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

by Randall J. Stephens,
The Florida Courier, March 16, 2018

“Gospel and rock ‘n’ roll were cut from the same cloth,” Tav Falco, leader of the psychedelic group Panther Burns, once observed, “even though one is considered to be the devil’s music, and the other sanctified music. It was played by the same people, and appealed to the same audience.” As he railed against rock ‘n’ roll as “the pulse and tempo of hell” in 1959, Pentecostal youth pastor David Wilkerson made much the same point. With the shaking, the prostration, and “even the speaking in vile tongues,” Wilkerson declared, rock concerts resembled perverted Pentecostal services.