Episode 006 – Why Should the Devil have all the Good Music? (Part 1)
17 April 2021
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
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B: Well, gidday T. How are we?
T: I’m good thanks B, can’t believe it’s been a week since last time we talked.
B: Time does go very fast, especially when you get as old as we are.
T: That’s right, it starts to completely go fast, because woe to you oh earth and sea, for the devil sends the beast with wrath, because he knows the time is short. That’s the beginning of Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden.
B: Is it.
T: Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast.
B: Ah. What a great song though, I do remember that. Here we are Episode 6, which we’re going to call Why does the Devil have all the Good Music? Which I’ve been informed again – wealth of knowledge, this T bloke, was a Cliff Richard song.
T: Cliff Richard did a version of that, definitely. He is a born-again fundamentalist.
B: Yes. Is he still?
T: He may have mellowed, who knows, but he certainly was.
B: You would hope he has mellowed. So, I think you should talk like you did in the last episode a little bit to our online presence – some of the tools available. You are the king of our online presence – our downloads are creeping up there.
T: Yep, we’re starting to get people subscribing and seeing people interact with us online. We release every Saturday, Australia time, we’ve even got people from overseas downloading which is nice, so take away a day. Also on Facebook where there’s a page and a group, feel free to join those and connect with us. We’re not going to be extremely strong on censorship or anything, so you don’t have to agree with us. You can argue with us, we may not argue back, but you’re welcome to come along and be part of the chat.
B: Yeah, I’m probably committed to not arguing back, I’ve been on both sides of the coin, as have you, and I definitely want to respect people’s opinions and what they say, everyone’s got their own stuff.
T: Exactly right.
B: This topic is a big one, music is a big part of the church scene, isn’t it.
T: I think it’s not just because there’s a history of music in church, I think the whole idea of churches getting together and singing songs came from once upon a time people would go down to the pubs or into the town square, they would get together and sing songs. And when churches looked at how to get people together, they would imitate what the “world” was doing, which was getting together and singing songs. Interesting the world has stopped doing that – we don’t go to each other’s places – maybe you might like to do karaoke, but largely we don’t get together and sing, but churches still do. You certainly watch bands in churches as well, but the idea of communal singing and choral singing…
B: I think music still brings people together regardless of whether we sing or not together. Whenever I have people over…
T: You like to sing?
B: Music always goes on – I do like to sing, and people like to leave when I sing! So you know I don’t know if there’s a correlation, I choose to believe there’s not. But I always put music on in the background.
T: Music is a big part of your life, it’s a big part of my life too.
B: It’s a huge part of my life. I still go to a lot of gigs to this day, I’ve always been drawn to music, and music speaks to me. I definitely connect with music, I find it a very emotional experience, but I also find it can lift and change my mood in many negative and positive ways, and I think over time I’ve learned how to control music rather than music control me.
T: It can also distract, can’t it. You can put on music and it can distract you from whatever’s getting you down, or whatever.
B: Well, back in university, because you’d study in a communal setting, I’d quite often put music on and write essays or reports or whatever. To this day I still have to do that at work, if I’ve got a report to write or a paper or something to present, I have to have music to help me. It is powerful.
T: So it’s no surprise that fundamentalist churches took music as something very important, right, and even the secular music – secular meaning not of the church – they were very preoccupied with that. Talk about being primed, before I joined any sort of church I was already exposed to the idea of backward masking as a kid, that if you play this music backwards, forwards or whatever that playing the music backwards would somehow influence you because the Devil would put secret messages inside the music. That came from Christians, right?
B: I was exposed to it too. Ten, eleven, twelve years old, sticking the record on backwards – that was well before I had any exposure to the church. So definitely yeah it leaked out.
T: Friends of mine and I got right into the Beatles and there was all this supposed backwards stuff apparently in their stuff, but the Beatles would put it on backwards and then you play it forwards, like Revolution number 9 on the White album, but then you play it backwards and it does say turn me on dead man. It says number nine number nine, turn it backwards and it’s clear as day, turn me on dead man. Other parts of it sound like someone speaking Russian, but there’s no message from the Devil in that.
B: No. Well why would the Devil …
T: Well he gets all the good music. So, when I was in the Revival Centres music wasn’t of the Devil, you could listen to whatever you wanted, so long as it wasn’t swearing and carrying on forwards. I think I mentioned in the last episode they just weren’t big on the Devil, but when I came into Great Big AOG you weren’t allowed to listen to secular music. It wasn’t like anyone would come down on you, it was just the culture, the peer pressure was you listen to Christian music, the end.
B: I remember once my brother was in the car with me, it was probably two years after my conversion time, it had been a rocky up and down, and I remember putting some music on. It wasn’t Christian music, I didn’t listen to any Christian music.
T: Knowing you it was probably Daryl Braithwaite. Or Cold Chisel.
B: It was Cold Chisel. And I remember it was a tape, it was that long ago, and I remember my brother ripping it out of the tape deck and putting this artist in called Keith Green.
T: Oh Keith Green. I was a big Keith Green fan.
B: Well, I hated it. I ripped that tape out and put it in the back seat.
T: (sings) You put this love in my heart…
B: Well I became a big Keith Green fan, I read the book
T: No Compromise
B: Many, many times.
T: Same. I had the audio book on tape. I used to buy that book and give it to people.
B: It was a great book, it had the mix of music and story. I love a biography. But I found myself particularly in the first few years of my journey in churches judging a church that I went into by its music. How professional was it, how much of a tight outfit was it, all that stuff. One thing in Great Big AOG that they were heavily involved in was Youth Alive. Youth Alive used to be held in the Sports and Entertainment Centre, the big one. They would get plenty of people, sometimes it would run over two nights wouldn’t it? I can’t remember, but there was lots of excited young people in there and the drawcard was music.
T: They would basically put on huge concerts, back in the day as if it was Bon Jovi or Duran Duran or whoever. It was on par in terms of lights and sound, certainly not in terms of performance, but the lights and sound and atmosphere was a rock concert.
B: I remember one thing that stands out – I became relatively involved in that space. Tommy Emmanuel, famous guitarist in Australia, he became a Christian, so he became a drawcard at this Youth Alive. They got him along, he played guitar, he was a beautiful instrumentalist, and he played Imagine.
T: Imagine by John Lennon, yes.
B: I don’t know if you remember this.
T: I do, yes. I’ve reflected on this a number of times and wondered, what was he up to?
B: Yeah yeah – the controversy. Obviously he was never invited back because as you know one of the famous lines in it, imagine there’s no heaven.
T: Basically it says imagine there’s no religion. But that’s what I’m asking, because Tommy Emmanuel would know what it says.
B: Or was it complete naivety in thinking this is a beautiful piece of music, because it is. It is such a beautiful piece of music.
T: I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s naivety, because would you be invited to speak or sing or play guitar and play a song that is directly challenging religion and the need for religion in the world at a religious event.
B: I think you’re missing the point that he was oppressed by a demon!
T: Ah, right.
B: Go back to Episode 5. Look whatever was behind it, it was pathetic he didn’t get invited back. Maybe he was a tool of the Devil, T. Who knows.
T: I’m just wondering was he – nah, I dunno. I don’t think he was up to something, because he was so big then, he was such a huge name why would he bother going along to a Youth Alive rally and say this is shit.
B: That’s right. And he was really into it.
T: He had a real conversion story.
B: Yeah, and then a deconversion story a few years later.
T: Was there.
B: Yep, from what I understand. I mean, I don’t know him but from what I understand from the rumour mill. Maybe it all started from when he played Imagine. But it was a huge thing, there was a lot of excitement. I think we spoke in one of our earlier episode about the need to save souls, and that’s what this night was all about. I remember being a salvation counsellor.
T: Yep, done that.
B: So you’d have these kids that would make a decision that they would follow Jesus, that was their night of their conversion, they would go back into a large section at the back of the stadium, and you’d have salvation counsellors that would sit around and essentially what you were doing was getting their contact details, making sure they got connected up with a church in their area.
T: But there were packs we’d give them too, with little tracts on how to stay saved and all that kind of stuff.
B: Yeah pretty much, you’d open them up and say has anyone got any questions about what just happened, most of them were 13, 14, 15, they had no questions because they were blinded by the lights and the music.
T: Are you saying the music was manipulative?
B: Oh, look, I think they used it as a tool to bring people in, but if I reflect on the manipulation of it, absolutely. If you looked at the stage and how they did it, there was a hype. They’d come out with a bang, they’d get everybody into it.
T: (singing) we will fight, we will win!
B: Absolutely, and people would be into it. It was like one giant karaoke session, and then they’d have a very pointed message, you could time it every time. There was always someone that would sneak around to the back of the stage, hop onto a keyboard or guitar…
T: And start playing a very heavy strings sound – waah waah waaah.
B: Build the emotion, then you’d have an altar call for people who wanted to come forward.
T: You’re skipping a stage, one of the stages was before they would do that whole talk they would have the praise and worship time, so they’d start with the whole we will fight, we will win, we will destroy, then it would go into refresh my heart and all that soft, gentle sappy sort of songs, kids would start raising their hands, people would be singing in tongues. And we would stand there in the crowd singing to God, picturing God in our mind, singing upwards and there was this whole sense of building to something, lifting up, but in a really soft sort of way. That’s when they would hope that the Holy Spirit would come, and fall on everyone and soften hearts and all that kind of stuff, and then they would go into the sermon and do the altar call and the strings sound.
B: That’s true. Quite often it was divided into praise which was high energy
T: Praise is fast, and worship which is people on keyboards doing heavy strings sound. The reason I keep talking about the heavy strings sound is because later when I was doing my own preaching and youth pastoring, I knew – time for the strings.
B: Oh, 100%.
T: And then you talk quietly over the strings.
B: Yep. I remember probably the first time I lead the praise and worship session, I remember using manipulative tools in it, and I consciously did it. I remember thinking okay this is where I have to use the drummer, I have to point at the drummer and get him to do a solid beat, then I’ve got to bring in the guitar and…
T: So you’re building it slowly, you’re building the crescendo.
B: Yep, and I knew how to do it because I’d seen it 100 times. And I consciously did it because it was learned behaviour, I thought that’s what you had to do, that’s how you had an impact. There’s a factory of musicians which pump out the most successful of this praise and worship, which in Australia is Hillsong.
T: Yep, and it’s worth noting that while we’re going to sit here and talk about being part of Great Big AOG people are going to say oh you were never in Hillsong, but when we were in Great Big AOG, Hillsong was part of Assemblies of God. They weren’t a church, they were a music conference that used to happen at Hills Christian Life Centre, every year. People from all over Australia including our church would get excited and go have you been to Hillsong yet? It’s this conference that would happen every year. And the leader of Hillsong was actually head of the AOG for a while – Brian Houston. I don’t even know the whole story about why they broke away, but certainly that whole using music in that way, we were there at the conception of that. I think we should get badges and t-shirts – we were there.
B: We absolutely were there and it was hugely influential. Did you ever go to Hillsong?
T: No, I never went to Hillsong, but I would listen to Brian speak because I was in Bible College, an upcoming leader and all that sort of stuff so I used to go to conferences where he was leading. He wasn’t in charge of the AOG then but he was still a high flyer, so he would come and speak. And there was another guy, Geoff Bullock who used to write all this music.
B: Oh yes, of course. I forgot about him. Darlene Zschech.
T: And Darlene Zschech was another one, and these were all AOG people. So we’d go to Youth Alive rallies and events, and they would be there. They were just part of the furniture because they weren’t yet – and I’m just speculating here, I’m not sure how much money they make now, but they weren’t yet making millions. As individuals, let alone as churches.
B: Yeah. Do you think they – I mean, it’s speculative of course, but I think they went into it with good intention.
T: Oh yeah, I think so. As did we.
B: Absolutely. And I think fame just came to them. They became very very famous within the circle, and probably started to be outside of that too, I mean it was on 60 minutes here several times about the influence of Hillsong.
T: I mean, the Prime Minister now, dating this podcast in 2021, he is a member of Hillsong, he goes to that church so their influence is phenomenal.
B: Is it Hillsong or Planet Shakers that he’s part of?
T: Hillsong. Planet Shakers is still AOG, but Hillsong left and Planet Shakers went well we’re going to do this too. But we digress. Using music in that way, you talked about the difference between praise and worship. I can remember I was allowed to lead the praise, but I wasn’t allowed to lead the worship. So I could do the fast songs, but I couldn’t do the slow songs.
B: And I do have a recollection of a time – we got involved in these O teams I think they were called.
T: Outreach teams.
B: And we would go to smaller fledgling churches as they were really starting to get off the ground, because we came from Great Big AOG, we were the experts.
T: We were fucking big.
B: So there’d be a group, and the group would consist of someone who lead the praise and the worship, or the praise or worship, there was someone who would preach, and you would essentially do the whole thing. I think we were trying to teach them how to do it, or they saw that you were coming from Great Big AOG and they thought my god this is amazing, someone actually paying attention. But you, I remember this one time
T: This one time, on band camp?
B: It was close to that! But you were really into it, and you were good at it.
T: Oh man I was a master manipulator.
B: You were great.
T: Not just with songs. With sermons too. But keep going.
B: I remember this one you went off. There’s an artist here in Australia called Jimmy Barnes – Google him, he’s a little bit of a rock singer. Jimmy Barnes likes to really slam into a song and rock his body around, and you did a Jimmy Barnes while you were doing a praise song. The song was called Jesus Lover of my Soul and you were going off, you turned it into something else. I remember looking around and people were really into it and I remember looking at you going wow what’s happened.
T: That was all performance.
B: Oh 100%.
T: But also I was enjoying myself. That was what was happening in that moment.
B: Oh that was great.
T: It’s funny, I don’t know if it was that one or another one where I did a similar thing, after one of the pastors came up to me and prophesied that God was going to use me in music, and I was like nah, I’m going to be a pastor. It’s more about control and power than status because those singers and everything, while on the one hand they were idolised and lauded, at the same time they were tier B compared to the pastors and preachers.
B: Absolutely. I remember wanting to be a pastor, because it was the ultimate tier.
T: I remember being in church one day and retreating into my own head, but at the time I was having a moment with God where I felt God was asking me what I wanted to do, do you want to be a singer or do you want to be a preacher. And I was like no choice God, I want to be the preacher.
B: I thought you were going to say you wanted to be a singing preacher.
T: Well yeah, yeah, but no.
B: Life is a musical.
T: That was the choice – music will manipulate, but not as much as power will.
B: No, absolutely. I want to go back to something we started talking about at the start of this podcast, the influence of music and how you couldn’t listen to worldly music. What was the impact that had for you?
T: When I stepped into Great Big AOG there was a number of barriers or hurdles you jumped to get closer and closer in right, going to a home group, going to Youth, quitting smoking and drinking was part of that, and dealing with worldly music. I had a really nice vinyl music collection, even to the point where I had gotten rid of cassettes to purchase vinyl of the same albums, but I was really into heavy metal so I had things like Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osborne, the Beatles, that sort of stuff. I had a Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band picture disc which I bought overseas. I had a really nice collection. Burnt them all. Gave it all to Jesus, and set fire to it. My mother, who wasn’t involved, was mortified, because this collection was worth a lot of money and I torched it all and did not listen to secular from probably about 1990 to 1995. If I heard it on the radio or in the shopping centre or something, fine, but I didn’t buy albums, I didn’t tune into the radio myself, it was all Christian music.
B: I remember when you came out the other side of that, I remember a conversation when you used to try and shit stir people with that because you knew it triggered them. I remember being at a wedding with you and you were asking people out of the blue whether they’d heard the new Oasis album.
T: Yeah because I left Great Big AOG before you did.
B: Yes, you did.
T: But I was still on the fringes a little bit. Because for me, taking that back – I mean, that’s a whole ‘nother episode, right, but taking that back and saying this is actually what I enjoy, this is who I am – yeah.
B: Look, I was similar. As we said before, music’s always been a huge part of my life. I had a huge music collection as well.
T: Yes I’m going to hang my head in shame here – go on, tell the story for the listeners.
B: It was fairly significant, I remember this one album I had, it was Cold Chisel, it was called you’re 13 you’re beautiful and you’re mine…
T: Which nowadays #metoo would probably not…
B: Oh it would not be popular, however, I bought it back in the 80s, probably the mid 80s and I paid about $150 for it back then. Very limited, not many of them around, this was perfect, never been played, but that was just one of 100s and 100s of albums and compact discs I had at the time. I used to buy at least two CDs every week with my pay, or a vinyl. But I loved my music, I still love it, and as I said before, I found it very difficult to latch onto Christian music at first because it bored me. I really loved the music I had.
T: I can remember, because I didn’t have a car and you used to drive me places, and I would get into your car and you’d be playing secular music.
B: Yes.
T: I didn’t say it like this, but retrospectively it’s like what the fuck? Why is this guy in leadership, in youth leadership, doing all this sort of stuff, and obviously got a heart for God and we’d hop into his car and he’s putting on Daryl Braithwaite, or Cold Chisel, or Frente, or whatever.
B: So we had a couple of days of fasting and prayer retreat.
T: Did we?
B: Yes.
T: I don’t remember this.
B: I remember you delivering a word from God.
T: Did I. Oh.
B: saying that if I wanted to be closer to God I needed to rid myself of that music collection.
T: Did I really, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise I did that, I thought I just came to you one day as a concerned person, but I actually brought God and manipulated you.
B: Had a word. But you probably thought it was the right thing to do.
T: I totally thought it was the right thing, (and I still do)
(laughter)
B: And I was ripe for the picking, because I went you know what, I don’t think I can get closer to God.
T: I knew MP3s were coming, it was all fine.
B: That was the moment when I went home and destroyed my music collection, I broke every single one of my records, my compact discs, I destroyed the tapes.
T: It wasn’t enough to give them away, we had to destroy them.
B: You couldn’t give them away, because then you’re giving them to someone else and invoking those issues to them. I remember then I built up a huge Christian music collection and much like you, I reckon it was from about 1990, maybe 91-92, maybe through to 96-97 predominantly I only listened to Christian music because I thought it was the right thing to do.
T: I remember you were into Steve Camp, Steven Curtis Chapman, Keith Green.
B: Yeah, but also a lot of alternative Christian music, there was a band called Mad at the World, I used to really like them, the Swirling Eddies, the Rocking Rabbis.
T: I don’t know any of them.
B: So it was very alternative, and you know what, I’ve still got those discs at home. But it was probably about 96-97 I thought I’m going to start building my non Christian music collection back up.
T: Screw false prophecies.
B: That’s right. But you know it’s all part of the journey, and it’s whatever – in the end it’s material possessions and it’s gone, and to compensate we do have Spotify.
T: But remember we moved from vinyl to CDs – people have now gone back to vinyl, and I get that, but it’s all there on Spotify so we didn’t end up losing anything really, but it speaks to something deeper.
B: We lost our religion.
T: Well yeah, which at that point was music. But you know what I’m saying, it speaks to something deeper which is that music is so powerful the church saw it as a threat, so they had to sever us from those voices, from those influences – or they felt they did.
B: Sex, drugs and rock and roll. All those things to fear. This is a massive topic, and I reckon we could do a part two three and four of this. Who knows what we’ll bring up later on, but it’s an interesting one and it’s one that is dear to my heart.
T: All right, well that sounds good to me. Let’s make this another one of those part 1’s where we can talk about music and those kinds of things later. I would also like to one day do an episode about Hillsong and stuff like that, because whilst we weren’t actually there when they exploded, we were there at the beginning, and I think we’ve got some perspective to bring on Hillsong.
B: Yeah absolutely. It’s not going to be sequential, music part 2 will not be next week, it’ll be another time. So we will just keep on mixing it up. So thank you everyone for listening.
T: Look us up on Facebook, jump into the group, have a chat, find us on your favourite podcast. You know another thing I’d like to say, it’s going to sound typically what people who make podcasts say, but tell your friends about us if you think what we’re saying is valid or interesting, subscribe to us on your favourite podcast platform, and also give us a rating, because that actually brings us up in search results.
B: If you don’t like us, give it to an enemy. Spruik us, say hey.
T: Give us one star rather than five.
B: No no, appreciate everyone’s support to date.
T: See you next week.