Rock Artist Quotes

"One of the reasons we’re successful is that we’re able to keep the music hard and direct so that it communicates directly with the body." John Kay of the rock group Steppenwolf, cited in Into Rock or On the Rock, by ChristianHelps.org.

“I recalled the effects of the music I once helped produce in nightclubs. I remembered seeing sensuality, uncontrolled emotions, rebellion, violence, and what I would now call devil possession....I also saw extreme lethargy....our ability to produce these different reactions and sensual responses to our music filled us with glee. Yes, we knew we were manipulating people’s minds.” Louis Torres, bass player for Bill Haley and the Comets, cited in Inside Rock Music, p 43, by Vance Ferrell.

“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.

"I couldn’t believe it, all that rhythm and power. I got stoned just feeling it like it was the best dope in the world. It was so sensual, so vibrant, loud, crazy. I couldn’t stay still...I was moving and jumping...By the end I was wild." Janis Joplin, rock star, quoted in Wichita Eagle (October 6, 1970), p. 7A, article "Janis Joplin Followed the Script," by Joel Dreyfuss.

“...rock and roll has an insistant, powerful impetus -- basic backbeat and shuffle rhythms...which demanded a physical response. So the harsh, direct syncopation of rock and roll came as a physical manifestation of its content -- a challenge to loosen up, to break the old molds of convention and propriety, to express real emotions. The musicians themselves moved and danced as they played, begging the listener to cast off his inhibitions....Its strength (has) always been rooted in the sexual energy of its rhythms...Rock and roll made you want to move and shake and get physically excited.” Rock Music, p.16-17, 25, by William J. Schafer, Augsburg Publishing House, 1972.

"Rock motivates you internally, gives you a sensual feeling. A girl can be turned on by the music. It releases her inhibitions. The beat of the drum has always been a factor...A girl realises her own sexuality through the music." Quoted in The New Sound, Yes, p 112, by Ira Peck.

“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.

“The great strength of rock & roll lies in its beat. It is a music which is basically sexual, unpuritan...” Irwin Sibler, cited in Sing Out magazine, May 1965, p. 63.

“The new left [of the 1960's] sprang from Elvis’ gyrating pelvis...Elvis Presley ripped off Ike Eisenhower by turning our upright young awakening bodies around. Hard animal rock energy surged hot through us, the driving rhythm arousing repressed passions.” Jerry Rubin manifesto entitled “Do It”, cited in The New American, April 8, 2002, p. 11-12.

“Rock and roll aims for liberation and transcendence, eroticizing the spiritual and spiritualizing the erotic, because that is its ecumenical birthright.” Robert Palmer, cited in Rock & Roll an Unruly History, p. 72.

"The throbbing beat of rock provides a vital sexual release for adolescent audience." Jan Berry of the group Jan and Dean, cited in Pop Goes the Gospel, by Blanchard.

“The sex is definitely in the music, and sex is in all aspects in the music.” Luke Campbell of the Rap group 2 Live Crew, cited in Why Are You Opposed to Contemporary Christian Music?, by David Cloud.

"I've always thought that the main ingredients in rock are sex, really good stage shows and really sassy music. Sex and sass, I think that's where it's at." Debra Harry, lead singer of the rock bank Blondie, Hit Parader, Sept. 1979, p. 31.

“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, on TV channel ABC, Dec. 10, 1987.

“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, by William Lutz, Goodyear Publishing Company, 1974, p. 398.

"Everybody takes it for granted that rock 'n'roll is synonymous with sex." Chris Stein, lead guitarist of the rock band Blondie, People, May 21, 1979.

"Rock music is sex. The big beat matches the body's rhythms." Frank Zappa, of the rock group Mothers of Invention, Life magazine, June 28, 1968.

“Rock music is sex and you have to hit them [teenagers] in the face with it.” Andrew Oldham, manager of the rock group Rolling Stones, Time magazine, April 28, 1967, p. 54.

“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, December 10, 1987.

“Rock and roll challenged the dominant norms and values with a genuinely Dionysian fervor....We must never forget our glorious Dionysian heritage.” Rock & Roll an Unruly History, p 150, 155.

“The same exact rhythms are used in...African and Indian music, in rock music, and in music used in meetings of faith healers. The god comes, whenever he is called by anyone using those rhythms.” Demon Possession and Music, by Dr. Juanita McElwain.

“I believe rock ‘n’ roll is dangerous...I think that we are only heralding something even darker than ourselves.” David Bowie, Rolling Stone Magazine, February 12th 1976, p. 83.

“I'm the Rock 'n Roll singer that you heard about through the years....I was directed and commanded by another power. The power of darkness...The power of the devil. Satan.” Little Richard, early rock star, in The Life and Times of Little Richard, p 205-206, by Charles White.

"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, cited in The Dallas Morning News, October 29, 1978, p 14A.

"Don’t listen to the words, it’s the music that has its own message....I’ve been stoned on the music many times....The music is what will get you going." Timothy Leary, Politics of Ecstasy, p. 165, New York, 1965.

"Rock music is communication without words, regardless of what ideology is inserted into the music." Rock Music, p 25, by Dr William J. Schafer, Augsburg Publishing House, 1972.

"The music is its own message and it can completely change the message of the words." The Big Beat: A Rock Blast, by Dr. Frank Garlock, Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 1971.

“Words are incidental at best...But the points is, that they don’t matter. What you dance to is the beat, the bass and drums. And with this mix and volume, not only is the beat sensed, but literally felt, as this aspect of the rhythm section takes precedence over melody and harmony.” Tuning the Human Instrument, p 14, by Dr. Steven Halpern, 1978.

"Music is the most powerful stimulus known among the perceptive senses. The medical, psychiatric and other evidences for the non-neutrality of music is so overwhelming that it frankly amazes me that anyone should seriously say otherwise." The Psychology of Music, by Dr. Max Schoen, 1940.

“The use of syncopated rhythms, with their ability to alter states of consciousness, stem from ancient Egypt. It is to Egypt that historians trace the origin of drum-syncopated music and its uses. In the temples, priests intentionally employed complex syncopation in order to induce trances and other disturbances.” Witchcraft, p 23, by Pennethorne Hughes.

“Drumming is made for trance and for ecstatic states. The basis of percussion is redundancy and redundancy is the basis of trance.” Drumming at the Edge of Magic, by Mickey Hart of the rock group Grateful Dead.

Many people, including the Rock performers themselves, are very aware of this trance-like hypnotic effect being produced in the listeners of Rock music!

"By carefully controlling the sequences of the rhythms any pop performer can create audience hysteria. We know how to do it." John Phillips of the rock group Mamas and the Papas, cited in Into Rock or On the Rock, by ChristianHelps.org.

“Rock music is an ideal vehicle for individual or mass hypnosis.” Musician Andrew Salter, cited in Pop Goes the Gospel, p. 20, by John Blanchard, Durham: Evangelical Press, 2nd ed. 1989.

“There is no question in my mind about the hypnotic effect of these songs.” Dr. Granville Knight, cited in Pop Goes the Gospel, p. 20, by John Blanchard, Durham: Evangelical Press, 2nd ed. 1989.

“What is undeniable about rock is its hypnotic power. It has gripped millions of young people around the world and transformed their lives.” Rock Music, p 79, by Professor William Shafer, Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1972.

“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.” Are the Kids All Right?, by John G. Fuller, New York: Times Books, 1981.

“The children are being hypnotized [through music] without their knowledge...And, it is even more insidious when one realizes...the more often the hypnotism is repeated, the higher the susceptibility of the subject.” Dr. W. J. Bryan, editor of the Journal of the American Institute of Hypnosis, cited in Assault on Childhood, chapter 3 Singing Death, by Alan Gourley.

"We are moving after the minds, and so are most of the new groups." Mick Jagger of the rock group Rolling Stones, in Hit Parader, January 1968, p. 12.

“The ways in which sound affects the human organism are myriad and subtle. The loud sounds and bright lights [of today’s music] are tremendous indoctrination tools.” Frank Zappa of the rock group Mothers of Invention, cited in The New American, April 8, 2002, p. 11.

“Pop music is the mass medium for conditioning the way people think.” Graham Nash of the rock group Crosby Stills & Nash, in Hit Parader Yearbook, No. 6, 1967.

“Atmospheres are going to come through music, because the music is a spiritual thing of its own....You can hypnotize people...and when you get [them] at [their] weakest point, you can preach into the sub-conscious minds 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.” Jimi Hendrix, rock star, in Life, Oct. 3, 1969, p. 74.

“Assemble a mob of men and women...treat them to amplified band music, bright lights...and in next to no time you can reduce them to a state of almost mindless subhumanity. Never before have so few been in a position to make fools, maniacs, or criminals of so many.” The Devils of Loudun, Epilog, by Aldous Huxley, 1953, New York, Harpers and Brothers.

"It is the rhythm that controls the activities of large groups...It furnishes a nonverbal persuasion not only to act – but to act together." Music In Therapy, p 140, by E. Thayer Gaston.

"We take kids away from their parents and their environment to where the only reality is the rhythm and the beat." Donnie Brewer of the rock group Grand Funk, quoted in "Satan's Music Exposed" by Lowell Hart.

"Our music is capable of causing emotional instability, disorganised behaviour, rebellion and even revolution." The Beatles, cited in "Satan's Music Exposed" by Lowell Hart.

"I’d like to incite people to break the framework, to be disobedient in school, to stick out their tongues and to insult authority." John Lennon of the rock group the Beatles, cited in Ramparts Magazine, July 1971, p. 47.

“...rock and roll was popular because it was music to rebel by, it was full of teenage angst, and because Elvis shook like none before...” Soundscapes, Volume 6, April, 2003, article The Music Matters: An analysis of early rock and roll, by Joe Burns, at http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME06/Music_matters.shtml.

“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, January 3, 1969, article The Revolutionary Hype.