Ask Lemmy

As long as there has been popular music, there have been people who say it is evil. Many classical composer where consider controversial. Mozart’s Leck mich im Arsch (Lick me in the arse) aside, anyone who challenged the status quo was considered “evil” but many.

In rock and rolls case, I would say no it is not inherently racist, and it has nothing to do with drums. But I can see how you could draw that conclusion because pre-Elvis rock and roll was considered “race music”. However, that fact that record companies found success with white washed versions of it, would indicate to me that they didn’t consider rock and roll itself evil. Of course, there were always those who hated it no matter how watered down Pat Boone tried to make it and considered it evil. But that’s no different than really anything that goes against the status quo.

As the 60s rolled on, there were minor conflict between rock and roll and the church. Most famously, John Lennon saying the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. In the late 60s bands like Black Sabbath were seen as evil, but I don’t think that applied to rock and roll as a whole. However, into the 70s with bands like Alice Cooper, New York Dolls, Kiss, and then the emergence of punk, more people started thinking of rock and roll in general as evil.

Then comes the 1980s. The Reagan years. Where you have the rise of the Moral Majority, the Satanic Panic, and PMRC, which loved to label things as “evil”. Make things us versus them. I don’t think it had anything to do with the actual music. It was more of the anti-establishment messages and decadence that was associated with the rock and roll lifestyle. It didn’t help that many bands purposefully adopted satanic symbols for shock value.

But, in true 1980s fashion instead of talking to their kids, boomer parents just labeled it as evil and forbid it.