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An Unofficial History of the Jesus-Rock Era

By Steve Morley

Rock and roll, when it’s doing its job, is going to cause controversy. The same can be said of Christianity, especially in these days when political and religious crossfire could, from a distance, be mistaken for Ford-versus-Chevy fightin’ words. If you steadfastly believe in the power of either of these cultural monuments, you’d best be prepared for a skirmish. Should you combine music and faith in the same conversation, you’re likely in for a lengthy debate. The historically segregated worlds of Christian-themed music and secular pop/rock have flirted for decades, each eyeing the other’s wardrobes in search of new accoutrements, if not total makeovers. Ideologically, though, the two spheres remain at odds, leading puzzled observers and offense-prone outsiders to perceive the advocates of artistic segregation either as intolerant, tongue-clucking prudes or communion wafer-thin hypocrites who watch VH-1 with their curtains drawn. While neither image is entirely fictional, it is ungracious – and inaccurate – to arbitrarily assign such labels to the many who walk a reasonable middle ground.

While the followers of Christ have been portrayed one-dimensionally on television and maligned in the alternative press, the longstanding rift has been propagated largely by the actions of conservative Christians themselves. It would be difficult to say who’s done the most damage to the public image of the American churchgoer: the media mockers who gleefully portray Protestants as naļve, cloistered ninnies, or those dubious models of white-suited godliness who render Christianity (and, by extension, the miracle-working power in which its millions of perfectly sane subscribers sincerely trust and believe) into grotesque, self-righteous caricatures perfectly suited for media ridicule. Meanwhile, log onto one of a trillion Internet chat rooms, and watch participants still splitting hair follicles over whether Creed was a “Christian” band, or maybe even whether Bob Dylan’s late-’70s conversion was real – why isn’t he isn’t singing about Jesus anymore, huh? Huh? And while we’re at it, by golly, where did that greasy Elvis get off making all those gospel records and prancing around with fire ants in his dungarees? You get the picture.

The individual arguments have grown more sophisticated over time, but the furor remains. If it all seems wildly overblown, keep in mind that the topic is a sensitive one. Many devout Christians were taught to object to modern instrumentation in the sanctuary or to resist the emulation of “worldly things” in sacred music, while others simply oppose market-driven, cookie-cutter “Christian product,” which can reduce the highly personal significance of one’s spiritual life to little more than shallow bumper sticker fodder. As media conglomerates amass stables of artists who reside on both sides of the sacred-secular line, some onlookers are troubled by the prospect that the corporate bottom line is tearing away at Christian music’s twofold purpose – to entertain and spiritually edify, the latter goal theoretically being the more critical. This higher-minded objective – though perhaps a moot point, given contemporary Christian music’s history of preaching to the converted while hoping to reach non-Christians – is in constant danger of being compromised by the focus on total units sold.

Meanwhile, card-carrying guitar-slingers routinely scorn Christian acts offering flimsy, copycatted rock alternatives, as much for the music’s too-polite attitude and its sometimes-sterile production as for the jargon-loaded lyrics that can seem patronizing to non-Christians – particularly those who seek enlightenment elsewhere. One thing seems certain, though –if you should happen to believe that Jesus is Lord and also adore, let’s say, Chuck Berry or Cheap Trick, you probably won’t be content to live solely on the enriched white bread of Christian pop/rock, which often lacks the solar plexus impact and originality (or at least the more inspired plagiarism) of the full-blooded variety.

The widely held belief that Christian rock is a laughable oxymoron, an unsatisfying substitute for honest to-Little Richard rawkinroll, is gradually being weakened by the emergence of believable and successful crossover bands (most notably Switchfoot) and a spate of faith-fueled indie-rockers who bring a scuffed-up abandon to music for teens and young adults, some of whom carry their dog-eared Bibles under tattooed arms. But the change-in-progress is hardly an overnight transfiguration, if indeed it will ever find completion. Take it from John Davis, former frontman for Tennessee’s now-defunct power-poppers, Superdrag. Davis himself experienced the tension between his renewed Christian beliefs and the standard-issue rock‘n’roll lifestyle, which in his case led him past the foul line of reasonable alcoholic consumption. Davis, whose self-titled solo debut is built convincingly upon well-digested first-generation rock influences, understands how hard it is to gain street credibility as an artist tagged with a religious label.

“If somebody asks you what kind of music you do,” Davis proposes, “and you say ‘Well, it’s Christian… rock and roll,’ you can expect a fair amount of eye-rolling.” Of course, Davis also had the wherewithal to work with well-schooled rock/roots producer R.S. Field (John Mayall, Webb Wilder), while most Christian labels use in-house producers whose sonic priorities rarely involve Marshall stacks, vintage Strats and Big Muff fuzz boxes. In deference to the elusive guidelines of the Christian format, even those producers who dabble in distortion steer away from deliberately disheveled rock aesthetics. As Davis’ work proves, musicians of fervent faith can and do make valid and original musical statements, but they tend to be the exception.

Critics of the Christian genre often unfairly assume that its artists live there simply because they lack the chops to hack it in the mainstream. Let the record show that the Christian industry possesses a wealth of talent, despite the marginal bystanders and the ever-present bedroom hobbyists and hopefuls whose depth of devotion may outweigh their natural musical ability. However modest their gifts or lofty their ambitions, these souls are no different (and sometimes more justified) than many of the tin-eared pilgrims who are routinely seen on American Idol cattle calls, painfully undergoing violent ego reconstructions. And yes, there are occasionally established artists who land awkwardly on the set of The 700 Club after their commercial star begins a downward slide. But that’s as much a matter of artist management (or its absence) as it is an issue of musical endowments, which one can assume were already present to one degree or another.

If there’s anything inherently inferior about Christian music in general, it is largely the fault of those who dictate the market’s narrow parameters. While Christian pop and rock tastemakers have relaxed their silk neckties considerably, the format remains in an apparent stalemate between the opposing goals of purity and profit. Some industry principals have succumbed to sales-and-marketing myopia, while others might tread too carefully for fear of offending conservative listeners. (Mainstream music execs face a similar situation, with one significant difference – they strive to avoid financial losses by being certain their product will offend…)

Some of the genre’s most gifted alumni, from world-class guitarist and CCM pioneer Phil Keaggy to Sam Phillips (the artist formerly known as Christian pop singer Leslie Phillips) have exercised levels of artistry and independence that moved them beyond the format’s self-imposed restraints. In cases like theirs, such breaches of conformity (coupled with pop’s infamously fickle nature) sometimes result in a ludicrous fall from favor with radio and record company bigwigs. There are many others who, for various reasons, have simply drifted (if not leapt headlong) from grace. Branded as backslidden sinners by their colleagues, often seen by the secular market as somehow unsuitable, and brushed aside as has-beens by both camps, they are relegated to a performer’s purgatory where maybe – just maybe – they can find a small niche in which to ply their trade.

Finally, aside from the legitimate debate over what musical styles are acceptable for personal and corporate worship, the biggest hobgoblin may be the industry’s mania for categorizing every imaginable musical sub-niche according to sales demographics. Commerce is a necessary part of the equation, of course, but when the question “exactly who’s gonna buy it?” dwarfs the importance of “is it music worth releasing?,” the grocer has taken the restaurant hostage. While stylistic profiling is an industry-wide practice that is useful for identifying potential customers, it can reduce the odds of mainstream acceptance for worthy artists who have a Christian affiliation. Quickly stamped with a label that acts as a “skeptic alert,” prospective listeners may well steer clear of their music and its supposed agenda to transform their wicked ways. For bands that hope to simply express themselves authentically, without wielding an aggressive agenda to convert listeners, it’s a no-win scenario.

How long has this situation existed? The debate itself is ages old; Martin Luther, the Augustine monk who spearheaded the Christian Reformation in 16th century Germany, outraged the religious status quo by setting his devotional lyrics to popular beer-drinking songs of the day, making liturgical music accessible to the average Johannes. Christian rock is a mere babe by comparison, having first appeared full-blown in 1965 in Merseybeat-era England, where bands like The Pilgrims, The Witnesses and The Crossbeats blazed evangelical, youth-targeted trails on previously untouched turf. Such music was far too limited in sales and promotion (not to mention eclipsed by the reign of British pop) to have triggered a commercial trend in the U.K. or anywhere else. This fact has led some observers to consider that this Bible-based beat music, and the American “Jesus-rock” movement soon to follow, was at least initially a divinely inspired rather than purely man-conceived phenomenon.

Regional Christian youth scenes cropped up independently of – and initially unbeknownst to – each other, most notably in Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco and later moving eastward in a seemingly scattered fashion. Street people in L.A. and SanFran, in fact, had their own self-appointed spiritual leader – the aptly named Reverend Arthur Blessitt – who ran a half-rehab center/half-nightclub called His Place. Blessitt, who has since become internationally known for literally walking the planet with a wooden cross in tow, is often credited with birthing the California “Jesus freak” scene, creating an accompanying niche for rock music with a spiritual bent.

The earliest examples of Jesus-rock, like the raw but influential prototypes of many rock sub-genres, were vastly varied in content and quality. The first musical wave was earmarked by the same do-it-yourself spirit and innocence so prized in the regional pre-punk, psych and garage records of the era. Likely because devout Christian youths and fashion-conscious rockers didn’t generally fraternize, though, there was little opportunity for collaboration or direct stylistic influence. For this reason, the still-nascent Jesus-rock sound was foreshadowed by folk artists who scrambled across their genre’s rapidly burning bridge to the harbor of AM radio.

The main vehicle for contemporary worship in the first half of the 1960s was mainstream folk music and its comparatively rousing summer camp repertoire (think “Michael, Row The Boat Ashore”), sung in unison by throats poking out of striped, button-down collars. But by the mid-1960s, folk music’s stiffly strummed exuberance had lost much of its hipness quotient, the result of its family-style homogenization by record moguls and Bob Dylan’s blatant abdication of his unwanted folk-hero throne.

Singer Barry McGuire’s vocal style was sufficiently guttural to transcend his clean-cut pop-folk roots; the former New Christy Minstrel’s earnestly eerie take on P.F. Sloan’s prophetic-sounding ode, “Eve Of Destruction” (#1 in September of 1965), was soon joined by other spiritually informed, electrified folk records. Paul Simon’s “The Sound of Silence” rang with updated religious portent (“and the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made”), while The Byrds’ cover of Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season),” drawn directly from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament, shone a beacon of tentative hope over the grim lyrics that had suddenly invaded the Top 40 in the autumn of 1965.

(A momentary digression from the author: I vividly recall hearing that Byrds track in the family car en route to my grandfather’s funeral many years later, and hearing – really hearing – lines like “a time to be born, a time to die” for the first time. The song had become a classic, but more significantly, its message turned out to be eternal. It had unassumingly crouched there between the 12-string guitar and the winsome harmonies of Crosby and McGuinn, waiting to leap out until the moment when I could understand – and take comfort from – its simple and timeless wisdom.)

The Youngbloods’ definitive recording of Chet Powers’ durable “Get Together,” which initially hit the Top 100 in 1967 but failed to break the Top 40 until its 1969 re-release, revealed a twin thrust of civil rights rhetoric and subtle sermonizing. As well as waving the “love one another” banner, the song’s lyric spoke openly of the fear of mortality and “the one that left us here” who would, sang Jesse Colin Young, “return for us at last.”

Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit In The Sky” was a marked departure from its jangly, folk-flavored forebears, featuring wailing, post-psychedelic guitar leads sandwiched between a crunchy pop-boogie riff and lyrics that victoriously trumpeted “(I) never been a sinner, I never sin – I’ve got a friend in Jesus.” Astute Bible students noted that Greenbaum (a Jewish musician who never again touched the topic of religion before dropping completely out of sight) had blatantly disregarded Christian doctrine in apparently declaring himself sinless. Despite the validity of their point, the track typifies the casual climate present in 1969, when it was possible to have a smash hit single about the Savior Himself without even having attended Sunday school. Or – as Jesus-rock visionary Larry Norman did, against his record company’s counsel – you could have an artist portray a robed, suspiciously Christ-like figure sitting in with your band, quasi-cartoon style, on the front of your album.

The case in point was the hit-spawning LP by People!, a Bay Area-based group whose psychedelic-tinged cover of The Zombies’ “I Love You” was their sole charting hit. Norman, a witty and charismatic shaggy white-blonde, spoofed his own short-lived rock star profession at the album’s close – and made a brilliantly covert statement of his well-grounded Christian faith – with “What We Need Is a Whole Lot More of Jesus (And a Lot Less Rock and Roll).” The minute-and-a-half-long track, which humorously but perfectly encapsulated the troubled waters roaring between progressive and traditional Christian factions, was a spot-on parody of ultra-conservative church services complete with a warbling, vibrato-laden choir and the teeth-grating screech of metal on concrete as the congregation returned to its folding chairs.

Folks like the ones fictionalized on the recording wouldn’t have stayed in their seats for long had Norman appeared at their churches to perform songs from his groundbreaking Capitol Records solo debut, Upon This Rock. If you never heard of it, don’t feel left out –it undeservedly floundered almost upon release, as one might expect of a lone Christian rock album on a secular label whose management had no idea how to market it. Making matters worse, most churched folk – once they learned about Norman’s music – regarded it as a plague-infected affront to their faith. He was later vindicated when original compositions such as “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” became contemporary Christian anthems that, for a time, anyway, outlasted the volatile atmosphere in which Jesus-rock came forth.

The issue of the music’s spiritual legitimacy, by necessity, remains unresolved. Was it simply a fad? Can one absolutely rule out the existence of an all-knowing creative force that intended to reveal its presence in a new way? Questions like these can never be effectively argued, much less conclusively settled; the matter can only be judged individually, using one’s own ears and intuition. It didn’t help matters any, though, that the spiritual street scene grew up in tandem with the hippie culture, a fact that not only overshadows the Jesus movement’s history but also leads to confusion between the two similarly clad groups.

Both employed popular promotional methods of the time, from pavement-distributed alternative newspapers to boldly designed posters hawking nightclub shows and rocking revivals alike. The two factions were like fraternal twins, gestating at about the same time but destined to follow diverging paths. Even so, contradictions could be found, as spiritual seekers emerging in the loosening moral atmosphere of the late ‘60s might vacillate equally between marijuana, mantras and the Messiah.

The same long-haired deity that motivated the Jesus freak army was an obvious if indirect model for the so-called “Love Children” who shared the unorthodox, even nomadic lifestyle of sandal-wearing street evangelists as well as their emphasis on a departure from business as usual. But that’s where the similarity ends. According to biblical accounts, Jesus wasn’t after political or cultural change but a total revolution of the heart, a facet of humankind that he contended was full of flawed motives that would inevitably compromise even its noblest goals – even ones like peace and love. For this reason, freshly converted young Christians gazed simultaneously inward and skyward for answers to the tribulations of Earth circa 1967.

The focus of dedicated hippies was on seeking release from “hung-up” and ostensibly outdated American values. This objective could come off as vague and self-serving, though at their core, the movement’s most committed members desperately wanted to stop war and to curb, if not eliminate, the social and political ills they saw encroaching on their future. For a shining, crystalline instant, they thought it could truly be accomplished. However well meaning their efforts, though, the Hippie Dream gradually dissolved into a quagmire in which Love Itself gasped for breath amidst drug-addled dreamers, flower-wielding hangers-on and fed-up malcontents.

The Jesus-ites, on the other hand, held out for a God-initiated transcendence and, believing they’d found the source, were intent on sharing it with wide-eyed wonderment and childlike fervor. This in turn distinguished them from the religious establishment, which tended to be condemning of nonconformist lifestyles and who had difficulty accepting that God – their God, anyway – could be speaking through something they were ill-prepared to accept or understand. The traditional church did have a couple of legitimate beefs, however: Jesus-preaching youths were often ungrounded (if admirably enthusiastic) converts who could be overemotional and undereducated when it came to the finer points of Christian doctrine. For better or worse, many were unwilling to wait around for the Great By and By, and their claims of spiritual truth were minimized by the insistence of some that the world was going to end…um, last Wednesday.

To this day, nostalgia runs deep for the loss of “Summer of Love” idealism, leaving the questionable impression that the younger generation could have saved the day, and that they fell just mere inches short of the end zone. In retrospect, it could be argued that they were easily as naļve as those who looked directly to the figure of Jesus Christ to bring revolution, without delay, in an external and temporal form (incidentally, not unlike Jesus’ original twelve disciples did). In the end, it would be hard for either group to successfully argue that their own combined resources could be sufficient to bring about lasting change.

No sooner had cleaning crews removed the post-Woodstock remnants of Peace and Love left strewn on Yasgur’s farm than the hope of getting “back to the Garden” began to fade like a cheap tie-dyed headband. Many became disillusioned as the hippie scene deteriorated; some tried communal living as a last-ditch attempt to find refuge from a society in which their desire to participate had waned. Soon-to-be ex-Beatle Paul McCartney, never one for making big cultural pronouncements, had nonetheless captured the timbre of the times in a gently rocking requiem that solemnly, if perhaps unintentionally, laid an era to rest even as it raised the hope that “there will be an answer.” The deeply religious symbolism of “Let It Be” would give way to a burst of churchy rock and pop, influenced both in style and sentiment by the cultural phenomenon Time Magazine, in an issue dated June 21, 1971, had dubbed “The Jesus Revolution.”

The Messianic musical influence lingered, appearing as both faddish novelty such as Blood, Sweat & Tears’ swaggering gospel-rock hit “Hi De Ho” and Rick Springfield’s amiable, banjo-led ditty “Speak To The Sky” as well as quasi-serious hard rock including the cacophonous, Catholic mass-styled Ceremony, as recorded by Spooky Tooth. By 1973, though, the decline in spiritually themed music was noticeable. Just as most of the hippies had done, many young Christians tentatively returned to mainstream culture or retreated into self-protective shells, where some found comfort from an emerging Christian music industry designed as much (if not more) for their needs than the hoped-for harvest of souls. The ragtag band of musicians who maintained their forward-march fervency were largely thought too radical for the emerging Christian music market and were left to play for cult audiences too small to sustain them. Others who had hastily ridden the neo-Christian current to success (such as Sweathog, whose modest hit “Hallelujah” remains a delectable slab of steaming gospel-rock) were swept away in the shifting undertow.

These casualties, some of whom had poured considerable sweat into plowing and planting the fields for the contemporary Christian music crop still to come, are among the least-known and appreciated figures in rock’s history despite having jammed for Jesus on the same stages where Jimi and Janis performed. The story of Christian rock’s genesis, rendered hazy by more than four decades’ passage, needs to be told, if only to dispel the myth that rock‘n’roll is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Eternal Damnation, Incorporated. Perhaps Larry Norman, in his musical paraphrase of Martin Luther, summed it up best: “why should the devil have all the good music?”

© 2007 Steve Morley