I graduated from high school in 1975. That put me “coming of age” in the early 70’s, at the height of the hippy revolution and rock and roll. Studies show that the music we listened to during these hormonal filled formative years get imprinted in our brain, and influences out music tastes for the rest of our lives.
So, you can guess I’m a big fan of good old fashion Rock and Roll. My favorite bands back in the day were Queen, The Doobie Brothers, Elton John, Deep Purple, and Steve Miller. I even got to see the Eagles in their heyday playing live at the Oakland Coliseum (1). But, this fondness for rock was not without resistance from my church leaders, particularly Bishop William A. (from whom I take my moniker, Bishop Bill). Bishop A. would tell us that Rock and Roll music was of the devil, and it was not so much the music itself, but the life styles of the musicians that we were condoning if not outright supporting by purchasing their music.
It was during this time that we were shown a filmstrip in priesthood meeting about preparing for our missions. (2) The filmstrip showed a young man filling out paperwork, getting interviews, getting his hair cut, and leaving for his mission. There were no words for the filmstrip, just music. And the music that played for the whole filmstrip was an instrumental version of the Beatles’s “Here Comes the Sun”.
I think this was the first time in my life that I experienced cognitive dissonance with regard to the church. I was old enough to recognize that the church needed to pay royalties to use that song, and that those royalties were going to the Beatles. I can still remember to this day the feeling I had, wondering how the church could pay the Beatles, thus supporting their lifestyle, while I was counseled by Bishop A. to not listen to or support such artists. It all felt very hypocritical to me.
I knew Bishop A. did not recognize the music as being from the Beatles. And Bishop A. was not some rouge bishop, but was merely saying what many others of his generation though about the music of that time.
So, is this just a cultural thing that the current generation dislikes the music of the younger generation? Or was there more to the anti-rock movement that swept the Mormon church (and others) in the 1970’s?
(1) Bill Graham’s “A Day On The Green”, Aug 3, 1976. Lineup included the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Loggins and Messina, and Argent.
(2) For you kids out there, a filmstrip was a bunch of still photos on a long strip of film set to a recording on a cassette tape with words and music, and a little beep that would tell the projectionist when to advance the film.
Wheat & Tares 
Rock on Bishop Bill! I am just a few years behind you but share your love of rock. I also had tons of those, “rock is evil and of the devil” speeches. I would think about that for a second – until one my favorite songs from Boston would come on, then I would forget it as I cranked up the volume. In high school I had an old junker. I paid about 4x as much for the cassette stereo I put in it than I did for the car to start out. That is probably was one of the largest contributors to my hearing loss and slight tinnitus.
I remember that filmstrip. The part I most remember was the shoes he wanted to get. He put on some with like a 2+ inch heal and his mom was giving him a, “Hell No!” look and then the next frame was him in a more “missionary appropriate shoe” with his mom smiling.
I had one of the same “moments” with one of my leaders. He was a bit of the stern “Bruce R. McConkie” types and was my YM leader (he was a good one though). He gave a talk one week saying how much he loved his wife and when he had to travel even one night away from her he really missed her. Then that very week he was driving his kids and others (including me) to a church dance. The song, “Beth” from Kiss came on the radio. He commented after the song that it wasn’t appropriate as it included too much dependence on another person. At the time it never crossed my mind that the singer and “Beth” were married and looking back I think that was what he was talking about. But it put in my mind, “My leaders are going to degrade my choice of music EVEN when it is really good.” It kind of made it easier to ignore their message of turning off that even rock.
And I just have to say if anybody were to tell me that line of, “you shouldn’t support that lifestyle” I would have to say, “So of course, there is no way you voted for Trump then.” I mean I would HAVE to say it no matter who it is.
And I am envious of your resume of concerts.
Me and my kids go to concerts all the time now. I took one of my sons to see Dave Matthews just days back from his mission. I can’t imagine me EVER going to a concert with my parents. I still scratch my head when I find that me and my kids like most of the same music – both old and new.
In answer to the question I think there was a general anti-rock music that swept the church at that time—probably with some local leaders emphasing harm more than others.
My 70’s experience
My first year attending seminary(in UT),ninth grade, in 1973, the movie Jesus Christ Superstar came out in theaters. I well remember the seminary teacher instructing us, repeatedly, to not see it. At a minimum, there was no chance I would see it even if I had wanted to, because I was still reliant on transportation provided by my parents. But the strong admonition to not see it piqued my curiosity.
Fast forward some 11-12 years later, married, living in CA. Our home teacher whom we became fast friends with met and married a convert. One day she shared her conversion story. She said she had gone to see the movie Jesus Christ Superstar and felt inspired—experienced a spiritual awakening— to learn more about Jesus and his teachings, then sometime later met up with Mormon missionaries. ( today she serves as Stk Relief Society President),
Somehow in 23 years of church membership I’ve never gotten a lecture on specific types of music. Thank goodness!
I did mention once in a lesson some very particular issues related to music videos, but it was more of a “Make sure you’re aware of what’s in your kid’s playlist” then a lecture about satanic influences.
How much of this is just the older generation not liking what the younger generation does, and finding “scriptural” reasons for their disdain? I am reminded of this post at Keepa about a 1912 editorial by David O. McKay on the evils of the popular dances among the youth: http://www.keepapitchinin.org/2015/10/09/mormon-standards-dancing-1/
Two things:
1. There may have been no need for cognitive dissonance with the film strip. By that time, John and Paul had signed away their royalty rights and George and Ringo had only minuscule rights to begin with (see https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/7662519/beatles-catalog-paul-mccartney-brief-history-ownership). So by paying royalties, the Church was just supporting the lifestyles of the owners of regular businessmen (the merits of which I will leave for others to debate).
2. The world has officially turn upside down: https://www.facebook.com/events/386269641767084/
Being even older than Bishop Bill, I remember hearing numerous anti-pop music lectures (not just anti-rock). But instead of the don’t-support-their-life-style lecture, what I remember is the lecture on not being induced by the beat and lyrics into a self-centered, hedonistic, evil lifestyle advocated by those lyrics and demonstrated by the predominant culture at live rock concerts (Woodstock! 1969). It always seemed to me the concern about the lyrics was understandable, even if possibly overblown since most of the rock lyrics could not be understood without extraordinary effort, anyway. There remains in our culture a widespread failure to be able to distinguish between music (and musical style) on the one hand and lyrics on the other. E.g., Quiz a large group of Mormons on their favorite hymns and why they like them and you’ll find most individuals’ choices are a matter of the text and not the tune or the harmonic or rhythmic style. They identify that text with the tune they know, usually never realizing that in the general Christian world a lot of hymn texts are sung to a variety of tunes and a lot hymntunes are used with a variety of texts.
The scope of the anti-rock music lectures was regularly expanded, from the 60s well into the 80s to a condemnation of all pop musical styles. The lecturers showed no sign of recognition that the religious songs they liked to hear in church were in the same style as the pop music/light opera of the 30s and 40s evidenced in the movie musicals of Nelson Eddy and Jeannette McDonald, for example. The most amusing such lecture was a sacrament meeting talk by our bishop in the 80s condemning all pop music. He was followed by a mormo-pop vocal solo from one of the young women (one of those EFY type songs that were printed with the warning “this song is not appropriate for sacrament meeting”). Then the bishop thanked her for the wonderful, inspiring music, not recognizing that he had just contradicted his 20 minute spoken message.
None of these lectures affected me much, since I wasn’t into pop or rock anyway. In fact, the radios in our house and cars in the 60s sounded so bad any music from them was painful. I was first introduced to the Beatles in a high school classroom listening to horrible, offensive sounds sung by Ringo Starr. That was enough for me. (Now I actually like some of their songs.)
There is a flip side to this as well. That flip side is in the occasional anti-classical music lectures from church authorities. They may have reached their pinnacle in BKP’s anti-arts, anti-Bach speech that set the Fine Arts and Liberal Arts faculties at BYU in an uproar. I was amused at how readily one professor calmed the uproar in a faculty meeting by remarking, “Remember, they’re general authorities, not specific authorities.” Those lectures, like the anti-pop lectures, represent a failure to recognize individual, culturally-affected responses to music. They represent a presumption that music that inspires the lecturer (or, for the lecturer, drives away the Spirit), does the same for all others, since, of course, the lecturer is the measure of all things and has never figured out that the “Spirit” is not in the music, but in the relationships among the music (and performer/performance) and the listener, with heavy emphasis on the latter.
End of soapbox. Rock on.
Whoops. I decided to replace the name of the company with “regular businessmen” and forgot to delete the “owners of.” No implication of literal slavery intended.
This makes me glad I didn’t grow up in the Church. I was immersed in the music of my time ( Pretty much the same as Bishop Bill) in my early teens, thanks to the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five I specifically took up playing the drums because of Dave, even though he wasn’t much of a drummer. But I just wanted to be behind those drums and make that music. I even quit Boy Scouts because of it.
Throughout the ages, parents have complained about their kid’s music. Even some classical music was considered scandalous in its time.
I suppose there are some lyrics which are questionable. My Wife and I DJ’d a significant amount of Church dances and we were careful about the lyrics, but not the music. I even edited great songs to remove the objectionable parts.
The irony is that the parents and grandparents and some Church leaders condemn their kid’s music, but in the same breath say, “but our music was OK.” Uh, no, it was pretty much the same.
I remember a few warning words about lyrics as a youth in the 80s. And others about strong beats numbing the soul or some such.
Still we heard Tainted Love (Soft Cell) regularly at church dances, and one particularly memorable dance we were stunned to hear Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Relax, which at the time was not permitted to be played on BBC radio (I never did work out why that was), and there it was in the cultural hall at church.
Went to my first ever pop concert 18 months ago, when my husband and I went to see the Pet Shop Boys (he’s a huge fan) at the Royal Opera House. It was fantastic!
I recall getting some anti-rock messages from local church leaders in the early 90s. I was still young, but I got the impression that this was the pet concern of only a few very orthodox leaders, which turned out to be correct. Specifically, we were taught that heavy metal music had the power to convey Satan himself into our homes and cars, and that the purveyors of the genre intended it for that purpose. To be fair, this was around the time of the Judas Priest subliminal message controversy, as well as the Tipper Gore-led effort to police content in popular music. All of these local and national efforts backfired, though, as making it forbidden made it that much more appealing to me and my peers.
But I’m surprised that I never got church lectures about the dangers of hip-hop/gangster rap, which was just beginning to cross over into the mainstream at that time, especially in the area where I lived. These songs contained very overt (not subliminal) messages about violence, drugs, sex and criminal activity, as well as anti-authoritarian/anti-police themes; by comparison, the danger of heavy metal’s influence is mostly imaginary.
In hindsight, I also recognize the hypocrisy of my baby boomer parents, who were huge fans of the Beatles, Bob Dylan and other popular artists of their adolescence/young adulthood (who’s songs often contained references to drugs or controversial political/social issues), but who strongly disapproved of heavy metal (who’s lyrics are mostly unintelligible). Nonetheless, I’m happy these church-based efforts to police popular music have mostly died out. Hopefully, “modesty doctrine” will follow the same path before too long.
Also, one of my early LDS cog-dis moments: once at a stake youth dance I went to, Bobby Brown’s ode to infidelity/sexual conquest “Humpin’ Around” was played, and I was amazed that no one batted an eye. Even the adult chaperones were dancing enthusiastically to that song, immersed in the upbeat music but completely oblivious to the un-subtle lyrics.
Rogue vs rouge (red).
:).
I laugh as I listen to our ward ‘dad rock’ band , and think about the great work they have done in integrating guys into the ward, and all the ‘anti-any-music-post- 1900’ stuff we had to deal with during our youth. I’m so glad these guys were able to get past that stuff to accomplish what they have and have a great time doing it.
I’m in my 50s, and love discovering new stuff on 6 Music BBC – a very eclectic radio station you can access online, which plays both old and new music but nothing you will find on commercial radio. It makes every day a school day in a very good way, and has changed my life in the delight and stimulus it has brought. Digital so you can access it online and is great for kitchen dancing.
Also, my daughter is a musician and would unlikely have been so if our house hadn’t been full of all kinds of music.
Play that funky music white boy!
Great post and something I haven’t thought about for a while. I think bashing rock and roll, esp. in the 70s when I was growing up was less a Mormon thing and more just a general “people over 30” thing. I remember hearing all sorts of insane crap about the Eagles’ Hotel California inside album cover and Led Zeppelin, etc. All of this “devil’s music” crap (that I rarely hear in church these days and haven’t since the 90s) just really sounded and still sounds ridiculous. Who’s more likely to be a tool of Satan? Bon Scott, lead singer of AC/DC, a band who played around with the whole Satan thing as a show biz gimmick, or a politician who dresses in suits, looks legit, says all the right things and then works for and passes legislation that does demonstrable harm to millions of people? Which, by the way, is kind of the point of the Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil. SMH
And, just to add to the great anecdotes here, I will say that the most significant spiritual experience I ever had in a group of people was at a Springsteen concert. I was in the 13th row and the passion, energy and obvious emotional connection Bruce had with the audience was something I’ve never experienced before or since. It changed me. It made me hungrier for connections to other people, to deeper parts of myself and to the universe at large. If that’s what the devil’s music does, then give me all of that that you’ve got.
Anyone ever hear a recording of brother Lynn Bryson’s lectures where he talked about how rock and roll literally Unleashed the Power of Satan? Classic one for a laugh from the mission.
I probably got the music talks at church as a youth, but I don’t particularly remember them as I wasn’t a huge music kid. My big Cog-Dis was the endless lectures on modesty: shoulders and midriffs and skirts lengths, etc., to keep us from showing too much skin. But then a decent portion of the adult women wore 4 inch ‘hooker’ heels and super tight shirts showing off their boob jobs to church. We were well aware of who had had their chest size increased as well.
I don’t think it’s about the music at all. The music is just a proxy for the increasing pace of inter-generational cultural change. That change is proving dangerous to the Church, so the leadership (which tends to be older) is rightly suspicious of it. Remember that the phenomenon of a child listening to radically different music than her parents is a very recent arrival, culturally speaking, as is the phenomenon of children having radically different religious beliefs than their parents. These changes used to take multiple generations; now they occur in less than one. That’s scary for an institutional church. As other examples of resistance to rapid change, see the dress and grooming, use of technology, and language policies of the Church.
I never heard any of that type of music condemnation at church when I was growing up. I suppose a factor in that was that baby boomers were just starting to get into positions of authority at that time. The most we ever got was whatever For the Strength of Youth said, but nothing specific was ever singled out.
Both of my my baby boomer parents are big music fans. When I was young and listening to some “lame” music, my dad got “worried” and felt it was time to show me his record collection. All of the classic rock ensued. Even as I started to develop my own musical preferences, my parents seemed more concerned if it was objectively “quality” music, even if they personally didn’t enjoy it.
When adults in the ward would find out that I liked a lot of the music they grew up with, they were (understandably) very supportive. A favorite memory of mine was an ad hoc band I was in that played “Under the Bridge” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers for the ward talent show one year. The bishop was bobbing his head and thought it was a fantastic song (which it is). I always thought that was funny and wondered if he knew what the song was talking about. I haven’t heard anything about music in church for many years now, but I suppose that has more to do with my age.
I think that listening to too much Queen would turn you into a rouge bishop.
KLC – I do think singing “Fat Bottom Girls” might be a good tactic for keeping you from being called into a bishopric! I should have done that (more than just in my head during zzz meetings).
I took a class at BYU from a professor who, a couple of years later, became a general auxiliary leader for the church. He stated, in class, that he was a Styx fan. I imagine most church leaders under the age of 65 like at least some rock music.
When I was in high school in the early 1990s, my (released-time) seminary teachers spent a fair amount of time warning us about the evils of rock music. I remember hearing, for example, that the beat of rock music would interfere with your heartbeat, and so (it was implied) it was unhealthy, I guess? The seminary even sponsored an event one evening that included a bonfire so people could burn all the wicked music recordings that they owned. I wasn’t that into music, and I also wasn’t too into seminary, so I didn’t go, but looking back, I’m surprised that it didn’t seem all that bizarre to me at the time.
The arguments against rock music have always been:
The music is bad
The lyrics are bad
The artists are bad. And the truthful answer to all three is “:Some, but not all”.
I’ve performed rock music in my early days (drums) and still enjoy it; but I do practice Selective Listening. Most of my bands were the Prog-Rock era (Yes/ELP/Rick Wakeman) For every objection made against the rock music culture, I can make the same on professional athletes. When someone of the Church says Rock music :doesn’t invite the Spirit, I say “You haven’t listened to the right examples”.
🙂 “Start… to smoke… marijuana yeeeah yeeeah” I’d been out on a mission for about 6 months when I first heard the tapes and even then I could tell that it was about 1% truth and 99% bonkers. Someone put up a cleaned-up copy on Youtube a while back; it’s easy to find.
Back in the day, I mean waaaaaaay back in the day, I was invited to an Eagles concert by a couple of missionaries. The concert was two hours away. I don’t know what I was going to tell my parents but I would have figured it out.
In the meantime the mission president called a mandatory meeting for all missionaries on the same night that The Who were in town. A different set of missionaries who had already bought their tickets for the show, went down to the venue to try and re-sell them, where they were promptly arrested. They had to call the mission president from jail to bail them out.
The only reason I know about this is that it is the reason I never got to see The Eagles. As you can imagine The Who incident resulted in a bit of a mission crackdown. To this day I can’t hear an Eagles song without feeling terribly nostalgic and amused remembering how I almost got to see them.
I don’t blame those missionaries a bit for wanting to experience those great bands. I cherish every rock concert I ever attended. Those days will never come back!
My bishop told me in approximately 1986 that MTV was inspired by Satan. And of course there were all sorts of rumors that KISS, Black Sabbath, and other rock bands were Satan Worshipers. After all KISS stands for Knights in Satan’s Service. I was raised in a very conservative household and all my family we listed to was classical and MOTAB. Ever since leaving home my eyes have been opened. My favorite singers are Pink and Lady Gaga.
The rationale for listening to only classical and MOTAB was the scripture that says good fruit can’t come from a bad tree and similar reasoning to the OP. My rebuttal is that some classical composers were the rock stars of their times and probably lived hedonistic lifestyles. So the good fruit can’t have come from their bad trees either.
Bring on the rock and roll.
I was not a fan of music growing up in the 1960-70’s. But my brother was and our neighbor who was the bishop for a few years claimed rock music made the weeds grow faster in the part of his garden closer to the bedroom window we shared. The neighbors across the street also complained about the window rattling wicked rock music blasting from our room. They had more money and bought a system with much higher volume and blasted us back with classical music. I don’t think that did us any more good or harm.
One thing I think this Puritanical aversion to rock music did was shut down any hope for allowing more contemporary music in our church. The guitar, electric or not, became closely associated with heroin addiction in the minds of the highest leaders. Heaven forbid that anyone even think of plucking out the melody of any thing such as “Come Come Ye Saints” on a guitar. The youth might get mixed up and think it was condoning forbidden acts with your date.
The sad fact is that it takes many years to learn to skillfully play instruments like a piano or a violin.But someone with only a little musical aptitude can figure out how to play many common contemporary tunes on the guitar. It is about the easiest instrument to play for a beginner. We are making the “rocky ridge” of music in our church meetings steeper by eschewing the guitar. And it shows; in most wards I have attended the music is horrible in comparison to that in almost any other church.I am not recommending that we go to the other extreme where some church meetings sound like rock concerts, but there is a happy medium and we don’t seem to know where it is.
When my children were entering Jr high many years ago, a charismatic high school kid at a local Baptist church wrote a number of songs and produced a DVD. It was wildly popular among the local youth. The music was so simple but really resonated with the kids. I swear one of those tunes was no more than him shouting “Hop for Jesus.” Then playing one cord; bam bam bam. “Hop for Jesus” bam bam bam. I will never forget dozens of these kids hopping around to that music with enormous delight. I can’t imagine anything equivalent happened in my ward.
And Toad – if you want to go WAY WAY WAY back, at the time of it being composed, Handel’s Messiah couldn’t be sung in church because it had two sets of lyrics being sung at the same time (don’t know the musical term for that). Leaves me scratching my head.
We used to literally call them “anti-music firesides.” Of course, I have to thank my seminary teacher for doing the backward masking play of Led Zepplin’s Stairway to Heaven in class to show us the evils of music. I never would have figured out how to do that otherwise. 🙂
Polyphony, I think it was called.
This is one of the early examples for me growing up, that spiritual discernment is incredibly messy. I agree with some earlier comments that many folks equate familiarity and taste with spiritual revelation.
What is the difference between an acquired taste and becoming “numb” to the spirit?
At a youth conference, we attended a class that gave examples of 1) spiritual music (a hymn), 2) non-spiritual but ok music, and 3) BAD music ( they got “special permission”). My friend and I were immaturely proud to recognize all three. 2 was Cake’s Going the Distance and 3 was Alice in Chain’s Man in the Box.
More to your point: “conservative” means to resist change, so I think it’s natural on some level for organizations like the church to resist strong and fast cultural shifts. It counters their own M.O. I don’t think it’s a good instinct, as I’m more of a 13th-article-of-faith kind of guy. From an org perspective I think it’s more of a jealous boyfriend attitude: if it’s not these approved activities then it must be idol worship.
Man in the Box? 😪 The only way that classifies as bad is that AiC has always been a second rate band. If they really wanted to make an impact, they should have played Closer by Nine Inch Nails.
On a side note, the last time I was a YM advisor I subjected the teachers quorum to the whole of Mellon Collie and the Infinite
Sadness. I was released one month later.
I did sit in on a deacons quorum priesthood lesson where the other teacher used Pink Floyd’s “Time” as the core of his lesson. It actually was a very good lesson and I don’t think one of the kids got it. They just endured the “time” they were in the class.