From the Horse's Mouth: The Rock Industry Condemns Itself

Most people who listen to rock music do not consider the damage it is causing on their emotions, their ears, and even their souls. However, those in the music industry know exactly what it can do.

Jimi Hendrix, the guitar hero who wrote the hit song entitled "Voodoo Child," reveals the strength of music as a medium for setting atmosphere and indoctrinating minds:

The blues are easy to play but not to feel. The background to our music is a spiritual-blues thing. Blues is a part of America. We're making our music into electric church music—a new kind of Bible, not like in a hotel, but a Bible you carry in your hearts, one that will give you a physical feeling. We try to make our music so loose and hard-hitting so that it hits your soul hard enough to make it open. It's like shock therapy or a can opener. Rock is technically blues-based...We want them to realize that our music is just as spiritual as going to church.ⁱ

Claude Levi Strauss made this connection between spirituality and music:

Jimi Hendrix. CC By-SA 3.0 nl by A. Vente on Wikipedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jimi_Hendrix_1967.png...

Since music is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man.ⁱⁱ

Blacky Lawless of W.A.S.P says this about rock and roll:

Rock 'n' Roll is an aggressive art form, pure hostility and aggression. I believe in that like a religion.ⁱⁱⁱ

Little Richard, one of the early fathers of rock and roll, has this to say about the music:

My true belief about Rock 'n Roll—and there have been a lot of phrases attributed to me over the years—is this: I believe this kind of music is demonic...

A lot of the beats in music today are taken from voodoo, from the voodoo drums. If you study music in rhythms, like I have, you'll see that is true. I believe that kind of music is driving people from Christ. It is contagious.^iv

The metal magazine Ultrakill featured this statement about rock:

We've got Satan, Beelzebub, Satanial, the Serpent...and lord of misrule...But what about the musical connection with all of this? Well even before heavy metal the Devil took an interest in rock 'n roll. The very term rock 'n roll started life as a Black American expression for sex. And sinful procreation has been the Devil's province for a long, long time.^v

Rocker David Bowie has strong statements about his very own style of music:

I believe rock 'n roll is dangerous, it could very well bring about a very evil feeling in the west...it's got to go the other way now, and that's where I see it heading, bringing about the dark era...

I feel that we are only heralding something even darker than ourselves.

Rock 'n' roll lets in lower elements and shadows that I don't think are necessary. Rock has always been the Devil's music, you can't convince me that it isn't.^vi

The manager of the Rolling Stones said this:

Rock IS sex. You have to hit teenagers in the face with it!^vii

MTV, the most widely watched music channel on television made no bones about the fact that they were aiming at changing the way teenagers think. Consider this line from one of their advertisements:

MTV, aggressively reorganizing your brain.^viii

This is why, even in the early years of MTV, they could confidently make this boast:

At MTV, we don't shoot for the 14yr olds, we own them.^ix

MTV's founder, Bob Pitman, clearly understood the emotional power of the music-media combination to capture the minds of the teenagers:

The strongest appeal you can make is emotionally. If you can get their emotions going, make them forget their logic, you've got them.

Jimi Hendrix also said this:

Atmospheres are going to come through music...You can hypnotize people with the music and when you get them at their weakest point, you can preach into the subconscious what you want to say.

Rolling Stone magazine claimed this in its 20^th-anniversary edition:

It's not just an exaggeration to say that rebellion is more than just an occasional theme in rock, it is its very heart and soul.

i. David Henderson, 'Scuse me while I kiss the sky (Bantam Books, 1978): 9-10.

ii. Oliver Sacks, Awakenings (London: Pan, 1981): 56-57.

iii. Blacky Lawless, in an interview with Washington Post (February 8, 1987): F2. .

iv. Charles White, The Life and Times of Little Richard (De Capo Press, 1994): 197.

v. "The truth about the Devil," Ultrakill volume 3: back page.

vi. Rolling Stone (1972).

vii. TIME (April 28, 1967): 53.

viii. MTV advertisement, as shown on Hells Bells video series, pt. 2.

ix. MTV's Rock Around the Clock, Philadelphia Enquirer (November 3, 1982).

x. Bob Pitman as quoted by Eric Holmberg on Hells Bells Pt. 2 video series.