The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ’n’ Roll

345 Pages·2018·29.986 MB·English

by  Randall J. Stephens

THE DEV IL’S MUSIC

THE DEV IL’S MUSIC
How Christians Inspired, Condemned,
and Embraced Rock ’n’ Roll
Randall J. Stephens
Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts
London, England
2018
Copyright © 2018 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
First printing
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Stephens, Randall J., 1973– author.
Title: The dev il’s music : how Christians inspired, condemned, and embraced
rock ’n’ roll / Randall J. Stephens.
Description: Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts : Harvard University Press, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017038288 | ISBN 9780674980846 (cloth)
Subjects: LCSH: Rock m usic— Religious aspects— Chris tian ity. | Rock
music— History and criticism. | Rock music— United States— History and
criticism. | Christian rock music— United States— History and criticism. |
Fundamentalism— United States— History.
Classification: LCC ML3921.8.R63 S74 2018 | DDC 306.4/84260973— dc23
LC rec ord available at https:// lccn.loc . gov / 2017038288
Jacket photograph: Explo ’72 Dallas, Texas by Paul Slade, 1972 © Paris March/Getty Images
Jacket design: Tim Jones
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
1 Pentecostalism and Rock ’n’ Roll
in the 1950s 27
2 Race, Religion, and Rock ’n’ Roll 65
3 The Beatles, Chris tian ity, and the
Conservative Backlash 102
4 The Advent of Jesus Rock 146
5 The Fundamentalist Reaction to
Christian Rock 190
Epilogue 236
Notes 251
Acknowl edgments 319
Index 323

INTRODUCTION
In 2014, the rock ’n’ roll and country m usic legend Jerry Lee Lewis was
seventy- nine years old. He had entered a quiet, more reflective phase
of his life. And he was ready to talk a little about it. Somehow, he had
survived, whereas other first-g eneration dynamos like Elvis Presley, Roy
Orbison, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and so many others had passed
away. The Ferriday, Louisiana, native’s sensational career, starting in the
mid-1950s, had been marked by a frenetic stage show, wild pounding
on the piano, and songs that r ose to a blistering crescendo. His 1957 hit
song “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” rose to number three on the pop
chart and topped both the country and the rhythm and blues charts.
The follow-up, “ Great Balls of Fire,” scored similar success. But in the
harsh glare of the public spotlight, Lewis also suffered the indignities of
marital scandal, came under the watchful eye of the Internal Revenue
Ser vice, had run- ins with the law, and succumbed to drugs and al-
cohol. One of his sons drowned in a swimming pool. Another died in
a jeep accident.1
His c areer suffered a particularly strange blow on November 23, 1976.
The Killer, a nickname that stuck, showed up at the gates of Elvis Presley’s
Graceland mansion in the m iddle of the night, waving a gun and shouting
obscenities. He wanted to see the hermit King. Elvis did not go out to
meet the maniacal Lewis. Instead, police came to arrest him at three in
the morning. “Talk about rock- and- roll depravados,” cracked the critic
Nick Tosches, “Jerry Lee makes them all look like Wayne Newton.” He
dubbed the performer a “Baptist Dionysos aflame with glorious cow-
ardice and self- killing guilt.”2
Late in life, however, it seemed as though Jerry Lee wanted to set
things right. “I put God first now, always,” an older, chastened Jerry
Lee told Patrick Doyle of Rolling Stone magazine. “I pray all the time,
2 THE DEVIL’S MUSIC
really. I do a lot of what’s required,” he confessed. “I pay my tithe offer-
ings at the Church of God, in Cleveland, Tennessee. That’s how I was
raised.” That pentecostal denomination, headquartered in the hills west
of the Blue Ridge mountains, had once counted the young Johnny Cash
among its faithful.3
Try as he might, Lewis could not keep the hounds of guilt at bay. “I
was always worried whether I was going to heaven or hell,” he confided
to a Guardian journalist in 2015. “I still am. I worry about it before I
go to bed; it’s a very serious situation. I mean you worry, when you
breathe your last breath, where are you going to go?” He regularly hinted
that he felt torn between good and evil, God and the devil. His pente-
costal roots ran deep. So in 1979, when Rolling Stone magazine’s Robert
Palmer asked him, “[Is it true] that you believe you’re a sinner and going
to hell for playing rock & roll,” Lewis fired back, “Yep.” “I know the
right way,” he replied emphatically. “I was raised a good Christian. But
I couldn’t make it. . . . Too weak, I guess.”4
Conservative Christians found the Killer’s life and actions objection-
able, to say the least; however, they certainly agreed with him on some
counts. Rock ’n’ roll was the devi l’s music. Indeed, Jerry Lee’s cousin,
the pentecostal televangelist Jimmy Lee Swaggart, said as much from the
pulpit. The two w ere close in their youth, along with another cousin,
the future country singer Mickey Gilley. Swaggart liked to say that he
and Jimmy Lee w ere almost like twin b rothers. They took in the m usic
and the message of pentecostalism, the religion of the spirit, of signs and
won ders. Neither completed high school. But what they lacked in
formal training they more than made up for in charisma and stage pres-
ence. As Jerry Lee made it big as a rock ’n’ roller, Jimmy Lee embarked
on his preaching and music ministry career. In the 1970s and 1980s,
the high-p rofile Assemblies of God minister was using his rock ’n’ roll
cousin as a sermon illustration and a stern warning to youngsters and
their parents.5
At a summer 1985 ser vice in New Haven, Connecticut, Swaggart
made direct links between the satanic scourge of rock music and pen-
tecostalism. He was ashamed to admit that his own religious tradition
had helped produce the horrid music, he said as he paced furiously back
and forth on a long stage. He was wearing his trademark large, square-
framed glasses, and his blonde hair was styled into a conservative coif.
INTRODUCTION 3
To dramatize his points, he spoke with a loud, staccato voice, elongating
words like “pul- pit” with his southern drawl. Sweating under the harsh,
bright stage lights he waved his open Bible high above his head. “My
family started rock and roll!” he shouted to the quiet assembly of thou-
sands and then paused for emphasis. “I d on’t say that with any glee! I
don’t say it with any pomp or pride! I say it with shame and sad-
ness, because I’ve seen the death and the destruction. I’ve seen the
unmitigated misery and the pain. I’ve seen it!” His voice cracked with
emotion. “I speak of experience,” he warned, pointing his index fin ger
into the air. “My family— Jerry Lee Lewis, with Elvis Presley, with Chuck
Berry . . . started rock and roll!”6 Such claims served a rhetorical point.
And they worked well. The congregation clapped with approval while
some wiped away tears, moved by his convincing words. Fi nally, the
well- known evangelist concluded the event with an emotional call to
repentance and an invitation to the altar.7 In t hese years other forms of
repentance would be worked out in public rituals. A popu lar record-
burning craze in the late 1970s and early 1980s had already made the
moral outrage of Swaggart and other crusaders the stuff of national
headlines.
In early December 1980, Pastor LeRoy Peters, a Catholic- turned-
fundamentalist Christian, or ga nized an anti- rock-’n’- roll rally. It was a
quarter of a century since Jerry Lee and a host of other performers had
fired the imagination of the country’s teena gers and sparked a moral
panic. One hundred evangelicals gathered with the minister on a chilly
night in Saint Paul, Minnesota, at Zion Christian Life Center. They
came to smash and burn rock reco rds. The red- carpeted chapel was soon
littered with their night’s work. Shouts of “Hallelujah” and “Praise the
Lord” rang out over the ruckus. They pulled the black vinyl reco rds out
of their sleeves and snapped and cracked them with excitement. Scat-
tered around their feet lay thousands of LP covers by American and En-
glish bands and artists like the Ea gles, Donna Summer, Chicago, the
Electric Light Orchestra, the Bee Gees, Led Zeppelin, John Denver, and
the Beach Boys.8
The glam metal band KISS was a favorite target of such holy rage. The
group, decked out with its outlandish makeup and costumes, embodied
all sorts of dev ilish tropes for evangelicals and fundamentalists. The
band licensed plenty of kitschy merchandise, including trading cards,