David Bowie on Rock 'n' Roll

Rock has always been the devil’s music. You can’t convince me that it isn’t.

[...]

I honestly believe everything that I’ve said. I believe that rock & roll is dangerous. It could well bring about a very evil feeling in the West. [...] And that’s where I see it [Rock 'n' Roll] heading, bringing about the dark era. [...] I feel that we’re only heralding something even darker than ourselves. [...]

David Bowie quoted in Rolling Stone, no. 206 (February 12, 1976), p. 83.
<http://www.theuncool.com/journalism/rs206-david-bowie/>

Music and Demon-Possession

It may be said in general of possessed persons, that sometimes people who cannot sing, are able when possessed to do so; others who ordinarily cannot write verses, when possessed compose in rhyme with ease.

Nevius, John Livingston, Demon Possession and Allied Themes: being an inductive study of phenomena of our own times, Chicago; New York; Toronto: Fleming H. Revell, 1894, p. 58.

The Beach Boys' Witchcraft Music?

We were all messed up on drugs. We were doing witchcraft, trying to make witchcraft music.

Kent, Nick, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music, Boston: Da Capo Press, 2002, p. 43.

The Power of Music

And therefore, I [Socrates] said, Glaucon, musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful [...]

Plato, The Republic of Plato, 3rd ed., tr. Benjamin Jowett, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888, p. 88.

The Classic of Filial Piety on Music

[...] for changing their [people's] manners and altering their customs there is nothing better than Music [...]

 Classic of Filial Piety (孝經, Xiao Jing), ch. 12.
(Legge, James, tr., The Sacred books of China: The texts of Confucianism, Oxford: The Clarendon press, 1879, part 1(, Sacred Books of the East, vol. 3), pp. 481-482.)

Little Richard on Rock

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. I have seen the rock groups and the punk-rock people in this country. And some of their lyrics is demonic. They talk against God. 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.

White, Charles, The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock, updated ed., Boston: Da Capo Press, p. 197.

I had forgotten all about God—going from town to town, city to city, and from country to country, not knowing that I was directed and commanded by another power. The power of darkness. The power that you've heard so much about. The power that a lot of people don't believe exists. The power of the Devil. Satan.

White, Charles, The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock, updated ed., Boston: Da Capo Press, pp. 205-206.

John Lennon as a Spirit Filled Temple

"I [John Lennon] felt like a hollow temple filled with many spirits, each one passing through me, each inhabiting me for a little time and then leaving to be replaced by another."

Goldman, Albert, The Lives of John Lennon, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1988, p. 373.

Plato on Music

[...] they involuntarily, through their ignorance, asserted falsely that music did not possess any correctness whatever; but that it might be judged of most correctly by the pleasure of the party gratified, whether he were a better person or a worse.

Plato, The Laws, bk. 3, ch. 15.
(Plato, The Works of Plato: A New and Literal Version, trans. George Burges, London: Henry G. Bohn, 1852, vol. 5, The Laws, p. 117.)

without intending it, they were guilty of so far slandering their art as to assert, in their folly, that there was no such thing as right or wrong in music: the one proper criterion was the pleasure of the hearer, be he gentle or simple.

Plato, The Laws, bk. 3.
(Plato, The Laws of Plato, ed. w. intro., notes, etc. by E. B. England, Manchester: The University Press; London, New York, Bombay, etc.: Longmans, Green & Co., 1921, vol. 1, bks. 1-6, pp. 114, 409.)

Jimmy Page Being a Vehicle for Some Greater Force

"I know what my musical direction is now," he [Page] said at the end of 1973, "and at those times when I've hit it, it's just like I'm a vehicle for some greater force."

Davis, Stephen, Hammer of the Gods: the Led Zeppelin Saga, New York: Harper Entertainment, 2008, p. 211.

Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant and Automatic Writing

As for the lyrics [for 'Stairway to Heaven' of Led Zeppelin's fourth album], written entirely by Plant, 'Jimmy and I just sat by the fire, it was a remarkable setting,' he recalled years later. 'I was holding a pencil and paper, and for some reason I was in a very bad mood. Then all of a sudden my hand was writing out the words, "There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold/And she's buying a stairway to heaven . . ." I just sat there and looked at the words and then I almost leapt out of my seat.' [...]

[...]

More words would come the following day as the band worked their way bit by bit through the song's epic journey. [...] Page recalled how, 'As we were doing all that, Robert was writing down the lyrics. They just came to him really quickly. He said it was like someone was guiding his hand.'

Wall, Mick, When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led-Zeppelin, London: Orion Books, 2008, pp. 242-243.

He [Robert Plant] often remarked that he could feel his pen being pushed by some higher authority.

Davis, Stephen, Hammer of the Gods: the Led Zeppelin Saga, New York: Berkley Boulevard Books, 1997, p. 243.
<http://www.amazon.com/Hammer-Gods-Stephen-Davis/dp/0425182134>
Davis, Stephen, Hammer of the Gods: the Led Zeppelin Saga, New York: Harper Entertainment, 2008, p. 243.

Calling on the gods... Slay a few animals... At the crossroads

When I was back there in seminary school
There was a person there
Who put forth the proposition
That you can petition the Lord with prayer
Petition the lord with prayer
Petition the lord with prayer
You cannot petition the lord with prayer!

Can you give me sanctuary
I must find a place to hide
A place for me to hide

Can you find me soft asylum
I can't make it anymore
The Man is at the door [what man?]

[...]

There's only four ways to get unraveled
One is to sleep and the other is travel, da da
One is a bandit up in the hills
One is to love your neighbor 'till [sodomy?]
His wife gets home

[...]

All our lives we sweat and save
Building for a shallow grave
Must be something else we say
Somehow to defend this place
Everything must be this way
Everything must be this way, yeah

[...]

Out of sight!
The lights are getting brighter
The radio is moaning
Calling to the dogs [gods?]
There are still a few animals
Left out in the yard
[...]

[...]

We need someone or something new
Something else to get us through, yeah, c'mon

Callin' on the dogs [gods?]
Callin' on the dogs [gods?]
Oh, it's gettin' harder
Callin' on the dogs [gods?]
Callin' in the dogs [gods?]
Callin' all the dogs [gods?]
Callin' on the gods

You gotta meet me
Too late, baby
Slay a few animals
At the crossroads
Too late
All in the yard
[...]
By the crossroads
You gotta meet me
[...]
At the edge of town
[...]
Outskirts of the city
You and I
We need someone new
Somethin' new
Somethin' else to get us through
Better bring your gun
Better bring your gun
[...]

[...] 

  "The Soft Parade," The Doors, the soft parade.

  And he [Morrison] finally got there [the vocal theater and rhythmic tension of those first breakthrough records], at the very end of the album, in "The Soft Parade" [...] Morrison growls in ecstasy: "This is the best part of the trip!" And it is, a resolution of the fanfares and detours all over the rest of The Soft Parade, into that original pagan magic.

Fricke, David, the insert, the doors/the soft parade, Rhino Entertainment Company, 2007.

Producer Paul Rothchild was one [who believed Jim's accident story]: "As a child he was driving with his parents, and there was a truck full of Indians that had crashed and overturned. There was a medicine man dying at the side of the road, and Jim, this four- or five-year-old child vividly remembered a mystical experience when, as the shaman died, his spirit entered Jim's body. That was the pivotal event of his entire life. He always viewed himself as the shaman, having mystical powers and the ability to see through many facades to the truth. It was this power that drove him. This was the great force that pushed his life and took him out of the rigid, military environment of his youth and turned him into a seer."

Riordan, James and Jerry Prochnicky, Break on Through: The Life and Death of Jim Morrison, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991, p. 193.

When Manzarek heard that Morrison wanted to call the band The Doors, he thought it was ridiculous until he remembered the Blake line. "At the time, we had been ingesting a lot of psychedelic chemicals," Manzarek remembers, "so the doors of perception were cleansed in our own minds, so we saw music as a vehicle to, in a sense, become proselytizers of a new religion, a religion of self, of each man as god. That was the original idea behind The Doors. Using music and Jim's brilliant lyrics."

Riordan, James and Jerry Prochnicky, Break on Through: The Life and Death of Jim Morrison, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991, p. 74.

Jim Morrison later recounted what happened to him during this time: "I was living in this abandoned office building, sleeping on the roof. And all of a sudden I threw away most of my notebooks that I'd been keeping since high school and these songs just kept coming to me. It was a beautiful hot summer and I just started hearing songs. This kind of mythic concert that I heard . . . I thought I was going to be a writer or a sociologist, maybe write plays. I never went to concerts---one or two at most. I saw a few things on TV, but I had never been a part of it all. But I heard in my head a whole concert situation, with a band and singing and an audience---a large audience. Those first five or six songs I wrote, I was just taking notes at a fantastic rock concert that was going on inside my head. And once I had written the songs, I had to sing them."

Riordan, James and Jerry Prochnicky, Break on Through: The Life and Death of Jim Morrison, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991, p. 72.