Lennon As Lenin

Show me a Russian cemetery and I'll show you a Communist plot —

--Anonymous

When you mention Tulsa, Oklahoma, to anyone, if he’s heard of it he will envision oil magnates, Oral Roberts and Leon Russell, not necessarily in that order. Not long ago, the Oil Capital made headlines when some local Ku Klux Klansmen tried to make a citizen’s arrest of the cast of Hair during the nude scene. (The audience booed, and security men ushered the KKKreeps out the door.)

But Tulsa is also the home of Billy James Hargis’ Christian Crusade, an anti-Communist organization which perceives the USA through Red sunglasses. It searches for Commies in universities, in the National. Council of Churches, and sees a Kremlin plot behind the use of “music directed at destroying the mental and emotional stability of America’s youth through a scheme capable of producing mass neurosis.”

As Hitler had his Goebbels and Nixon has his Herb Kline for propaganda purposes, Hargis has Rev. David A. Noebel. That’s probably an unfair comparison since he’s more like “Otto the Orkin Man” of the Far Right, who leaves no (Rolling) stone unturned as he searches for (Red) Beatles underneath, or ferrets out the Marxist termites crawling out of Woody Guthrie. Noebel is thirtyish, balding, mild-mannered and neither the William Buckley intellectual nor Wallace demagogue one might expect after reading his books. He takes himself quite seriously. As he would say to me later: “Oh, we laugh at ourselves all the time and we have a lot of fun doing what we are doing but we still think it’s very serious business.”

His “business” (and it is indeed that, since he estimates Christian Crusade’s income last year at about $2]6. million) includes: teaching at the Christian Crusade Anti-Communist Youth University [unaccredited] in Manitou Springs, Colorado; vice-president of American Christian College [unaccredited] in Tulsa; and writing a series of books on the rock-music-as-a-Commie-plot theme. The first, Rhythm, Riots and Revolution, sold 100,000 paperback copies, and his latest offering is The Marxist Minstrels — A Handbook On Communist Subversion of Music.” (Those interested in obtaining these and other transitory tomes can write: Christian Crusade Publications, P.O. Box 977, Tulsa, OK 74102.)

I ventured to take a look at Rev. Noebel’s 180 -differentiated concept of popular music and its superstars.

The hard fact Is that in this present revolutionary era, heavy beat music has become the catalyst for the young radicals in their announced plans not only to destroy Western culture, but to dethrone God.

—“The Beatles:

A Study in Drugs, Sex and Revolution.”

That’s from one of Noebel’s books devoted entirely to the Beatles. The other is Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles. Two books? This seems to be evidence, I told Rev. Noebel, that you really consider them a threat, even though they have split and moved in their individual directions. “I just went down to the store,” he says, “and all the Beatles are still intact. They’re still selling Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which was dripping in drugs, so how can you say that if they split that those records still aren’t going to influence young people?” I hadn’t said that but I moved on and asked his opinion of John Lennon (who draws the most verbal abuse in his books). “Really,” he says in a voice as serious as Whiteman’s, “the key leader of the Beatles for all those years was John Lennon, and Lennon is still a very potent force today. He is recognized as one of the heroes of the Left. He has come out with ‘Working Class Hero’ which is for the Marxist-Leninist revolution, which he admitted in his Rolling Stone interview. I would say they are still a potent force to be reckoned with. I wish they would all be converted to Christ, take all their records off the stands and start over again.”

Harrison had not become a Jesus freak but you might consider him the “religious” one of the four, I mentioned. “Well, he’s hooked up in the Eastern metaphysical area. Of course, I don’t believe that’s the answer to the world’s problems. It certainly hasn’t been the answer to India’s problems, in fact that’s one of the hindrances India right now.” They have “more beef on the hoof’ than we have in the U.S., Noebel says, but people still are starving. “But where Christianity has gone those problems go out with it.” Yes, we are a Christian, meat-eating nation, I thought to myself, wondering what it all meant.

Jesus freaks. Hmmmm. Now here was something I had to ask him about. He must approve of them, but at the same time, even THEY like rock music.

First of all, Noebel said, he didn’t like the expression Jesus “freak’? because he considered it a derogatory term. “Really, they were drug freaks to “And Hair is drawn straight from Jerry Rubin.** (This guy may know something after ail.)

begin with, you see, and they sort of took it over from that subculture, so I would protest that word.” I argued that the term freak has become more generalized and shouldn’t be taken as a put-down. It was a moot point not worth following, so I didn’t. He knew that many “Jesus people” had found deliverance from drugs through Christ but he stopped far short of endorsing the policy of “uniting rock music with Gospel words. I think it is a bad omen, I think it is dangerous.” He compared it to the “early chuch of Corinth which desecrated the Lord’s Supper.”

“Desecrating” is included in his opinion of Jesus Christ, Superstar. The other adjectives are, in alphabetical order: anti-Christian, apostate, blasphemous, irreverent, profane and sacreligious. I thought this the height of redundancy but he replied he would have added “a few more words” if he had SEEN the play. His opinion, he admitted, was based on Time’s review and the written transcript. “It just isn’t Scriptural,” he wailed, “they’re just wrong in every basic point of Bible. Rice-Webber just brought their own preconceived, humanistic Christ to the fore.” He singled out his dislikes: “Makes the apostles look like idiots at the Last Supper, makes Christ not sure of himself, blames God the Father for the Crucifixion, and tries to get Judas off the hook.”

He decided not to write about Godspell, in a similar pamphlet, but did do one on Hair. Hair pushes playboylove. God condemns it. Playboy-love is one mile wide and l/64th of an inch deep.” A strange analogy, I thought — an abstract concept as a spatial relationship. I asked him to explain further. Very easily done, he says. Hair is to music what Jerry Rubin’s book Do It! is to literature.” (Let’s see now, I had elementary logic, a is to b as c is to d; if a=c, then b=d. I think I have it.) “Exactly what Rubin is pushing in Do It! is being pushed in Hair, including promiscuity, drugs and the whole hippie subculture, and I’m against the whole hippie subculture for many many reasons.” Yes, I had it all right.

ELEMENT OF

MUSIC GOOD MUSIC ROCK 'N ROLL

FITCH

RHYTHM

INTENSITY

ATMOSPHERE

Variety of pitches

Melodies.

Accurate pitches.

Uses many chords (harmonies).

Modulations (changing keys, or tonal levels). Uses very high pitches for

contrast and climax points,.

Well-organized pitch patterns.

Variety of rhythms..

Based on rhythm (the "backbone” of music)

Accurate rhythms...

Natural accents (4/4 time 1 2 3 4).

Always has well-organized rhythmic patterns

Rhythm used as only one part of music.

Rhythms which lead to natural physical motions (rhythm demands motion).

Much contrast between loud and soft..

Constant change in dynamic level.

Sound level always controlled, even in more exciting pieces.

Wide variation in use of "force intensity”

(this is qualitative, not quantitative, and can be as strong in soft music as in loud).

Well-ordered system...

Lifting-up quality.,

Strengthens moral and spiritual principles.

Clean words, with good purposes...

Constant repetition of pitches

Almost no melody (only oft-repeated fragments)

Slightly under true pitch (as in "blues”)

Repetition of same chords (usually I, IV, V)

Almost never modulates (stays in same key)

Overuse of high pitches to give wild, screaming sounds (instruments can be made to scream)

"Wild sound" (often incoherent)

Constant repetition of same rhythmic figure Based on the "Beat" (“Rhythm doesn't really exist in it" —Stravinsky)

"Breaking up” of rhythms (usually just before the beat), "Unnatural" accents (pattern reversed: 4/4 time 1 2 3 4) Often has no apparent rhythmic organization:

"wild sound”

Complete dominance of the "beat” (some taken directly from the drum beats of heathen rituals)

"Beats” which evoke unnatural, sensual "gyrations" (many changes in the “driving motion” of rhythms) Constantly driving “beat" (even in so-called slow songs it is in the background)

As loud as possible, as long as possible Use of powerful hi-fi equipment for greatest possible intensity to "completely captivate the listener"

Sound level often reaches uncontrolled wild stage (measured at 95 decibels which equals riveting— riveters wear ear plugs)

Always full of strong "force intensity" (with record

playing, turn the volume all the way down and listen)

Chaos

Degrading quality

Tears away moral principles, is anti-spiritual and anti-God in many instances Sensual, dirty, sadistic, neurotic, and even blasphemous words

The Communist infiltration into the subversion of American music has been nothing short of phenomenal.

—“Rhythm, Riots and Revolution”

Communist infiltration ... subversion ... phenomenal. Sounds like a script from the old TV series “I Led 3 lives.” According to the “RR&R” book, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie were the Rosenbergs of pop music. Sure, their songs are political, they had Communist leanings, I said, but both wrote some rather catchy tunes too, favorites like “This Land Is Your Land” and “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” Noebel again answered with a question: “Can music be used as a weapon of subversion?” Since I made no reply, he continued. “I’m arguing in this book that it has been and is still being used.” He cited another book — Great Day Coming — written by a Dr. Denisoff of the University of Illinois, in which the same charge is made that “Seeger and Guthrie were part and parcel of the movement to use folk music as a weapon for social-political change, that they were part and parcel of the Communist movement.” (Now another analogy, which I present in its entirety, to get the full effect.) “Now if this is true, then the so-called innocuous songs would be like the sugar cube which contains arsenic. In other words, you don’t tell someone you’re going to poison him, you tell him to drink a cup of coffee and you don’t tell him inside the sugar cube is a speck of arsenic ...”

Noebel (left) with Mojo Rev. Billy James Hargis.

“Or maybe acid,” I said, in faked seriousness.

“ ... or acid, or whatever it is. So I’m saying that the so-called good good songs with no political implications are just the sugar around the arsenic. And I would say this is basically true with the Beatle songs.”

To change the subject, I asked if he thought Bob Dylan had mellowed since the protest days. “Well, Bob Dylan is probably very close to where he was originally. George Jackson was a revolutionist and anyone singing whoopee in favor of George Jackson might as well sing for Hitler, Stalin, Krushchev or Mao Tse-Tung.”

Seeger, Guthrie, Dylan. Sure they were influential in the ’60s, but this is 1972. What about all the new super groups, I inquired, GFR, CCR, Faces,, Black Sabbath? No, he wasn’t familiar with them, he answered. “Basically, I don’t really care who plays the hard rock stuff. What I say about it is still true no matter who plays it. My work is more of a philosophical nature than it is boiled down to any particular group.”

Philosophy ... maybe I could come up with something here. Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, Leary and Baba Ram Dass (Dr. Richard Alpert) had all used psychedelic drugs as aids to awareness. Was there any validity to their claims? Noebel: “Scholars and intellectuals have done some of the stupidest things in the world. (I had to agree with him on that, and told him so.) Philosophy is my avocation and all you have to do is either look on the Freudian side or the Pavlovian side or the evil-nature side of any of these philosophers and you can’t believe they were supposed to be some of the smartest men in the world. Huxley might have thought he was bringing in Brave New World but they’ve opened up Pandora’s Boxes.”

Biblical scholar John Alegro has published a book in which he claims early Christians ingested Aminita muscaria — magic mushrooms. What was his reaction to these findings?, I asked Noebel. “Alegro calls himself a Biblical scholar but he is doing his best, and has been for years, to subvert Biblical Christianity as best hie could, and I would say this is more of his approach to it.”

CONTINUED ON PAGE 72.

Some of these rock players are the scum of the earth.

—Rev. Noebel

Since I was' providing Rev. Noebel with the opportunity to say anything he wanted, I asked his opinion of the rock publications, like CREEM.

“Well, my opinion isn’t very high, even though this is being printed in one of them. They’re pushing the rock-drug subculture onto unsuspecting 13 and 14-year-olds. They are read by gullible kids who think these cats (Cat Stevens? Fritz the Cat?) are really heroes and when they’re not, they’re stinkers. They’re immoral, illiterate and for these publications to keep playing them up as heroes, they’re playing up the wrong side of society, as far as I’m concerned. I would agree with a writer in St. Louis who said after inspecting the morals of the rock ‘n’ roll set, he found that the jet set looked like ‘pantywaist Victorians.’ And I’m arguing that rock ‘n’ roll is tearing down the morals of our kids and a lot of other things besides.”

I can’t believe he said the whole thing.