomy, venereal disease, discotheques, brothels, orgies of all kinds, night clubs, dives, strip joints, filthy musicals such as 'Hair' and 'Uncle Meat'; and on and on the list could go almost indefinitely” (Frank Garlock, The Big Beat, pp. 12-13).
“Rock music has always held seeds of the forbidden. … Rock and Roll has long been an adversary to many of the basic tenets of Christianity” (Michael Moynihan, Lord’s of Chaos, p. x).
“When you’re in a certain frame of mind, particularly sexually orientated, there’s nothing better than Rock and Roll because that’s where most of the performers are at” (Aerosmith’s manager David Krebbs, Circus, Oct. 17, 1978, p. 34).
“Rock music is sex and you have to hit them [teenagers] in the face with it” (Andrew Oldham, manager of the Rolling Stones, Time, April 28, 1967, p. 54).
“Unlike X-rated movies and books, [rock & roll] is broadcast, performed in concerts and available on records to any listener, regardless of age” (U.S. News & World Report, Oct. 31, 1977).
“‘Rockandroll,’ itself a bluesmusic term for sex, suggested rebellion and abandon as much as it did a new style of music when it first jarred adult sensibilities in the 1950s. ‘When you’re growing up,’ says Jerry Kramer, a prominent director of music videos, ‘you like rockandroll for one reason: Because your parents don’t’” (“What entertainers are doing to your kids,” U.S. News & World Report, October 28, 1985, page 47).
“The present rock ‘n’ roll scene, Lennon’s legacy, is one giant, multi-media portrait of degradation--a sleezy world of immorality, venereal disease, anarchy, nihilism, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, death, Satanism, perversion, and orgies” (David Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, 1982, p. 15).
“The truth is that rock ‘n’ roll is a moral hemlock. It is by nature a music of demonic rebellion and protest. Drugs and sex are its arsenal” (Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, 1982, p. 19).
“A new music emerged, again completely nonintellectual, with a thumping rhythm and shouting voices, each line and each beat full of the angry insult to all western values … their protest is in their music itself as well as in the words, for anyone who thinks that this is all cheap and no more than entertainment has never used his ears” (H.R. Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, pp. 188, 189).
“Rock music is evil because it is to music what Dada and surrealism are to art--atheistic, chaotic, nihilistic” (David Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, p. 42).
“The great strength of rock ‘n’ roll lies in its beat … it is a music which is basically sexual, un-Puritan … and a threat to established patterns and values” (Irwin Silber, Marxist, Sing Out, May 1965, p. 63).
“Rock radicalized teenagers, because it estranges them from the traditional virtues which they no longer see as relevant” (Martin Perlich, The Cleveland Press, July 25, 1969, p. 1N).
“[Rock music] is the strongest drug in the world” (Steven Tyler of the group Aerosmith, Rock Beat, Spring 1987, p. 23).
“Rock ’n’ roll is synonymous with sex and you can’t take that away from it. It just doesn’t work” (Steven Tyler, Entertainment Tonight, ABC, Dec. 10, 1987).
“Rock ‘n’ roll is sex. Real rock ‘n’ roll isn’t based on cerebral thoughts. It’s based on one’s lower nature” (Paul Stanley, cited by John Muncy, The Role of Rock, p. 44).
“Rock ‘n’ roll marked the beginning of the revolution. … We’ve combined youth, music, sex, drugs, and rebellion with treason, and that’s a combination hard to beat” (Jerry Rubin, Do It!, 1970, pp. 19, 249).
“The preachers and moral guardians who in rock’s infancy warned us of the evils of the music weren’t that far off base. Rock--at least as practiced by The Who and a few others--is defiant, it is antisocial, it is revolutionary … Anarchy, that’s what The Who is all about” (Robert W. Butler, Kansas City Times, Aug. 24, 1979, p. 6C).
“There is actually very little melody, little sense in the lyrics, only rhythm [in rock music]. The fact that music can both excite and incite has been known from time immemorial. … Now in our popular music, at least, we seem to be reverting to savagery … and youngsters who listen constantly to this sort of sound are thrust into turmoil. They are no longer relaxed, normal kids” (Dimitri Tiomkin, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, Aug. 8, 1965; Dr. Tiomkin is a famous composer and conductor).
“Everyone takes it for granted that rock and roll is synonymous with sex” (Chris Stein, rock manager, People, May 21, 1979).
“Pop music revolves around sexuality. I believe that if there is anarchy, let’s make it sexual anarchy rather than political” (Adam Ant, From Rock to Rock, p. 93).
“Living on the brink of disaster at all times is what Rock ‘n Roll is all about” (Kevin Cronin, REO Speedwagon, Newsweek, Dec. 20, 1976).
“Gimmicks are only part of the best way to sell rock and roll. Sex and style are crucial too. That’s what kid’s want. So I’m determined to be sexy and stylish. Sex is really an exciting part of rock and roll. When I dance onstage, I dance to turn people on. When I’m dancing, I turn myself on as well. Dancing is a sexual thing to do, you know” (Adam Ant, Rock Fever, May 1984, p. 13).
“Why do young people go to these rock shows? Because it’s their idol; it’s their god, in other words. They love rock and roll” (Chick Huntsberry, former bouncer, The Truth about Rock, p. 60).
“What made rockabilly [Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, etc.] such a drastically new music was its spirit, a thing that bordered on mania. Elvis’s ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’ was not merely a party song, but an invitation to a holocaust. … Rockabilly was the face of Dionysus, full of febrile sexuality and senselessness; it flushed the skin of new housewives and made pink teenage boys reinvent themselves as flaming creatures” (Nick Tosches, Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll, p. 58).
“After ten years of bland, brilliant music, we were back to what Rock ‘n’ Roll should be--nasty, crude, rebellious people’s music” (Tom Robinson, punk rocker, Dictionary of American Pop/Rock, p. 294).
“Violence and rebellion have been shaking their fists at the world through rock music since its inception. Though rebellion, in one form or another, is present in the lives of many of today’s youth, constant meditation on anger and alienation, through listening repeatedly to rock music, magnifies and distorts those feelings” (Why Knock Rock? P. 65).
“Rock and roll is the darkness that enshrouds secret desires unfulfilled, and the appetite that shoves you forward to disrobe them” (Timothy White, Rock Lives, p. xvi).
“The main purpose of rock and roll is celebration of the self” (Daryl Hall of Hall and Oates, interview with Timothy White, 1987, Rock Lives, p. 594).
“If you think rockabilly is just music, you’re wrong. Rockabilly’s always been an attitude” (Billy Poore, RockABilly: A Forty-Year Journey, p. 113).
“For white Memphis, the forbidden pleasures of Beale Street had always come wrapped in the pulsing rhythms of the blues. … Elvis’s [rock & roll] offered those pleasures long familiar to Memphians to a new audience” (Larry Nager, Memphis Beat, p. 154).
“Elvis Presley was one of the few people in our lifetime who changed things. You hear Mantovani in every elevator, but so what? Elvis changed our hairstyles, dress styles, our attitudes toward sex, all the musical taste” (David Brinkley, NBC News, cited by Larry Nager, Memphis Beat, p. 216).
“But now, ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight,’ you know what that means. I had my mind on this girl in the bedroom. I’m not going to lie to you. Listen, man, I wrote them kind of songs. I was a dirty cat” (Roy Brown, composer of “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” 1948, cited by Rock & Roll an Unruly History, p. 15).
“Rock and roll aims for liberation and transcendence, eroticizing the spiritual and spiritualizing the erotic, because that is its ecumenical birthright” (Robert Palmer, Rock & Roll an Unruly History, p. 72).
“Rock and roll challenged the dominant norms and values with a genuinely Dionysian fervor. Compared to an ancient Dionysian revel--trances, seizures, devotees tearing sacrificial animals to pieces with their bare hands and eating the meat raw--a rock and roll performance is almost tame. … We must never forget our glorious Dionysian heritage” (Rock & Roll an Unruly History, pp. 150,155).
“… fifties rock was revolutionary. It urged people to do whatever they wanted to do, even if it meant breaking the rules. … From Buddy the burgeoning youth culture received rock’s message of freedom, which presaged the dawn of a decade of seismic change and liberation. … Buddy Holly left the United States for the first time in 1958, carrying rock ‘n’ roll--the music as well as its highly subversive message of freedom--to the world at large. … laying the groundwork for the social and political upheavals rock ‘n’ roll was instrumental in fomenting in the following decade” (Ellis Amburn, Buddy Holly, pp. 4,6,131).
“Rock and roll is fun, it’s full of energy, it’s full of laughter. It’s naughty” (Tina Turner, cited in Rock Facts, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, p. 12).
“Mystery and mischief are the two most important ingredients in rock and roll” (Bono, cited in Rock Facts, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, p. 12).
“Rock and roll is simply an attitude” (Johnny Thunders, cited in Rock Facts, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, p. 14).
“Rock and roll was something that’s hardcore, rough and wild and sweaty and wet and just loose” (Patti Labelle, cited in Rock Facts, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, p. 17).
The Bill Haley song “Rock the Joint” encouraged young people to throw off all restraints. “It was a song about having such a good time that nothing mattered: ‘We’re gonna tear down the mailbox, rip up the floor/ Smash out the windows and knock out the door.”
Janet Jackson’s song “Control” presents the rock & roll philosophy: “This is a story about control. My control. Control of what, I say? Control of what I do, and this time I’m gonna do it my way. … got my own mind. I want to make my own decision; when it has to do with my life, I want to be the one in control…” (Janet Jackson, “Control”).
Gene Simmons of Kiss said: “What I write is pretty much a belief in a certain lifestyle which is a free soul, a free person, doing basically what he wants to do without hurting anybody else” (WCCO-TV, Five P.M. Report, Feb. 18, 1983).
“Sex, violence, rebellion—it’s all part of rock ‘n’ roll” (John Mellencamp, Larson’s Book of Rock, p. 170).
“Rock ‘n’ roll is like a drug. When you’re singing and playing rock ‘n’ roll, you’re on the leading edge of yourself. You’re tryin’ to vibrate, tryin’ to make something happen. It’s like there’s somethin’ alive and exposed” (Neil Young, cited by Mickey Hart, Spirit into Sound).
“Rock & roll is about striking out independently, not caring about your parents’ disapproval” (Pop Machine, quoted in “Metallica? OK, but we still don’t like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” Chicago Tribune, Sept. 23, 2008).
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Updated October 20, 2008 (first published October 8, 1998) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –
When I was converted in 1973 from a life of foolish rebellion, one of the first things the Lord dealt with me about was my music. I began listening to rock in 1959 and had lived and breathed it for many years. I started on 50s rock and country rock-a-billy and journeyed through 60s rock and part way through 70s rock before I was saved. When the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, I was in the 9th grade. The year I graduated from high school was “the summer of love.” When I was drafted into the Army two years later, the Woodstock movie was sweeping the land. During the year and a half I spent in Vietnam, I was stationed at Tan Son Nhut Airbase outside of Saigon. I was a clerk in a military police unit attached to MACV headquarters, the control center for the entire South Vietnam U.S. military operation. We lived at the R&R out-processing center, and the unit’s job was to keep drugs from leaving the country on soldiers bound for R&R and in personnel containers being shipped to the States. We had access to every conceivable luxury, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, tennis courts, racket ball, gym, movie theater, photo processing labs, you name it. I even had almost full-time use of a jeep for trips to Saigon. (Yes, it was rough duty but someone had to do it!) One of the facilities I used extensively was the reel-to-reel recording studio. The Army had a massive library of music, and soldiers who lived at or visited MACV headquarters could record as much as they wanted. I spent countless hours there recording rock music. I also utilized the PX system to purchase a sophisticated stereo system. By the time I was discharged from the Army, I was all set to stock my first hippie pad in Hollywood, Florida, with wall-to-wall rock music. My hippie heaven didn't last long, though. My buddies and I were buying and selling drugs, and two of us were arrested for possession of illegal drugs and public drunkenness. Though I got off lightly because it was my first arrest, I began to live in constant fear of being caught again and going to jail for a long time. I started to drift around. On one trip, I hitchhiked all the way to northern California and back to central Florida. Returning from California, I met some young people from India who introduced me to reincarnation and the Self Realization Fellowship Society. I began to practice meditation and study eastern religion, and I excitedly made another trip to California to visit the headquarters of the Self Realization Fellowship Society in Los Angeles. On the way there I won roughly $70 in a slot machine in Las Vegas and I thought it was an answer to my prayers!
Everything I was doing and thinking was supported by rock music--drugs, eastern religion, rebellion against parents and government, licentious living, long hair, communism (I collected Mao's Red Book and other communist propaganda during my stay in Vietnam and was very sympathetic to that philosophy). Rock music never encouraged me to be an obedient, submissive, God-honoring person. It taught me, rather, that I was “born to be wild,” born to follow my natural impulses, born to live without rules.
After I was saved I understood that rock music is intimately associated with everything that is evil and rebellious and anti-christ, that rock music perfectly fits the biblical definition of the worldliness which the Christian is not to love: the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life (1 John 2:15-17).
The first book I wrote as a young Christian was Mom and Dad Sleep While the Children Rock in Satan's Cradle, a warning about the dangers of rock music (not currently in print). Thirty-two years later I am more convinced than ever that secular rock music is spiritually destructive and that “Christian rock” is a misnomer. Rock music is not a proper medium for singing the praises of a holy God.
I have given my own testimony about the evils of rock music. Now consider the following statements from a wide range of other people about the character and philosophy of this music. Most of these are NOT fundamentalist Christians. In fact, many of these statements are from rock stars, and they are not naive about the nature of rock as many Christians are and they do not have an agenda to whitewash rock as some Christians do.
The book Rock Facts, which is published by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, admits that rock is not just a type of music, IT IS A LIFESTYLE. “… rock and roll has truly become a universal language … rock and roll also refers to an attitude, a feeling, a style, a way of life…” (Rock Facts, 1996, p. 7).
“I’m free to do what I want any old time” (Rolling Stones).
“The main ingredients in rock are … sex and sass” (Debra Harry, Hit Parader, Sept. 1979, p. 31).
“Rock is the total celebration of the physical” (Ted Nugent, rock star, Rolling Stone, Aug. 25, 1977, pp. 11-13).
“That’s what rock is all about--sex with a 100 megaton bomb, the beat!” (Gene Simmons of the rock group Kiss, interview, Entertainment Tonight, ABC, Dec. 10, 1987).
“Rock and roll’s corrupt degenerate lifestyle is fueled by the language of a certain kind of music” (Leonard Seidel, Face the Music, Springfield, VA: Grace Unlimited Productions, 1988).
“At the very least, rock is turning sex into something casual” (James Connor, Newsweek, May 6, 1985).
“Sex has been rock music’s number one message since the medium was born” (Why Knock Rock? P. 67).
“The whole Beatles idea was to do what you want … do what thou wilst, as long as it doesn’t hurt somebody” (John Lennon, cited by David Sheff, The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, p. 61).
“The best rock & roll music encapsulates a certain high energy--an angriness--whether on record or onstage. That is, rock & roll is only rock & roll if it’s not safe. … Violence and energy--and that’s really what rock & roll’s all about” (Mick Jagger, as told to Mikal Gilmore, Night Beat, p. 87).
“The truth is that rock ‘n’ roll is a moral hemlock. It is by nature a music of demonic rebellion and protest. Drugs and sex are its arsenal” (David Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, p. 19).
“Rock ‘n’ roll is all sex. One hundred percent sex” (Debbie Harry of the rock band Blondie, cited by Carl Belz, “Television Shows and Rock Music,” as it appeared in The Age of Communication, William Lutz, Goodyear Publishing Company, 1974, p. 398).
“The themes of rock 'n' roll include rebellion, homosexuality, satanism, the occult, drugs, murder, suicide, incest, vulgarity, sadomasochism, anti-patriotism and above all, free sex” (Fletcher Brothers, Rock Report, Lancaster: Starburst Publishing, 1987).
“... the whole idea of rock 'n' roll is to offend your parents” (Rock drummer King Coffey, The Truth about Rock, p. 30).
“Its admirers want to make rock appealing by making it respectable. The thing can’t be done. Rock is appealing because it's vulgar ... Rock is the quintessence of vulgarity. It’s crude, loud, and tasteless” (Robert Pattison, The Triumph of Vulgarity, 1987, preface, p. 4).
“Rock concerts are the churches of today. Music puts them on a spiritual plane. All music is God” (Craig Chaquico, Jefferson Airplane guitarist, Why Knock Rock?, p. 96).
“[Our music is intended] to change one set of values to another … free minds … free dope … free bodies … free music” (Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane, cited by Ben Fong-Torres, “Grace Slick with Paul Kantner,” The Rolling Stone Interviews, 1971, p. 447).
“At base and at its best, rock 'n' roll is a celebration of human sensuality” (Gail Pellert, Christian Rock, New York: Gannett, 1985, p. 23).
“… rock ‘n’ roll is more than just music--it is the energy center of a new culture and youth revolution” (advertisement for Rolling Stone magazine).
“There is no question in my mind about the hypnotic effect of these songs” (Dr. Granville Knight, cited by John Blanchard, Pop Goes the Gospel, Durham: Evangelical Press, 2nd ed. 1989, p. 20).
“Rock music is an ideal vehicle for individual or mass hypnosis” (Andrew Salter, Pop Goes the Gospel, p. 20).
“Rock music in particular has been demonstrated to be both powerful and addictive, as well as capable of producing a subtle form of hypnosis in which the subject, though not completely under trance, is still in a highly suggestive state” (John Fuller, Are the Kids All Right?, New York: Times Books, 1981).
“Pop music is the mass medium for conditioning the way people think” (Graham Nash of Crosby Stills & Nash, Hit Parader Yearbook, No. 6, 1967).
“What is undeniable about rock is its hypnotic power. It has gripped millions of young people around the world and transformed their lives” (William Schafer, Rock Music, Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1972, p. 79).
“Atmospheres are going to come through music, because the music is a spiritual thing of its own ... you hypnotize people to where they go right back to their natural state which is pure positive the subconscious what we want to say ... People want release any kind of way nowadays. The idea is to release in the proper form. Then they'll feel like going into another world, a clearer world. The music flows from the air; that's why I connect with a spirit, and when they come down off this natural high, they see clearer, feel different things...” (Jimmy Hendrix, rock star, Life, Oct. 3, 1969, p. 74).
“An incessant beat does erode a sense of responsibility in much the same way as alcohol does. ... You feel in the grip of a relentless stream of sound to which something very basic and primitive in the human nature responds” (David Winter, New Singer, New Song).
“Rock music involves a neurophysiological conditioning in connotation or felt meaning, linking aggression and sexuality. aggression linked with sexuality. ... Our basic claim is that the rock music itself induces a behavioral link between aggression and sexuality” (Drs. Daniel and Bernadette Skubik, The Neurophysiology of Rhythm).
“Rock'n roll doesn't glorify God. You can't drink out of God's cup and the devil's cup at the same time. I was one of the pioneers of that music, one of the builders. I know what the blocks are made of because I built them” (Little Richard, The Dallas Morning News, Oct. 29, 1978, p. 14A).
“Rock 'n' roll is 99% sex” (John Oates of the rock duo Hall & Oates, Circus, Jan. 31, 1976).
“Listen, rock 'n roll AIN'T CHURCH. It's nasty business. You gotta be nasty too. If you're goody, goody, you can't sing or play it...” (Lita Ford of heavy metal group The Runaways, Los Angeles Times, August 7, 1988).
“Rock music is sex. The big beat matches the body’s rhythms” (Frank Zappa of the Mothers of Invention, Life, June 28, 1968).
“Rock ‘n’ roll is pagan and primitive, and very jungle, and that’s how it should be! The moment it stops being those things, it’s dead … the true meaning of rock … is sex, subversion and style” (Malcolm McLaren, punk rock manager, Rock, August 1983, p. 60).
“In a sense all rock is revolutionary. By its very beat and sound it has always implicitly rejected restraints and has celebrated freedom and sexuality” (Time magazine, Jan. 3, 1969).
“Rock 'n' roll is a beast. Well-intentioned people thought you could pick it up and cuddle it. They forgot it had claws of the bands--The Slits, The Damned, Bad Manners, The Vibrators, The Stranglers and Meat Loaf. ... I know, because I was one of them. Behind every sweet doowop and bebop is an unfettered sexuality and sympathy for the devil: a violently anarchic--in the face of all harmony, peace and progress. People could see that when it first happened and it hasn't changed. Anybody with a penn'orthy of grey matter could see it was trouble” (Ray Gosling, BBC Radio 4 program “Crooning Buffoons,” The Listener, Feb. 11, 1982).
“Most of it [rock music] is used as a vehicle for anti-Christian propaganda” (Graham Cray, appendix to J. & M. Prince, Time to Listen, Time to Talk, cited in Pop Goes the Gospel, p. 86).
“Rock music has got the same message as before. It is anti-religious, anti-nationalistic and anti-morality. But now I understand what you have to do. You have to put the message across with a little honey on it” (John Lennon, spoken not long before his death in 1980, Pop Goes the Gospel, p. 84).
“Heavy rock is body music designed to bypass your brain and with an unrelenting brutality induce a frenzied state amongst the audience” (Dave Roberts, Buzz columnist, Christian rock magazine in Britain, April 1982).
“Rock is the perfect primal method of releasing our violent instincts” (Ted Nugent, rock musician, Circus, May 13, 1976).
“Don’t listen to the words, it’s the music that has its own message. ... I’ve been stoned on the music many times” (Timothy Leary, New Age guru and promoter of LSD, Politics of Ecstasy).
“Rock 'n' roll, if not actually inventing the teenager, split the pop followers into the under twenties and the rest” (Bob Dawbarn, Melody Maker, Feb. 10, 1968).
“Rock music has widened the inevitable and normal gap between generations, turned it from something healthy--and absolutely necessary to forward movement--into something negative, destructive, nihilistic” (George Lees, music critic, High Fidelity, February 1970).
“The [rock] medium is so anti-Christian in its ethos--libertarian, anti-authoritarian, equating infatuation and sexual attraction with love, and on the drug-culture fringe--that when Christians assume that ethos to communicate the message of self-denial, cross-bearing and following Christ then it utterly mangles the message” (Colin Chapman, “Modern Music and Evangelism,” Background to the Task, Evangelical Alliance Commission on Evangelism, 1968).
“... rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal to sexual desire--not love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored. Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later” (Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987, p. 73).
“Although the music has changed over the years, the rebellious urges that created it remain the same. ... I was reminded once more of the basic appeal of rock and roll--its irreverent, nose-thumbing quality” (Ellen Willis, TV Guide, January 1979, p. 15).
“We respond to the materiality of rock’s sounds, and the rock experience is essentially erotic” (Simon Frith, Sound Effects, New York: Pantheon Books, 1981, p. 164).
“There is a great deal of powerful, albeit subliminal, sexual stimulation implicit in both the rhythm and [the] lyrics of rock music” (Dr. David Elkind, chairman of the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study at Tufts University in Massachusetts, The Hurried Child, Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley Publishing Co., 1981, p. 89).
“[The Rolling Stones] are raw, sloppy, savage, oppressively intense, base, bolsh, scurvy, mean, mesmerizing, cold, perverse, raunchy, decadent, and self-indulgent revolutionaries. ... Their music is rugged, sinewy, insinuating ... IT REFLECTS THEIR WAY OF LIVING” (Michael Ross, Rock Beyond Woodstock, p. 13).
“The [hippie] counterculture is the world’s first amplified music” (Timothy Tyler, “Out of Tune and Lost in the Counterculture,” Time, Feb. 22, 1971, pp. 15-16).
“Rock is visceral. It does disturbing things to your body. In spite of yourself, you find your body tingling, moving with the music. ... To get into rock, you have to give in to it, let it inside, flow with it, to the point where it consumes you, and all you can feel or hear or think about is the music. ... Such open sensuality” (Tom McSloy, rock music performer, “Music to Jangle Your Insides,” National Review, June 30, 1970, p. 681).
“If any music has been guilty by association, it is rock music. It would be impossible to make a complete list, but here are a few of the 'associates' of rock: drug addicts, revolutionaries, rioters, Satan worshippers, drop-outs, draft- dodgers, homosexuals and other sex deviates, rebels, juvenile criminals, Black Panthers and White Panthers, motorcycle gangs, blasphemers, suicides, heathenism, voodooism, phallixism, Communism in the United States (Communist Russian outlawed rock music around 1960), paganism, lesbianism, immorality, demonology, promiscuity, free love, free sex, disobedience (civil and uncivil), sodomy, venereal disease, discotheques, brothels, orgies of all kinds, night clubs, dives, strip joints, filthy musicals such as 'Hair' and 'Uncle Meat'; and on and on the list could go almost indefinitely” (Frank Garlock, The Big Beat, pp. 12-13).
“Rock music has always held seeds of the forbidden. … Rock and Roll has long been an adversary to many of the basic tenets of Christianity” (Michael Moynihan, Lord’s of Chaos, p. x).
“When you’re in a certain frame of mind, particularly sexually orientated, there’s nothing better than Rock and Roll because that’s where most of the performers are at” (Aerosmith’s manager David Krebbs, Circus, Oct. 17, 1978, p. 34).
“Rock music is sex and you have to hit them [teenagers] in the face with it” (Andrew Oldham, manager of the Rolling Stones, Time, April 28, 1967, p. 54).
“Unlike X-rated movies and books, [rock & roll] is broadcast, performed in concerts and available on records to any listener, regardless of age” (U.S. News & World Report, Oct. 31, 1977).
“‘Rockandroll,’ itself a bluesmusic term for sex, suggested rebellion and abandon as much as it did a new style of music when it first jarred adult sensibilities in the 1950s. ‘When you’re growing up,’ says Jerry Kramer, a prominent director of music videos, ‘you like rockandroll for one reason: Because your parents don’t’” (“What entertainers are doing to your kids,” U.S. News & World Report, October 28, 1985, page 47).
“The present rock ‘n’ roll scene, Lennon’s legacy, is one giant, multi-media portrait of degradation--a sleezy world of immorality, venereal disease, anarchy, nihilism, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, death, Satanism, perversion, and orgies” (David Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, 1982, p. 15).
“The truth is that rock ‘n’ roll is a moral hemlock. It is by nature a music of demonic rebellion and protest. Drugs and sex are its arsenal” (Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, 1982, p. 19).
“A new music emerged, again completely nonintellectual, with a thumping rhythm and shouting voices, each line and each beat full of the angry insult to all western values … their protest is in their music itself as well as in the words, for anyone who thinks that this is all cheap and no more than entertainment has never used his ears” (H.R. Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, pp. 188, 189).
“Rock music is evil because it is to music what Dada and surrealism are to art--atheistic, chaotic, nihilistic” (David Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, p. 42).
“The great strength of rock ‘n’ roll lies in its beat … it is a music which is basically sexual, un-Puritan … and a threat to established patterns and values” (Irwin Silber, Marxist, Sing Out, May 1965, p. 63).
“Rock radicalized teenagers, because it estranges them from the traditional virtues which they no longer see as relevant” (Martin Perlich, The Cleveland Press, July 25, 1969, p. 1N).
“[Rock music] is the strongest drug in the world” (Steven Tyler of the group Aerosmith, Rock Beat, Spring 1987, p. 23).
“Rock ’n’ roll is synonymous with sex and you can’t take that away from it. It just doesn’t work” (Steven Tyler, Entertainment Tonight, ABC, Dec. 10, 1987).
“Rock ‘n’ roll is sex. Real rock ‘n’ roll isn’t based on cerebral thoughts. It’s based on one’s lower nature” (Paul Stanley, cited by John Muncy, The Role of Rock, p. 44).
“Rock ‘n’ roll marked the beginning of the revolution. … We’ve combined youth, music, sex, drugs, and rebellion with treason, and that’s a combination hard to beat” (Jerry Rubin, Do It!, 1970, pp. 19, 249).
“The preachers and moral guardians who in rock’s infancy warned us of the evils of the music weren’t that far off base. Rock--at least as practiced by The Who and a few others--is defiant, it is antisocial, it is revolutionary … Anarchy, that’s what The Who is all about” (Robert W. Butler, Kansas City Times, Aug. 24, 1979, p. 6C).
“There is actually very little melody, little sense in the lyrics, only rhythm [in rock music]. The fact that music can both excite and incite has been known from time immemorial. … Now in our popular music, at least, we seem to be reverting to savagery … and youngsters who listen constantly to this sort of sound are thrust into turmoil. They are no longer relaxed, normal kids” (Dimitri Tiomkin, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, Aug. 8, 1965; Dr. Tiomkin is a famous composer and conductor).
“Everyone takes it for granted that rock and roll is synonymous with sex” (Chris Stein, rock manager, People, May 21, 1979).
“Pop music revolves around sexuality. I believe that if there is anarchy, let’s make it sexual anarchy rather than political” (Adam Ant, From Rock to Rock, p. 93).
“Living on the brink of disaster at all times is what Rock ‘n Roll is all about” (Kevin Cronin, REO Speedwagon, Newsweek, Dec. 20, 1976).
“Gimmicks are only part of the best way to sell rock and roll. Sex and style are crucial too. That’s what kid’s want. So I’m determined to be sexy and stylish. Sex is really an exciting part of rock and roll. When I dance onstage, I dance to turn people on. When I’m dancing, I turn myself on as well. Dancing is a sexual thing to do, you know” (Adam Ant, Rock Fever, May 1984, p. 13).
“Why do young people go to these rock shows? Because it’s their idol; it’s their god, in other words. They love rock and roll” (Chick Huntsberry, former bouncer, The Truth about Rock, p. 60).
“What made rockabilly [Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, etc.] such a drastically new music was its spirit, a thing that bordered on mania. Elvis’s ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’ was not merely a party song, but an invitation to a holocaust. … Rockabilly was the face of Dionysus, full of febrile sexuality and senselessness; it flushed the skin of new housewives and made pink teenage boys reinvent themselves as flaming creatures” (Nick Tosches, Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll, p. 58).
“After ten years of bland, brilliant music, we were back to what Rock ‘n’ Roll should be--nasty, crude, rebellious people’s music” (Tom Robinson, punk rocker, Dictionary of American Pop/Rock, p. 294).
“Violence and rebellion have been shaking their fists at the world through rock music since its inception. Though rebellion, in one form or another, is present in the lives of many of today’s youth, constant meditation on anger and alienation, through listening repeatedly to rock music, magnifies and distorts those feelings” (Why Knock Rock? P. 65).
“Rock and roll is the darkness that enshrouds secret desires unfulfilled, and the appetite that shoves you forward to disrobe them” (Timothy White, Rock Lives, p. xvi).
“The main purpose of rock and roll is celebration of the self” (Daryl Hall of Hall and Oates, interview with Timothy White, 1987, Rock Lives, p. 594).
“If you think rockabilly is just music, you’re wrong. Rockabilly’s always been an attitude” (Billy Poore, RockABilly: A Forty-Year Journey, p. 113).
“For white Memphis, the forbidden pleasures of Beale Street had always come wrapped in the pulsing rhythms of the blues. … Elvis’s [rock & roll] offered those pleasures long familiar to Memphians to a new audience” (Larry Nager, Memphis Beat, p. 154).
“Elvis Presley was one of the few people in our lifetime who changed things. You hear Mantovani in every elevator, but so what? Elvis changed our hairstyles, dress styles, our attitudes toward sex, all the musical taste” (David Brinkley, NBC News, cited by Larry Nager, Memphis Beat, p. 216).
“But now, ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight,’ you know what that means. I had my mind on this girl in the bedroom. I’m not going to lie to you. Listen, man, I wrote them kind of songs. I was a dirty cat” (Roy Brown, composer of “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” 1948, cited by Rock & Roll an Unruly History, p. 15).
“Rock and roll aims for liberation and transcendence, eroticizing the spiritual and spiritualizing the erotic, because that is its ecumenical birthright” (Robert Palmer, Rock & Roll an Unruly History, p. 72).
“Rock and roll challenged the dominant norms and values with a genuinely Dionysian fervor. Compared to an ancient Dionysian revel--trances, seizures, devotees tearing sacrificial animals to pieces with their bare hands and eating the meat raw--a rock and roll performance is almost tame. … We must never forget our glorious Dionysian heritage” (Rock & Roll an Unruly History, pp. 150,155).
“… fifties rock was revolutionary. It urged people to do whatever they wanted to do, even if it meant breaking the rules. … From Buddy the burgeoning youth culture received rock’s message of freedom, which presaged the dawn of a decade of seismic change and liberation. … Buddy Holly left the United States for the first time in 1958, carrying rock ‘n’ roll--the music as well as its highly subversive message of freedom--to the world at large. … laying the groundwork for the social and political upheavals rock ‘n’ roll was instrumental in fomenting in the following decade” (Ellis Amburn, Buddy Holly, pp. 4,6,131).
“Rock and roll is fun, it’s full of energy, it’s full of laughter. It’s naughty” (Tina Turner, cited in Rock Facts, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, p. 12).
“Mystery and mischief are the two most important ingredients in rock and roll” (Bono, cited in Rock Facts, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, p. 12).
“Rock and roll is simply an attitude” (Johnny Thunders, cited in Rock Facts, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, p. 14).
“Rock and roll was something that’s hardcore, rough and wild and sweaty and wet and just loose” (Patti Labelle, cited in Rock Facts, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, p. 17).
The Bill Haley song “Rock the Joint” encouraged young people to throw off all restraints. “It was a song about having such a good time that nothing mattered: ‘We’re gonna tear down the mailbox, rip up the floor/ Smash out the windows and knock out the door.”
Janet Jackson’s song “Control” presents the rock & roll philosophy: “This is a story about control. My control. Control of what, I say? Control of what I do, and this time I’m gonna do it my way. … got my own mind. I want to make my own decision; when it has to do with my life, I want to be the one in control…” (Janet Jackson, “Control”).
Gene Simmons of Kiss said: “What I write is pretty much a belief in a certain lifestyle which is a free soul, a free person, doing basically what he wants to do without hurting anybody else” (WCCO-TV, Five P.M. Report, Feb. 18, 1983).
“Sex, violence, rebellion—it’s all part of rock ‘n’ roll” (John Mellencamp, Larson’s Book of Rock, p. 170).
“Rock ‘n’ roll is like a drug. When you’re singing and playing rock ‘n’ roll, you’re on the leading edge of yourself. You’re tryin’ to vibrate, tryin’ to make something happen. It’s like there’s somethin’ alive and exposed” (Neil Young, cited by Mickey Hart, Spirit into Sound).
“Rock & roll is about striking out independently, not caring about your parents’ disapproval” (Pop Machine, quoted in “Metallica? OK, but we still don’t like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” Chicago Tribune, Sept. 23, 2008).
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ELVIS PRESLEY: KING OF ROCK & ROLL 1 OF 2
Sep/21/08 18:21
ELVIS PRESLEY: KING OF ROCK & ROLL 1 OF 2
Updated September 21, 2008 (first published November 20, 1999) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –
The following is part 1 of 2 of the article “Elvis Presley: King of Rock & Roll.” The complete article is in the Music section of the End Times Apostasy Database at the Way of Life Literature web site. This is excerpted from the 430-page book Rock Music vs. the God of the Bible, available from Way of Life Literature.
Elvis Presley (1935-1977) is called the “King of Rock & Roll.” Alice Cooper said, “There will never be anybody cooler than Elvis Presley” (“100 Greatest Artists of Rock & Roll,” VH1). Bruce Springsteen testified, “Elvis is my religion.” John Lennon went even further, saying, “Before Elvis, there was nothing” (“The Boss,” USA Today, Aug. 16, 2002, p. 8D).
Presley produced 94 gold singles, 43 gold albums; and his movies grossed over $180 million. Further millions were made through the sale of merchandise. In 1956 alone, he earned over $50 million. He is the object of one of “the biggest personality cults in modern history.” An estimated one million people visited his gravesite at Forest Hill cemetery during the first few weeks after he died, before it was moved to the grounds of Graceland. More than twenty years after his death, 700,000 each year stream through his Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee; and the annual vigil held to commemorate his death is attended by thousands of dedicated fans, many of whom weep openly during the occasion. Elvis Presley Enterprises takes in more than $100 million per year. When the U.S. Post Office issued a stamp of Elvis Presley and sold Elvis paraphernalia in 1994, sales exceeded $50 million. There are 500 Elvis fan clubs still active around the world.
More than any other one rock artist or group, Elvis symbolizes the rock & roll era. Countless other rock stars, including the Beatles, trace their inspiration to Elvis. The King of Rock & Roll changed an entire generation. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam observed: “In cultural terms, [Elvis’s] coming was nothing less than the start of a revolution” (Halberstam, The Fifties). When Elvis appeared on the Milton Berle Show in April 1956, he was watched by more than 40 million viewers, one out of every four Americans. Soon, Life magazine published photos of teenage boys lined up at barbershops for ducktail haircuts so they could look like their rock King. Elvis’ biographer Peter Harry Brown correctly noted that to the girls of that day, “Elvis Presley didn’t just represent a new type of music; he represented sexual liberation” (Down at the End of Lonely Street, p. 55). Elvis Presley stood for everything rock & roll stands for: sexual license, rebellion against authority, self-fulfillment, if it feels good, do it and don’t worry about tomorrow, debauchery glossed over with a thin veneer of shallow, humanistic spirituality. The rock & roll philosophy created Elvis Presley, and it killed Elvis Presley.
Elvis grew up in a superficially religious family, sporadically attending First Assembly of God Church in East Tupelo, Mississippi, then First Assembly of God in Memphis. His father and mother were not committed church members, though, and though Elvis attended church frequently with his mother during his childhood, he never made a profession of faith or joined the church. The pastor in Memphis, James E. Haffmill, says Elvis did not sing in church or participate in a church group (Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 20). By his high school years, Elvis largely stopped attending church. Elvis’s father, Vernon, and mother, Gladys, met at the First Assembly of God in Tupelo, but they eloped a few months later. Gladys was 21 and Vernon was 17. Vernon, was “a weakling, a malingerer, always averse to work and responsibility” (Goldman, Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, p. 16). Vernon went to prison for check forgery when Elvis was a child. In 1948 he was kicked out of his hometown in Mississippi for moonshining, and the Presley family moved to Memphis. Soon after the death of Elvis’s mom, Vernon began dating the wife of a soldier in Germany, and after she divorced her husband, they married. Later Vernon’s second wife left him because of his adultery with another woman. Elvis’s mother was “a surreptitious drinker and alcoholic.” When she was angry, “she cussed like a sailor” (Priscilla Presley, Elvis and Me, p. 172). She was “a woman susceptible to the full spectrum of backwoods superstitions, prone to prophetic dreams and mystical intuitions” (Stairway to Heaven, p. 46). Gladys was only 46 when she died from alcohol-related problems. Elvis had a twin brother, Jesse, who died at birth, and both he and his mother were accustomed to praying to this dead boy. They talked to him about their problems and asked him for guidance. Elvis told his cousin, Earl, that he talked to Jesse every day, and that sometimes Jesse answered him (Earl Greenwood, The Boy Who Would Be King, pp. 30,32). When they moved to Memphis, Elvis told his cousin Earl that “Jesse’s hand was guidin’ us” (Greenwood, p. 78). Elvis was a mamma’s boy to the extreme, and to her death, she was jealous of any other woman in his life. She and Elvis “formed a team that usually excluded the father.” His mother “wanted to be everything to Elvis and wanted more from him than what was right or healthy to expect” (Greenwood, p. 116).
Elvis was a rebel. Even as a 13-year-old, when the other boys wore crewcuts, Elvis “boasted long, flowing blonde hair that fell almost to his shoulders” (The Boy Who Would Be King, p. 70). (Later he died his hair black.) Though he wanted to play football in high school, he refused to cut his hair in order to try out for the team. He cursed and blasphemed God behind his mother’s back, told dirty stories, and ran around to places he knew he should not visit. By the time he graduated from high school, he was spending much of his time in honky tonks and was living in immorality. This is the boy who became the King of Rock & Roll.
HOW ELVIS BECAME A ROCK STAR
There is a saying, “The blues had a baby and named it rock & roll.” Elvis Presley was an important figure in the birth of that baby. Elvis “spent much of his spare time hanging around the black section of town, especially on Beale Street, where bluesmen like Furry Lewis and B.B. King performed” (Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock, p. 783). Beale Street was infamous for its prostitutes and drinking/gambling establishments. Music producer Jim Dickinson called it “the center of all evil in the known universe” (James Dickerson, Goin’ Back to Memphis, p. 27). Elvis’s cousin Earl, who paled around with Elvis for many years before and after his success, said that he “adopted Beale Street as his own, even though he was one of the few white people to hang out there regularly” (The Boy Who Would Be King, p. 121). B.B. King said: “I knew Elvis before he was popular. He used to come around and be around us a lot. There was a place we used to go and hang out on Beale Street” (King, A Time to Rock, p. 35). Well-known bluesman Calvin Newborn (brother of Phineas Newborn, Jr.) said that Elvis often stopped by such local nightspots as the Flamingo Room on Beale Street or the Plantation Inn in West Memphis to hear blues bands. Elvis listened to radio WDIA, “a flagship blues station of the South that featured such flamboyant black disk jockeys as Rufus Thomas and B.B. King” (Rock Lives, p. 38). Elvis also listened to radio station WHBQ’s nine-to-midnight Red Hot & Blue program hosted by Dewey Mills Phillips. It was Phillips, in July 1954, who became the first disc jockey to play an Elvis Presley record on the air. Elvis’s first guitarist, Scotty Moore, learned many of his guitar licks from an old black blues player who worked with him before he teamed up with Elvis (Scotty Moore, That’s Alright, Elvis, p. 57). Sam Phillips, owner of Sun Records, was looking for “a white man with a Negro sound and the Negro feel,” because he believed the black blues and boogie-woogie music could become tremendously popular among white people if presented in the right way. Phillips had said, “If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.” Phillips also said he was looking for “something ugly” (James Miller, Flowers in the Dustbin, p. 71). That’s a pretty good description morally and spiritually of rock & roll. Sam Phillips found his man in Elvis, and in 1954 he roared to popularity with “That’s All Right, Mama,” a song written by black bluesman Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup. The flipside of that hit single was “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” which was a country song that Elvis hopped up and gave “a bluesy spin.” Their first No. 1 hit single, “Mystery Train,” was also an old blues number. Six of the 15 songs Elvis recorded for Sun Records (before going over to RCA-Victor a year later) were from black bluesmen.
By 1956, Presley was a national rock star and teenage idol, and his music and image had a tremendously unwholesome effect upon young people. Parents, pastors, and teachers condemned Elvis’s sensual music and suggestive dancing and warned of the evil influence he was exercising among young people. They were right, but the onslaught of rock & roll was unstoppable. When asked about his sensual stage gyrations, he replied: “It’s the beat that gets you. If you like it and you feel it, you can’t help but move to it. That’s what happens to me. I can’t help it” (Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 21). Describing what happened to him during rock performances, Elvis said: “It’s like a surge of electricity going through you. It’s almost like making love, but it’s even stronger than that” (Elvis Presley, cited by James Miller, Flowers in the Dustbin, p. 83). Elvis correctly observed the licentious power of the rock & roll beat.
Between March 1958 and March 1960 Elvis served in the army, then resumed his music and movie career where he had left off. He had many top ten hits in the first half of the 1960s.
ELVIS’S ABIDING LOVE FOR SOUTHERN GOSPEL NOT EVIDENCE OF SALVATION
Elvis performed and recorded many gospel songs. In the early 1950s he attended all-night gospel quartet concerts at the First Assembly of God and Ellis Auditorium in Memphis and befriended such famous groups as the Blackwood Brothers and the Statesmen. When he was 18, Elvis auditioned for a place in the Songfellows Quartet, but the position was given to James Blackwood’s nephew Cecil. Later, as his rock & roll career was prospering, Elvis was offered a place with the Blackwood Brothers, but he turned it down. Even after he became famous, Elvis continued attending Southern gospel sings and the National Quartet Convention. In the early years of his rock & roll career, he sang some with the Blackwood Brothers and the Statesmen at all-night sings at Ellis Auditorium in Memphis (Taylor, Happy Rhythms, p. 117). Elvis told pop singer Johnny Rivers that he patterned his singing style after Jake Hess of the Statesmen Quartet (Happy Rhythm, p. 49). The Jordanaires performed as background singers on Elvis Presley records and as session singers for many other raunchy rock and country recordings. Members of the Speer Family (Ben and Brock) also sang on Elvis recordings, including “I’ve Got a Woman” and “Heartbreak Hotel.” The Jordanaires provided vocals for Elvis’s 1956 megahit “Hound Dog.” The Jordanaires toured with Eddy Arnold as well as with Elvis. They also performed on some of Elvis’s indecent movies. J.D. Sumner and the Stamps toured with Elvis from 1969 until his death in 1977, performing backup for the King of Rock & Roll in sin-holes such as Las Vegas nightclubs. Ed Hill, one of the singers with the Stamps, was Elvis’s announcer for two years. It was Hill who concluded the Elvis concerts with: “Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building. Goodbye, and God bless you.” (During the years in which Sumner and the Stamps were backing Elvis Presley at Las Vegas and elsewhere, Sumner’s nephew, Donnie, who sang in the group, became a drug addict and was lured into the licentious pop music field.) Sumner helped arrange Elvis’s funeral, and the Stamps, the Statesmen, and James Blackwood provided the music. After Elvis’s death, J.D. Sumner and the Stamps performed rock concerts in tribute to Elvis Presley.
Elvis’s love for gospel music is not evidence that he was born again. His on-again, off-again profession of faith in Christ also was not evidence that he was saved. Three independent Baptist preachers have testified that Elvis told them that he had trusted Jesus as his Savior in his younger years but was backslidden. There was no biblical evidence for that, though. We must remember that Elvis grew up around churches and understood all of the terminology. There was never a time, though, when Elvis’s life changed. Empty professions of faith do not constitute biblical salvation. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). Elvis liked some gospel music but he did not like Bible preaching. He refused to allow anyone, including God, tell him how to live his life. That is evidence of an unregenerate heart.
We agree with the following sad, but honest, assessment of Elvis’s life:
Updated September 21, 2008 (first published November 20, 1999) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –
The following is part 1 of 2 of the article “Elvis Presley: King of Rock & Roll.” The complete article is in the Music section of the End Times Apostasy Database at the Way of Life Literature web site. This is excerpted from the 430-page book Rock Music vs. the God of the Bible, available from Way of Life Literature.
Elvis Presley (1935-1977) is called the “King of Rock & Roll.” Alice Cooper said, “There will never be anybody cooler than Elvis Presley” (“100 Greatest Artists of Rock & Roll,” VH1). Bruce Springsteen testified, “Elvis is my religion.” John Lennon went even further, saying, “Before Elvis, there was nothing” (“The Boss,” USA Today, Aug. 16, 2002, p. 8D).
Presley produced 94 gold singles, 43 gold albums; and his movies grossed over $180 million. Further millions were made through the sale of merchandise. In 1956 alone, he earned over $50 million. He is the object of one of “the biggest personality cults in modern history.” An estimated one million people visited his gravesite at Forest Hill cemetery during the first few weeks after he died, before it was moved to the grounds of Graceland. More than twenty years after his death, 700,000 each year stream through his Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee; and the annual vigil held to commemorate his death is attended by thousands of dedicated fans, many of whom weep openly during the occasion. Elvis Presley Enterprises takes in more than $100 million per year. When the U.S. Post Office issued a stamp of Elvis Presley and sold Elvis paraphernalia in 1994, sales exceeded $50 million. There are 500 Elvis fan clubs still active around the world.
More than any other one rock artist or group, Elvis symbolizes the rock & roll era. Countless other rock stars, including the Beatles, trace their inspiration to Elvis. The King of Rock & Roll changed an entire generation. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam observed: “In cultural terms, [Elvis’s] coming was nothing less than the start of a revolution” (Halberstam, The Fifties). When Elvis appeared on the Milton Berle Show in April 1956, he was watched by more than 40 million viewers, one out of every four Americans. Soon, Life magazine published photos of teenage boys lined up at barbershops for ducktail haircuts so they could look like their rock King. Elvis’ biographer Peter Harry Brown correctly noted that to the girls of that day, “Elvis Presley didn’t just represent a new type of music; he represented sexual liberation” (Down at the End of Lonely Street, p. 55). Elvis Presley stood for everything rock & roll stands for: sexual license, rebellion against authority, self-fulfillment, if it feels good, do it and don’t worry about tomorrow, debauchery glossed over with a thin veneer of shallow, humanistic spirituality. The rock & roll philosophy created Elvis Presley, and it killed Elvis Presley.
Elvis grew up in a superficially religious family, sporadically attending First Assembly of God Church in East Tupelo, Mississippi, then First Assembly of God in Memphis. His father and mother were not committed church members, though, and though Elvis attended church frequently with his mother during his childhood, he never made a profession of faith or joined the church. The pastor in Memphis, James E. Haffmill, says Elvis did not sing in church or participate in a church group (Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 20). By his high school years, Elvis largely stopped attending church. Elvis’s father, Vernon, and mother, Gladys, met at the First Assembly of God in Tupelo, but they eloped a few months later. Gladys was 21 and Vernon was 17. Vernon, was “a weakling, a malingerer, always averse to work and responsibility” (Goldman, Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, p. 16). Vernon went to prison for check forgery when Elvis was a child. In 1948 he was kicked out of his hometown in Mississippi for moonshining, and the Presley family moved to Memphis. Soon after the death of Elvis’s mom, Vernon began dating the wife of a soldier in Germany, and after she divorced her husband, they married. Later Vernon’s second wife left him because of his adultery with another woman. Elvis’s mother was “a surreptitious drinker and alcoholic.” When she was angry, “she cussed like a sailor” (Priscilla Presley, Elvis and Me, p. 172). She was “a woman susceptible to the full spectrum of backwoods superstitions, prone to prophetic dreams and mystical intuitions” (Stairway to Heaven, p. 46). Gladys was only 46 when she died from alcohol-related problems. Elvis had a twin brother, Jesse, who died at birth, and both he and his mother were accustomed to praying to this dead boy. They talked to him about their problems and asked him for guidance. Elvis told his cousin, Earl, that he talked to Jesse every day, and that sometimes Jesse answered him (Earl Greenwood, The Boy Who Would Be King, pp. 30,32). When they moved to Memphis, Elvis told his cousin Earl that “Jesse’s hand was guidin’ us” (Greenwood, p. 78). Elvis was a mamma’s boy to the extreme, and to her death, she was jealous of any other woman in his life. She and Elvis “formed a team that usually excluded the father.” His mother “wanted to be everything to Elvis and wanted more from him than what was right or healthy to expect” (Greenwood, p. 116).
Elvis was a rebel. Even as a 13-year-old, when the other boys wore crewcuts, Elvis “boasted long, flowing blonde hair that fell almost to his shoulders” (The Boy Who Would Be King, p. 70). (Later he died his hair black.) Though he wanted to play football in high school, he refused to cut his hair in order to try out for the team. He cursed and blasphemed God behind his mother’s back, told dirty stories, and ran around to places he knew he should not visit. By the time he graduated from high school, he was spending much of his time in honky tonks and was living in immorality. This is the boy who became the King of Rock & Roll.
HOW ELVIS BECAME A ROCK STAR
There is a saying, “The blues had a baby and named it rock & roll.” Elvis Presley was an important figure in the birth of that baby. Elvis “spent much of his spare time hanging around the black section of town, especially on Beale Street, where bluesmen like Furry Lewis and B.B. King performed” (Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock, p. 783). Beale Street was infamous for its prostitutes and drinking/gambling establishments. Music producer Jim Dickinson called it “the center of all evil in the known universe” (James Dickerson, Goin’ Back to Memphis, p. 27). Elvis’s cousin Earl, who paled around with Elvis for many years before and after his success, said that he “adopted Beale Street as his own, even though he was one of the few white people to hang out there regularly” (The Boy Who Would Be King, p. 121). B.B. King said: “I knew Elvis before he was popular. He used to come around and be around us a lot. There was a place we used to go and hang out on Beale Street” (King, A Time to Rock, p. 35). Well-known bluesman Calvin Newborn (brother of Phineas Newborn, Jr.) said that Elvis often stopped by such local nightspots as the Flamingo Room on Beale Street or the Plantation Inn in West Memphis to hear blues bands. Elvis listened to radio WDIA, “a flagship blues station of the South that featured such flamboyant black disk jockeys as Rufus Thomas and B.B. King” (Rock Lives, p. 38). Elvis also listened to radio station WHBQ’s nine-to-midnight Red Hot & Blue program hosted by Dewey Mills Phillips. It was Phillips, in July 1954, who became the first disc jockey to play an Elvis Presley record on the air. Elvis’s first guitarist, Scotty Moore, learned many of his guitar licks from an old black blues player who worked with him before he teamed up with Elvis (Scotty Moore, That’s Alright, Elvis, p. 57). Sam Phillips, owner of Sun Records, was looking for “a white man with a Negro sound and the Negro feel,” because he believed the black blues and boogie-woogie music could become tremendously popular among white people if presented in the right way. Phillips had said, “If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.” Phillips also said he was looking for “something ugly” (James Miller, Flowers in the Dustbin, p. 71). That’s a pretty good description morally and spiritually of rock & roll. Sam Phillips found his man in Elvis, and in 1954 he roared to popularity with “That’s All Right, Mama,” a song written by black bluesman Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup. The flipside of that hit single was “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” which was a country song that Elvis hopped up and gave “a bluesy spin.” Their first No. 1 hit single, “Mystery Train,” was also an old blues number. Six of the 15 songs Elvis recorded for Sun Records (before going over to RCA-Victor a year later) were from black bluesmen.
By 1956, Presley was a national rock star and teenage idol, and his music and image had a tremendously unwholesome effect upon young people. Parents, pastors, and teachers condemned Elvis’s sensual music and suggestive dancing and warned of the evil influence he was exercising among young people. They were right, but the onslaught of rock & roll was unstoppable. When asked about his sensual stage gyrations, he replied: “It’s the beat that gets you. If you like it and you feel it, you can’t help but move to it. That’s what happens to me. I can’t help it” (Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 21). Describing what happened to him during rock performances, Elvis said: “It’s like a surge of electricity going through you. It’s almost like making love, but it’s even stronger than that” (Elvis Presley, cited by James Miller, Flowers in the Dustbin, p. 83). Elvis correctly observed the licentious power of the rock & roll beat.
Between March 1958 and March 1960 Elvis served in the army, then resumed his music and movie career where he had left off. He had many top ten hits in the first half of the 1960s.
ELVIS’S ABIDING LOVE FOR SOUTHERN GOSPEL NOT EVIDENCE OF SALVATION
Elvis performed and recorded many gospel songs. In the early 1950s he attended all-night gospel quartet concerts at the First Assembly of God and Ellis Auditorium in Memphis and befriended such famous groups as the Blackwood Brothers and the Statesmen. When he was 18, Elvis auditioned for a place in the Songfellows Quartet, but the position was given to James Blackwood’s nephew Cecil. Later, as his rock & roll career was prospering, Elvis was offered a place with the Blackwood Brothers, but he turned it down. Even after he became famous, Elvis continued attending Southern gospel sings and the National Quartet Convention. In the early years of his rock & roll career, he sang some with the Blackwood Brothers and the Statesmen at all-night sings at Ellis Auditorium in Memphis (Taylor, Happy Rhythms, p. 117). Elvis told pop singer Johnny Rivers that he patterned his singing style after Jake Hess of the Statesmen Quartet (Happy Rhythm, p. 49). The Jordanaires performed as background singers on Elvis Presley records and as session singers for many other raunchy rock and country recordings. Members of the Speer Family (Ben and Brock) also sang on Elvis recordings, including “I’ve Got a Woman” and “Heartbreak Hotel.” The Jordanaires provided vocals for Elvis’s 1956 megahit “Hound Dog.” The Jordanaires toured with Eddy Arnold as well as with Elvis. They also performed on some of Elvis’s indecent movies. J.D. Sumner and the Stamps toured with Elvis from 1969 until his death in 1977, performing backup for the King of Rock & Roll in sin-holes such as Las Vegas nightclubs. Ed Hill, one of the singers with the Stamps, was Elvis’s announcer for two years. It was Hill who concluded the Elvis concerts with: “Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building. Goodbye, and God bless you.” (During the years in which Sumner and the Stamps were backing Elvis Presley at Las Vegas and elsewhere, Sumner’s nephew, Donnie, who sang in the group, became a drug addict and was lured into the licentious pop music field.) Sumner helped arrange Elvis’s funeral, and the Stamps, the Statesmen, and James Blackwood provided the music. After Elvis’s death, J.D. Sumner and the Stamps performed rock concerts in tribute to Elvis Presley.
Elvis’s love for gospel music is not evidence that he was born again. His on-again, off-again profession of faith in Christ also was not evidence that he was saved. Three independent Baptist preachers have testified that Elvis told them that he had trusted Jesus as his Savior in his younger years but was backslidden. There was no biblical evidence for that, though. We must remember that Elvis grew up around churches and understood all of the terminology. There was never a time, though, when Elvis’s life changed. Empty professions of faith do not constitute biblical salvation. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). Elvis liked some gospel music but he did not like Bible preaching. He refused to allow anyone, including God, tell him how to live his life. That is evidence of an unregenerate heart.
We agree with the following sad, but honest, assessment of Elvis’s life:
“Elvis Presley never stood for anything. He made no sacrifices, fought no battles, suffered no martyrdom, never raised a finger to struggle on behalf of what he believed or claimed to believe. Even gospel, the music he cherished above all, he travestied and commercialized and soft-soaped to the point where it became nauseating. ... Essentially, Elvis was a phony. ... He feigned piety, but his spirituals sound insincere or histrionic” (Goldman, Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, pp. 187,188).
The Bible warns that friendship with the world is enmity with God (James 4:4); and while we hope Elvis did trust Jesus Christ as God and Savior before he died, there is no evidence that he truly repented of his sin or separated from the world or believed in the Christ of the Bible. The book he took to the bathroom just before he died was either The Force of Jesus by Frank Adams or The Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus, depending on various accounts. Both books present an unscriptural, pagan christ. Pastor Hamill, former pastor of First Assembly of God in Memphis, says that Presley visited him in the late 1950s, when he was at the height of his rock & roll powers, and testified: “Pastor, I’m the most miserable young man you’ve ever seen. I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need to spend. I’ve got millions of fans. I’ve got friends. But I’m doing what you taught me not to do, and I’m not doing the things you taught me to do” (Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 20).
ELVIS’S DRUG ABUSE KILLED HIM
Elvis did not drink, but he abused drugs most of his life. He began using amphetamines and Benzedrine to give him a lift when he began his rock & roll career in the first half of the 1950s. It is possible that they were first given to him by Memphis disc jockey Dewey Phillips, who helped popularize Elvis’s music by playing his songs repeatedly (Goldman, p. 9). The drugs “transformed the shy, mute, passive ‘Baby Elvis’ of those years into the Hillbilly Cat.’” He also used marijuana some and took LSD at least once. In her autobiography, Priscilla Presley says that Elvis was using drugs heavily by 1960 and that his personality changed dramatically. After the breakup of his short-lived marriage in 1973, Elvis “was hopelessly drug-dependent.” He abused barbiturates and narcotics so heavily that he destroyed himself. He died on August 16, 1977, at age 42 in his bathroom at Graceland, of a shutdown of his central nervous system caused by polypharmacy, or the combined effect of a number of drugs. There is some evidence, in fact, that Elvis committed suicide (Goldman, Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, pp. 161-175). He had attempted suicide in 1967 just before his marriage. Fourteen drugs were found in his body during the autopsy, including toxic or near toxic levels of four. Dr. Norman Weissman, director of operations at Bio-Sciences Laboratories, where the toxicity tests were performed, testified that he had never seen so many drugs in one specimen. Elvis’s doctor, George Nichopolous, had prescribed 19,000 pills and vials for Elvis in the last 31.5 months of his life. Elvis required 5,110 pills per year just for his sleeping routine. Elvis also obtained drugs from many other sources, both legal and illegal! It was estimated that he spent at least $1 million per year on drugs and drug prescribing doctors (Goldman, p. 56). Dr. Nichopolous’s head nurse, Tish Henley, actually lived on the grounds of Graceland and monitored Elvis’s drug consumption. In 1980, Nichopolous was found in violation of the prescribing rules of the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners, and he lost his license for three months and was put on probation for three years. In 1992, his medical license was revoked permanently.
After a protracted legal battle, Elvis’s daughter, Lisa Marie, inherited his entire estate, now valued at over $100 million. Graceland was made into a museum, and it is visited by more than 650,000 per year.
A SELF-CENTERED MAN
Elvis was self-centered to the extreme. Though he gave away many expensive gifts, including fancy automobiles and jewelry, it was obvious that he used these to obtain his own way. “But when his extravagant presents fail to inspire a properly beholden attitude, the legendary Presley generosity peels off, revealing its true motive as the desire for absolute control” (Goldman, p. 104). He could not take even kind criticism and was quick to cut off friends who crossed him in any way. “A little Caesar, he made himself all-powerful in his kingdom, reducing everyone around him to a sycophant or hustler” (Goldman, Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, p. 15). He was hypercritical, sarcastic, and mean-spirited to people around him. When Elvis first began touring with Scotty Moore and Bill Black, they traveled in the automobile owned and maintained by Moore’s wife, Bobbie. She worked at Sears and was the only one who had a steady paying job at the time. When Elvis became an overnight star and began to make big money, he purchased a Lincoln, but he never made any attempt to replace Bobbie’s car or to pay back what she had put into it for them. Elvis promised Scotty Moore and Bill Black, the members of his first band, that he would not forget them if they prospered financially, but he did just that. While Elvis was making tens of thousands of dollars by 1956 and 1957, Moore and Black were paid lowly wages and were finally let go to fend for themselves as best they could. Elvis never gave his old friends automobiles or anything of significant value. Reminiscing on those days, Scotty Moore says, “He promised us that the more he made the more we would make, but it hasn’t worked out that way. The thing that got me, the thing that wasn’t right about it, was the fact that Elvis didn’t keep his word. ... We were supposed to be the King’s men. In reality, we were the court jesters” (Moore, That’s Alright, Elvis, pp. 146,155). Elvis turned them “out to pasture like broken-down mules, without a penny.” Elvis kept up this pattern all his life. He would fire his friends and workers at the snap of a finger, and he “was not one to give his buddies a second change” (The Boy Who Would Be King, p. 197). Bobby West served his cousin Elvis faithfully for 20 years, and was rewarded in 1976 by being fired with three day’s notice and one week’s pay. Delbert West (another cousin) and Dave Hebler were similarly treated.
ELVIS’S RAGE
Elvis often exhibited a violent, even murderous, rage. He was “notorious for making terrible threats.” He cooked up murder plots against a number of people, including the man his ex-wife ran off with and three former bodyguards who wrote a tell-all book about him. He threw things at people and even dragged one woman through several rooms by her hair. He viciously threw a pool ball at one female fan, hitting her in the chest and injuring her severely. One of his sleep-over girlfriends almost died of a drug overdose he had given her and she remained in intensive care for several days near death. He never once went to see her or call and had no further contact with her. According to his cousin Earl, he never apologized for anything. He drew and fired his guns many times when he could not get his way, firing into ceilings, shooting out television sets. When his last girlfriend, Ginger Alden, attempted to leave Graceland against his wishes, he fired over her head to force her to stay. Elvis hit Priscilla, his wife, at least once, giving her a black eye. He also threw chairs and other things at her. Once he tore up her expensive cloths and threw them and her out into the driveway. He even mocked and flaunted her with his affairs. When his father remarried, Elvis treated him and his wife very badly. When he first learned of it, he “threw a tantrum of frightening proportions,” destroying furniture and punching holes in the walls with his fists. On one occasion he stormed around the dinner table and threw the plates full of food at the wall, cursing his father and stepmother and blaspheming God (The Boy Who Would Be King).
ELVIS’S IMMORALITY
Elvis was a fornicator and adulterer. He had “a roving eye.” “His list of one-night stands would fill volumes” (Jim Curtin, Elvis, p. 119). He began sleeping with multiple girls per week when he was only one year out of high school and discovered the power of his music to capture sensual girls. His cousin Earl notes that the sleazy music clubs Elvis was visiting “satisfied more than his thirst for music—they unleashed Elvis’s sexuality” (The Boy Who Would Be King, p. 122). He slept with many girls before his marriage to Priscilla Beaulieu, and had multiple affairs after his marriage. Priscilla was only a 14-year-old ninth grader when Elvis began dating her in 1959 during his army tour in Germany. At the time he met Priscilla, he had an even younger girl living in his house (Moore, That’s Alright, Elvis, p. 162). Elvis corrupted the shy, teenaged Priscilla. He gave her liquor and got her drunk. He got her hooked on pills. He taught her to dress in a licentious manner. He encouraged her to lie to her parents. He led her into immorality and pornography. He taught her to gamble. He used hallucinogenic drugs with her. (These are facts published in Priscilla’s autobiography.) In 1962, the 15-year-old Priscilla moved in with Elvis at his Graceland mansion in Memphis (after Elvis lied to her parents about the living arrangement) and they lived together for five years before they married in May 1967. (The marriage was probably due to pressure put on Elvis by his manager, who was worried about the star’s public image.) Elvis and Priscilla had constant problems in their marriage and were divorced in 1973. Elvis had many adulterous affairs during his marriage, and Priscilla admits two affairs of her own. Scotty Moore’s second wife, Emily, said she felt sorry for Priscilla because of all of the women Elvis was seeing. Elvis seduced his stepbrother Billy’s wife, Angie, and destroyed their marriage. He then banished Billy from Graceland. Elvis’s cousin, Earl, who was his best buddy in high school and during the early years of his music career and who worked for him for many years after his success, describes how Elvis became addicted to orgies involving many girls at one time. Elvis cursed and profaned the Lord’s name continually in his ordinary conversation. Even during his earliest concerts he “told some really dirty, crude jokes in between his songs” (RockABilly, p. 120).
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For the conclusion, see Part 2 of 2 of the article “Elvis Presley: King of Rock & Roll.” The complete article is in the Music section of the End Times Apostasy Database at the Way of Life Literature web site.
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ELVIS PRESLEY: KING OF ROCK & ROLL 2 OF 2
Sep/21/08 18:20
ELVIS PRESLEY: KING OF ROCK & ROLL 2 OF 2
Updated September 21, 2008 (first published November 20, 1999) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –
The following is part 2 of 2 of the article “Elvis Presley: King of Rock & Roll.” The complete article is in the Music section of the End Times Apostasy Database at the Way of Life Literature web site. This is excerpted from the 430-page book Rock Music vs. the God of the Bible, available from Way of Life Literature.
WASTING A FORTUNE
Elvis lived for pleasure but was utterly bored with life before he was 40 years old. Elvis sought to be rich, but it came with a curse attached to it and most of his riches disappeared into thin air. Though Elvis’s music, movies, and trademarked items grossed an estimated two or more BILLION dollars during his lifetime, he saw relatively little of it and most of what he did receive was squandered on playthings. By 1969, he was so broke that he was forced to revive his stage career. He had no investments, no property except that surrounding Graceland, and no savings. His manager, Colonel Parker, had swindled or mismanaged him out of a vast fortune. (On Parker’s advice, for example, Elvis sold the rights to his record royalties in 1974 for a lump sum that netted him only $750,000 after taxes.)
ELVIS’S SENSUAL MUSIC
Elvis’s music was reflective of his lifestyle: sensual and licentious. Many of his performances were characterized by hysteria and near rioting. Females attempted to rip off Elvis’s clothes. There were riots at his early concerts. “He’d start out, ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a Hound Dog,’ and they’d just go to pieces. They’d always react the same way. There’d be a riot every time” (Scotty Moore, p. 175). Girls literally threw themselves at him. In DeLeon, Texas, in July 1955, fans “shredded Presley’s pink shirt—a trademark by now—and tore the shoes from his feet.” At a 1956 concert in Jacksonville, Florida, Juvenile Court Judge Marion Gooding warned Elvis that if he did his “hip-gyrating movements” and created a riot, he would be arrested and sent to jail. Elvis performed flatfooted and stayed out of trouble. Colonel Parker played up Elvis’s sensuality. He taught him to “play up his sexuality and make both the men and women in the audience want him” (The Boy Who Would Be King, p. 164).
TRAGEDY FOLLOWS THE ROCK MUSIC LIFESTYLE
Elvis’s first band was composed of three members, Elvis, lead guitarist Scotty Moore, and bass guitarist Bill Black. The lives of all three men were marked by confusion and tragedy. Elvis died young and miserable. When asked about his severe narcotic usage in the years before his death, Elvis replied, “It’s better to be unconscious than miserable” (Goldman, p. 3). Bill Black, who formed the Bill Black Combo after his years with Elvis, died in 1965 at age 29 of a brain tumor. Scotty Moore was divorced multiple times. He also had multiple extra-marital affairs. When he had been married only three months to his first wife, he fathered a child by another woman, a nightclub singer he met on the road. The little girl was born the night Elvis, Moore, and Black recorded their first hit at Sun Records. During his second marriage, Moore fathered another out-of-wedlock child. In 1992, at age 61, Moore filed for bankruptcy.
ELVIS’S STRANGE RELIGION
Elvis did not believe the Bible in any traditional sense. His christ was a false one. Elvis constructed “a personalised religion out of what he’d read of Hinduism, Judaism, numerology, theosophy, mind control, positive thinking and Christianity” (Hungry for Heaven, p. 143). The night he died, he was reading the book Sex and Psychic Energy (Goldman, Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, p. 140). Elvis loved material by guru Paramahansa Yogananda, the Hindu founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship. (I studied Yogananda’s writings and belonged to his Fellowship before I was saved in 1973.) In considering a marriage to Ginger Alden (which never came to pass) prior to his death, Elvis wanted the ceremony to be held in a pyramid-shaped arena “in order to focus the spiritual energies upon him and Ginger” (Goldman, Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, p. 125). Elvis traveled with a portable bookcase containing over 200 volumes of his favorite books. The books most commonly associated with him were books promoting pagan religion, such as The Prophet by Kahilil Gibran; Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda; The Mystical Christ by Manley Palmer; The Life and Teachings of the Master of the Far East by Baird Spalding; The Inner Life by Leadbetter; The First and Last Freedom by Krishnamurti; The Urantia Book; The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception; the Book of Numbers by Cheiro; and Esoteric Healing by Alice Bailey. Elvis was a great fan of occultist Madame Blavatsky. He was so taken with Blavatsky’s book The Voice of Silence, which contains the supposed translation of ancient occultic Tibetan incantations, that he “sometimes read from it onstage and was inspired by it to name his own gospel group, Voice” (Goldman, Elvis, p. 436). Another of Elvis’s favorite books was The Impersonal Life, which supposedly contains words recorded directly from God by Joseph Benner. Biographer Albert Goldman says Elvis gave away hundreds of copies of this book over the last 13 years of his life.
Elvis was sometimes called the evangelist by those who hung around him, and he called them his disciples; but the message he preached contained “strange permutations of Christian dogma” (Stairway to Heaven, p. 56). Elvis believed, for example, that Jesus slept with his female followers. Elvis even had messianic concepts of himself as the savior of mankind in the early 1970s. He read the Bible aloud at times and even conducted some strange “Bible studies,” but he had no spiritual discernment and made up his own wild-eyed interpretations of biblical passages. His ex-wife, Priscilla, eventually joined the Church of Scientology, as did his daughter, Lisa Marie, and her two children.
Elvis prayed a lot in his last days, asking God for forgiveness, but the evidence points to a Judas type of remorse instead of godly repentance. “For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death” (2 Cor. 7:10). One can have sorrow or remorse for the consequences of one’s sin without repenting toward God and trusting God’s provision for sin, which is the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Judas “repented himself” in the sense that he was sorry for betraying Jesus, and he committed suicide because of his despair, but he did not repent toward God and trust Jesus Christ as his Savior (Matt. 27:3-5). True biblical salvation is “repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21). Had Elvis done this he would have been a new man (2 Cor. 5:17) and would have seen things through the eyes of hope instead of through the eyes of despair. He would have had supernatural power, and there would have been a change in his life. The spiritual blindness would have fallen from his eyes and he would have cast off his eastern mysticism and cleaved to the truth. Elvis’s guilt and sorrow produced no perceptible change in his life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Esposito, Joe, and Elena Oumano. Good Rockin’ Tonight. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
Friedlander, Paul. Rock and Roll: A Society History. Boulder, CO: WestviewPress, 1996. 356 p.
Gaither, Bill, with Jerry Jenkins. Homecoming: The Story of Southern Gospel Music through the Eyes of Its Best-Loved Performers. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997. 217 p.
George, Nelson. The Death of Rhythm & Blues. New York: Plume Book, 1988. 222 p.
Goldman, Albert. Elvis. New York: Avon, 1981.
———. Elvis: The Last 24 Hours. New York: St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 1991. 192 p.
Gordon, Robert (1961- ). It Came from Memphis. Boston, London: Faber and Faber, 1995. 303 p.
Greenwood, Earl, and Kathleen Tracy. The Boy Who Would Be King: An Intimate Protrait of Elvis Presley by His Cousin. New York: Dutton, 1990. 310 p.
Guralnick, Peter. Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley. Boston, New York, London: Little, Brown and Co., 1999. 767 p.
———. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. Boston, New York, London: Little, Brown and Co., 1994. 560 p.
———. Searching for Robert Johnson. New York: Plume, 1998. 85 p.
King, B.B. Blues All Around Me. New York: Avon Books, 1996. 338 p.
Lewis, Myra, with Murray Silver. Great Balls of Fire:The Uncensored Story of Jerry Lee Lewis. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982. 373 p.
Marcus, Greil. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music. New York: Plume, 1997. 319 p.
Moore, Scotty. That’s Alright Elvis: The Untold Story of Elvis’s First Guitarist and Manager, Scotty Moore. As told to James Dickerson. New York: Schirmer Books, 1997. 271 p.
Nager, Larry. Memphis Beat: The lives and Times of America’s Musical Crossroads. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. 287 p.
Oliver, Paul. The Story of the Blues. London: PIMLICO, 1969, 1997. 212 p.
Palmer, Robert. Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History, from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago’s South Side. New York: Penguin Books, 1981. 310 p.
Poore, Billy (1944- ). RockABilly a Forty Year Journey. Milwaukee, WI: Hal-Leonard Corporation, 1998. 295 p.
Presley, Priscilla Beaulieu, with Sandra Harmon. Elvis and Me. New York: Berkley Books, 1986. 318 p.
Quain, Kevin. The Elvis Reader. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.
Romanowski, Patricia, and Holy George-Warren, ed. The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll. New York: Fireside, 1995. 1120 p.
Santelli, Robert. The Big Book of Blues. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. 420 p.
Seay, Davin, with Mary Neely. Stairway to Heaven: the Spiritual Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll. New York: Ballantine Books, 1986. 355 p.
Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1971, 1997. 678 p.
Szatmary, David (1951- ). A Time to Rock: A Social History of Rock ‘n’ Roll. New York: Schirmer Books, 1996. 367 p.
Terrell, Bob. The Life and Times of J.D. Sumner. Nashville: J.D. Sumner, 1994. 269 p.
———. The Music Men: The Story of Professional Gospel Quartet Singing. Boone, NC: Bob Terrell Publisher, 1990. 332 p.
Tosches, Nick. Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996. 290 p.
———. Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story. New York: Grove Press, 1982. 276 p.
Turner, Steve (1949- ). Hungry for Heaven: Rock and roll and the search for redemption. London: W.H. Allen in association with Kingsway, 1988, revised 1995. 240 p.
Wardlow, Gayle Dean. Chasin’ That Devil Music: Searching for the Blues. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 1998. 271 p.
White, Charles. The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock. New York: Pocket Books, 1994, 1984. 282 p.
White, Timothy. Rock Lives: Profiles and Interviews. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1990. 807 p.
This is the conclusion to part 2 of 2 of the article “Elvis Presley: King of Rock & Roll.” The complete article is in the Music section of the End Times Apostasy Database at the Way of Life Literature web site –
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
Updated September 21, 2008 (first published November 20, 1999) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –
The following is part 2 of 2 of the article “Elvis Presley: King of Rock & Roll.” The complete article is in the Music section of the End Times Apostasy Database at the Way of Life Literature web site. This is excerpted from the 430-page book Rock Music vs. the God of the Bible, available from Way of Life Literature.
WASTING A FORTUNE
Elvis lived for pleasure but was utterly bored with life before he was 40 years old. Elvis sought to be rich, but it came with a curse attached to it and most of his riches disappeared into thin air. Though Elvis’s music, movies, and trademarked items grossed an estimated two or more BILLION dollars during his lifetime, he saw relatively little of it and most of what he did receive was squandered on playthings. By 1969, he was so broke that he was forced to revive his stage career. He had no investments, no property except that surrounding Graceland, and no savings. His manager, Colonel Parker, had swindled or mismanaged him out of a vast fortune. (On Parker’s advice, for example, Elvis sold the rights to his record royalties in 1974 for a lump sum that netted him only $750,000 after taxes.)
ELVIS’S SENSUAL MUSIC
Elvis’s music was reflective of his lifestyle: sensual and licentious. Many of his performances were characterized by hysteria and near rioting. Females attempted to rip off Elvis’s clothes. There were riots at his early concerts. “He’d start out, ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a Hound Dog,’ and they’d just go to pieces. They’d always react the same way. There’d be a riot every time” (Scotty Moore, p. 175). Girls literally threw themselves at him. In DeLeon, Texas, in July 1955, fans “shredded Presley’s pink shirt—a trademark by now—and tore the shoes from his feet.” At a 1956 concert in Jacksonville, Florida, Juvenile Court Judge Marion Gooding warned Elvis that if he did his “hip-gyrating movements” and created a riot, he would be arrested and sent to jail. Elvis performed flatfooted and stayed out of trouble. Colonel Parker played up Elvis’s sensuality. He taught him to “play up his sexuality and make both the men and women in the audience want him” (The Boy Who Would Be King, p. 164).
TRAGEDY FOLLOWS THE ROCK MUSIC LIFESTYLE
Elvis’s first band was composed of three members, Elvis, lead guitarist Scotty Moore, and bass guitarist Bill Black. The lives of all three men were marked by confusion and tragedy. Elvis died young and miserable. When asked about his severe narcotic usage in the years before his death, Elvis replied, “It’s better to be unconscious than miserable” (Goldman, p. 3). Bill Black, who formed the Bill Black Combo after his years with Elvis, died in 1965 at age 29 of a brain tumor. Scotty Moore was divorced multiple times. He also had multiple extra-marital affairs. When he had been married only three months to his first wife, he fathered a child by another woman, a nightclub singer he met on the road. The little girl was born the night Elvis, Moore, and Black recorded their first hit at Sun Records. During his second marriage, Moore fathered another out-of-wedlock child. In 1992, at age 61, Moore filed for bankruptcy.
ELVIS’S STRANGE RELIGION
Elvis did not believe the Bible in any traditional sense. His christ was a false one. Elvis constructed “a personalised religion out of what he’d read of Hinduism, Judaism, numerology, theosophy, mind control, positive thinking and Christianity” (Hungry for Heaven, p. 143). The night he died, he was reading the book Sex and Psychic Energy (Goldman, Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, p. 140). Elvis loved material by guru Paramahansa Yogananda, the Hindu founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship. (I studied Yogananda’s writings and belonged to his Fellowship before I was saved in 1973.) In considering a marriage to Ginger Alden (which never came to pass) prior to his death, Elvis wanted the ceremony to be held in a pyramid-shaped arena “in order to focus the spiritual energies upon him and Ginger” (Goldman, Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, p. 125). Elvis traveled with a portable bookcase containing over 200 volumes of his favorite books. The books most commonly associated with him were books promoting pagan religion, such as The Prophet by Kahilil Gibran; Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda; The Mystical Christ by Manley Palmer; The Life and Teachings of the Master of the Far East by Baird Spalding; The Inner Life by Leadbetter; The First and Last Freedom by Krishnamurti; The Urantia Book; The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception; the Book of Numbers by Cheiro; and Esoteric Healing by Alice Bailey. Elvis was a great fan of occultist Madame Blavatsky. He was so taken with Blavatsky’s book The Voice of Silence, which contains the supposed translation of ancient occultic Tibetan incantations, that he “sometimes read from it onstage and was inspired by it to name his own gospel group, Voice” (Goldman, Elvis, p. 436). Another of Elvis’s favorite books was The Impersonal Life, which supposedly contains words recorded directly from God by Joseph Benner. Biographer Albert Goldman says Elvis gave away hundreds of copies of this book over the last 13 years of his life.
Elvis was sometimes called the evangelist by those who hung around him, and he called them his disciples; but the message he preached contained “strange permutations of Christian dogma” (Stairway to Heaven, p. 56). Elvis believed, for example, that Jesus slept with his female followers. Elvis even had messianic concepts of himself as the savior of mankind in the early 1970s. He read the Bible aloud at times and even conducted some strange “Bible studies,” but he had no spiritual discernment and made up his own wild-eyed interpretations of biblical passages. His ex-wife, Priscilla, eventually joined the Church of Scientology, as did his daughter, Lisa Marie, and her two children.
Elvis prayed a lot in his last days, asking God for forgiveness, but the evidence points to a Judas type of remorse instead of godly repentance. “For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death” (2 Cor. 7:10). One can have sorrow or remorse for the consequences of one’s sin without repenting toward God and trusting God’s provision for sin, which is the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Judas “repented himself” in the sense that he was sorry for betraying Jesus, and he committed suicide because of his despair, but he did not repent toward God and trust Jesus Christ as his Savior (Matt. 27:3-5). True biblical salvation is “repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21). Had Elvis done this he would have been a new man (2 Cor. 5:17) and would have seen things through the eyes of hope instead of through the eyes of despair. He would have had supernatural power, and there would have been a change in his life. The spiritual blindness would have fallen from his eyes and he would have cast off his eastern mysticism and cleaved to the truth. Elvis’s guilt and sorrow produced no perceptible change in his life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barbin, Lucy de, and Dary Matera. Are You Lonesome Tonight? The Untold Story of Elvis Presley’s One True Love--and the Child He Never Knew. New York: Villard Books, 1987. 295 p.
Brown, Peter Harry, and Pat H. Broeske. Down at the End of Lonely Street: The Life and Death of Elvis Presley. New York: Signet, 1998. 552.
Charters, Samuel. The Bluesmen. New York: Oak Publications, 1967.
Corvette, Nikki. Rock ‘n’ Roll Heaven: The Deaths and Lives of Musical Legends from the Big Bopper to Kirt Cobain. New York: Boulevard Book, 1997. 184 p.
Curtin, Jim. Elvis: Unknown Stories Behind the Legend. Nashville: Celebrity Books, 1998. 400 p.
Dawidoff, Nicholas. In the Country of Country: A Journey to the Roots of American Music. New York: Vintage Books, 1998. 365 p.
Dickerson, James. Goin’ Back to Memphis. New York: Schirmer Books, 1996. 279 p.
Doll, Susan. Best of Elvis. Lincolnwood, IL: Publications International, 1996. .
———. Elvis: Portrait of a King. Lincolnwood: IL: Publications Int., 1995.
Dundy, Elaine. Elvis and Gladys. New York: Masmillan Publishing, 1985. 350 p.
Dunleavy, Steve. Elvis: What Happened. New York: Ballantine Books, 1977.
Esposito, Joe, and Elena Oumano. Good Rockin’ Tonight. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
Friedlander, Paul. Rock and Roll: A Society History. Boulder, CO: WestviewPress, 1996. 356 p.
Gaither, Bill, with Jerry Jenkins. Homecoming: The Story of Southern Gospel Music through the Eyes of Its Best-Loved Performers. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997. 217 p.
George, Nelson. The Death of Rhythm & Blues. New York: Plume Book, 1988. 222 p.
Goldman, Albert. Elvis. New York: Avon, 1981.
———. Elvis: The Last 24 Hours. New York: St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 1991. 192 p.
Gordon, Robert (1961- ). It Came from Memphis. Boston, London: Faber and Faber, 1995. 303 p.
Greenwood, Earl, and Kathleen Tracy. The Boy Who Would Be King: An Intimate Protrait of Elvis Presley by His Cousin. New York: Dutton, 1990. 310 p.
Guralnick, Peter. Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley. Boston, New York, London: Little, Brown and Co., 1999. 767 p.
———. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. Boston, New York, London: Little, Brown and Co., 1994. 560 p.
———. Searching for Robert Johnson. New York: Plume, 1998. 85 p.
King, B.B. Blues All Around Me. New York: Avon Books, 1996. 338 p.
Lewis, Myra, with Murray Silver. Great Balls of Fire:The Uncensored Story of Jerry Lee Lewis. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982. 373 p.
Marcus, Greil. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music. New York: Plume, 1997. 319 p.
Moore, Scotty. That’s Alright Elvis: The Untold Story of Elvis’s First Guitarist and Manager, Scotty Moore. As told to James Dickerson. New York: Schirmer Books, 1997. 271 p.
Nager, Larry. Memphis Beat: The lives and Times of America’s Musical Crossroads. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. 287 p.
Oliver, Paul. The Story of the Blues. London: PIMLICO, 1969, 1997. 212 p.
Palmer, Robert. Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History, from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago’s South Side. New York: Penguin Books, 1981. 310 p.
Poore, Billy (1944- ). RockABilly a Forty Year Journey. Milwaukee, WI: Hal-Leonard Corporation, 1998. 295 p.
Presley, Priscilla Beaulieu, with Sandra Harmon. Elvis and Me. New York: Berkley Books, 1986. 318 p.
Quain, Kevin. The Elvis Reader. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.
Romanowski, Patricia, and Holy George-Warren, ed. The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll. New York: Fireside, 1995. 1120 p.
Santelli, Robert. The Big Book of Blues. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. 420 p.
Seay, Davin, with Mary Neely. Stairway to Heaven: the Spiritual Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll. New York: Ballantine Books, 1986. 355 p.
Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1971, 1997. 678 p.
Szatmary, David (1951- ). A Time to Rock: A Social History of Rock ‘n’ Roll. New York: Schirmer Books, 1996. 367 p.
Terrell, Bob. The Life and Times of J.D. Sumner. Nashville: J.D. Sumner, 1994. 269 p.
———. The Music Men: The Story of Professional Gospel Quartet Singing. Boone, NC: Bob Terrell Publisher, 1990. 332 p.
Tosches, Nick. Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996. 290 p.
———. Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story. New York: Grove Press, 1982. 276 p.
Turner, Steve (1949- ). Hungry for Heaven: Rock and roll and the search for redemption. London: W.H. Allen in association with Kingsway, 1988, revised 1995. 240 p.
Wardlow, Gayle Dean. Chasin’ That Devil Music: Searching for the Blues. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 1998. 271 p.
White, Charles. The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock. New York: Pocket Books, 1994, 1984. 282 p.
White, Timothy. Rock Lives: Profiles and Interviews. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1990. 807 p.
This is the conclusion to part 2 of 2 of the article “Elvis Presley: King of Rock & Roll.” The complete article is in the Music section of the End Times Apostasy Database at the Way of Life Literature web site –
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
THE BEATLES AND CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN MUSIC
Aug/04/08 13:31
THE BEATLES AND CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN MUSIC
Updated and enlarged August 4, 2008 (first published April 12, 2006) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
When I was saved by God’s marvelous grace in 1973 I was saved out of a hippie background. Rock & roll was my lifestyle and self was my god. I was a teenager when the Beatles burst onto the American scene in 1964. When I got out of the Army I was so full of the rock & roll philosophy that I determined that no one was ever again going to tell me what to do. I grew my hair long to let my “freak flag” fly; I used drugs and sold them for an “easy” income; I determined to ride a bicycle to South America but when I had ridden about 20 miles down the road I decided that I needed a better plan, so I sold the bicycle and hitchhiked all the way across America twice, working all sorts of weird day jobs, such as washing syrup off of barges in New Orleans; staying at rescue missions and sleeping by the highways; I attended the Mardi Gras twice; I played the slot machines in Las Vegas; and I went to jail.
All of that is “the bad old days,” to say the least. I look back on my life before Christ as foolishness and waste and shame and I thank the Lord that He gave me a new life.
He also gave me a new song. “And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD” (Psalm 40:3).
After I had been saved a couple of months the Lord dealt with me about rock & roll. It was a real struggle, because I absolutely loved rock and listened to it practically every waking moment for many years. I had begun to study the Bible zealously as soon as I was saved. Each day I would find a private place away from distraction and would read and meditate upon the blessed Word of God. I had been deceived and in bondage to Satan for many years; and now that I had received the truth, I never wanted to be deceived again. I held on to Christ’s promise in John 8:31-32. “Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” And in John 7:17: “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.”
I desired that God would purify and use my life, and one of the first things He dealt with me about was my music. God’s Word tells us that we cannot serve two masters. I cannot say I love the Lord if I love the things that the Lord hates. “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4). Those are strong words.
One day as I was driving in my car with the radio tuned to a rock station, as usual, I realized that I was pouring garbage into my mind as fast as I was pouring in the truth and that this was hindering my spiritual growth. “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would” (Gal. 5:17). I turned off the radio that day and rejoiced in what God had shown me, but I was often tempted to return to rock & roll because it is intoxicating.
The LSD guru Timothy Leary said, “I’ve been STONED ON THE MUSIC many times.”
Steven Tyler of Aerosmith said, “[Rock music] is the strongest drug in the world” (Rock Beat, Spring 1987, p. 23).
Jimi Hendrix said that through rock music, “YOU HYPNOTIZE PEOPLE to where they go right back to their natural state ... People want release any kind of way nowadays” (Life, Oct. 3, 1969, p. 74).
I have no doubt that God led me to give up rock & roll. The Bible strictly forbids the believer to associate with the evil things of the world.
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, THE LUST OF THE FLESH, AND THE LUST OF THE EYES, AND THE PRIDE OF LIFE, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” (1 John 2:15-17).
A more apt description of rock & roll could not be given that the one found in this passage: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life sums up rock & roll. We see, then, that it is impossible for one who loves the Father to love rock & roll. A choice must be made.
“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Rom. 12:2).
The believer is forbidden to be conformed to this evil world. He must not allow himself to be fashioned by the world’s ways and thinking and lusts. It is impossible to know the perfect will of God unless he unconforms his life to this world.
“For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world” (Titus 2:11-12).
We are saved by grace without works because of the blood of Christ, but we are saved unto good works, and the true grace of God teaches us to deny every worldly lust and to live godly in this present world. Thus, the grace of God itself teaches the believer to separate from sensual, filthy, rebellious rock & roll, because it is not sober, righteous, or godly.
“Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works” (Tit. 2:14).
Christ did not die to save sinners in their sin; He died to save them from their sin. The believer is to separate himself from “all iniquity.” That is a far-reaching truth. Is there iniquity in rock & roll? Indeed, it is filled to overflowing with iniquity, with immodesty, fornication, cursing, bitterness, anger, rebellion, false gods, you name it.
“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them” (Eph. 5:11).
Are there any “unfruitful works of darkness” in rock & roll or rap or reggae or country-western and other forms of pop music today? Indeed, that is an apt description of the vast majority of it. Thus, the believer is commanded not to have any fellowship with it, but rather to reprove it.
That is what I determined to do 32 years ago when the Lord opened my eyes to this matter, and my conviction has only grown stronger with the passing years. I am as certain that rock & roll is evil and that God requires believers to separate from it as I am of anything in this life.
Separation is not popular in Christianity today, but the truth has never been found among the majority in this sin-cursed world; and in light of Bible prophecy (i.e., 2 Tim. 3:1-5; 4:3-4) we cannot expect it to be found among the majority of professing Christians in these Last Days.
CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN MUSICIANS AND THE BEATLES
One of the reasons why we are opposed to Contemporary Christian Music is its worldliness, its refusal to separate from the world. Contemporary Christian musicians make no attempt to hide the fact that they love secular rock & roll and they have no shame for doing so. When asked in interviews about their musical influences and their favorite music, invariably they list a number of raunchy secular rock musicians.
One of the rock groups that CCM musicians love the most is the Beatles.
PHIL KEAGGY performs an unholy combination of secular rock and Christian rock/folk, and those who listen to his music are drawn toward worldly rock & roll. On his 1993 Crimson and Blue album, for example, he pays “homage to the Beatles” with several of the songs. In a June 2008 interview Keaggy said that performing at the wedding of Linda McCartney’s sister and jamming with Paul McCartney is one of his most cherished memories (“Reconnecting with Phil Keaggy,” Crosswalk.com, June 25, 2008).
CAEDMON’S CALL often performs Beatles music.
RANDY STONEHILL says that it was the Beatles who gave him the inspiration to play rock and roll: “Really it was after I saw the Beatles. I saw them on television when I was twelve and I knew that that was what I wanted to do” (Stonehill, cited by Devlin Donaldson, “Life Between the Glory and the Fame,” CCM Magazine, October 1981).
The GALACTIC COWBOYS lead singer says, “I’d have to say that The Beatles are still the biggest influence on us, all the way around--except for maybe the guitar tones. They were great songwriters and vocalists” (Ben Huggins, cited by Dan Macintosh, HM magazine, September-October 1998).
Some of DC TALK’S musical role models are the Beatles, David Bowie, and The Police, all of which are wicked secular rock groups (Flint Michigan Journal, March 15, 1996). dc Talk opened its “Jesus Freak” concerts with the Beatles’ song “Help.” During their 1999 “Supernatural Experience” tour, dc Talk performed “Hello Good-bye” by the Beatles (CCM Magazine, April 1999, p. 55).
JARS OF CLAY names Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles as their inspiration (Dann Denny, “Christian Rock,” Sunday Herald Times, Bloomington, Ind., Feb. 8, 1998). The lead guitarist for Jars of Clay is said to be a “Beatles fanatic” (Christian News, Dec. 8, 1997).
MAYFAIR LAUNDRY, a group which got its name from a scene in a Beatle’s movie, cites influences from the Beatles to Red Hot Chilli Peppers (Heaven’s Metal Magazine, May-June 1998).
The cover to STEVE GREEN’S It’s a Dying World album was drawn by the same artist who did the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album, which included pictures of satanist Aleister Crowley and LSD proponent Timothy Leary, among others.
JOHN MICHAEL TALBOT performed Beatles songs during concerts in the late 1990s.
In a May 1987 interview with CCM Magazine, LESLIE PHILLIPS spoke of her love for the Beatles: “[In the 1987 album The Turning] I just sort of returned to what I loved originally. You know, returning to your roots and all that. The Beatles were the first rock group I remember hearing, and I dearly love them. They were spectacular, even in their mistakes. There was a spirit in that kind of music that we don’t have today.”
THE ROCK ‘N’ ROLL WORSHIP CIRCUS’ musical style is “reminiscent of rock’s glory days” and “combines the best elements of classic seventies style power pop ala David Bowie, The Kinks and Cheap Trick, Pink Floyd, The Beatles and U2” (from their web site).
During the Feb. 18, 2002, premier show for MICHAEL W. SMITH’S Come Together Tour, THIRD DAY took the stage to the strains of the New Age Beatles song “Come Together” (press release, Nashville, April 24).
In his musings on Contemporary Christian Music of October 2, 2002, RUSS BREIMEIER (co-director of Christianity Today.com music channel) exalts the Beatles. He describes his recent attendance at a Paul McCartney concert in the following terms: “Last week, I also fulfilled one of my lifelong dreams … and got to see Sir Paul McCartney in concert. What an incredible show! … It was simply awesome to hear 20,000+ people sing along to ‘Let It Be,’ surrounding a beautifully lit stage.” There was not a word of warning about the wicked influence the Beatles have had upon society for the past 45 years or about their anti-christ blasphemies. And consider the words to this “simply awesome” song “Let It Be” -- “When I find myself in times of trouble/ Mother Mary comes to me/ Speaking words of wisdom, let it be./ And in my hour of darkness/ She is standing right in front of me/ Speaking words of wisdom, let it be. … Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.”
One of the members of VOX79, the worship band at a conference at WILLOW CREEK COMMUNITY CHURCH, February 2007, was pictured wearing a Beatles t-shirt on the Willow Creek web site (http://www.willowcreek.com/events/student/schedule.asp).
A video that contains a graphical slide show from an Argentina missionary trip by SADDLEBACK CHURCH members features John Lennon’s atheistic song “Imagine.” The trip, made August 1-12, 2006, was part of Rick Warren’s P.E.A.C.E. program, and the video was published on YouTube. The soundtrack uses several pieces of music, including John Lennon’s original recording of Imagine. The lyrics say: “Imagine there’s no heaven/ It’s easy if you try/ No hell below us/ Above us only sky.”
In an interview published on CMCentral.com September 27, 2007, the interviewer of John Ellis of TREE63 commented that their new album (Sunday and Everyday) has a psychedelic feel to it and some tracks are reminiscent of John Lennon. Ellis replied: “Did you say psychedelic? It’s funny, I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently about the 40th anniversary of Monterrey, and the Summer of Love this year. So I’ve been reading a lot about Sgt. Pepper, the whole psychedelic culture of 40 years ago. My dad brought me up on the Beatles and by the time I was twelve I was a complete Beatle addict. I have a lot of deep roots in that culture, and most of the music I buy these days is 40 years old.”
Granger Community Church in Granger, Indiana, is featuring Beatles Music as their 2007 Christmas theme. Pastor Tim Stevens says: “With Across the Universe currently in the theaters and the new Beatles-themed Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas called Love, the Beatles are as hot as ever. Using the music of the Beatles we will be telling the Christmas story all December. And we've been getting great feedback from music lovers of all generation” (http://www.leadingsmart.com/leadingsmart/2007/11/let-it-bechrist.html/). They are advertising it as “Let it Be...Christmas -- A Story Told by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, George and Ringo.”
Standard Publishing has a 2007 series of Bible studies entitled “Tuning into God” that are based on songs from the Beatles and other rock groups. The studies give the background to the raunchy old songs and even encourage the Bible class to play them. This is like digging in a garbage can to learn nutrition.
CONCLUSION
I believe it is absolutely unconscionable for Christian musicians to encourage an appetite for Beatles’ music in young people. No rock group has had a more spiritually destructive influence than the Beatles. They were certainly controlled by demons as they captured the affection of an entire generation with their “magical mystery” music and carried millions of young people along on their journey to eastern religion, atheism, drug abuse, and rebellion against established order.
In his 1965 book, A Spaniard in the Works, John Lennon called Jesus Christ many wicked things that we cannot repeat and he blasphemed the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In the song “God” (1970), Lennon sang: “I don’t believe in Bible. I don’t believe in Jesus. I just believe in me, Yoko and me, that’s reality.”
Lennon’s extremely popular song “IMAGINE” (1971) promotes atheism. The lyrics say: “Imagine there’s no heaven … No hell below us, above us only sky … no religion too/ You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one/ I hope some day you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.”
How many millions of people throughout the world have followed John Lennon in this delusive dream? Death will show that this dream is the most horrible nightmare imaginable.
The Beatles have done more to further the Devil’s program in this generation than any other music group. It is unconscionable for a Christian to pay homage to these people and to their demonically-inspired music, thereby encouraging Christian young people to think that rock & roll is harmless.
The Beatles continue to exercise a vast influence, and young people need to be warned to stay away from them and from the world of licentious rock and roll that the Beatles helped to create.
“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you” (2 Cor. 6:14-17).
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
Updated and enlarged August 4, 2008 (first published April 12, 2006) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
When I was saved by God’s marvelous grace in 1973 I was saved out of a hippie background. Rock & roll was my lifestyle and self was my god. I was a teenager when the Beatles burst onto the American scene in 1964. When I got out of the Army I was so full of the rock & roll philosophy that I determined that no one was ever again going to tell me what to do. I grew my hair long to let my “freak flag” fly; I used drugs and sold them for an “easy” income; I determined to ride a bicycle to South America but when I had ridden about 20 miles down the road I decided that I needed a better plan, so I sold the bicycle and hitchhiked all the way across America twice, working all sorts of weird day jobs, such as washing syrup off of barges in New Orleans; staying at rescue missions and sleeping by the highways; I attended the Mardi Gras twice; I played the slot machines in Las Vegas; and I went to jail.
All of that is “the bad old days,” to say the least. I look back on my life before Christ as foolishness and waste and shame and I thank the Lord that He gave me a new life.
He also gave me a new song. “And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD” (Psalm 40:3).
After I had been saved a couple of months the Lord dealt with me about rock & roll. It was a real struggle, because I absolutely loved rock and listened to it practically every waking moment for many years. I had begun to study the Bible zealously as soon as I was saved. Each day I would find a private place away from distraction and would read and meditate upon the blessed Word of God. I had been deceived and in bondage to Satan for many years; and now that I had received the truth, I never wanted to be deceived again. I held on to Christ’s promise in John 8:31-32. “Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” And in John 7:17: “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.”
I desired that God would purify and use my life, and one of the first things He dealt with me about was my music. God’s Word tells us that we cannot serve two masters. I cannot say I love the Lord if I love the things that the Lord hates. “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4). Those are strong words.
One day as I was driving in my car with the radio tuned to a rock station, as usual, I realized that I was pouring garbage into my mind as fast as I was pouring in the truth and that this was hindering my spiritual growth. “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would” (Gal. 5:17). I turned off the radio that day and rejoiced in what God had shown me, but I was often tempted to return to rock & roll because it is intoxicating.
The LSD guru Timothy Leary said, “I’ve been STONED ON THE MUSIC many times.”
Steven Tyler of Aerosmith said, “[Rock music] is the strongest drug in the world” (Rock Beat, Spring 1987, p. 23).
Jimi Hendrix said that through rock music, “YOU HYPNOTIZE PEOPLE to where they go right back to their natural state ... People want release any kind of way nowadays” (Life, Oct. 3, 1969, p. 74).
I have no doubt that God led me to give up rock & roll. The Bible strictly forbids the believer to associate with the evil things of the world.
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, THE LUST OF THE FLESH, AND THE LUST OF THE EYES, AND THE PRIDE OF LIFE, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” (1 John 2:15-17).
A more apt description of rock & roll could not be given that the one found in this passage: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life sums up rock & roll. We see, then, that it is impossible for one who loves the Father to love rock & roll. A choice must be made.
“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Rom. 12:2).
The believer is forbidden to be conformed to this evil world. He must not allow himself to be fashioned by the world’s ways and thinking and lusts. It is impossible to know the perfect will of God unless he unconforms his life to this world.
“For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world” (Titus 2:11-12).
We are saved by grace without works because of the blood of Christ, but we are saved unto good works, and the true grace of God teaches us to deny every worldly lust and to live godly in this present world. Thus, the grace of God itself teaches the believer to separate from sensual, filthy, rebellious rock & roll, because it is not sober, righteous, or godly.
“Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works” (Tit. 2:14).
Christ did not die to save sinners in their sin; He died to save them from their sin. The believer is to separate himself from “all iniquity.” That is a far-reaching truth. Is there iniquity in rock & roll? Indeed, it is filled to overflowing with iniquity, with immodesty, fornication, cursing, bitterness, anger, rebellion, false gods, you name it.
“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them” (Eph. 5:11).
Are there any “unfruitful works of darkness” in rock & roll or rap or reggae or country-western and other forms of pop music today? Indeed, that is an apt description of the vast majority of it. Thus, the believer is commanded not to have any fellowship with it, but rather to reprove it.
That is what I determined to do 32 years ago when the Lord opened my eyes to this matter, and my conviction has only grown stronger with the passing years. I am as certain that rock & roll is evil and that God requires believers to separate from it as I am of anything in this life.
Separation is not popular in Christianity today, but the truth has never been found among the majority in this sin-cursed world; and in light of Bible prophecy (i.e., 2 Tim. 3:1-5; 4:3-4) we cannot expect it to be found among the majority of professing Christians in these Last Days.
CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN MUSICIANS AND THE BEATLES
One of the reasons why we are opposed to Contemporary Christian Music is its worldliness, its refusal to separate from the world. Contemporary Christian musicians make no attempt to hide the fact that they love secular rock & roll and they have no shame for doing so. When asked in interviews about their musical influences and their favorite music, invariably they list a number of raunchy secular rock musicians.
One of the rock groups that CCM musicians love the most is the Beatles.
PHIL KEAGGY performs an unholy combination of secular rock and Christian rock/folk, and those who listen to his music are drawn toward worldly rock & roll. On his 1993 Crimson and Blue album, for example, he pays “homage to the Beatles” with several of the songs. In a June 2008 interview Keaggy said that performing at the wedding of Linda McCartney’s sister and jamming with Paul McCartney is one of his most cherished memories (“Reconnecting with Phil Keaggy,” Crosswalk.com, June 25, 2008).
CAEDMON’S CALL often performs Beatles music.
RANDY STONEHILL says that it was the Beatles who gave him the inspiration to play rock and roll: “Really it was after I saw the Beatles. I saw them on television when I was twelve and I knew that that was what I wanted to do” (Stonehill, cited by Devlin Donaldson, “Life Between the Glory and the Fame,” CCM Magazine, October 1981).
The GALACTIC COWBOYS lead singer says, “I’d have to say that The Beatles are still the biggest influence on us, all the way around--except for maybe the guitar tones. They were great songwriters and vocalists” (Ben Huggins, cited by Dan Macintosh, HM magazine, September-October 1998).
Some of DC TALK’S musical role models are the Beatles, David Bowie, and The Police, all of which are wicked secular rock groups (Flint Michigan Journal, March 15, 1996). dc Talk opened its “Jesus Freak” concerts with the Beatles’ song “Help.” During their 1999 “Supernatural Experience” tour, dc Talk performed “Hello Good-bye” by the Beatles (CCM Magazine, April 1999, p. 55).
JARS OF CLAY names Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles as their inspiration (Dann Denny, “Christian Rock,” Sunday Herald Times, Bloomington, Ind., Feb. 8, 1998). The lead guitarist for Jars of Clay is said to be a “Beatles fanatic” (Christian News, Dec. 8, 1997).
MAYFAIR LAUNDRY, a group which got its name from a scene in a Beatle’s movie, cites influences from the Beatles to Red Hot Chilli Peppers (Heaven’s Metal Magazine, May-June 1998).
The cover to STEVE GREEN’S It’s a Dying World album was drawn by the same artist who did the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album, which included pictures of satanist Aleister Crowley and LSD proponent Timothy Leary, among others.
JOHN MICHAEL TALBOT performed Beatles songs during concerts in the late 1990s.
In a May 1987 interview with CCM Magazine, LESLIE PHILLIPS spoke of her love for the Beatles: “[In the 1987 album The Turning] I just sort of returned to what I loved originally. You know, returning to your roots and all that. The Beatles were the first rock group I remember hearing, and I dearly love them. They were spectacular, even in their mistakes. There was a spirit in that kind of music that we don’t have today.”
THE ROCK ‘N’ ROLL WORSHIP CIRCUS’ musical style is “reminiscent of rock’s glory days” and “combines the best elements of classic seventies style power pop ala David Bowie, The Kinks and Cheap Trick, Pink Floyd, The Beatles and U2” (from their web site).
During the Feb. 18, 2002, premier show for MICHAEL W. SMITH’S Come Together Tour, THIRD DAY took the stage to the strains of the New Age Beatles song “Come Together” (press release, Nashville, April 24).
In his musings on Contemporary Christian Music of October 2, 2002, RUSS BREIMEIER (co-director of Christianity Today.com music channel) exalts the Beatles. He describes his recent attendance at a Paul McCartney concert in the following terms: “Last week, I also fulfilled one of my lifelong dreams … and got to see Sir Paul McCartney in concert. What an incredible show! … It was simply awesome to hear 20,000+ people sing along to ‘Let It Be,’ surrounding a beautifully lit stage.” There was not a word of warning about the wicked influence the Beatles have had upon society for the past 45 years or about their anti-christ blasphemies. And consider the words to this “simply awesome” song “Let It Be” -- “When I find myself in times of trouble/ Mother Mary comes to me/ Speaking words of wisdom, let it be./ And in my hour of darkness/ She is standing right in front of me/ Speaking words of wisdom, let it be. … Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.”
One of the members of VOX79, the worship band at a conference at WILLOW CREEK COMMUNITY CHURCH, February 2007, was pictured wearing a Beatles t-shirt on the Willow Creek web site (http://www.willowcreek.com/events/student/schedule.asp).
A video that contains a graphical slide show from an Argentina missionary trip by SADDLEBACK CHURCH members features John Lennon’s atheistic song “Imagine.” The trip, made August 1-12, 2006, was part of Rick Warren’s P.E.A.C.E. program, and the video was published on YouTube. The soundtrack uses several pieces of music, including John Lennon’s original recording of Imagine. The lyrics say: “Imagine there’s no heaven/ It’s easy if you try/ No hell below us/ Above us only sky.”
In an interview published on CMCentral.com September 27, 2007, the interviewer of John Ellis of TREE63 commented that their new album (Sunday and Everyday) has a psychedelic feel to it and some tracks are reminiscent of John Lennon. Ellis replied: “Did you say psychedelic? It’s funny, I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently about the 40th anniversary of Monterrey, and the Summer of Love this year. So I’ve been reading a lot about Sgt. Pepper, the whole psychedelic culture of 40 years ago. My dad brought me up on the Beatles and by the time I was twelve I was a complete Beatle addict. I have a lot of deep roots in that culture, and most of the music I buy these days is 40 years old.”
Granger Community Church in Granger, Indiana, is featuring Beatles Music as their 2007 Christmas theme. Pastor Tim Stevens says: “With Across the Universe currently in the theaters and the new Beatles-themed Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas called Love, the Beatles are as hot as ever. Using the music of the Beatles we will be telling the Christmas story all December. And we've been getting great feedback from music lovers of all generation” (http://www.leadingsmart.com/leadingsmart/2007/11/let-it-bechrist.html/). They are advertising it as “Let it Be...Christmas -- A Story Told by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, George and Ringo.”
Standard Publishing has a 2007 series of Bible studies entitled “Tuning into God” that are based on songs from the Beatles and other rock groups. The studies give the background to the raunchy old songs and even encourage the Bible class to play them. This is like digging in a garbage can to learn nutrition.
CONCLUSION
I believe it is absolutely unconscionable for Christian musicians to encourage an appetite for Beatles’ music in young people. No rock group has had a more spiritually destructive influence than the Beatles. They were certainly controlled by demons as they captured the affection of an entire generation with their “magical mystery” music and carried millions of young people along on their journey to eastern religion, atheism, drug abuse, and rebellion against established order.
In his 1965 book, A Spaniard in the Works, John Lennon called Jesus Christ many wicked things that we cannot repeat and he blasphemed the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In the song “God” (1970), Lennon sang: “I don’t believe in Bible. I don’t believe in Jesus. I just believe in me, Yoko and me, that’s reality.”
Lennon’s extremely popular song “IMAGINE” (1971) promotes atheism. The lyrics say: “Imagine there’s no heaven … No hell below us, above us only sky … no religion too/ You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one/ I hope some day you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.”
How many millions of people throughout the world have followed John Lennon in this delusive dream? Death will show that this dream is the most horrible nightmare imaginable.
The Beatles have done more to further the Devil’s program in this generation than any other music group. It is unconscionable for a Christian to pay homage to these people and to their demonically-inspired music, thereby encouraging Christian young people to think that rock & roll is harmless.
The Beatles continue to exercise a vast influence, and young people need to be warned to stay away from them and from the world of licentious rock and roll that the Beatles helped to create.
“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you” (2 Cor. 6:14-17).
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
BOB DYLAN
May/29/08 12:28
BOB DYLAN
May 29, 2001 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –
From my “hippie” days prior to conversion in 1973, I remember rock legend Bob Dylan (1941- ) (real name Robert Zimmerman) very well. It was in 1962 that Dylan legally changed his name and produced his debut album. His famous song “The Times They Are A-Changin” appeared in 1964. I had started listening to rock music intently in the early 1960s, and I was consumed with that type of music until I was saved in 1973. That was the heyday of Dylan’s career, and I still recall the haunting, sensual nature of his music. He helped to popularize the merging of folk and rock music and sang some very immoral songs as well as songs with pacifistic, civil rights, socialistic, humanistic, and New Age themes. He was one of the chief poets of the ’60s rock generation. His songs posed many interesting questions, but he had no answers. In “Blowing in the Wind,” he asked such things as, “How many roads must a man walk down before he is called a man?” What is the answer? “The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind...” What does that mean? It means he doesn’t know the answer and he is not sure anyone knows the answer. Sadly, that is the philosophy of most of Dylan’s fans because they have rejected the Bible.
Dylan’s vast influence has been anything but wholesome and godly. It was Dylan who introduced the Beatles to marijuana (Peter Brown, The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles). Dylan “went through some profound drug experiences during 1964-5, taking up Baudelair’s formula for immortality: ‘A poet makes himself a seer by a long prodigious and rational disordering of the senses.’ He … tried just about everything he could to ‘open his head’ as biographer Tony Scaduto puts it” (Waiting for the Man, p. 144). Many of Dylan’s songs were about drugs, including “Lay Down Your Weary Tune,” “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
There was even violence at some Dylan concerts. For example, in Slane, Ireland, in July 1984, the police had to barricade themselves inside their station as mobs of Dylan fans besieged them, rioting, breaking windows, and overturning cars.
Dylan’s backup group, which was known only as the Band, was formerly called Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks. They “had a reputation for pill popping, whoring, and brawling that was second to none” (Robert Palmer, Rock & Roll an Unruly History, p. 3).
The cover to Dylan’s Desire album (1976) depicts him smoking marijuana in one corner, a black magic tarot card in another corner, and a huge Buddha in the bottom corner. Next to the Buddha are the words: “I have a brother or two and a whole lot of Karma to burn … Isis and the moon shine on me” (Muncy, The Role of Rock, p. 167).
Dylan divorced his wife Sara Lowndes in 1977.
In 1978, Dylan attended a home Bible study with girlfriend Mary Alice. She had recently “re-dedicated her life to Christ” and was concerned that she was living with an unsaved man who was not her husband. She invited two assistant pastors from the Hollywood Vineyard Church (associated with the Vineyard Christian Fellowship under the leadership of the late John Wimber) to visit Dylan’s home. Dylan’s testimony was as follows: “One thing led to another ... until I had this feeling, this vision and feeling. I truly had a born-again experience, if you want to call it that. It’s an over-used term, but it’s something that people can relate to” (Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 160, citing a November 1980 interview with Robert Hillburn of the Los Angeles Times). From this testimony, we can see the influence of false Vineyard theology, which focuses on experiential feelings, visions, voices, personal prophecies, healing, tongues, spirit slayings, and such things. This experiential-oriented theology does not produce stability in the Christian life. Dylan spent three and a half months at the Vineyard church’s School of Discipleship, and his next three albums, Slow Train Coming (1979), Saved (1980), and Shot of Love (1981), were gospel albums of sorts.
Dylan soon repudiated any claim to the Christian faith and went back to his standard rock music. Dylan never attended church regularly and soon quite altogether. Even rock historian Steve Turner, who has attempted to justify Dylan’s apostasy, admits: “The womanizing and drunkenness that Dylan once saw as evidence of the old life have apparently continued almost uninterrupted” (Turner, “Watered Down Love,” Christianity Today, May 21, 2001). Dylan’s 1983 album was titled Infidels. The July 21, 1983, issue of the Washington Post noted that Dylan believes in reincarnation and that “everyone is born knowing the truth.” An article in the San Luis Obispo (California) Register for March 16, 1983, quoted Dylan as saying: “Whoever said I was Christian? Like Gandhi, I’m Christian, I’m Jewish, I’m a Moslem, I’m a Hindu. I am a humanist.” In recent years, Dylan has practiced Lubavitch Hasidism, an ultra-orthodox form of Judaism, suggesting he has returned to his Jewish roots.
In September 1997, Dylan performed before Pope John Paul II at a Roman Catholic youth festival in Bologna, Italy. A crowd of 300,000 young people attended the festival. The 56-year-old Dylan sang two songs directly to the Pope. Dylan then took off his cowboy hat and bowed before him. The Catholic organizer of the festival, Cardinal Ernesto Vecchi, said that he had invited Dylan because he is the “representative of the best type of rock” and “he has a spiritual nature.”
David Blue, who played with Country Joe & the Fish and who toured with Dylan as part of the Rolling Thunder Revue, died in 1982 at age 41 of a heart attack while jogging. Albert Grossman, Bob Dylan’s manager during the 1960s, died in 1986 at age 39 of a heart attack.
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service. These articles cannot be stored on BBS or Internet sites or sold or placed by themselves or with other material in any electronic format for sale, but may be distributed for free by e-mail or by print. They must be left intact and nothing removed or changed, including these informational headers. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service is a listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. Our goal in this particular aspect of our ministry is not devotional but is TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. To Subscribe to the Fundamental Baptist Information Service, send an email to lists@wayoflife.org and put “subscribe FBIS” in the subject field. To UNSUBSCRIBE, send an email to lists@wayoflife.org and put “unsubscribe FBIS” in the subject field. To change addresses, simply unsubscribe the old one, then re-subscribe the new one. Or a more simple process is to go to the web site and sign up or change addresses there: http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6). Some of these articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 19th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://www.wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org (e-mail). OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org ]
THE RAPPER DEATHSTYLE
Mar/27/08 14:08
THE RAPPER DEATHSTYLE
Enlarged March 27, 2008 (first published December 5, 2002) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –
A study published in the May 2003 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that students who listen to violent music are more likely to act violently. “Across five studies, we found that violent lyrics do increase violent thinking and aggressive feelings,” said lead researcher Craig Anderson of Iowa State University.
In 2007 the police in Colorado Springs issued a warning that gangsta rap is contributing to the rise in violence and murders in their area.
In a pathetic attempt to defend rap against the police charge, one rapper said: “When two cowboys got into an argument at a saloon, went outside and had a draw, nobody blamed the music that was playing at the saloon” (“Colorado police link rise in violence to music,” Goupstate.com, Sept. 3, 2007). But cowboy saloon songs didn’t wind people up into a violent rage against society and urge them to murder and rape and shoot police officers and treat women like dogs.
Rap or Hip Hop is violent music, and it is not surprising that it is accompanied by violence.
The following are some of the cases in which rappers themselves have died untimely deaths because of the violence, drug abuse, and immorality that is glorified in rap music.
We wouldn’t even try to document the untimely deaths of common rap lovers, because they are off of the news radar screens, but the number would doubtless run into the thousands if not the tens of thousands.
Rapper Scot Sterling (aka Scot La Rock), whose debut album was titled “Criminal Minded,” died in August 1987 at age 25 of a gunshot wound.
King Tubby, who invented the dubbing process that was popularized by rappers, was murdered in 1989 when he was 58 years old.
Rapper Michael Menson, of the group Double Trouble died in 1989 at age 29 when a gang soaked him in gasoline and set him afire. Double Trouble had a hit that same year titled “Street Tuff.”
MC Rock, rapper with The Almighty RSO, was stabbed to death in 1990 at roughly age 28.
Trouble T-Roy (Troy Dixon), rapper with Heavy D and the Boyz, fell off a balcony after a concert in 1990 at age 22.
Brandon Mitchell, rapper with Wreckx-N-Effect, was shot to death in 1990 at about age 20 during an argument over a woman.
Rapper Michael Robinson (a.k.a. The Mac) was shot dead in Vallejo, California, in about 1990 while sitting in his car with his pregnant girlfriend. He was about 20 years old.
Charizma, rapper with Peanut Butter Wolf, was shot to death in 1993 at age 20.
Deah Dame, rapper with Damian Dame, died in a car crash in 1994 at age 35.
Eazy-E (Eric Wright) of N.W.A., one of the founders of Gangsta rap, died of AIDS in 1995 at age 31. His lyrics focused on themes such as guns, drugs, anti-law enforcement, and deviant sex. He had seven children by six different women.
Mr. Cee, rapper with R.B.L. Posse (Ruthless By Law), died after being shot nine times on New Year’s morning of 1996 at about age 30.
Rapper Hitman (Ricky Herd), was shot to death in 1995 at age 24.
Randy Walker (aka Stretch), of Live Squad, died of unknown cause in 1995 at age 27.
Tupac Shakur (aka 2Pac, Makaveli), a gangsta rap superstar who founded the Outlawz Immortalz after he was released from prison in 1995, was shot to death a year later at age 25. Time Warner Music helped pay Shakur’s $1.4 million bail. Outlaw is an acronym for Operating Under Thug Laws as Warriors. The members of the group took the names of various tyrants, brutal dictators, and enemies of America such as Fidel Castro, Idi Amin, and Saddam Hussein.
Yafeu Fula (aka Yaki Kadafi, Young Hollywood), of the Outlawz Immortalz, was shot to death in 1996 two months after the group’s founder Tupac Shakur. He was shot by a cousin of Napoleon, another member of Outlawz.
Rapper Seagram Miller was shot to death in Oakland, California, in August 1996 at age 26.
Rappin’ Ron of Oakland, California, who recorded with Cell Block Records, died of a car crash in January 1997.
Rapper Young Lay of Vallejo, California, barely survived a gunshot wound to the head in 1997, but his baby was kidnapped and his live-in girlfriend died in an arson house fire.
Notorious B.I.G. (aka Biggie Smalls) (real name Christopher Wallace), gangsta rapper, was shot to death in 1997 at age 24. This was only three years after the release of his successful album “Ready to Die.” This album was filled with cursing, violence, and immorality. One cut was titled “Suicidal Thoughts,” and Notorious B.I.G. sang, “When I die, -----, I wanna go to hell.”
San Francisco Rapper JoJo White of Bored Stiff was shot to death in 1997.
Rapper DJ Caravan of FunkSoulJaz died in 1997 of unknown cause.
Gangsta Rapper Dion Stewart (aka The True Lesson Giver) of the duo Black Dynasty was shot to death while trying to rob a convenience store in 1997 at about age 30.
Fat Pat (Patrick Hawkins), rapper who recorded immoral songs, was shot to death in 1998 at age 26.
Rapper DJ Crazy Rak died in 1998 in a hotel fire in San Francisco. He was about 32 years old.
Luis “Papo” Deschamps, rapper with Sandy y Papo, died in a car crash in 1999 at age 23.
Malcolm Howard, rapper with 4 Black Faces, was shot to death execution style in 1999 at roughly age 30.
MC Big L (Lamont Coleman), rapper with Diggin’ In the Crates Crew, was shot to death outside his home in 1999 at age 23.
Rapper MC Ant was shot to death in 1999 at roughly age 35.
Karnail Pitts (aka Bugz), of D12, died after he was shot three times and run over with a car in an altercation in 1999. He was about 30 years old.
Freaky Tah (Raymond Rogers), member of Lost Boyz, was shot to death while leaving a nightclub in New York City at 4 a.m. on Sunday morning in March 1999 at age 27.
Matthew Roberts of Blaggers I.T.A. died in February 2000 at age 36 of drug related causes.
Q-Don (Raeneal Quann), rapper, was shot to death outside a Philadelphia nightclub in April 2000 at roughly age 30.
Yusef Afloat Muhammad, rapper with The Nonce, was found dead alongside a Los Angeles freeway in May 2000 at roughly age 28.
Big Pun (aka Big Punisher) (born Christopher Rios) died in 2000 of a heart attack at age 28.
Johnny Burns (aka Mausburg) was robbed and shot to death in his hometown of Compton, California, in 2000 at age 21.
Bruce Mayfield (aka Chip Banks and Bankie), rapper with The American Cream Team, was shot to death over a money dispute in November 2000 at age 30.
DJ Screw (Robert Davis, Jr.), inventor of a hypnotic, slowed-down, drug-influenced style of rap music, died in November 2000 of a drug-induced heart attack at age 30. He had long abused drugs and alcohol.
Erik Carson (aka Eclipse) was shot to death at 1:30 a.m. on November 14, 2000, in Oakland, California, at age 23.
Bruce Washington (aka Hussein Fatal), of the Outlawz, was imprisoned in 2000 for slashing a person’s face and stomach and another person’s arm and chest with a box cutter.
Lloyd “Mooseman” Roberts, rapper who worked with Iggy Pop, Ice-T, and Body Count, died in a drive by shooting in February 2001 at roughly age 28.
Prince Ital Joe, reggae and rapper who worked with Tupac and Snoop Dogg, died in a car crash in May 2001 at age 37 or 38.
Tonnie Sheppard, rapper and cousin of rapper Haf-A-Mil, was stabbed to death in a recording studio during a fight with studio executives in May 2001 at age 38 or 39.
Coughnut, rapper with Ill Mannered Posse, died in a car crash in September 2001 at age 33. The California Highway Patrol report said that alcohol was probably a factor in the crash that killed two other people, including rapper D Mac.
Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, singer with rap group TLC, died in a car crash in April 2002 at age 30. A few days before her own death, Lisa had hit and killed a 10-year-old boy with her car in Honduras.
Jam Master Jay, rapper with the popular group Run-DMC, was shot to death in his recording studio in October 2002 at age 37 by an unknown assailant. This is the latest in a long string of violence associated with rappers, who produce a style of music that is infamously violent in nature (though Jam Master Jay himself was more positive than most).
Rapper Speedy Loc died of an unreported medical condition on June 13, 2003. He was about 30 years old.
B Brazy of Damu Ridaz died in 2003 of unknown cause. He was about 25.
San Francisco rapper Double D (Darrel Anderson) was killed in August 2003. He was about 30.
Rapper Lil Bo was killed in 2003 at about age 25.
In November 2003, Anthony “Wolf” Jones,” 38-year-old former bodyguard for “P. Diddy” Combs, was shot to death in a gunfight outside an Atlanta nightclub. $7,000 was found on Jones’ body. Jones and Combs had been acquitted of gun possession and bribery charges stemming from a 1999 shooting inside a New York nightclub.
In December 2003, federal prosecutor Jonathan Luna was gunned down during the trial of rapper Deon Lionnel Smith, who was accused of running a violent drug ring.
Rapper Freako of Ghetto Stars was shot to death in February 2004 at about age 25.
Rapper Juston Potts (aka Kanyva) murdered his promoter on June 7, 2004, because “she told him he didn’t have the talent to sell records” (“Aspiring rapper arrested in killing,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 8, 2004).
Rapper Holy Quran was shot and killed in 2004. He was about 25.
Russell Tyrone Jones (aka Ol’ Dirty Bastard), of Wu-Tang Clan, died in November 2004 of a drug overdose at age 36.
Rapper Andre Hicks (aka Mac Dre or Dr. Dre) was shot to death in 2004 at age 34. A news report said, “His death was as violent as the lyrics to some of his most popular songs.” Police say that Hicks was part of a gang that robbed banks and pizza parlors, and in 1992 he was sentenced to 5 years in prison. His rapper nickname, Mac, describes a man that women would pay to have sex with.
Rapper Anthony Watkins (aka Fat Tone) of Kansas City was shot to death in 2005 at age 24. He was murdered by rapper Mac Minister because he was suspected to have murdered Andrew Hicks (Mac Dre) the previous year.
Deshaun Holton (aka Proof), of D12, was shot to death at a bar in Detroit in April 2006 at age 32. He was the best man at rapper Eminem’s wedding to his former wife Kim four months earlier. Proof first shot 35-year-old Keith Bender in the head and then was shot by an unknown third party.
Rapper Big Hawk (John Edward Hawkins) of Houston, Texas, of DJ Screw’s Screwed up Click, was shot to death in May 2006 at age 36. His brother, Patrick Hawkins (aka Fat Pat), was shot to death in 1998 when he was in his 20s.
In January 2007 rapper Busta Rhymes (Trevor Smith) was arrested and charged with punching and kicking a man. He was also charged with assault in August 2006. In February 2006 his bodyguard Israel Ramirez was shot to death.
Stack Bundles (Rayquon Elliot), “an up-and-coming New York rapper” affiliated with Byrd Gang Records, was shot to death in June 2007 at 5 a.m. in the morning outside his home after partying all night with friends. He was 24.
Rapper Skee 64 (Toby Rios) died in March 2007 at about age 28.
Rapper Woodie of San Francisco died in March 2007 of unknown cause at about age 35.
Many other California rappers are affiliated with infamous Bloods gangs. These include DJ Quik, Suge Knight, The Game, the rappers of the Boo-Yaa Tribe, Mack 10, B-Real, and DJ Zombie (http://www.ufaqs.com/wiki/en/bl/Bloods.htm).
Two members of the rap group Damu Ridaz, with ties to the Bloods, were shot and killed in 2007 while in their 20s. B-Brazy and G Spider were both shot and killed at different times by Mexican gangs. Lil Hawk of Damu Ridaz is in prison serving a life sentence.
Big Moe (Kenneth Moore) of Houston died in October 2007 at age 33, probably of a heart attack. He was a part of the Screwed Up Click rapper group. In 2000 he reportedly overdosed on codeine-laced cough syrup, and he often rapped about drug usage.
Influential rapper Pimp C of Underground Kingz was found dead in a motel room in December 2007 at age 33 of unreported cause. His songs dealt with “descriptions of sex and conspicuous consumption and triple-beam scales used to weigh drugs.” He spent three years in jail on gun charges.
Other rappers that died violently and/or young in the last 20 years include Karizma of San Jose, California, California, Plan B of Oakland, Black Cee of San Francisco, Black C, DJ Co V C of Funxsouljaz, 4-1-So-Sicc-Ass-Rell of Cold World Hustlers, Lil' Bo, Billboard of Black Wall Street, and Woodie (2007).
“Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Cor. 15:33).
“My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. ... My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path: For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood” (Proverbs 1:10, 15, 16).
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
Enlarged March 27, 2008 (first published December 5, 2002) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –
A study published in the May 2003 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that students who listen to violent music are more likely to act violently. “Across five studies, we found that violent lyrics do increase violent thinking and aggressive feelings,” said lead researcher Craig Anderson of Iowa State University.
In 2007 the police in Colorado Springs issued a warning that gangsta rap is contributing to the rise in violence and murders in their area.
In a pathetic attempt to defend rap against the police charge, one rapper said: “When two cowboys got into an argument at a saloon, went outside and had a draw, nobody blamed the music that was playing at the saloon” (“Colorado police link rise in violence to music,” Goupstate.com, Sept. 3, 2007). But cowboy saloon songs didn’t wind people up into a violent rage against society and urge them to murder and rape and shoot police officers and treat women like dogs.
Rap or Hip Hop is violent music, and it is not surprising that it is accompanied by violence.
The following are some of the cases in which rappers themselves have died untimely deaths because of the violence, drug abuse, and immorality that is glorified in rap music.
We wouldn’t even try to document the untimely deaths of common rap lovers, because they are off of the news radar screens, but the number would doubtless run into the thousands if not the tens of thousands.
Rapper Scot Sterling (aka Scot La Rock), whose debut album was titled “Criminal Minded,” died in August 1987 at age 25 of a gunshot wound.
King Tubby, who invented the dubbing process that was popularized by rappers, was murdered in 1989 when he was 58 years old.
Rapper Michael Menson, of the group Double Trouble died in 1989 at age 29 when a gang soaked him in gasoline and set him afire. Double Trouble had a hit that same year titled “Street Tuff.”
MC Rock, rapper with The Almighty RSO, was stabbed to death in 1990 at roughly age 28.
Trouble T-Roy (Troy Dixon), rapper with Heavy D and the Boyz, fell off a balcony after a concert in 1990 at age 22.
Brandon Mitchell, rapper with Wreckx-N-Effect, was shot to death in 1990 at about age 20 during an argument over a woman.
Rapper Michael Robinson (a.k.a. The Mac) was shot dead in Vallejo, California, in about 1990 while sitting in his car with his pregnant girlfriend. He was about 20 years old.
Charizma, rapper with Peanut Butter Wolf, was shot to death in 1993 at age 20.
Deah Dame, rapper with Damian Dame, died in a car crash in 1994 at age 35.
Eazy-E (Eric Wright) of N.W.A., one of the founders of Gangsta rap, died of AIDS in 1995 at age 31. His lyrics focused on themes such as guns, drugs, anti-law enforcement, and deviant sex. He had seven children by six different women.
Mr. Cee, rapper with R.B.L. Posse (Ruthless By Law), died after being shot nine times on New Year’s morning of 1996 at about age 30.
Rapper Hitman (Ricky Herd), was shot to death in 1995 at age 24.
Randy Walker (aka Stretch), of Live Squad, died of unknown cause in 1995 at age 27.
Tupac Shakur (aka 2Pac, Makaveli), a gangsta rap superstar who founded the Outlawz Immortalz after he was released from prison in 1995, was shot to death a year later at age 25. Time Warner Music helped pay Shakur’s $1.4 million bail. Outlaw is an acronym for Operating Under Thug Laws as Warriors. The members of the group took the names of various tyrants, brutal dictators, and enemies of America such as Fidel Castro, Idi Amin, and Saddam Hussein.
Yafeu Fula (aka Yaki Kadafi, Young Hollywood), of the Outlawz Immortalz, was shot to death in 1996 two months after the group’s founder Tupac Shakur. He was shot by a cousin of Napoleon, another member of Outlawz.
Rapper Seagram Miller was shot to death in Oakland, California, in August 1996 at age 26.
Rappin’ Ron of Oakland, California, who recorded with Cell Block Records, died of a car crash in January 1997.
Rapper Young Lay of Vallejo, California, barely survived a gunshot wound to the head in 1997, but his baby was kidnapped and his live-in girlfriend died in an arson house fire.
Notorious B.I.G. (aka Biggie Smalls) (real name Christopher Wallace), gangsta rapper, was shot to death in 1997 at age 24. This was only three years after the release of his successful album “Ready to Die.” This album was filled with cursing, violence, and immorality. One cut was titled “Suicidal Thoughts,” and Notorious B.I.G. sang, “When I die, -----, I wanna go to hell.”
San Francisco Rapper JoJo White of Bored Stiff was shot to death in 1997.
Rapper DJ Caravan of FunkSoulJaz died in 1997 of unknown cause.
Gangsta Rapper Dion Stewart (aka The True Lesson Giver) of the duo Black Dynasty was shot to death while trying to rob a convenience store in 1997 at about age 30.
Fat Pat (Patrick Hawkins), rapper who recorded immoral songs, was shot to death in 1998 at age 26.
Rapper DJ Crazy Rak died in 1998 in a hotel fire in San Francisco. He was about 32 years old.
Luis “Papo” Deschamps, rapper with Sandy y Papo, died in a car crash in 1999 at age 23.
Malcolm Howard, rapper with 4 Black Faces, was shot to death execution style in 1999 at roughly age 30.
MC Big L (Lamont Coleman), rapper with Diggin’ In the Crates Crew, was shot to death outside his home in 1999 at age 23.
Rapper MC Ant was shot to death in 1999 at roughly age 35.
Karnail Pitts (aka Bugz), of D12, died after he was shot three times and run over with a car in an altercation in 1999. He was about 30 years old.
Freaky Tah (Raymond Rogers), member of Lost Boyz, was shot to death while leaving a nightclub in New York City at 4 a.m. on Sunday morning in March 1999 at age 27.
Matthew Roberts of Blaggers I.T.A. died in February 2000 at age 36 of drug related causes.
Q-Don (Raeneal Quann), rapper, was shot to death outside a Philadelphia nightclub in April 2000 at roughly age 30.
Yusef Afloat Muhammad, rapper with The Nonce, was found dead alongside a Los Angeles freeway in May 2000 at roughly age 28.
Big Pun (aka Big Punisher) (born Christopher Rios) died in 2000 of a heart attack at age 28.
Johnny Burns (aka Mausburg) was robbed and shot to death in his hometown of Compton, California, in 2000 at age 21.
Bruce Mayfield (aka Chip Banks and Bankie), rapper with The American Cream Team, was shot to death over a money dispute in November 2000 at age 30.
DJ Screw (Robert Davis, Jr.), inventor of a hypnotic, slowed-down, drug-influenced style of rap music, died in November 2000 of a drug-induced heart attack at age 30. He had long abused drugs and alcohol.
Erik Carson (aka Eclipse) was shot to death at 1:30 a.m. on November 14, 2000, in Oakland, California, at age 23.
Bruce Washington (aka Hussein Fatal), of the Outlawz, was imprisoned in 2000 for slashing a person’s face and stomach and another person’s arm and chest with a box cutter.
Lloyd “Mooseman” Roberts, rapper who worked with Iggy Pop, Ice-T, and Body Count, died in a drive by shooting in February 2001 at roughly age 28.
Prince Ital Joe, reggae and rapper who worked with Tupac and Snoop Dogg, died in a car crash in May 2001 at age 37 or 38.
Tonnie Sheppard, rapper and cousin of rapper Haf-A-Mil, was stabbed to death in a recording studio during a fight with studio executives in May 2001 at age 38 or 39.
Coughnut, rapper with Ill Mannered Posse, died in a car crash in September 2001 at age 33. The California Highway Patrol report said that alcohol was probably a factor in the crash that killed two other people, including rapper D Mac.
Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, singer with rap group TLC, died in a car crash in April 2002 at age 30. A few days before her own death, Lisa had hit and killed a 10-year-old boy with her car in Honduras.
Jam Master Jay, rapper with the popular group Run-DMC, was shot to death in his recording studio in October 2002 at age 37 by an unknown assailant. This is the latest in a long string of violence associated with rappers, who produce a style of music that is infamously violent in nature (though Jam Master Jay himself was more positive than most).
Rapper Speedy Loc died of an unreported medical condition on June 13, 2003. He was about 30 years old.
B Brazy of Damu Ridaz died in 2003 of unknown cause. He was about 25.
San Francisco rapper Double D (Darrel Anderson) was killed in August 2003. He was about 30.
Rapper Lil Bo was killed in 2003 at about age 25.
In November 2003, Anthony “Wolf” Jones,” 38-year-old former bodyguard for “P. Diddy” Combs, was shot to death in a gunfight outside an Atlanta nightclub. $7,000 was found on Jones’ body. Jones and Combs had been acquitted of gun possession and bribery charges stemming from a 1999 shooting inside a New York nightclub.
In December 2003, federal prosecutor Jonathan Luna was gunned down during the trial of rapper Deon Lionnel Smith, who was accused of running a violent drug ring.
Rapper Freako of Ghetto Stars was shot to death in February 2004 at about age 25.
Rapper Juston Potts (aka Kanyva) murdered his promoter on June 7, 2004, because “she told him he didn’t have the talent to sell records” (“Aspiring rapper arrested in killing,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 8, 2004).
Rapper Holy Quran was shot and killed in 2004. He was about 25.
Russell Tyrone Jones (aka Ol’ Dirty Bastard), of Wu-Tang Clan, died in November 2004 of a drug overdose at age 36.
Rapper Andre Hicks (aka Mac Dre or Dr. Dre) was shot to death in 2004 at age 34. A news report said, “His death was as violent as the lyrics to some of his most popular songs.” Police say that Hicks was part of a gang that robbed banks and pizza parlors, and in 1992 he was sentenced to 5 years in prison. His rapper nickname, Mac, describes a man that women would pay to have sex with.
Rapper Anthony Watkins (aka Fat Tone) of Kansas City was shot to death in 2005 at age 24. He was murdered by rapper Mac Minister because he was suspected to have murdered Andrew Hicks (Mac Dre) the previous year.
Deshaun Holton (aka Proof), of D12, was shot to death at a bar in Detroit in April 2006 at age 32. He was the best man at rapper Eminem’s wedding to his former wife Kim four months earlier. Proof first shot 35-year-old Keith Bender in the head and then was shot by an unknown third party.
Rapper Big Hawk (John Edward Hawkins) of Houston, Texas, of DJ Screw’s Screwed up Click, was shot to death in May 2006 at age 36. His brother, Patrick Hawkins (aka Fat Pat), was shot to death in 1998 when he was in his 20s.
In January 2007 rapper Busta Rhymes (Trevor Smith) was arrested and charged with punching and kicking a man. He was also charged with assault in August 2006. In February 2006 his bodyguard Israel Ramirez was shot to death.
Stack Bundles (Rayquon Elliot), “an up-and-coming New York rapper” affiliated with Byrd Gang Records, was shot to death in June 2007 at 5 a.m. in the morning outside his home after partying all night with friends. He was 24.
Rapper Skee 64 (Toby Rios) died in March 2007 at about age 28.
Rapper Woodie of San Francisco died in March 2007 of unknown cause at about age 35.
Many other California rappers are affiliated with infamous Bloods gangs. These include DJ Quik, Suge Knight, The Game, the rappers of the Boo-Yaa Tribe, Mack 10, B-Real, and DJ Zombie (http://www.ufaqs.com/wiki/en/bl/Bloods.htm).
Two members of the rap group Damu Ridaz, with ties to the Bloods, were shot and killed in 2007 while in their 20s. B-Brazy and G Spider were both shot and killed at different times by Mexican gangs. Lil Hawk of Damu Ridaz is in prison serving a life sentence.
Big Moe (Kenneth Moore) of Houston died in October 2007 at age 33, probably of a heart attack. He was a part of the Screwed Up Click rapper group. In 2000 he reportedly overdosed on codeine-laced cough syrup, and he often rapped about drug usage.
Influential rapper Pimp C of Underground Kingz was found dead in a motel room in December 2007 at age 33 of unreported cause. His songs dealt with “descriptions of sex and conspicuous consumption and triple-beam scales used to weigh drugs.” He spent three years in jail on gun charges.
Other rappers that died violently and/or young in the last 20 years include Karizma of San Jose, California, California, Plan B of Oakland, Black Cee of San Francisco, Black C, DJ Co V C of Funxsouljaz, 4-1-So-Sicc-Ass-Rell of Cold World Hustlers, Lil' Bo, Billboard of Black Wall Street, and Woodie (2007).
“Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Cor. 15:33).
“My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. ... My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path: For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood” (Proverbs 1:10, 15, 16).
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THE BEATLES
Mar/12/08 13:31
THE BEATLES
Updated March 12, 2006 (first published October 8, 2000) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article)-
The Beatles are the most popular and influential rock band of all time. The Beatles, in fact, are a synonym for rock & roll. Their music was re-released in 1987 via compact disc and continues to sell well, and it is played continuously on oldies radio stations. Their new album, titled “1,” debuted in November 2000 at No. 1 on pop charts in the U.S.A. and 16 other countries and sold more than one-half million copies the first week. The album contains 27 of the Beatles No. 1 singles. A recent television special, which was titled The Beatles Revolution, attracted 8.7 million viewers to its first showing on ABC and is being rebroadcast by cable networks. Their influence permeates Western society and can be felt throughout the world. Countless rock and rollers could give the same testimony as that of Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson: “Their arrival in America in 1964 was electrifying, one of the most exciting things that ever happened in my life, and their music has always and will always mean so much to me.”
Even Contemporary Christian musicians are Beatles fans. For example, Phil Keaggy pays “homage to the Beatles” on his 1993 Crimson and Blue album. Galactic Cowboys admits that their biggest influence is the Beatles. Caedmon’s Call often performs Beatles music. dc Talk opened its “Jesus Freak” concerts with the Beatles’ song “Help.” Jars of Clay names Jimmy Hendrix and the Beatles as their inspiration. The lead guitarist is said to be a “Beatles fanatic.”
Sid Bernstein observed, “Only Hitler ever duplicated [the Beatles’] power over crowds. … when the Beatles talk—about drugs, the war in Vietnam, religion—millions listen, and this is the new situation in the pop music world” (Time, Sept. 22, 1967, p. 60). Rock critic Vern Stefanic noted that “Lennon was more than a musician” because he promoted “an anti-God theme, and anti-America, pro-revolution stance” (Tulsa World, Dec. 12, 1980, p. 20). The Beatles even pioneered the longhaired look. “. . . the major impulse behind the rock androgyny of the Sixties was, in fact, of foreign origin . . . the Beatles. . . . the haircuts were so revolutionary by Sixties standards that they were viewed as signs of incipient transvestism” (Steven Simels, Gender Chameleons: Androgyny in Rock ‘n’ Roll, pp. 29,30,32). Paul McCartney admitted their role in destroying traditional convention: “There they were in America, all getting house-trained for adulthood with their indisputable principle of life: short hair equals men; long hair equals women. Well, we got rid of that small convention for them. And a few others, too” (Barbara Ehrenreich, “Beatlemania: Girls Just Wanted to Have Fun,” cited by Lisa Lewis, The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, p. 102).
HISTORY OF THE BEATLES. Called the “fab four,” the Beatles were composed of John Lennon (1940-1980), Paul McCartney (1942- ), George Harrison (1943-2001) and Ringo Starr (born Richard Starkey) (1940- ). McCartney and Harrison had Catholic mothers, but their fathers were not religious. Paul McCartney’s father, Jim, considered himself an agnostic. (When Jim McCartney died in 1976, Paul did not even attend the funeral.) Ringo’s mother and father separated when he was very young and later divorced. Ringo’s mother worked as a barmaid at times. Lennon’s mother and father (Fred) had gotten married without her parent’s approval, and Fred left his little family to join the merchant marines when John was very small. John’s mother later lived with another man and had two daughters, though she never divorced Fred. In later life Lennon expressed great hatred for his mother. His father’s second wife, Pauline, testified that the mere mention of her name “triggered a vicious verbal attack on [his mother], whom he reviled in the most obscene language I had ever heard…” (Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 17). John was raised largely by his mother’s sister, his Aunt Mimi. She sent him to an Anglican Sunday school, where he sang in the choir. By age 11, though, he was permanently barred from Sunday services because he “repeatedly improvised obscene and impious lyrics to the hymns” (Rock Lives, p. 114). Lennon testified that none of his church experiences touched him and that by age 19 he “was cynical about religion and never even considered the goings-on in Christianity.” It is sad that all Lennon experienced was corrupt Christianity in the form of dead Anglicanism. By 1964, McCartney testified that none of them believed in God and that religion “doesn’t fit into my life.” Their drug experiences changed that, but the “god” they came to believe in was not the God of the Bible. McCartney described his God as “a force we are all a part of.” Lennon said, “We’re all God.”
John Lennon was the undisputed leader of the Beatles. By the late 1950s, he was a profane and brawling street youth. He shoplifted, abused girls, drew obscene pictures, lied “about everything,” despised authority, and was the ringleader of a group of rowdies. The young Lennon was also very cruel. He tried to frighten old people and made fun of those who were crippled or deformed. The new music called rock & roll fit his licentious lifestyle. Later Lennon described himself as “a weird, psychotic kid covering up my insecurity with a macho façade” (Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 2). The other Beatles were also juvenile rowdies, if not outright delinquents. Even as a young teenager, Paul McCartney “became about the most sexually precocious boy of his year.” Paul also stole things and drew dirty pictures. They rebelled against their fathers and other authority figures. Ringo’s first job was as a bartender on a ferryboat. He was also a thief and a truant during his youth. Even George Harrison, the “only one whose family background was normal and undramatic,” rebelled against the way his father wanted him to act and dress. He later testified: “Going in for flash clothes, or at least trying to be a bit different … was part of the rebelling. I never cared for authority” (Hunter Davies, The Beatles, p. 39). Harrison was in frequent trouble at school. When they began playing together in bands in their teenage years, they played in wicked places such as strip joints. They testified that they “got drunk a lot” and “had a lot of girls” (The Beatles, p. 77).
The Beatles were powerfully influenced by American bluesmen and Elvis Presley, and they formed a rock band called the Quarrymen in the mid-1950s. Lennon testified that “nothing really effected me until Elvis.” McCartney said: “[Elvis] was the biggest kick. Every time I felt low I just put on an Elvis and I’d feel great, beautiful.” Ringo said, “Elvis changed my life.” By late 1957, the band included Lennon, Harrison, and McCartney, plus other young men on bass and drums. They combed their hair and dressed like Elvis and played rhythm & blues and Chuck Berry/Little Richard/Elvis type music. The group changed its name to the Silver Beetles in 1960, then simply to the Beatles, referring to the beat of their music. “John Lennon changed the name to Beatles to accent the drive of their music, the BEAT” (H.T. Spence, Confronting Contemporary Christian Music, p. 78). Drummer Ringo Starr joined the group in 1962 just before they recorded their first single. That year the Beatles played with Little Richard in a Liverpool, England, club. Little Richard said, “They were little, strange-looking fellows; they all had their little bangs” (Dallas Times Herald, Oct. 29, 1978). By 1963, “Beatlemania” was raging in England, and by 1964 the Beatles had leaped to international fame when “I Want to Hold Your Hand” skyrocketed to the top of the charts in the United States and they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. By April 1964, the Beatles had the top five best-selling singles in America.
The Beatles set the tone for rock music and for the hippie youth culture in the 1960s until the band broke up in 1969. They led a generation of rebellious youth from marijuana to acid to “free sex” to eastern religion to revolution and liberal political/social activism. David Noebel observes: “The Beatles set trends, and their fans followed their lead. They were the vanguard of an entire generation who grew long hair, smoked grass, snorted coke, dropped acid, and lived for rock ‘n’ roll. They were the ‘cool’ generation” (The Legacy of John Lennon, p. 43).
THE BEATLES AND IMMORALITY. Ringo reported, “We got drunk a lot. You couldn’t help it. We had a lot of girls. We soon realized that they were easy to get” (TV Guide, July 29, 1978, p. 21). McCartney said: “We didn’t all get into music for a job! We got into it to avoid a job, in truth—and get lots of girls.” Lennon’s 21st birthday party was “a huge drunken noisy orgy” (The Beatles, p. 177). Lennon called marriage a stupid scene” and a mere “bit of paper.” He frequented prostitutes even in his teenage years, living in immorality before he was married, and then in adulterous relationships during his two marriages. His first wife, Cynthia, was pregnant with a child when he finally married her in a clandestine ceremony in August 1962. No parents attended and the other band members dressed in black. On their wedding night, John hurried away for a performance. Lennon and Yoko Ono lived together for a year while he was still married to Cynthia and Ono was still married to an American filmmaker. When Cynthia returned from a vacation in Greece, she found Ono living with her husband in her own home. Ono was still married to another man when she announced that she was expecting a baby by Lennon. The mocking Two Virgins album cover featured the nude photos of Lennon and Ono on the front and back. (The album, which had no songs, was composed of sound effects and random voices.) Ono had been married several times and had a number of abortions before her alliance with Lennon. Lennon said, “…intellectually, we knew marriage was a stupid scene, but we’re romantic and square as well as hip and aware. We lived together for a year before we got married, but we were still tied to other people by a bit of paper” (Davies, The Beatles). The two finally got married in March 1969. Ono wore a short mini-skirt and sunglasses. On their honeymoon, Lennon and Ono spent seven days in a public bed in Amsterdam, “to protest violence.” Later Lennon spent 18 months with his and Yoko’s secretary, May Pang, while he was still married to Ono. Lennon was involved with an adulterous relationship with the wife of the Beatles’ manager, Malcolm Evans (Giuliano, p. 107). In his last year, he was addicted to pornography movies and other vile things.
After several years of immoral partying, Ringo Starr married Maureen Cox in February 1965. She was already pregnant with his child when he proposed to her after a night of drinking. In 1975, they went through a “rather messy, acrimonious divorce.” George Harrison had announced that he was in love with Ringo’s wife, and Ringo, for his part, admitted that he had an adulterous affair with actress Nancy Andrews. After the divorce, Ringo “started a wandering life.” In 1981, he married an American actress and former Playboy model.
George Harrison lived with Pattie Boyd for about a year before they were married in January 1966. In 1970, Eric Clapton wrote the famous rock love song, “Layla,” for another man’s wife; for the woman Clapton was illicitly “in love” with was George Harrison’s wife, Pattie. By 1973, Patti began living and traveling with Clapton. George Harrison and Pattie were finally divorced in 1977, and she married Clapton in 1979. That marriage only lasted a few years. Harrison married Olivia Trinidad Arias in 1978, one month after their son, Dhani, was born. Harrison also had an adulterous affair with Ringo Starr’s wife Maureen.
Paul McCartney lived with Jane Asher for many years. She told the press: “I certainly don’t object to people having children when they are not married, and I think it is quite sensible to live together before you are married” (Noebel, The Marxist Minstrels, p. 92). McCartney and Asher became engaged in January 1968, but she called it off after discovering his affair with an American woman. McCartney also lived with Linda Eastman for a few months before they were married in March 1969. They had a one-day engagement. She was four months pregnant at the time of the marriage. (It was her second.) Linda died in 1998.
George Harrison promised to reporters that the Beatles would not be afraid to use any four-letter words in their songs. In fact, obscenities are quite common in Beatles’ compositions (Noebel, The Marxist Minstrels, pp. 104, 92).
The Beatles manager, BRIAN EPSTEIN, was a homosexual. After hearing the Beatles in a London pub, he become obsessed with making John Lennon his lover. Two years after the Beatles’ wildly successful 1964 America tour, Lennon accompanied Epstein to Barcelona, Spain, for a weekend that possibly included homosexual activity (Hunter Davies, The Beatles, introduction to the 1985 edition). There were probably other homosexual episodes in Lennon’s life. Biographer Geoffrey Giuliano, who had access to Lennon’s diaries, concluded that there was “a pronounced homosexual element in Lennon’s makeup” (Lennon in America, p. 13). During his last days, Epstein was constantly in the depths of depression, living on pills, having tantrums with his staff and closest friends over petty things” (Hunter Davies, The Beatles, introduction to the 1985 edition). He was also involved in extremely sordid homosexual alliances. Before signing as the Beatles’ manager, he had been arrested for solicitation in a public restroom or park. Epstein died in 1967 at age 37 of a drug overdose. The death, from a cumulative effect of bromide in the drug Carbitral, was ruled accidental; but he had attempted suicide once before. Two other drugs were found in his body. At the time of his death, the Beatles were in Wales, sitting under the teaching of Hindu guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Britain had decriminalized homosexual activity one month before Epstein’s death.
THE BEATLES AND DRUGS. Testifying before the House Select Committee on Crime, popular family entertainer Art Linkletter, who lost a child to drug abuse, referred to the Beatles as the “leading missionaries of the acid society” (Crime in America—Illicit and Dangerous Drugs, October 1969). Media researcher Brian Key observed: “The Beatles became the super drug culture prophets … of all time” (Key, Media Sexploitation, 1976, p. 136). The student newspaper for the University of Wisconsin noted that the Beatles have “proselytized the use of drugs so subtly that words and conceptions once only common to drug users are found in sentences of teeny-boppers and statesmen alike” (Daily Cardinal, Dec. 3, 1968, p. 5, cited by David Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, p. 63).
The Beatles began taking drugs during their earliest band days before they became popular. They started by taking slimming pills to stay awake during long performances. They were high on “prellies,” a form of speed called Phenmetrazine and marketed as Preludin. John Lennon was so out of control one night, that “when a customer over-enthusiastically approached the stage, he kicked him in the head twice, then grabbed a steak knife from a table and threw it at the man” (Waiting for the Man, p. 107).
Many of the Beatles songs were about drugs. These include “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Day Tripper,” “Yellow Submarine,” “Help,” “Cold Turkey,” “Glass Onion,” “I Am the Walrus,” and “Penny Lane.” (The Beatles have admitted that these are drug songs.) BBC removed the Beatles’ song “A Day in the Life” from the air because of its drug implications. Their 1967 Sgt. Pepper’s album heralded the drug revolution in America (“Approbation on Drug Usage in Rock and Roll Music,” U.N. Bulletin on Narcotics, Oct.-Dec. 1969, p. 35; David Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, pp. 56,58). Time magazine reported that Sgt. Pepper’s was “drenched in drugs” (Time, Sept. 22, 1967, p. 62). The album “galvanized the acid subculture and gave LSD an international platform” (Waiting for the Man, p. 145). On the Sgt. Pepper’s album Ringo Starr sang, “I get high with a little help from my friends.” The members of the Beatles later openly admitted that the album was “a drug album” (Flowers in the Dustbin, p. 253). Sgt. Pepper’s was hugely influential, one of the best-selling albums of rock history. The London Times’ theater critic Kenneth Tynan observed that the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album was “a decisive moment in the history of Western civilization.”
Lennon admitted that he began taking LSD in 1964 and that “it went on for years. I must have had a thousand trips … a thousand. I used to just eat it all the time” (Rolling Stone, Jan. 7, 1971, p. 39; cited by Jann Wenner, Lennon Remembers, p. 76). John Lennon read Timothy Leary’s book The Psychedelic Experience in 1966, after Paul McCartney took him to the Indica, a hip New Age bookshop in London. Lennon wrote “Tomorrow Never Knows” after taking LSD and wrote the songs “Come Together” and “Give Peace a Chance” for Leary.
Lennon claimed that he had been on pills since he was 17 and soon after turned to pot. He said: “I have always needed a drug to survive. The others, too, but I always had more, more pills, more of everything because I am more crazy, probably (Noebel, The Marxist Minstrels, p. 111). Lennon admitted to a Rolling Stone interviewer that there were “a lot of obvious LSD things in the music.” Lennon said, “God isn’t in a pill, but LSD explained the mystery of life. It was a religious experience.” In an interview with Playboy, Lennon said the Beatles smoked marijuana for breakfast and were so stoned that they were “just all glazed eyes.” The Beatles took out a full-page ad in the London Times (June 1967), calling for the legalization of marijuana. In 1969, Lennon said: “If people can’t face up to the fact of other people being naked or smoking pot … then we’re never going to get anywhere” (Penthouse, Oct. 1969, p. 29, cited in The Legacy of John Lennon, p. 66). Paul McCartney told Life magazine that he was “deeply committed to the possibilities of LSD as a universal cure-all.” He went on to say, “After I took it, it opened my eyes. We only use one-tenth of our brain. Just think what all we could accomplish if we could only tap that hidden part. It would mean a whole new world. If politicians would use LSD, there would be no more war, poverty or famine” (Life, June 16, 1967, p. 105).
In 1968, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were arrested for marijuana possession. The drug conviction nearly cost Lennon the right to live in the United States. In April 1969, George Harrison and his wife, Patti, were arrested at their home and charged with possession of 120 joints of marijuana. The drugs were found by a police dog. They pleaded guilty and were fined. In 1972, Paul McCartney and his wife, Linda, pleaded guilty to smuggling marijuana into Sweden. In 1973, McCartney pleaded guilty to growing marijuana on his farm in Scotland. McCartney’s wife was arrested in Los Angeles in 1975 for possession of marijuana. In 1980, McCartney was arrested by customs officials at Tokyo International Airport when nearly a half-pound of marijuana was discovered in his suitcase. He was kicked out of Japan after being detained for nine days. In 1984, McCartney and his wife, Linda, were fined 70 pounds by Barbados magistrates for possession of marijuana. A few days later, Linda McCartney was charged again, for importing marijuana into Heathrow Airport.
Drugs were involved when Mel Evans, former Beatles road manager, was shot to death by police in 1976 during an argument involving a rifle. His girlfriend had called the police and told them that Mal had taken Valium and was “totally messed up,” and when he allegedly made threatening gestures with the gun, they shot him. The rifle was not loaded. He was in his 40s.
THE BEATLES AND REVOLUTION. The Beatles promoted the revolutionary overthrow of authority and communism in songs such as “Revolution No. 9,” “Working Class Hero,” Back in the USSR,” “Power to the People,” “Sometime in New York City,” “Give Peace a Chance,” “Bloody Sunday” (which called British police “Anglo pigs”), “Attica State” (“now’s the time for revolution”), “Angela” (which glorified communist Angela Davis), and “Piggies.” Lennon performed at anti-America rallies and called upon America to leave Vietnam to the communists. He said: “I really thought that love would save us. But now I’m wearing a Chairman Mao badge, that’s where it’s at. I’m just beginning to think he’s doing a good job” (Lennon, cited by Wenner, Lennon Remembers, p. 86). Lennon gave the violent Students for Democratic Society (SDS) $5,000, hoping it would assist those who were being sought by police for bombings. Though Lennon later characterized his radicalism as “phony” and motivated by guilt for his wealth (Newsweek, Sept. 29, 1980, p. 77), “its effect was deadly real” (Noebel, p. 78).
Even as early as the beginning of 1961, before they became international rock stars, the Beatles experienced rioting at their concerts. “In most places the appearance ended in riots, especially when Paul sang ‘Long Tall Sally,’ a standard rock number but done with tremendous beat and excitement. They were beginning to realize the effect they could have on an audience and often made the most of it, until things got out of hand. Paul says that some of the early ballrooms were terrifying” (The Beatles, p. 94). The Beatles fans used fire extinguishers on each other at the Hambledone Hall. Paul McCartney said: “When we played ‘Hully Gully,’ that used to be one of the tunes which ended in fighting.” Neil Aspinall, the road manager for the Beatles, testified that “they were beginning to cause riots everywhere.” A British rock fan magazine of that time observed that the reason for the violence was that the Beatles “symbolised the rebellion of youth.” When the Beatles broke into international fame, the rioting became even worse. The British parliament discussed “the thousands of extra policemen all around the country who were being made to do extra, and dangerous, duty because of the Beatles” (The Beatles, p. 184). At a concert in Manila in 1966, the Beatles were kicked and punched by the crowds because they were perceived to have been discourteous to the President’s wife. During the Beatles’ last tour in the States, the crowds surged forward and viciously bashed in the roof of the limousine they thought the Beatles were in. As it turned out, the Beatles had been smuggled out in an ambulance.
THE BEATLES AND PAGAN RELIGION. In the summer of 1967, the four Beatles and other rock stars, including Brian Jones and Mike Jagger of the Rolling Stones, visited Guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi during his trip to North Wales and listened to the teachings that he called the “Spiritual Regeneration Movement.” This false teacher claimed to have a path of regeneration other than that of being born again through faith in Jesus Christ. Later the Beatles, along with Donovan, Mia Farrow, Beach Boy Mike Love, and others, visited the Maharishi’s ashram on the banks of the River Ganges in India to study Transcendental Meditation. The Beatles soon split with the Maharishi. One reason was his suggestion that they turn over 25 percent of their income to his work. Another reason was they caught the Guru eating meat, which was not allowed to his disciples, and engaging in acts of immorality with female disciples. Lennon later composed a song about the Maharishi titled “Sexy Sadie.”
The Beatles had a central role in popularizing the Hare Krishna movement in the west. In December 1966, Hindu Swami Bhaktivedanta recorded an album of chanting titled Krishna Consciousness. The recording was done in New York City, but George Harrison was in New York at the time and had been joining in with Hare Krishna chanting sessions in Tompkins Square Park. He took the album back to England and the Beatles ordered 100 copies of it. Soon after that, Harrison and Lennon sang the Hare Krishna chant “for days” during a sailing trip through the Greek islands. Harrison reminisced, “Like six hours we sang, because we couldn’t stop once we got going.” In September 1969, at the invitation of the Beatles, the Swami moved to England and set up shop at Tittenhurst Park, an 80-acre estate owned by John Lennon. Three or four times a week he gave public lectures in a building at the north end of the property, about 100 yards from the main house, in which John and his second wife, Yoko, lived. A Hindu altar was set up there and eventually the building was called “the Temple.” The Swami, who took the impressive but blasphemous title of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founded the Hare Krishna movement. In June of 1969, Hare Krishna followers sang in Montreal, Canada, with John and Yoko on the recording of “Give Peace a Chance,” a song that would become extremely influential. John and Yoko chanted Hare Krishna on that song. “The Hare Krishna devotees had been visiting with the Lennons for several days, discussing world peace and self-realization” (Krishna web site, http://introduction.Krishna.org/Articles/2000/08/00066.html), and the Lennons recorded the song to promote the Hindu concept of world peace. That same summer, George Harrison produced a hit single, “The Hare Krishna Mantra,” which featured Hindus from the London Radha-Krishna Temple. It rose to the Top 10 and made the pagan Hare Krishna chant a household word in the West. Harrison co-signed the lease on the first Hare Krishna temple in London. He also gave them a mansion outside London, which they made into an international ashram, where hundreds of thousands of people have learned about Hinduism in the heart of the old British empire. Harrison financed the publication of Krishna magazine and put up $19,000 to print the first edition of the Krishna book in 1970. In his introduction to book, Harrison said, “As GOD is unlimited. HE has many Names. Allah-Buddha-Jehova-Rama: All are KRISHNA, all are ONE.” By 1982, a leader in the Hare Krishna movement said it is “growing like wildfire” and “Krishna consciousness has certainly spread more in the last sixteen years than it has since the sixteenth century” (Interview with George Harrison at the Hare Krishna web site). Today the complete works of Prabhupada are in all the major colleges and universities of the world. Millions upon millions have been influenced to think more favorably of pagan gods because of the Beatles.
Though Lennon rejected organized forms of Hinduism, he continued to believe in yoga till the end of his life. “If John’s energy level and ambition were running high, a half hour or more of yoga was next on the agenda. . . . Outside of walking, yoga was the only exercise he ever did. But spiritual rather than physical reasons motivated him to continue meditating. . . . [He believed yoga could help him achieve his greatest ambition, which was] a state of spiritual perfection by following The Way of The Masters: Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna and Gandhi. . . . John believed that if he meditated long and hard enough, he’d merge with God and acquire psychic powers, like clairvoyance and the ability to fly through the air. And he wanted those powers as badly as he wanted anything” (Robert Rosen, Nowhere Man, p. 18).
George Harrison also continued to follow Hinduism. Harrison admitted to Rolling Stone magazine that the drug LSD opened his mind to this pagan religion. “Although up until LSD, I never realized that there was anything beyond this state of consciousness. … I think for me it was definitely LSD. The first time I took it, it just blew everything away. I had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass” (Rolling Stone, Nov. 5 - Dec. 10, 1987, p. 48). The creator of LSD, Dr. Albert Hofman, also acknowledges that the hallucinogenic drug led him into Hindu meditation (Mark Spaulding, The Heartbeat of the Dragon, p. 75).
Harrison’s 1971 song “MY SWEET LORD,” which he published the year following the breakup of the Beatles, is a song of praise to the Hindu god Krishna. It mentions the long process of achieving Nirvana through meditation and mysticism. At the end of the song, there is a little ruse, when the words “hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah” cunningly and almost imperceptibly merge into “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.” Thus the song transforms from a form of Christian praise to the praise of the Hindu god Krishna. In fact, Harrison admits that he did that to trick people. In his 1982 interview with the Hare Krishna organization he said, “I wanted to show that Hallelujah and Hare Krishna are quite the same thing. I did the voices singing ‘Hallelujah’ and then the change to ‘Hare Krishna’ so that people would be chanting the maha-mantra before they knew what was going on! . . . My idea in ‘My Sweet Lord,’ because it sounded like a ‘pop song,’ was to sneak up on them a bit. The point was to have the people not offended by ‘Hallelujah,’ and by the time it gets to ‘Hare Krishna,’ they’re already hooked, and their foot’s tapping, and they’re already singing along ‘Hallelujah,’ to kind of lull them into a sense of false security. And then suddenly it turns into ‘Hare Krishna,” and they will all be singing that before they know what’s happened, and they will think, ‘Hey, I thought I wasn’t supposed to like Hare Krishna! . . . It was just a little trick really” (Harrison, Krishna web site, http://introduction.Krishna.org/Articles/2000/08/00066.html). The trick worked, because when it first came out, many Christians thought Harrison was glorifying the Lord of the Bible. Harrison said, “Ten years later they're still trying to figure out what the words mean” (Ibid.). The song was immensely popular. The album on which it appeared, All Things Must Pass, remained the top selling album in America for seven weeks straight. Another song on that album, “Awaiting on You All,” also deals with Hinduism and chanting.
Harrison also sang about Krishna in his albums Living in the Material World (1973), Dark Horse (1974), and Somewhere in England (1982). Living in the Material World had the lyrics: “I hope to get out of this place/ By the Lord Sri Krishna’s grace/ My salvation from the material world.” The Living in the Material World album cover contained a photo of the Hindu god Krishna and promoted the Bhagavad-gita, the Hindu scriptures. During his 1974 concerts in America, Harrison led audiences in the Hare Krishna mantra. In 1987, Harrison testified that Hinduism was still a part of his life. “I still believe the purpose of our life is to get God-realization. There’s a science that goes with that, the science of self-realization. It’s still very much a part of my life, but it’s sort of very personal, very private” (People, Oct. 19, 1987, p. 64). As we will see, Harrison remained committed to Hinduism to his death.
The song “Tomorrow Never Knows” was inspired by John Lennon’s “drug-addled readings of the Tibetan Book of the Dead” (Robert Seay, Stairway to Heaven, p. 140). The lyrics say: “Turn off your mind relax and float downstream. It is not dying. It is not dying. Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void. It is shining. It is shining. That you may see the meaning of within. It is being. It is being.” As we shall see, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were heavily involved in occultism toward the end of Lennon’s life.
Lennon “was strongly influenced by Van Gogh and Marcel Duchamp [depraved artists and philosophers who taught that life is meaningless]; these men were the textbook teachers of Lennon when he attended the Liverpool Art School. Both he and Yoko Ono were much involved in avant-garde art, and their music certainly reveals this fact” (H.T. Spence, Confronting Contemporary Christian Music, p. 41). In 1965 Lennon was asked, “What will you do when Beatlemania subsides?” He replied: “I don’t suppose I think much about the future. I don’t really [care]. Though now we’ve made it, it would be a pity to get bombed. It’s selfish, but I don’t care too much about humanity—I’m an escapist. Everybody’s always drumming on about the future but I’m not letting it interfere with my laughs, if you see what I mean” (Seay, Stairway to Heaven, p. 128).
Lennon and Yoko Ono were fascinated by the occult. He purchased entire sections of occult literature in bookstores (Gary Patterson, Hellhounds on Their Trail, p. 181). Occultist John Green was hired by Yoko Ono in 1974 to be her tarot card reader. “As time went on he became Lennon’s advisor, confidant and friend. Until October of 1980, he worked closely with them. They did everything according to ‘the cards.’ He advised them on all of their business transactions and investments, even to the point of how to handle the problems Lennon was having with Apple, the Beatles record company” (Song Magazine, Feb. 1984, p. 16, cited by More Rock, Country & Backward Masking Unmasked, p. 105). “People were hired and fired based on the findings of the tarot card reader, Charlie Swan; the Council of Seers, an assortment of freelance astrologers, psychics and directionalists; and Yoko’s own consultations with the zodiac and Book of Numbers” (Robert Rosen, Nowhere Man, p. 38). Yoko followed the Asian philosophy of katu-tugai, which combined numerology with cartography. According to the tenets of katu-tugai, traveling in a westerly direction ensures good luck. In 1977, Yoko spent a week in South America studying magic with a seven-foot-tall Columbian witch, who was paid $60,000 to teach Yoko how to cast spells. “The Lennons saw magic as both an instrument of crisis management and the ideal weapon” (Rosen, p. 62). They cast magic spells against their opponents in lawsuits (Geoffrey Giuliano, p. 119) and even against Paul and Linda McCartney when they simply wanted to visit the Lennons in 1980 (p. 208). Lennon also believed in UFOs, and he religiously read the tabloid reports on these. He claimed to have seen a UFO hovering over the East River in 1974, and his song “Nobody Told Me,” which appeared on his Milk and Honey album, was about UFOs over New York. Lennon was fascinated with a book called The Lost Spear of Destiny, which was about the spear used to pierce the side of Jesus Christ when He was on the cross. Lennon fantasized about finding the spear. When asked what he would do with it if he found it, Lennon replied that he could do anything in the universe (Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 81). Lennon and Yoko participated in séances, and Yoko believed that she was a reincarnation of a 3,000-year-old Persian mummy that she had purchased in from Switzerland (Giuliano, p. 157). She collected Egyptian artifacts, believing they possessed magical powers.
Yoko Ono believed the Hindu oyth that a son born on his father’s birthday inherits his soul when the father dies. Thus, they arranged to have their son, Sean, delivered by cesarean on Lennon’s 35th birthday, October 9, 1975 (Hellhounds on Their Trail, p. 183). She “was convinced the baby would be a messiah who would one day change the world” (Giuliano, p. 101).
Lennon and Yoko’s prognosticators frequently gave false predictions. When Yoko was pregnant, I Ching predicted the baby was a girl; but it was actually a boy (Giuliano, p. 88). In 1976, Yoko’s psychic advisers suggested that Lennon should not resume his musical career until 1982, but he died two years before then (Giuliano, p. 108). A psychic Yoko consulted in 1977 in Rome predicted that Lennon would become musically productive again in 1980 and that this phase would last two years, but Lennon died in 1980 (Giuliano, p. 144). In 1979, only a year before Lennon’s death, Yoko’s advisers forecast that she and John would have two more children (Giuliano, p. 192).
The Beatles immensely aided in the promotion of one-world, New Age thought. In 1967, for example, their song “All You Need Is Love” (referring not to the love of God through Jesus Christ or to love defined biblically, but to a vague humanistic “love”) was broadcast to more than 150 million people via a television program called Our World.
After his wife Linda’s death, Paul McCartney told the press that he was committed to “fate.” He said: “The Beatles had an expression: something will happen. That’s about as far as I get with philosophy. There’s no point mapping out next year. Fate is much more magical” (Paul McCartney, USA Today, Oct. 15, 1999, p. 8E).
LENNON’S VIOLENCE AND LACK OF LOVE. The man who sang about love (“all you need is love”) and peace (“give peace a chance”) was actually very noncompassionate, self-centered to the extreme, and violent. His biographers speak of “the infamous Lennon temper.” He frequently flew into rages, screaming, smashing things, hitting people. He admitted, “I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself and I hit. I fought men and I beat women” (Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 20). On one adulterous weekend fling with his secretary, May Pang, Lennon “accused her of cheating on him, and flew into a rage, trashing the room and trampling her eyeglasses” (Giuliano, p. 16). Lennon admitted: “I was a very jealous, possessive guy. A very insecure male. A guy who wants to put his woman in a little box and only bring her out when he feels like playing with her” (Ibid.). When the owner of a nightclub said something that upset Lennon, he “beat the poor man mercilessly” (Giuliano, p. 8). At a party in California in 1973, Lennon “went berserk, hurling a chair out the window, smashing mirrors, heaving a TV against the wall, and screaming nonsense about film director Roman Polanski being to blame” (Giuliano, p. 57). During the recording of his Rock ‘n’ Roll album, Lennon “was so out of control he began to kick the windows out of the car and later trashed the house” (Giuliano, p. 59). Lennon confided to a friend, “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to kill a woman, many women! It was only becoming a Beatle that saved me from actually doing it” (Giuliano, p. 20). When Yoko was pregnant with their son (Sean Ono Taro Lennon), John Lennon once kicked her in the stomach during an explosive confrontation; Lennon later hit the young Sean, even kicking him once in a restaurant (Giuliano, pp. 111, 138). In 1979, Lennon flew into a rage and trashed his apartment while “filling the air with a stream of profane invective” (Giuliano, p. 179). As for love, even Lennon’s celebrated relationship with Yoko Ono was filled with everything but love. After 1971, “John and Yoko’s great love was pretty much a public charade designed to help prop up their often flickering careers” (Giuliano, p. 147). In 1972, the Sunday Mirror described John Lennon and Yoko Ono as “one of the saddest, loneliest couples in the world . . . two people who have everything that adds up to nothing.” On their 10th wedding anniversary in 1979, Lennon thought Yoko was mocking him when she gave him a sentimental little poem referring to him as the ruler of their kingdom, and he flew into a selfish rage when she gave him an expensive pearl-and-diamond ring, claiming that “she never got him what he really wanted.” After that, Lennon retreated to his room and fell into a narcotic-induced slumber. After Lennon’s death, his son Julian (the son by his first wife) perceptively asked: “How can you talk about peace and love and have a family in bits and pieces, no communication, adultery, divorce?” (Giuliano, p. 220).
LENNON’S NEAR INSANITY. There were many evidences of insanity during Lennon’s final years. In the early 1970s, Lennon and Yoko underwent psychological therapy at the Primal Institute in California. Dr. Janov testified: “John was simply not functioning. He really needed help” (Giuliano, p. 18). The therapy consisted of giving oneself over to hysterical outbursts in an attempt to purge the psyche. Lennon would scream and wail, weep, and roll on the floor. “John eventually confessed to several dark sexual impulses: he wanted to be spanked or whipped and he was drawn to the notion of having a spiked boot heel driven into him. . . . Later in his life, John gathered together a collection of S&M-inspired manikins, which he kept tucked away in the bowels of the Dakota. These dummies, adorned with whips and chains, also had their hands and feet manacled. John’s violent sexual impulses troubled Yoko” (Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 19). Lennon was plagued by nightmares from which he awoke in terror (Giuliano, pp. 83, 137, 142). Though never really overweight, Lennon was obsessed with his weight and when he found himself overeating, he would hide in the master bedroom and force himself to vomit (Giuliano, p. 92). After the couple moved into the Dakota apartments in New York in 1973, Lennon spent most of the time locked indoors. He referred to himself as Greta Hughes, referring to Greta Garbo and Howard Hughes, famous recluses. “More and more, the increasingly reclusive Lennon began to shun his friends. . . . Lennon’s anxieties were rapidly getting the better of him. . . . Everybody’s working-class hero was sliding steadily into a morass of hopelessness and solemnity” (Giuliano, pp. 84, 97, 105). He “quietly slipped into a dark hibernation,” spending entire days in bed (Giuliano, p. 129). To help him conquer his $700 per day heroin habit, Yoko introduced him to a form of therapy involving self-hypnosis and “past-life regression.” He thought he was actually traveling back into his past lives. In one session he discovered that he had been a Neanderthal man. In another, he was involved in the Crusades during the Dark Ages. Lennon was so paranoid that when he visited Hong Kong in 1976, he did not leave his suite for three days. He thought he had multiple personalities, and he would lie down and imagine that his various personalities were in other parts of the room talking to him. “In doing so, Lennon was in such a state of mind that the slightest noise or shadow would terrify him” (Giuliano, p. 122). When he went out into the crowds he would hear “a cacophony of terrible voices in his head” which filled him with terror. When he returned to New York, he became a virtual hermit, “retreating to his room, sleeping his days away, mindlessly standing at the window watching the rain. Once Yoko found him staring off into space groaning that there was no place he could go where he didn’t feel abandoned and isolated…” (Giuliano, p. 142). In 1978, Lennon “locked himself into his pristine, white-bricked, white-carpeted Dakota bedroom. Lying on the bed, he chain-smoked Gitane cigarettes and stared blankly at his giant television, while the muted phone at his side was lit by calls he never took. . . . he stayed in a dark room with the curtains drawn…” (Giuliano, pp. 173, 174). By 1979, at age 39, “John Lennon was already an old man haunted by his past and frightened by the future” (Giuliano, p. 177). He swung radically “from snappy impatience to bouts of uncontrolled weeping” and could only sleep with the aid of narcotics. Yoko talked Lennon into visiting their Virginia farm in 1979, but he became so paranoid and shaken from the brief excursion into the public (they rode a train) that when they arrived back at their home in New York he “erupted violently, reducing the apartment to a shambles.” The man who is acclaimed as the towering genius behind the Beatles had “all but lost his creative drive and confessed he’d sunk so low he had even become terrified of composing” (Giuliano, p. 130).
THE BEATLES WERE ANTI-CHRIST AND BLASPHEMOUS. Their press officer, Derek Taylor, testified: “They’re [the Beatles] completely anti-Christ. I mean, I am anti-Christ as well, but they’re so anti-Christ they shock me which isn’t an easy thing” (Saturday Evening Post, August 8-15, 1964, p. 25). In 1964 Paul McCartney stated, “We probably seem to be anti-religious ... none of us believes in God.” McCartney still doesn’t believe in God in a traditional sense. In an interview with Larry King on June 21, 2001, he said: “The moment the man upstairs wants me, I am his. I know at some point I’m going to die, so I don’t worry about it. . . . I don’t have very strong religious beliefs, but I have spiritual feelings about that [death]” (Paul McCartney, interview on Larry King Live, CNN, June 12, 2001). We have seen that by age 11, John Lennon was permanently barred from Sunday services in his aunt’s Anglican church because he “repeatedly improvised obscene and impious lyrics to the hymns.” He did things even cruder and viler than that, such as urinate on members of the “clergy” from second floor windows and display homemade dummies of Christ in lewd poses. In 1966, Lennon created a furor by claiming: “Christianity will go, it will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that. I’m right and will be proved right. ... We’re more popular than Jesus now” (Newsweek, March 21, 1966). Though he claimed that he was misunderstood and gave a half-hearted apology (after learning that his remarks might financially jeopardize their United States tour), it is obvious what the head Beatle thought about Christianity. In his 1965 book A Spaniard in the Works, which was published by Simon and Schuster, Lennon portrayed Jesus Christ as Jesus El Pifico, a “garlic eating, stinking little yellow, greasy fascist bastard Catholic Spaniard.” In this wicked book, Lennon blasphemed the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by calling them “Fahter, Sock, and Mickey Most.”
Lennon’s 1970 album, Plastic Ono Band, contained two anti-christ songs. On “I Found Out,” Lennon sang, “I told you before, stay away from my door. Don’t give me that brother, brother, brother, brother. . . . There ain’t no Jesus gonna come from the sky.” In the song “God,” Lennon boldly said, “I don't believe in magic. I don't believe in Bible. I don't believe in tarot. I don't believe in Jesus. I just believe in me. Yoko and me. That’s reality.”
George Harrison financed Monty Python’s vile and blasphemous Life of Brian, which even Newsweek magazine described as “irreverent.” Time magazine called it an “intense assault on religion” (Time, Sept. 17, 1979, p. 101).
Paul McCartney described himself and the other Beatles as “four iconoclastic, brass-hard, post-Christian, pragmatic realists” (Time, Sept. 5, 1968, p. 60).
Aliester Crowley’s photo appeared on the Beatles’ Sargent Pepper’s album cover. The Beatles testified that the characters who appeared on the album were their “heroes.” John Lennon explained to Playboy magazine that “the whole Beatles idea was to do what you want … do what thou wilst, as long as it doesn’t hurt somebody” (Lennon, cited by David Sheff, The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, p. 61). This was precisely what Crowley taught.
Lennon claimed that the Beatles knew exactly what they wanted to do. “We know what we are because we know what we’re doing. … There were very few things that happened to the Beatles that weren’t really well thought out by us whether to do it or not” (Rolling Stone, Feb. 12, 1976, p. 92).
LENNON’S BRIEF FLIRTATION WITH CHRISTIANITY. In 1977, Lennon made a short-lived profession of faith in Christ while watching television evangelists. (This information was published recently in two different books—Robert Rosen, Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon and Geoffrey Giuliano, Lennon in America). Lennon began to use expressions like “Praise the Lord” and “Thank you, Jesus”; attended some church services; wrote a never-released song titled “You Saved My Soul”; took his son, Sean, to a Christian theater performance; called The 700 Club help line to request prayer for his troubled marriage; and tried to get Yoko Ono interested in Christianity. (Her first husband, Anthony Cox, had become a Christian in the 1970s, but she wanted nothing to do with it.) Even though he briefly professed faith in Christ, Lennon did not turn from his occultism. He continued to perform magical rites, consult the horoscope and prognosticators, and celebrate Buddha’s birthday (Giuliano, p. 133). Lennon’s Christian profession lasted only a few weeks. When two missionaries confronted Lennon with fundamental doctrines of the Bible such as the deity of Christ and a literal and fall, he rejected these (Giuliano, p. 134). In 1979 Lennon wrote a song titled “Serve Yourself,” in which he instructed his listeners: “You got to serve yourself/ Nobody gonna do it for you/ You may believe in devils/ You may believe in laws/ But you know you’re gonna have to serve yourself.” In interviews in December 1980, just before his death, he described his beliefs as “Zen Christian, Zen pagan, Zen Marxist” or nothing at all (Steve Turner, “The Ballad of John and Jesus,” Christianity Today, June 12, 2000, p. 86). He testified that he had never met a Christian who wasn’t actually a sanctimonious hypocrite (Giuliano, p. 134). Lennon also said that he did not believe in the Judeo-Christian doctrine that God “is some other thing outside of ourselves” (Spin, February 1987, p. 46). Thus to the very end of his short life Lennon continued to lead his followers into eternal destruction.
LENNON’S DEATH. Lennon was shot to death in December 1980 outside his apartment building in New York City. He was 40 years old. In an interview with Gannett News Service, Lennon’s murderer, Mark David Chapman, testified of how he prepared for the crime: “Alone in my apartment back in Honolulu, I would strip naked and put on Beatles records and pray to Satan to give me the strength. … I prayed for demons to enter my body to give me the power to kill” (cited by Evangelist Richard Ciarrocca, Observations, Dec. 1990). Chapman had also imitated Lennon, even taking his name for awhile, and marrying a Japanese woman.
Just hours before he was killed, Lennon had posed naked in a photo that was published on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
At the beginning of the Beatles song “Come Together,” Lennon mutters, “Shoot me.” One of the Beatles songs was “Happiness Is a Warm Gun.” The lyrics are: “When I hold you in my arms (Oh, yeah)/ And I feel my finger on your trigger (Oh, yeah)/ I know nobody can do me no harm (Oh, yeah)/ Because happiness is a warm gun, bang, bang, shoot, shoot.” Since Lennon’s death, Yoko Ono has attempted to contact him beyond the veil of death. The cover to her album It’s Alright shows Yoko and her son, Sean, standing in a park with a spirit form of Lennon standing next to them. Lennon’s other son, Julian (his only child by his first wife, Cynthia), claims in his song “Well, I Don’t Know” that he has communicated with his dead father (Muncy, The Role of Rock, p. 364).
When Lennon died, his estate was estimated to be worth $275 million. As of 2006 it is estimated at $775 million.
In summarizing the influence of John Lennon, rock researcher David A. Noebel stated: “The present rock ‘n’ roll scene, Lennon’s legacy, is one giant, multi-media portrait of degradation—a sleazy world of immorality, venereal disease, anarchy, nihilism, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, death, Satanism, perversion, and orgies” (Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, 1982, p. 15).
Lennon released his hugely popular song “Imagine” in 1971. He described it as “an anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic song.” Note the blasphemous words.
“Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try/ No hell below us, above only sky/ Imagine all the people living for today. Imagine there’s no countries; it isn’t hard to do/ Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too/ Imagine all the people living in peace. Imagine no possessions; I wonder if you can/ No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man/ Imagine all the people sharing all the world. Chorus. “You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one/ And some day I hope you’ll join us/ And the world will be as one” (“Imagine,” John Lennon).
In an interview that appeared in the London Times, Yoko Ono said, “The whole universe was made by words. In the beginning there was a word--not ‘God’ but ‘love’” (“Leave the McCartneys Alone,” Times, June 27, 2006, “Arts,” p. 18). Thus Ono is desperately holding on to the atheism she shared with Lennon.
The 2004 YouGov survey of people in Britain found that only 44% believe in God, 33% in heaven, and 25% in hell. Thus a whopping 75% have bought into Lennon’s dream. Prior to the Beatles, 80% believed in God.
As for me, Lennon can have his dream. I believe there is a holy God and there is a heaven and there is a hell and there is sin that separates man from God and there is a lovely Saviour who died for my sins so I don’t have to go there.
After Lennon was murdered, a memorial to him was set up in Central Park across from his apartment. Inscribed in the heart of the memorial is the word “Imagine.” When a crowd gathers every year to observe the anniversary of Lennon’s death, they sing this anti-christ song.
Nicky Hammerhead, drummer in John Lennon’s group, died in 1992 at age 32 from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident.
Authur Alexander, songwriter/R&B singer who wrote songs that were recorded by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, died in 1993 at age 53 of heart and respiratory problems.
HARRISON’S DEATH. George Harrison died of throat cancer on Nov. 29, 2001, at age 58, surrounded by old friends from the Hare Krishna movement. Ravi Shankar, the famous Indian musician who trained Harrison on the sitar in 1966, was with Harrison the day before he died and said Harrison “looked so peaceful” (“Harrison’s ashes to be spread in India,” Fox News, Dec. 3, 2001). Guada Chandra Das of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness told AFP that Harrison died to the sound of “chanting and praying” (“Harrison had a passion for East,” AFP, Dec. 2, 2001). After his body was cremated, his widow and 23-year-old son carried the ashes to India and sprinkled them in the Ganges river in Varnasi and Allahabad, India. They were accompanied by two Hare Krishna devotees who performed Hindu rites on the ashes. His widow asked fans to give a minute of meditation as a tribute to the musician at the hour of the scattering, which was 3 a.m. on Tuesday, December 4. Harrison’s longtime friend Gavin De Becker said that the former Beatle “died with one thought in mind -- love God and love one another” (Associated Press, Nov. 30, 2001). Sadly, though, the love that the Beatles sang about is not the true love of God in Jesus Christ which offers eternal salvation for sinful men. The god that Harrison worshipped and promoted was the Hindi-New Age god of self. In an interview he said, “The Lord, or God, has got a million names, whatever you want to call him; it doesn’t matter as long as you call him. . . . Every one of us has within us a drop of that ocean, and we have the same qualities as God, just like a drop of that ocean has the same qualities as the whole ocean. Everybody’s looking for something, and we are it” (“George Harrison’s Credo,” The Himalayan Times, Kathmandu Nepal, Dec. 17, 2001). Harrison also said in a 1982 interview with the Hare Krishna organization, “The word ‘Hare’ calls upon the energy of the Lord. If you chant the mantra enough, you build up identification with God. God’s all happiness, all bliss, and by chanting His names, we connect with him. So it’s really a process of actually having God realization, which becomes clear with the expanded state of consciousness that develops when you chant. . . . The best thing you can give is God consciousness. Manifest your own divinity first. The truth is there. It’s right within us all. Understand what you are” (George Harrison, “Hare Krishna Mantra, There’s Nothing Higher,” 1982, http://introduction.Krishna.org/Articles/2000/08/00066.html).
The Beatles generation, while rejecting the gross rituals of Hinduism, has adopted its core philosophy, which is self choosing its own way and being its own god. In Hinduism, God is like a smorgasbord, and the individual picks and chooses his favorites from among the myriads of gods, all the while also believing that himself is god, too. George Harrison spoke frequently about Jesus, but he did not mean the Jesus of the Bible but rather the “other christ” of Hinduism. When John Lennon blurted out in 1966 that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, he might have been right. The Beatles have had a vast influence upon the hearts and minds, not only of the unsaved, but also of professing Christians, and have helped to create a corrupt form of Christianity which merges paganism with Christ, a Christianity which believes it is wrong to judge sin and or to live by strict biblical standards or to say that there is only one way of truth. The average Christian today thinks nothing whatsoever of going to church on Sunday and then watching R-rated movies and listening to R-rated music the rest of the week; and he knows far more about Harry Potter and rock stars and sports idols than he does about the Bible. Indeed, 2 Timothy chapter 3 is upon us.
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The Beatles are the most popular and influential rock band of all time. The Beatles, in fact, are a synonym for rock & roll. Their music was re-released in 1987 via compact disc and continues to sell well, and it is played continuously on oldies radio stations. Their new album, titled “1,” debuted in November 2000 at No. 1 on pop charts in the U.S.A. and 16 other countries and sold more than one-half million copies the first week. The album contains 27 of the Beatles No. 1 singles. A recent television special, which was titled The Beatles Revolution, attracted 8.7 million viewers to its first showing on ABC and is being rebroadcast by cable networks. Their influence permeates Western society and can be felt throughout the world. Countless rock and rollers could give the same testimony as that of Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson: “Their arrival in America in 1964 was electrifying, one of the most exciting things that ever happened in my life, and their music has always and will always mean so much to me.”
Even Contemporary Christian musicians are Beatles fans. For example, Phil Keaggy pays “homage to the Beatles” on his 1993 Crimson and Blue album. Galactic Cowboys admits that their biggest influence is the Beatles. Caedmon’s Call often performs Beatles music. dc Talk opened its “Jesus Freak” concerts with the Beatles’ song “Help.” Jars of Clay names Jimmy Hendrix and the Beatles as their inspiration. The lead guitarist is said to be a “Beatles fanatic.”
Sid Bernstein observed, “Only Hitler ever duplicated [the Beatles’] power over crowds. … when the Beatles talk—about drugs, the war in Vietnam, religion—millions listen, and this is the new situation in the pop music world” (Time, Sept. 22, 1967, p. 60). Rock critic Vern Stefanic noted that “Lennon was more than a musician” because he promoted “an anti-God theme, and anti-America, pro-revolution stance” (Tulsa World, Dec. 12, 1980, p. 20). The Beatles even pioneered the longhaired look. “. . . the major impulse behind the rock androgyny of the Sixties was, in fact, of foreign origin . . . the Beatles. . . . the haircuts were so revolutionary by Sixties standards that they were viewed as signs of incipient transvestism” (Steven Simels, Gender Chameleons: Androgyny in Rock ‘n’ Roll, pp. 29,30,32). Paul McCartney admitted their role in destroying traditional convention: “There they were in America, all getting house-trained for adulthood with their indisputable principle of life: short hair equals men; long hair equals women. Well, we got rid of that small convention for them. And a few others, too” (Barbara Ehrenreich, “Beatlemania: Girls Just Wanted to Have Fun,” cited by Lisa Lewis, The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, p. 102).
HISTORY OF THE BEATLES. Called the “fab four,” the Beatles were composed of John Lennon (1940-1980), Paul McCartney (1942- ), George Harrison (1943-2001) and Ringo Starr (born Richard Starkey) (1940- ). McCartney and Harrison had Catholic mothers, but their fathers were not religious. Paul McCartney’s father, Jim, considered himself an agnostic. (When Jim McCartney died in 1976, Paul did not even attend the funeral.) Ringo’s mother and father separated when he was very young and later divorced. Ringo’s mother worked as a barmaid at times. Lennon’s mother and father (Fred) had gotten married without her parent’s approval, and Fred left his little family to join the merchant marines when John was very small. John’s mother later lived with another man and had two daughters, though she never divorced Fred. In later life Lennon expressed great hatred for his mother. His father’s second wife, Pauline, testified that the mere mention of her name “triggered a vicious verbal attack on [his mother], whom he reviled in the most obscene language I had ever heard…” (Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 17). John was raised largely by his mother’s sister, his Aunt Mimi. She sent him to an Anglican Sunday school, where he sang in the choir. By age 11, though, he was permanently barred from Sunday services because he “repeatedly improvised obscene and impious lyrics to the hymns” (Rock Lives, p. 114). Lennon testified that none of his church experiences touched him and that by age 19 he “was cynical about religion and never even considered the goings-on in Christianity.” It is sad that all Lennon experienced was corrupt Christianity in the form of dead Anglicanism. By 1964, McCartney testified that none of them believed in God and that religion “doesn’t fit into my life.” Their drug experiences changed that, but the “god” they came to believe in was not the God of the Bible. McCartney described his God as “a force we are all a part of.” Lennon said, “We’re all God.”
John Lennon was the undisputed leader of the Beatles. By the late 1950s, he was a profane and brawling street youth. He shoplifted, abused girls, drew obscene pictures, lied “about everything,” despised authority, and was the ringleader of a group of rowdies. The young Lennon was also very cruel. He tried to frighten old people and made fun of those who were crippled or deformed. The new music called rock & roll fit his licentious lifestyle. Later Lennon described himself as “a weird, psychotic kid covering up my insecurity with a macho façade” (Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 2). The other Beatles were also juvenile rowdies, if not outright delinquents. Even as a young teenager, Paul McCartney “became about the most sexually precocious boy of his year.” Paul also stole things and drew dirty pictures. They rebelled against their fathers and other authority figures. Ringo’s first job was as a bartender on a ferryboat. He was also a thief and a truant during his youth. Even George Harrison, the “only one whose family background was normal and undramatic,” rebelled against the way his father wanted him to act and dress. He later testified: “Going in for flash clothes, or at least trying to be a bit different … was part of the rebelling. I never cared for authority” (Hunter Davies, The Beatles, p. 39). Harrison was in frequent trouble at school. When they began playing together in bands in their teenage years, they played in wicked places such as strip joints. They testified that they “got drunk a lot” and “had a lot of girls” (The Beatles, p. 77).
The Beatles were powerfully influenced by American bluesmen and Elvis Presley, and they formed a rock band called the Quarrymen in the mid-1950s. Lennon testified that “nothing really effected me until Elvis.” McCartney said: “[Elvis] was the biggest kick. Every time I felt low I just put on an Elvis and I’d feel great, beautiful.” Ringo said, “Elvis changed my life.” By late 1957, the band included Lennon, Harrison, and McCartney, plus other young men on bass and drums. They combed their hair and dressed like Elvis and played rhythm & blues and Chuck Berry/Little Richard/Elvis type music. The group changed its name to the Silver Beetles in 1960, then simply to the Beatles, referring to the beat of their music. “John Lennon changed the name to Beatles to accent the drive of their music, the BEAT” (H.T. Spence, Confronting Contemporary Christian Music, p. 78). Drummer Ringo Starr joined the group in 1962 just before they recorded their first single. That year the Beatles played with Little Richard in a Liverpool, England, club. Little Richard said, “They were little, strange-looking fellows; they all had their little bangs” (Dallas Times Herald, Oct. 29, 1978). By 1963, “Beatlemania” was raging in England, and by 1964 the Beatles had leaped to international fame when “I Want to Hold Your Hand” skyrocketed to the top of the charts in the United States and they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. By April 1964, the Beatles had the top five best-selling singles in America.
The Beatles set the tone for rock music and for the hippie youth culture in the 1960s until the band broke up in 1969. They led a generation of rebellious youth from marijuana to acid to “free sex” to eastern religion to revolution and liberal political/social activism. David Noebel observes: “The Beatles set trends, and their fans followed their lead. They were the vanguard of an entire generation who grew long hair, smoked grass, snorted coke, dropped acid, and lived for rock ‘n’ roll. They were the ‘cool’ generation” (The Legacy of John Lennon, p. 43).
THE BEATLES AND IMMORALITY. Ringo reported, “We got drunk a lot. You couldn’t help it. We had a lot of girls. We soon realized that they were easy to get” (TV Guide, July 29, 1978, p. 21). McCartney said: “We didn’t all get into music for a job! We got into it to avoid a job, in truth—and get lots of girls.” Lennon’s 21st birthday party was “a huge drunken noisy orgy” (The Beatles, p. 177). Lennon called marriage a stupid scene” and a mere “bit of paper.” He frequented prostitutes even in his teenage years, living in immorality before he was married, and then in adulterous relationships during his two marriages. His first wife, Cynthia, was pregnant with a child when he finally married her in a clandestine ceremony in August 1962. No parents attended and the other band members dressed in black. On their wedding night, John hurried away for a performance. Lennon and Yoko Ono lived together for a year while he was still married to Cynthia and Ono was still married to an American filmmaker. When Cynthia returned from a vacation in Greece, she found Ono living with her husband in her own home. Ono was still married to another man when she announced that she was expecting a baby by Lennon. The mocking Two Virgins album cover featured the nude photos of Lennon and Ono on the front and back. (The album, which had no songs, was composed of sound effects and random voices.) Ono had been married several times and had a number of abortions before her alliance with Lennon. Lennon said, “…intellectually, we knew marriage was a stupid scene, but we’re romantic and square as well as hip and aware. We lived together for a year before we got married, but we were still tied to other people by a bit of paper” (Davies, The Beatles). The two finally got married in March 1969. Ono wore a short mini-skirt and sunglasses. On their honeymoon, Lennon and Ono spent seven days in a public bed in Amsterdam, “to protest violence.” Later Lennon spent 18 months with his and Yoko’s secretary, May Pang, while he was still married to Ono. Lennon was involved with an adulterous relationship with the wife of the Beatles’ manager, Malcolm Evans (Giuliano, p. 107). In his last year, he was addicted to pornography movies and other vile things.
After several years of immoral partying, Ringo Starr married Maureen Cox in February 1965. She was already pregnant with his child when he proposed to her after a night of drinking. In 1975, they went through a “rather messy, acrimonious divorce.” George Harrison had announced that he was in love with Ringo’s wife, and Ringo, for his part, admitted that he had an adulterous affair with actress Nancy Andrews. After the divorce, Ringo “started a wandering life.” In 1981, he married an American actress and former Playboy model.
George Harrison lived with Pattie Boyd for about a year before they were married in January 1966. In 1970, Eric Clapton wrote the famous rock love song, “Layla,” for another man’s wife; for the woman Clapton was illicitly “in love” with was George Harrison’s wife, Pattie. By 1973, Patti began living and traveling with Clapton. George Harrison and Pattie were finally divorced in 1977, and she married Clapton in 1979. That marriage only lasted a few years. Harrison married Olivia Trinidad Arias in 1978, one month after their son, Dhani, was born. Harrison also had an adulterous affair with Ringo Starr’s wife Maureen.
Paul McCartney lived with Jane Asher for many years. She told the press: “I certainly don’t object to people having children when they are not married, and I think it is quite sensible to live together before you are married” (Noebel, The Marxist Minstrels, p. 92). McCartney and Asher became engaged in January 1968, but she called it off after discovering his affair with an American woman. McCartney also lived with Linda Eastman for a few months before they were married in March 1969. They had a one-day engagement. She was four months pregnant at the time of the marriage. (It was her second.) Linda died in 1998.
George Harrison promised to reporters that the Beatles would not be afraid to use any four-letter words in their songs. In fact, obscenities are quite common in Beatles’ compositions (Noebel, The Marxist Minstrels, pp. 104, 92).
The Beatles manager, BRIAN EPSTEIN, was a homosexual. After hearing the Beatles in a London pub, he become obsessed with making John Lennon his lover. Two years after the Beatles’ wildly successful 1964 America tour, Lennon accompanied Epstein to Barcelona, Spain, for a weekend that possibly included homosexual activity (Hunter Davies, The Beatles, introduction to the 1985 edition). There were probably other homosexual episodes in Lennon’s life. Biographer Geoffrey Giuliano, who had access to Lennon’s diaries, concluded that there was “a pronounced homosexual element in Lennon’s makeup” (Lennon in America, p. 13). During his last days, Epstein was constantly in the depths of depression, living on pills, having tantrums with his staff and closest friends over petty things” (Hunter Davies, The Beatles, introduction to the 1985 edition). He was also involved in extremely sordid homosexual alliances. Before signing as the Beatles’ manager, he had been arrested for solicitation in a public restroom or park. Epstein died in 1967 at age 37 of a drug overdose. The death, from a cumulative effect of bromide in the drug Carbitral, was ruled accidental; but he had attempted suicide once before. Two other drugs were found in his body. At the time of his death, the Beatles were in Wales, sitting under the teaching of Hindu guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Britain had decriminalized homosexual activity one month before Epstein’s death.
THE BEATLES AND DRUGS. Testifying before the House Select Committee on Crime, popular family entertainer Art Linkletter, who lost a child to drug abuse, referred to the Beatles as the “leading missionaries of the acid society” (Crime in America—Illicit and Dangerous Drugs, October 1969). Media researcher Brian Key observed: “The Beatles became the super drug culture prophets … of all time” (Key, Media Sexploitation, 1976, p. 136). The student newspaper for the University of Wisconsin noted that the Beatles have “proselytized the use of drugs so subtly that words and conceptions once only common to drug users are found in sentences of teeny-boppers and statesmen alike” (Daily Cardinal, Dec. 3, 1968, p. 5, cited by David Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, p. 63).
The Beatles began taking drugs during their earliest band days before they became popular. They started by taking slimming pills to stay awake during long performances. They were high on “prellies,” a form of speed called Phenmetrazine and marketed as Preludin. John Lennon was so out of control one night, that “when a customer over-enthusiastically approached the stage, he kicked him in the head twice, then grabbed a steak knife from a table and threw it at the man” (Waiting for the Man, p. 107).
Many of the Beatles songs were about drugs. These include “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Day Tripper,” “Yellow Submarine,” “Help,” “Cold Turkey,” “Glass Onion,” “I Am the Walrus,” and “Penny Lane.” (The Beatles have admitted that these are drug songs.) BBC removed the Beatles’ song “A Day in the Life” from the air because of its drug implications. Their 1967 Sgt. Pepper’s album heralded the drug revolution in America (“Approbation on Drug Usage in Rock and Roll Music,” U.N. Bulletin on Narcotics, Oct.-Dec. 1969, p. 35; David Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, pp. 56,58). Time magazine reported that Sgt. Pepper’s was “drenched in drugs” (Time, Sept. 22, 1967, p. 62). The album “galvanized the acid subculture and gave LSD an international platform” (Waiting for the Man, p. 145). On the Sgt. Pepper’s album Ringo Starr sang, “I get high with a little help from my friends.” The members of the Beatles later openly admitted that the album was “a drug album” (Flowers in the Dustbin, p. 253). Sgt. Pepper’s was hugely influential, one of the best-selling albums of rock history. The London Times’ theater critic Kenneth Tynan observed that the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album was “a decisive moment in the history of Western civilization.”
Lennon admitted that he began taking LSD in 1964 and that “it went on for years. I must have had a thousand trips … a thousand. I used to just eat it all the time” (Rolling Stone, Jan. 7, 1971, p. 39; cited by Jann Wenner, Lennon Remembers, p. 76). John Lennon read Timothy Leary’s book The Psychedelic Experience in 1966, after Paul McCartney took him to the Indica, a hip New Age bookshop in London. Lennon wrote “Tomorrow Never Knows” after taking LSD and wrote the songs “Come Together” and “Give Peace a Chance” for Leary.
Lennon claimed that he had been on pills since he was 17 and soon after turned to pot. He said: “I have always needed a drug to survive. The others, too, but I always had more, more pills, more of everything because I am more crazy, probably (Noebel, The Marxist Minstrels, p. 111). Lennon admitted to a Rolling Stone interviewer that there were “a lot of obvious LSD things in the music.” Lennon said, “God isn’t in a pill, but LSD explained the mystery of life. It was a religious experience.” In an interview with Playboy, Lennon said the Beatles smoked marijuana for breakfast and were so stoned that they were “just all glazed eyes.” The Beatles took out a full-page ad in the London Times (June 1967), calling for the legalization of marijuana. In 1969, Lennon said: “If people can’t face up to the fact of other people being naked or smoking pot … then we’re never going to get anywhere” (Penthouse, Oct. 1969, p. 29, cited in The Legacy of John Lennon, p. 66). Paul McCartney told Life magazine that he was “deeply committed to the possibilities of LSD as a universal cure-all.” He went on to say, “After I took it, it opened my eyes. We only use one-tenth of our brain. Just think what all we could accomplish if we could only tap that hidden part. It would mean a whole new world. If politicians would use LSD, there would be no more war, poverty or famine” (Life, June 16, 1967, p. 105).
In 1968, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were arrested for marijuana possession. The drug conviction nearly cost Lennon the right to live in the United States. In April 1969, George Harrison and his wife, Patti, were arrested at their home and charged with possession of 120 joints of marijuana. The drugs were found by a police dog. They pleaded guilty and were fined. In 1972, Paul McCartney and his wife, Linda, pleaded guilty to smuggling marijuana into Sweden. In 1973, McCartney pleaded guilty to growing marijuana on his farm in Scotland. McCartney’s wife was arrested in Los Angeles in 1975 for possession of marijuana. In 1980, McCartney was arrested by customs officials at Tokyo International Airport when nearly a half-pound of marijuana was discovered in his suitcase. He was kicked out of Japan after being detained for nine days. In 1984, McCartney and his wife, Linda, were fined 70 pounds by Barbados magistrates for possession of marijuana. A few days later, Linda McCartney was charged again, for importing marijuana into Heathrow Airport.
Drugs were involved when Mel Evans, former Beatles road manager, was shot to death by police in 1976 during an argument involving a rifle. His girlfriend had called the police and told them that Mal had taken Valium and was “totally messed up,” and when he allegedly made threatening gestures with the gun, they shot him. The rifle was not loaded. He was in his 40s.
THE BEATLES AND REVOLUTION. The Beatles promoted the revolutionary overthrow of authority and communism in songs such as “Revolution No. 9,” “Working Class Hero,” Back in the USSR,” “Power to the People,” “Sometime in New York City,” “Give Peace a Chance,” “Bloody Sunday” (which called British police “Anglo pigs”), “Attica State” (“now’s the time for revolution”), “Angela” (which glorified communist Angela Davis), and “Piggies.” Lennon performed at anti-America rallies and called upon America to leave Vietnam to the communists. He said: “I really thought that love would save us. But now I’m wearing a Chairman Mao badge, that’s where it’s at. I’m just beginning to think he’s doing a good job” (Lennon, cited by Wenner, Lennon Remembers, p. 86). Lennon gave the violent Students for Democratic Society (SDS) $5,000, hoping it would assist those who were being sought by police for bombings. Though Lennon later characterized his radicalism as “phony” and motivated by guilt for his wealth (Newsweek, Sept. 29, 1980, p. 77), “its effect was deadly real” (Noebel, p. 78).
Even as early as the beginning of 1961, before they became international rock stars, the Beatles experienced rioting at their concerts. “In most places the appearance ended in riots, especially when Paul sang ‘Long Tall Sally,’ a standard rock number but done with tremendous beat and excitement. They were beginning to realize the effect they could have on an audience and often made the most of it, until things got out of hand. Paul says that some of the early ballrooms were terrifying” (The Beatles, p. 94). The Beatles fans used fire extinguishers on each other at the Hambledone Hall. Paul McCartney said: “When we played ‘Hully Gully,’ that used to be one of the tunes which ended in fighting.” Neil Aspinall, the road manager for the Beatles, testified that “they were beginning to cause riots everywhere.” A British rock fan magazine of that time observed that the reason for the violence was that the Beatles “symbolised the rebellion of youth.” When the Beatles broke into international fame, the rioting became even worse. The British parliament discussed “the thousands of extra policemen all around the country who were being made to do extra, and dangerous, duty because of the Beatles” (The Beatles, p. 184). At a concert in Manila in 1966, the Beatles were kicked and punched by the crowds because they were perceived to have been discourteous to the President’s wife. During the Beatles’ last tour in the States, the crowds surged forward and viciously bashed in the roof of the limousine they thought the Beatles were in. As it turned out, the Beatles had been smuggled out in an ambulance.
THE BEATLES AND PAGAN RELIGION. In the summer of 1967, the four Beatles and other rock stars, including Brian Jones and Mike Jagger of the Rolling Stones, visited Guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi during his trip to North Wales and listened to the teachings that he called the “Spiritual Regeneration Movement.” This false teacher claimed to have a path of regeneration other than that of being born again through faith in Jesus Christ. Later the Beatles, along with Donovan, Mia Farrow, Beach Boy Mike Love, and others, visited the Maharishi’s ashram on the banks of the River Ganges in India to study Transcendental Meditation. The Beatles soon split with the Maharishi. One reason was his suggestion that they turn over 25 percent of their income to his work. Another reason was they caught the Guru eating meat, which was not allowed to his disciples, and engaging in acts of immorality with female disciples. Lennon later composed a song about the Maharishi titled “Sexy Sadie.”
The Beatles had a central role in popularizing the Hare Krishna movement in the west. In December 1966, Hindu Swami Bhaktivedanta recorded an album of chanting titled Krishna Consciousness. The recording was done in New York City, but George Harrison was in New York at the time and had been joining in with Hare Krishna chanting sessions in Tompkins Square Park. He took the album back to England and the Beatles ordered 100 copies of it. Soon after that, Harrison and Lennon sang the Hare Krishna chant “for days” during a sailing trip through the Greek islands. Harrison reminisced, “Like six hours we sang, because we couldn’t stop once we got going.” In September 1969, at the invitation of the Beatles, the Swami moved to England and set up shop at Tittenhurst Park, an 80-acre estate owned by John Lennon. Three or four times a week he gave public lectures in a building at the north end of the property, about 100 yards from the main house, in which John and his second wife, Yoko, lived. A Hindu altar was set up there and eventually the building was called “the Temple.” The Swami, who took the impressive but blasphemous title of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founded the Hare Krishna movement. In June of 1969, Hare Krishna followers sang in Montreal, Canada, with John and Yoko on the recording of “Give Peace a Chance,” a song that would become extremely influential. John and Yoko chanted Hare Krishna on that song. “The Hare Krishna devotees had been visiting with the Lennons for several days, discussing world peace and self-realization” (Krishna web site, http://introduction.Krishna.org/Articles/2000/08/00066.html), and the Lennons recorded the song to promote the Hindu concept of world peace. That same summer, George Harrison produced a hit single, “The Hare Krishna Mantra,” which featured Hindus from the London Radha-Krishna Temple. It rose to the Top 10 and made the pagan Hare Krishna chant a household word in the West. Harrison co-signed the lease on the first Hare Krishna temple in London. He also gave them a mansion outside London, which they made into an international ashram, where hundreds of thousands of people have learned about Hinduism in the heart of the old British empire. Harrison financed the publication of Krishna magazine and put up $19,000 to print the first edition of the Krishna book in 1970. In his introduction to book, Harrison said, “As GOD is unlimited. HE has many Names. Allah-Buddha-Jehova-Rama: All are KRISHNA, all are ONE.” By 1982, a leader in the Hare Krishna movement said it is “growing like wildfire” and “Krishna consciousness has certainly spread more in the last sixteen years than it has since the sixteenth century” (Interview with George Harrison at the Hare Krishna web site). Today the complete works of Prabhupada are in all the major colleges and universities of the world. Millions upon millions have been influenced to think more favorably of pagan gods because of the Beatles.
Though Lennon rejected organized forms of Hinduism, he continued to believe in yoga till the end of his life. “If John’s energy level and ambition were running high, a half hour or more of yoga was next on the agenda. . . . Outside of walking, yoga was the only exercise he ever did. But spiritual rather than physical reasons motivated him to continue meditating. . . . [He believed yoga could help him achieve his greatest ambition, which was] a state of spiritual perfection by following The Way of The Masters: Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna and Gandhi. . . . John believed that if he meditated long and hard enough, he’d merge with God and acquire psychic powers, like clairvoyance and the ability to fly through the air. And he wanted those powers as badly as he wanted anything” (Robert Rosen, Nowhere Man, p. 18).
George Harrison also continued to follow Hinduism. Harrison admitted to Rolling Stone magazine that the drug LSD opened his mind to this pagan religion. “Although up until LSD, I never realized that there was anything beyond this state of consciousness. … I think for me it was definitely LSD. The first time I took it, it just blew everything away. I had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass” (Rolling Stone, Nov. 5 - Dec. 10, 1987, p. 48). The creator of LSD, Dr. Albert Hofman, also acknowledges that the hallucinogenic drug led him into Hindu meditation (Mark Spaulding, The Heartbeat of the Dragon, p. 75).
Harrison’s 1971 song “MY SWEET LORD,” which he published the year following the breakup of the Beatles, is a song of praise to the Hindu god Krishna. It mentions the long process of achieving Nirvana through meditation and mysticism. At the end of the song, there is a little ruse, when the words “hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah” cunningly and almost imperceptibly merge into “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.” Thus the song transforms from a form of Christian praise to the praise of the Hindu god Krishna. In fact, Harrison admits that he did that to trick people. In his 1982 interview with the Hare Krishna organization he said, “I wanted to show that Hallelujah and Hare Krishna are quite the same thing. I did the voices singing ‘Hallelujah’ and then the change to ‘Hare Krishna’ so that people would be chanting the maha-mantra before they knew what was going on! . . . My idea in ‘My Sweet Lord,’ because it sounded like a ‘pop song,’ was to sneak up on them a bit. The point was to have the people not offended by ‘Hallelujah,’ and by the time it gets to ‘Hare Krishna,’ they’re already hooked, and their foot’s tapping, and they’re already singing along ‘Hallelujah,’ to kind of lull them into a sense of false security. And then suddenly it turns into ‘Hare Krishna,” and they will all be singing that before they know what’s happened, and they will think, ‘Hey, I thought I wasn’t supposed to like Hare Krishna! . . . It was just a little trick really” (Harrison, Krishna web site, http://introduction.Krishna.org/Articles/2000/08/00066.html). The trick worked, because when it first came out, many Christians thought Harrison was glorifying the Lord of the Bible. Harrison said, “Ten years later they're still trying to figure out what the words mean” (Ibid.). The song was immensely popular. The album on which it appeared, All Things Must Pass, remained the top selling album in America for seven weeks straight. Another song on that album, “Awaiting on You All,” also deals with Hinduism and chanting.
Harrison also sang about Krishna in his albums Living in the Material World (1973), Dark Horse (1974), and Somewhere in England (1982). Living in the Material World had the lyrics: “I hope to get out of this place/ By the Lord Sri Krishna’s grace/ My salvation from the material world.” The Living in the Material World album cover contained a photo of the Hindu god Krishna and promoted the Bhagavad-gita, the Hindu scriptures. During his 1974 concerts in America, Harrison led audiences in the Hare Krishna mantra. In 1987, Harrison testified that Hinduism was still a part of his life. “I still believe the purpose of our life is to get God-realization. There’s a science that goes with that, the science of self-realization. It’s still very much a part of my life, but it’s sort of very personal, very private” (People, Oct. 19, 1987, p. 64). As we will see, Harrison remained committed to Hinduism to his death.
The song “Tomorrow Never Knows” was inspired by John Lennon’s “drug-addled readings of the Tibetan Book of the Dead” (Robert Seay, Stairway to Heaven, p. 140). The lyrics say: “Turn off your mind relax and float downstream. It is not dying. It is not dying. Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void. It is shining. It is shining. That you may see the meaning of within. It is being. It is being.” As we shall see, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were heavily involved in occultism toward the end of Lennon’s life.
Lennon “was strongly influenced by Van Gogh and Marcel Duchamp [depraved artists and philosophers who taught that life is meaningless]; these men were the textbook teachers of Lennon when he attended the Liverpool Art School. Both he and Yoko Ono were much involved in avant-garde art, and their music certainly reveals this fact” (H.T. Spence, Confronting Contemporary Christian Music, p. 41). In 1965 Lennon was asked, “What will you do when Beatlemania subsides?” He replied: “I don’t suppose I think much about the future. I don’t really [care]. Though now we’ve made it, it would be a pity to get bombed. It’s selfish, but I don’t care too much about humanity—I’m an escapist. Everybody’s always drumming on about the future but I’m not letting it interfere with my laughs, if you see what I mean” (Seay, Stairway to Heaven, p. 128).
Lennon and Yoko Ono were fascinated by the occult. He purchased entire sections of occult literature in bookstores (Gary Patterson, Hellhounds on Their Trail, p. 181). Occultist John Green was hired by Yoko Ono in 1974 to be her tarot card reader. “As time went on he became Lennon’s advisor, confidant and friend. Until October of 1980, he worked closely with them. They did everything according to ‘the cards.’ He advised them on all of their business transactions and investments, even to the point of how to handle the problems Lennon was having with Apple, the Beatles record company” (Song Magazine, Feb. 1984, p. 16, cited by More Rock, Country & Backward Masking Unmasked, p. 105). “People were hired and fired based on the findings of the tarot card reader, Charlie Swan; the Council of Seers, an assortment of freelance astrologers, psychics and directionalists; and Yoko’s own consultations with the zodiac and Book of Numbers” (Robert Rosen, Nowhere Man, p. 38). Yoko followed the Asian philosophy of katu-tugai, which combined numerology with cartography. According to the tenets of katu-tugai, traveling in a westerly direction ensures good luck. In 1977, Yoko spent a week in South America studying magic with a seven-foot-tall Columbian witch, who was paid $60,000 to teach Yoko how to cast spells. “The Lennons saw magic as both an instrument of crisis management and the ideal weapon” (Rosen, p. 62). They cast magic spells against their opponents in lawsuits (Geoffrey Giuliano, p. 119) and even against Paul and Linda McCartney when they simply wanted to visit the Lennons in 1980 (p. 208). Lennon also believed in UFOs, and he religiously read the tabloid reports on these. He claimed to have seen a UFO hovering over the East River in 1974, and his song “Nobody Told Me,” which appeared on his Milk and Honey album, was about UFOs over New York. Lennon was fascinated with a book called The Lost Spear of Destiny, which was about the spear used to pierce the side of Jesus Christ when He was on the cross. Lennon fantasized about finding the spear. When asked what he would do with it if he found it, Lennon replied that he could do anything in the universe (Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 81). Lennon and Yoko participated in séances, and Yoko believed that she was a reincarnation of a 3,000-year-old Persian mummy that she had purchased in from Switzerland (Giuliano, p. 157). She collected Egyptian artifacts, believing they possessed magical powers.
Yoko Ono believed the Hindu oyth that a son born on his father’s birthday inherits his soul when the father dies. Thus, they arranged to have their son, Sean, delivered by cesarean on Lennon’s 35th birthday, October 9, 1975 (Hellhounds on Their Trail, p. 183). She “was convinced the baby would be a messiah who would one day change the world” (Giuliano, p. 101).
Lennon and Yoko’s prognosticators frequently gave false predictions. When Yoko was pregnant, I Ching predicted the baby was a girl; but it was actually a boy (Giuliano, p. 88). In 1976, Yoko’s psychic advisers suggested that Lennon should not resume his musical career until 1982, but he died two years before then (Giuliano, p. 108). A psychic Yoko consulted in 1977 in Rome predicted that Lennon would become musically productive again in 1980 and that this phase would last two years, but Lennon died in 1980 (Giuliano, p. 144). In 1979, only a year before Lennon’s death, Yoko’s advisers forecast that she and John would have two more children (Giuliano, p. 192).
The Beatles immensely aided in the promotion of one-world, New Age thought. In 1967, for example, their song “All You Need Is Love” (referring not to the love of God through Jesus Christ or to love defined biblically, but to a vague humanistic “love”) was broadcast to more than 150 million people via a television program called Our World.
After his wife Linda’s death, Paul McCartney told the press that he was committed to “fate.” He said: “The Beatles had an expression: something will happen. That’s about as far as I get with philosophy. There’s no point mapping out next year. Fate is much more magical” (Paul McCartney, USA Today, Oct. 15, 1999, p. 8E).
LENNON’S VIOLENCE AND LACK OF LOVE. The man who sang about love (“all you need is love”) and peace (“give peace a chance”) was actually very noncompassionate, self-centered to the extreme, and violent. His biographers speak of “the infamous Lennon temper.” He frequently flew into rages, screaming, smashing things, hitting people. He admitted, “I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself and I hit. I fought men and I beat women” (Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 20). On one adulterous weekend fling with his secretary, May Pang, Lennon “accused her of cheating on him, and flew into a rage, trashing the room and trampling her eyeglasses” (Giuliano, p. 16). Lennon admitted: “I was a very jealous, possessive guy. A very insecure male. A guy who wants to put his woman in a little box and only bring her out when he feels like playing with her” (Ibid.). When the owner of a nightclub said something that upset Lennon, he “beat the poor man mercilessly” (Giuliano, p. 8). At a party in California in 1973, Lennon “went berserk, hurling a chair out the window, smashing mirrors, heaving a TV against the wall, and screaming nonsense about film director Roman Polanski being to blame” (Giuliano, p. 57). During the recording of his Rock ‘n’ Roll album, Lennon “was so out of control he began to kick the windows out of the car and later trashed the house” (Giuliano, p. 59). Lennon confided to a friend, “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to kill a woman, many women! It was only becoming a Beatle that saved me from actually doing it” (Giuliano, p. 20). When Yoko was pregnant with their son (Sean Ono Taro Lennon), John Lennon once kicked her in the stomach during an explosive confrontation; Lennon later hit the young Sean, even kicking him once in a restaurant (Giuliano, pp. 111, 138). In 1979, Lennon flew into a rage and trashed his apartment while “filling the air with a stream of profane invective” (Giuliano, p. 179). As for love, even Lennon’s celebrated relationship with Yoko Ono was filled with everything but love. After 1971, “John and Yoko’s great love was pretty much a public charade designed to help prop up their often flickering careers” (Giuliano, p. 147). In 1972, the Sunday Mirror described John Lennon and Yoko Ono as “one of the saddest, loneliest couples in the world . . . two people who have everything that adds up to nothing.” On their 10th wedding anniversary in 1979, Lennon thought Yoko was mocking him when she gave him a sentimental little poem referring to him as the ruler of their kingdom, and he flew into a selfish rage when she gave him an expensive pearl-and-diamond ring, claiming that “she never got him what he really wanted.” After that, Lennon retreated to his room and fell into a narcotic-induced slumber. After Lennon’s death, his son Julian (the son by his first wife) perceptively asked: “How can you talk about peace and love and have a family in bits and pieces, no communication, adultery, divorce?” (Giuliano, p. 220).
LENNON’S NEAR INSANITY. There were many evidences of insanity during Lennon’s final years. In the early 1970s, Lennon and Yoko underwent psychological therapy at the Primal Institute in California. Dr. Janov testified: “John was simply not functioning. He really needed help” (Giuliano, p. 18). The therapy consisted of giving oneself over to hysterical outbursts in an attempt to purge the psyche. Lennon would scream and wail, weep, and roll on the floor. “John eventually confessed to several dark sexual impulses: he wanted to be spanked or whipped and he was drawn to the notion of having a spiked boot heel driven into him. . . . Later in his life, John gathered together a collection of S&M-inspired manikins, which he kept tucked away in the bowels of the Dakota. These dummies, adorned with whips and chains, also had their hands and feet manacled. John’s violent sexual impulses troubled Yoko” (Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 19). Lennon was plagued by nightmares from which he awoke in terror (Giuliano, pp. 83, 137, 142). Though never really overweight, Lennon was obsessed with his weight and when he found himself overeating, he would hide in the master bedroom and force himself to vomit (Giuliano, p. 92). After the couple moved into the Dakota apartments in New York in 1973, Lennon spent most of the time locked indoors. He referred to himself as Greta Hughes, referring to Greta Garbo and Howard Hughes, famous recluses. “More and more, the increasingly reclusive Lennon began to shun his friends. . . . Lennon’s anxieties were rapidly getting the better of him. . . . Everybody’s working-class hero was sliding steadily into a morass of hopelessness and solemnity” (Giuliano, pp. 84, 97, 105). He “quietly slipped into a dark hibernation,” spending entire days in bed (Giuliano, p. 129). To help him conquer his $700 per day heroin habit, Yoko introduced him to a form of therapy involving self-hypnosis and “past-life regression.” He thought he was actually traveling back into his past lives. In one session he discovered that he had been a Neanderthal man. In another, he was involved in the Crusades during the Dark Ages. Lennon was so paranoid that when he visited Hong Kong in 1976, he did not leave his suite for three days. He thought he had multiple personalities, and he would lie down and imagine that his various personalities were in other parts of the room talking to him. “In doing so, Lennon was in such a state of mind that the slightest noise or shadow would terrify him” (Giuliano, p. 122). When he went out into the crowds he would hear “a cacophony of terrible voices in his head” which filled him with terror. When he returned to New York, he became a virtual hermit, “retreating to his room, sleeping his days away, mindlessly standing at the window watching the rain. Once Yoko found him staring off into space groaning that there was no place he could go where he didn’t feel abandoned and isolated…” (Giuliano, p. 142). In 1978, Lennon “locked himself into his pristine, white-bricked, white-carpeted Dakota bedroom. Lying on the bed, he chain-smoked Gitane cigarettes and stared blankly at his giant television, while the muted phone at his side was lit by calls he never took. . . . he stayed in a dark room with the curtains drawn…” (Giuliano, pp. 173, 174). By 1979, at age 39, “John Lennon was already an old man haunted by his past and frightened by the future” (Giuliano, p. 177). He swung radically “from snappy impatience to bouts of uncontrolled weeping” and could only sleep with the aid of narcotics. Yoko talked Lennon into visiting their Virginia farm in 1979, but he became so paranoid and shaken from the brief excursion into the public (they rode a train) that when they arrived back at their home in New York he “erupted violently, reducing the apartment to a shambles.” The man who is acclaimed as the towering genius behind the Beatles had “all but lost his creative drive and confessed he’d sunk so low he had even become terrified of composing” (Giuliano, p. 130).
THE BEATLES WERE ANTI-CHRIST AND BLASPHEMOUS. Their press officer, Derek Taylor, testified: “They’re [the Beatles] completely anti-Christ. I mean, I am anti-Christ as well, but they’re so anti-Christ they shock me which isn’t an easy thing” (Saturday Evening Post, August 8-15, 1964, p. 25). In 1964 Paul McCartney stated, “We probably seem to be anti-religious ... none of us believes in God.” McCartney still doesn’t believe in God in a traditional sense. In an interview with Larry King on June 21, 2001, he said: “The moment the man upstairs wants me, I am his. I know at some point I’m going to die, so I don’t worry about it. . . . I don’t have very strong religious beliefs, but I have spiritual feelings about that [death]” (Paul McCartney, interview on Larry King Live, CNN, June 12, 2001). We have seen that by age 11, John Lennon was permanently barred from Sunday services in his aunt’s Anglican church because he “repeatedly improvised obscene and impious lyrics to the hymns.” He did things even cruder and viler than that, such as urinate on members of the “clergy” from second floor windows and display homemade dummies of Christ in lewd poses. In 1966, Lennon created a furor by claiming: “Christianity will go, it will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that. I’m right and will be proved right. ... We’re more popular than Jesus now” (Newsweek, March 21, 1966). Though he claimed that he was misunderstood and gave a half-hearted apology (after learning that his remarks might financially jeopardize their United States tour), it is obvious what the head Beatle thought about Christianity. In his 1965 book A Spaniard in the Works, which was published by Simon and Schuster, Lennon portrayed Jesus Christ as Jesus El Pifico, a “garlic eating, stinking little yellow, greasy fascist bastard Catholic Spaniard.” In this wicked book, Lennon blasphemed the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by calling them “Fahter, Sock, and Mickey Most.”
Lennon’s 1970 album, Plastic Ono Band, contained two anti-christ songs. On “I Found Out,” Lennon sang, “I told you before, stay away from my door. Don’t give me that brother, brother, brother, brother. . . . There ain’t no Jesus gonna come from the sky.” In the song “God,” Lennon boldly said, “I don't believe in magic. I don't believe in Bible. I don't believe in tarot. I don't believe in Jesus. I just believe in me. Yoko and me. That’s reality.”
George Harrison financed Monty Python’s vile and blasphemous Life of Brian, which even Newsweek magazine described as “irreverent.” Time magazine called it an “intense assault on religion” (Time, Sept. 17, 1979, p. 101).
Paul McCartney described himself and the other Beatles as “four iconoclastic, brass-hard, post-Christian, pragmatic realists” (Time, Sept. 5, 1968, p. 60).
Aliester Crowley’s photo appeared on the Beatles’ Sargent Pepper’s album cover. The Beatles testified that the characters who appeared on the album were their “heroes.” John Lennon explained to Playboy magazine that “the whole Beatles idea was to do what you want … do what thou wilst, as long as it doesn’t hurt somebody” (Lennon, cited by David Sheff, The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, p. 61). This was precisely what Crowley taught.
Lennon claimed that the Beatles knew exactly what they wanted to do. “We know what we are because we know what we’re doing. … There were very few things that happened to the Beatles that weren’t really well thought out by us whether to do it or not” (Rolling Stone, Feb. 12, 1976, p. 92).
LENNON’S BRIEF FLIRTATION WITH CHRISTIANITY. In 1977, Lennon made a short-lived profession of faith in Christ while watching television evangelists. (This information was published recently in two different books—Robert Rosen, Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon and Geoffrey Giuliano, Lennon in America). Lennon began to use expressions like “Praise the Lord” and “Thank you, Jesus”; attended some church services; wrote a never-released song titled “You Saved My Soul”; took his son, Sean, to a Christian theater performance; called The 700 Club help line to request prayer for his troubled marriage; and tried to get Yoko Ono interested in Christianity. (Her first husband, Anthony Cox, had become a Christian in the 1970s, but she wanted nothing to do with it.) Even though he briefly professed faith in Christ, Lennon did not turn from his occultism. He continued to perform magical rites, consult the horoscope and prognosticators, and celebrate Buddha’s birthday (Giuliano, p. 133). Lennon’s Christian profession lasted only a few weeks. When two missionaries confronted Lennon with fundamental doctrines of the Bible such as the deity of Christ and a literal and fall, he rejected these (Giuliano, p. 134). In 1979 Lennon wrote a song titled “Serve Yourself,” in which he instructed his listeners: “You got to serve yourself/ Nobody gonna do it for you/ You may believe in devils/ You may believe in laws/ But you know you’re gonna have to serve yourself.” In interviews in December 1980, just before his death, he described his beliefs as “Zen Christian, Zen pagan, Zen Marxist” or nothing at all (Steve Turner, “The Ballad of John and Jesus,” Christianity Today, June 12, 2000, p. 86). He testified that he had never met a Christian who wasn’t actually a sanctimonious hypocrite (Giuliano, p. 134). Lennon also said that he did not believe in the Judeo-Christian doctrine that God “is some other thing outside of ourselves” (Spin, February 1987, p. 46). Thus to the very end of his short life Lennon continued to lead his followers into eternal destruction.
LENNON’S DEATH. Lennon was shot to death in December 1980 outside his apartment building in New York City. He was 40 years old. In an interview with Gannett News Service, Lennon’s murderer, Mark David Chapman, testified of how he prepared for the crime: “Alone in my apartment back in Honolulu, I would strip naked and put on Beatles records and pray to Satan to give me the strength. … I prayed for demons to enter my body to give me the power to kill” (cited by Evangelist Richard Ciarrocca, Observations, Dec. 1990). Chapman had also imitated Lennon, even taking his name for awhile, and marrying a Japanese woman.
Just hours before he was killed, Lennon had posed naked in a photo that was published on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
At the beginning of the Beatles song “Come Together,” Lennon mutters, “Shoot me.” One of the Beatles songs was “Happiness Is a Warm Gun.” The lyrics are: “When I hold you in my arms (Oh, yeah)/ And I feel my finger on your trigger (Oh, yeah)/ I know nobody can do me no harm (Oh, yeah)/ Because happiness is a warm gun, bang, bang, shoot, shoot.” Since Lennon’s death, Yoko Ono has attempted to contact him beyond the veil of death. The cover to her album It’s Alright shows Yoko and her son, Sean, standing in a park with a spirit form of Lennon standing next to them. Lennon’s other son, Julian (his only child by his first wife, Cynthia), claims in his song “Well, I Don’t Know” that he has communicated with his dead father (Muncy, The Role of Rock, p. 364).
When Lennon died, his estate was estimated to be worth $275 million. As of 2006 it is estimated at $775 million.
In summarizing the influence of John Lennon, rock researcher David A. Noebel stated: “The present rock ‘n’ roll scene, Lennon’s legacy, is one giant, multi-media portrait of degradation—a sleazy world of immorality, venereal disease, anarchy, nihilism, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, death, Satanism, perversion, and orgies” (Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, 1982, p. 15).
Lennon released his hugely popular song “Imagine” in 1971. He described it as “an anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic song.” Note the blasphemous words.
“Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try/ No hell below us, above only sky/ Imagine all the people living for today. Imagine there’s no countries; it isn’t hard to do/ Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too/ Imagine all the people living in peace. Imagine no possessions; I wonder if you can/ No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man/ Imagine all the people sharing all the world. Chorus. “You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one/ And some day I hope you’ll join us/ And the world will be as one” (“Imagine,” John Lennon).
In an interview that appeared in the London Times, Yoko Ono said, “The whole universe was made by words. In the beginning there was a word--not ‘God’ but ‘love’” (“Leave the McCartneys Alone,” Times, June 27, 2006, “Arts,” p. 18). Thus Ono is desperately holding on to the atheism she shared with Lennon.
The 2004 YouGov survey of people in Britain found that only 44% believe in God, 33% in heaven, and 25% in hell. Thus a whopping 75% have bought into Lennon’s dream. Prior to the Beatles, 80% believed in God.
As for me, Lennon can have his dream. I believe there is a holy God and there is a heaven and there is a hell and there is sin that separates man from God and there is a lovely Saviour who died for my sins so I don’t have to go there.
After Lennon was murdered, a memorial to him was set up in Central Park across from his apartment. Inscribed in the heart of the memorial is the word “Imagine.” When a crowd gathers every year to observe the anniversary of Lennon’s death, they sing this anti-christ song.
Nicky Hammerhead, drummer in John Lennon’s group, died in 1992 at age 32 from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident.
Authur Alexander, songwriter/R&B singer who wrote songs that were recorded by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, died in 1993 at age 53 of heart and respiratory problems.
HARRISON’S DEATH. George Harrison died of throat cancer on Nov. 29, 2001, at age 58, surrounded by old friends from the Hare Krishna movement. Ravi Shankar, the famous Indian musician who trained Harrison on the sitar in 1966, was with Harrison the day before he died and said Harrison “looked so peaceful” (“Harrison’s ashes to be spread in India,” Fox News, Dec. 3, 2001). Guada Chandra Das of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness told AFP that Harrison died to the sound of “chanting and praying” (“Harrison had a passion for East,” AFP, Dec. 2, 2001). After his body was cremated, his widow and 23-year-old son carried the ashes to India and sprinkled them in the Ganges river in Varnasi and Allahabad, India. They were accompanied by two Hare Krishna devotees who performed Hindu rites on the ashes. His widow asked fans to give a minute of meditation as a tribute to the musician at the hour of the scattering, which was 3 a.m. on Tuesday, December 4. Harrison’s longtime friend Gavin De Becker said that the former Beatle “died with one thought in mind -- love God and love one another” (Associated Press, Nov. 30, 2001). Sadly, though, the love that the Beatles sang about is not the true love of God in Jesus Christ which offers eternal salvation for sinful men. The god that Harrison worshipped and promoted was the Hindi-New Age god of self. In an interview he said, “The Lord, or God, has got a million names, whatever you want to call him; it doesn’t matter as long as you call him. . . . Every one of us has within us a drop of that ocean, and we have the same qualities as God, just like a drop of that ocean has the same qualities as the whole ocean. Everybody’s looking for something, and we are it” (“George Harrison’s Credo,” The Himalayan Times, Kathmandu Nepal, Dec. 17, 2001). Harrison also said in a 1982 interview with the Hare Krishna organization, “The word ‘Hare’ calls upon the energy of the Lord. If you chant the mantra enough, you build up identification with God. God’s all happiness, all bliss, and by chanting His names, we connect with him. So it’s really a process of actually having God realization, which becomes clear with the expanded state of consciousness that develops when you chant. . . . The best thing you can give is God consciousness. Manifest your own divinity first. The truth is there. It’s right within us all. Understand what you are” (George Harrison, “Hare Krishna Mantra, There’s Nothing Higher,” 1982, http://introduction.Krishna.org/Articles/2000/08/00066.html).
The Beatles generation, while rejecting the gross rituals of Hinduism, has adopted its core philosophy, which is self choosing its own way and being its own god. In Hinduism, God is like a smorgasbord, and the individual picks and chooses his favorites from among the myriads of gods, all the while also believing that himself is god, too. George Harrison spoke frequently about Jesus, but he did not mean the Jesus of the Bible but rather the “other christ” of Hinduism. When John Lennon blurted out in 1966 that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, he might have been right. The Beatles have had a vast influence upon the hearts and minds, not only of the unsaved, but also of professing Christians, and have helped to create a corrupt form of Christianity which merges paganism with Christ, a Christianity which believes it is wrong to judge sin and or to live by strict biblical standards or to say that there is only one way of truth. The average Christian today thinks nothing whatsoever of going to church on Sunday and then watching R-rated movies and listening to R-rated music the rest of the week; and he knows far more about Harry Potter and rock stars and sports idols than he does about the Bible. Indeed, 2 Timothy chapter 3 is upon us.
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IS IT WRONG TO LISTEN TO “CLEAN” SECULAR ROCK?
Feb/26/08 19:56
IS IT WRONG TO LISTEN TO “CLEAN” SECULAR ROCK?
February 26, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
I received the following question recently:
“I am a 14-year-old born-again Christian (proud of being born again) with a question about secular music. I do not approve of the rock lifestyle, but I like rock music. I have about 40% secular music and 60% Christian music on my iPod. I am very picky about the secular music on my iPod. I do not approve of music about sex, drugs, or alcohol. I also will not tolerate curse words and blasphemy. But throughout the Rock 'n' Roll scene, there are songs without any of this. I have found that it is hard to find one secular group that has none of this in any of their songs, but my philosophy has always been that I should judge the song instead of the singer. For example, John Lennon, one of the pill-popping adulterous Beatles who stated that he was more famous then Jesus, wrote a song entitled ‘Beautiful Boy’ for his son. I have always found this song sweet and enjoyed it, but the song ‘Imagine’ starts off with ‘Imagine there’s not heaven, it’s easy if you try.’ And I don't approve of that song. So this leads me to my question: In your opinion, should I not listen to any of the clean secular songs, because they are written by vulgar Rock 'n' Roll stars. I stress that I do not admire them, but I do love music a lot.”
REPLY FROM BROTHER CLOUD
That is an excellent question, and I will give five reasons why I believe this is an unscriptural and spiritually dangerous practice.
1. A major problem with rock music is the sensual back beat that appeals to the flesh; this is a serious issue regardless of the lyrics.
Certain kinds of rhythms produce certain effects on people. Dr. David Elkind, Chairman, Department of Child Study, Tufts University, warned: “There is a great deal of powerful sexual stimulation in THE RHYTHM of rock music.”
Blues, jazz, rock, reggae, rap, and other forms of modern dance music have an intimate and inextricable association with immorality, drunkenness, drug abuse, gambling, prostitution, and other evils. It is impossible to disconnect the music from this association. “Sex, drugs, and rock & roll” is not just a popular saying; it is a true saying because “sex, drugs, and rock & roll” go together like peas in a pod.
The chief component of this type of music is the heavy back beat. It is called the anapestic beat. This is a poetic term that describes poetry using three syllables with the emphasis on the third -- da-da-DA, da-da-DA. In music, the anapestic or back beat emphasizes the off beat. The anapestic rock beat goes one-TWO-three-FOUR or one-two-THREE, one-two-THREE. This is in contrast with a “straight” or march beat, which has the emphasis on the first beat or on each beat equally -- one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, or ONE-two-three-four, ONE-two-three-four.
This backbeat has been the chief characteristic of rock music from its inception. Consider these quotes:
“I felt that if I could take a ... tune and drop the first and third beats and accentuate the second and fourth, and add a beat the listeners could clap to as well as dance this would be what they were after” (Bill Haley, cited by Charlie Gillett, The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, p. 14).
Chuck Berry sang, “I dig that rock and roll music; it has a back beat; you can't lose it.”
Huey Lewis and the News sang, “When they play their music, ooh that modern music, they like it with a lot of style; but it's still that same old backbeat rhythm that really, really drives 'em wild” (“The Heart of Rock & Roll”).
Elvis Presley testified: “It’s the beat that gets to you. If you like it and you feel it, you can’t help but move to it. That’s what happens to me. I can’t help it” (cited by Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 35).
In his history of party music in Memphis, Tennessee, author Larry Nager observed that “…the forbidden pleasures of Beale Street had always come wrapped in the PULSING RHYTHMS of the blues” (Larry Nager, Memphis Beat). He is describing the back beat that is the basic element of rock & roll. That part of Beale Street near the river was infamous for its bars, gambling dens, and houses of prostitution. Those are the “forbidden pleasures” referred to by Nager. It is not happenstance that those wicked activities were accompanied by certain types of pulsing rhythms. And those old blues and boogie woogie rhythms were not always loud and boisterous. Like rock music, there were soft blues as well as hard.
Famous bluesman Robert Johnson knew that his guitar music had a licentious affect on women. He said, “This sound [the blues] affected most women in a way that I could never understand.”
B.B. King, one of the most famous of the bluesmen, made the same observation in his autobiography: “The women reacted with their bodies flowing to a rhythm coming out of my guitar…” (B.B. King, Blues All Around Me).
These blues musicians admit that their rhythms produce a sexual reaction.
Consider some other testimonies from secular social scientists, music experts, and from rock musicians themselves:
Graham Cray, former chairman of the Greenbelt Festival said: “In all pop music lyrics are secondary. POP IS MUSIC OF FEELING, SPOKEN PRIMARILY TO THE BODY and only secondarily to the intellect.”
Dr. Simon Frith said, “We respond to the materiality of rock’s sounds, and THE ROCK EXPERIENCE IS ESSENTIALLY EROTIC” (Sound Effects, p. 164).
Gene Simmons of Kiss said, “That’s what rock is all about--SEX WITH A 100 MEGATON BOMB, THE BEAT!” (Entertainment Tonight, ABC, Dec. 10, 1987).
Irwin Sibler said, “The great strength of rock & roll lies in its beat. It is a music which is BASICALLY SEXUAL, unpuritan...” (Sing Out, May 1965, p. 63).
Frank Zappa of the Mothers of Invention said, “ROCK MUSIC IS SEX. The big beat matches the body’s rhythms” (Life, June 28, 1968).
Robert Palmer said: “I believe in the transformative power of rock and roll … this transformative power inheres not so much in the words of songs or the stances of the stars, but in the music itself--in the SOUND, and above all, in the BEAT” (Rock & Roll an Unruly History, p. 12).
John Lennon said: “Because it is PRIMITIVE enough and has no bull, really, the best stuff, and it GETS THROUGH TO YOU BY ITS BEAT” (Rolling Stone, Feb. 12, 1976, p 100).
Rapper Luke Campbell of 2 Live Crew says, “The sex is definitely in the music, and SEX IS IN ALL ASPECTS IN THE MUSIC.”
Jan Berry of Jan and Dean says, “The THROBBING BEAT OF ROCK PROVIDES A VITAL SEXUAL RELEASE for adolescent audiences” (cited by Ken Blanchard, Pop Goes the Gospel).
Observe that these statements do not refer to the words of rock music but to the back beat rhythm in particular. This is a loud warning to those who have ears to hear.
“For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would” (Gal. 5:17).
2. The rock rhythm is addictive.
By listening to rock, one develops an appetite for and addiction to this type of music, and like all addictions this one is never content. Steven Tyler of Aerosmith said, “Rock music is the strongest drug in the world.” Timothy Leary said: “Don’t listen to the words, it’s the music that has its own message. ... I’ve been stoned on the music many times” (Politics of Ecstasy).
The child of God should avoid any fleshly thing that has this type of addictive power.
“Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway” (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).
3. “Clean” rock is a dangerous bridge to the evil things and unclean spirits that permeate rock and roll.
The Bible warns God’s people to stay away from evil. There is great spiritual danger in dabbling with the world’s toys. To play around with rock music in the search for “clean” songs is a very dangerous occupation. It is playing with fire! Rock music has captured the heart and soul of multitudes of people and carried them into the depths of satanic deception and eternal destruction.
“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them” (Ephesians 5:11).
“Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Corinthians 15:33).
“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8).
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever” (1 John 2:15-17).
“Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4).
4. The listener has to sort through the huge amount of garbage in rock music to find a few relatively innocent songs.
Is this a safe and wise use of this brief earthly life?
“See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is” (Eph. 5:15-17).
5. We must be concerned about our influence on others.
If I listen to “clean rock,” it is probable that my influence will encourage others to listen to music that is much worse. I might be exceedingly careful about what rock songs I listen to, but it is doubtful if others within my sphere of influence will be so careful.
“All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth. . . . Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God” (1 Cor. 10:23, 24, 31).
“It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak” (Rom. 14:21).
Steve Peters, who does not believe all rock & roll is wrong for Christians, nevertheless made the following important admission: “Just about the time I think I’ve found a good-clean-acceptable secular musician, they blow it on their next album or tour. And if I have recommended them, suddenly I find myself scrambling to tell thousands of teens who know--I WAS WRONG” (The Truth about Rock, p. 90). We would remind Mr. Peters that he will never undo all the damage he has caused by recommending secular rock even hesitatingly and tentatively. Such recommendations by Christian authority figures are a bright green signal to young people that it is alright to explore the filthy world of rock. VERY few of them will be as cautious about what they listen to as Mr. Peters says he is and very few will escape the moral and spiritual pollutions that permeate the world of rock.
I will conclude with a statement by our friend Brian Snider, who also came out of a life of heavy involvement with rock music and its wicked lifestyle. I asked him to reply to this same question:
“I guess it’s just a matter of getting some personal conviction about the issue of fellowship with the ‘unfruitful works of darkness’ (Ephesians 5:11). In that passage, it says that the works are ‘unfruitful.’ You could take that to mean things that don’t necessarily drag you down into deep sin, but that don’t help you and could possibly hinder you.
The Bible says we should ‘approve things that are excellent’ (Philippians 1:10), not just things that are middling or near the world. I am familiar with the song ‘Beautiful Boy’ and it is a pretty song, but I knew when I got saved I’d have to give up rock music--not just the overtly wicked stuff--but I just felt that I would have to eliminate all John Lennon.
“I doubt if the young person who wrote to you loves rock music more than me or you. I love it a lot, too. Giving up rock is a bitter pill for the flesh to swallow, but I’d recommend swallowing it.
“Also, there are a lot of attachments with rock music that go far beyond the music. The attitudes, lifestyles, immorality, coolness, dress, etc., that we ought to distance ourselves from.
“There are some Beatles songs that, as far as the melodies go, I wouldn’t necessarily mind having on my iPod (‘Yesterday,’ ‘Norwegian Wood,’ ‘Blackbird,’ etc.). But even then the lyrics aren’t always wholesome, and the fact is, you can’t separate the music from the men or women who made it” (Brian Snider, February 20, 2008).
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]
February 26, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -
I received the following question recently:
“I am a 14-year-old born-again Christian (proud of being born again) with a question about secular music. I do not approve of the rock lifestyle, but I like rock music. I have about 40% secular music and 60% Christian music on my iPod. I am very picky about the secular music on my iPod. I do not approve of music about sex, drugs, or alcohol. I also will not tolerate curse words and blasphemy. But throughout the Rock 'n' Roll scene, there are songs without any of this. I have found that it is hard to find one secular group that has none of this in any of their songs, but my philosophy has always been that I should judge the song instead of the singer. For example, John Lennon, one of the pill-popping adulterous Beatles who stated that he was more famous then Jesus, wrote a song entitled ‘Beautiful Boy’ for his son. I have always found this song sweet and enjoyed it, but the song ‘Imagine’ starts off with ‘Imagine there’s not heaven, it’s easy if you try.’ And I don't approve of that song. So this leads me to my question: In your opinion, should I not listen to any of the clean secular songs, because they are written by vulgar Rock 'n' Roll stars. I stress that I do not admire them, but I do love music a lot.”
REPLY FROM BROTHER CLOUD
That is an excellent question, and I will give five reasons why I believe this is an unscriptural and spiritually dangerous practice.
1. A major problem with rock music is the sensual back beat that appeals to the flesh; this is a serious issue regardless of the lyrics.
Certain kinds of rhythms produce certain effects on people. Dr. David Elkind, Chairman, Department of Child Study, Tufts University, warned: “There is a great deal of powerful sexual stimulation in THE RHYTHM of rock music.”
Blues, jazz, rock, reggae, rap, and other forms of modern dance music have an intimate and inextricable association with immorality, drunkenness, drug abuse, gambling, prostitution, and other evils. It is impossible to disconnect the music from this association. “Sex, drugs, and rock & roll” is not just a popular saying; it is a true saying because “sex, drugs, and rock & roll” go together like peas in a pod.
The chief component of this type of music is the heavy back beat. It is called the anapestic beat. This is a poetic term that describes poetry using three syllables with the emphasis on the third -- da-da-DA, da-da-DA. In music, the anapestic or back beat emphasizes the off beat. The anapestic rock beat goes one-TWO-three-FOUR or one-two-THREE, one-two-THREE. This is in contrast with a “straight” or march beat, which has the emphasis on the first beat or on each beat equally -- one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, or ONE-two-three-four, ONE-two-three-four.
This backbeat has been the chief characteristic of rock music from its inception. Consider these quotes:
“I felt that if I could take a ... tune and drop the first and third beats and accentuate the second and fourth, and add a beat the listeners could clap to as well as dance this would be what they were after” (Bill Haley, cited by Charlie Gillett, The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, p. 14).
Chuck Berry sang, “I dig that rock and roll music; it has a back beat; you can't lose it.”
Huey Lewis and the News sang, “When they play their music, ooh that modern music, they like it with a lot of style; but it's still that same old backbeat rhythm that really, really drives 'em wild” (“The Heart of Rock & Roll”).
Elvis Presley testified: “It’s the beat that gets to you. If you like it and you feel it, you can’t help but move to it. That’s what happens to me. I can’t help it” (cited by Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 35).
In his history of party music in Memphis, Tennessee, author Larry Nager observed that “…the forbidden pleasures of Beale Street had always come wrapped in the PULSING RHYTHMS of the blues” (Larry Nager, Memphis Beat). He is describing the back beat that is the basic element of rock & roll. That part of Beale Street near the river was infamous for its bars, gambling dens, and houses of prostitution. Those are the “forbidden pleasures” referred to by Nager. It is not happenstance that those wicked activities were accompanied by certain types of pulsing rhythms. And those old blues and boogie woogie rhythms were not always loud and boisterous. Like rock music, there were soft blues as well as hard.
Famous bluesman Robert Johnson knew that his guitar music had a licentious affect on women. He said, “This sound [the blues] affected most women in a way that I could never understand.”
B.B. King, one of the most famous of the bluesmen, made the same observation in his autobiography: “The women reacted with their bodies flowing to a rhythm coming out of my guitar…” (B.B. King, Blues All Around Me).
These blues musicians admit that their rhythms produce a sexual reaction.
Consider some other testimonies from secular social scientists, music experts, and from rock musicians themselves:
Graham Cray, former chairman of the Greenbelt Festival said: “In all pop music lyrics are secondary. POP IS MUSIC OF FEELING, SPOKEN PRIMARILY TO THE BODY and only secondarily to the intellect.”
Dr. Simon Frith said, “We respond to the materiality of rock’s sounds, and THE ROCK EXPERIENCE IS ESSENTIALLY EROTIC” (Sound Effects, p. 164).
Gene Simmons of Kiss said, “That’s what rock is all about--SEX WITH A 100 MEGATON BOMB, THE BEAT!” (Entertainment Tonight, ABC, Dec. 10, 1987).
Irwin Sibler said, “The great strength of rock & roll lies in its beat. It is a music which is BASICALLY SEXUAL, unpuritan...” (Sing Out, May 1965, p. 63).
Frank Zappa of the Mothers of Invention said, “ROCK MUSIC IS SEX. The big beat matches the body’s rhythms” (Life, June 28, 1968).
Robert Palmer said: “I believe in the transformative power of rock and roll … this transformative power inheres not so much in the words of songs or the stances of the stars, but in the music itself--in the SOUND, and above all, in the BEAT” (Rock & Roll an Unruly History, p. 12).
John Lennon said: “Because it is PRIMITIVE enough and has no bull, really, the best stuff, and it GETS THROUGH TO YOU BY ITS BEAT” (Rolling Stone, Feb. 12, 1976, p 100).
Rapper Luke Campbell of 2 Live Crew says, “The sex is definitely in the music, and SEX IS IN ALL ASPECTS IN THE MUSIC.”
Jan Berry of Jan and Dean says, “The THROBBING BEAT OF ROCK PROVIDES A VITAL SEXUAL RELEASE for adolescent audiences” (cited by Ken Blanchard, Pop Goes the Gospel).
Observe that these statements do not refer to the words of rock music but to the back beat rhythm in particular. This is a loud warning to those who have ears to hear.
“For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would” (Gal. 5:17).
2. The rock rhythm is addictive.
By listening to rock, one develops an appetite for and addiction to this type of music, and like all addictions this one is never content. Steven Tyler of Aerosmith said, “Rock music is the strongest drug in the world.” Timothy Leary said: “Don’t listen to the words, it’s the music that has its own message. ... I’ve been stoned on the music many times” (Politics of Ecstasy).
The child of God should avoid any fleshly thing that has this type of addictive power.
“Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway” (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).
3. “Clean” rock is a dangerous bridge to the evil things and unclean spirits that permeate rock and roll.
The Bible warns God’s people to stay away from evil. There is great spiritual danger in dabbling with the world’s toys. To play around with rock music in the search for “clean” songs is a very dangerous occupation. It is playing with fire! Rock music has captured the heart and soul of multitudes of people and carried them into the depths of satanic deception and eternal destruction.
“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them” (Ephesians 5:11).
“Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Corinthians 15:33).
“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8).
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever” (1 John 2:15-17).
“Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4).
4. The listener has to sort through the huge amount of garbage in rock music to find a few relatively innocent songs.
Is this a safe and wise use of this brief earthly life?
“See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is” (Eph. 5:15-17).
5. We must be concerned about our influence on others.
If I listen to “clean rock,” it is probable that my influence will encourage others to listen to music that is much worse. I might be exceedingly careful about what rock songs I listen to, but it is doubtful if others within my sphere of influence will be so careful.
“All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth. . . . Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God” (1 Cor. 10:23, 24, 31).
“It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak” (Rom. 14:21).
Steve Peters, who does not believe all rock & roll is wrong for Christians, nevertheless made the following important admission: “Just about the time I think I’ve found a good-clean-acceptable secular musician, they blow it on their next album or tour. And if I have recommended them, suddenly I find myself scrambling to tell thousands of teens who know--I WAS WRONG” (The Truth about Rock, p. 90). We would remind Mr. Peters that he will never undo all the damage he has caused by recommending secular rock even hesitatingly and tentatively. Such recommendations by Christian authority figures are a bright green signal to young people that it is alright to explore the filthy world of rock. VERY few of them will be as cautious about what they listen to as Mr. Peters says he is and very few will escape the moral and spiritual pollutions that permeate the world of rock.
I will conclude with a statement by our friend Brian Snider, who also came out of a life of heavy involvement with rock music and its wicked lifestyle. I asked him to reply to this same question:
“I guess it’s just a matter of getting some personal conviction about the issue of fellowship with the ‘unfruitful works of darkness’ (Ephesians 5:11). In that passage, it says that the works are ‘unfruitful.’ You could take that to mean things that don’t necessarily drag you down into deep sin, but that don’t help you and could possibly hinder you.
The Bible says we should ‘approve things that are excellent’ (Philippians 1:10), not just things that are middling or near the world. I am familiar with the song ‘Beautiful Boy’ and it is a pretty song, but I knew when I got saved I’d have to give up rock music--not just the overtly wicked stuff--but I just felt that I would have to eliminate all John Lennon.
“I doubt if the young person who wrote to you loves rock music more than me or you. I love it a lot, too. Giving up rock is a bitter pill for the flesh to swallow, but I’d recommend swallowing it.
“Also, there are a lot of attachments with rock music that go far beyond the music. The attitudes, lifestyles, immorality, coolness, dress, etc., that we ought to distance ourselves from.
“There are some Beatles songs that, as far as the melodies go, I wouldn’t necessarily mind having on my iPod (‘Yesterday,’ ‘Norwegian Wood,’ ‘Blackbird,’ etc.). But even then the lyrics aren’t always wholesome, and the fact is, you can’t separate the music from the men or women who made it” (Brian Snider, February 20, 2008).
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]