Changing his tune: Once a fan of rock 'n' roll, Eric Holmberg now sees the threat it poses to American culture. He talked to The New American about his efforts to make these dangers known. (Cover Story: Music).

Interview of Eric Holmberg

The three-video set Hells Bells 2: The Dangers of Rock 'n' Roll is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in learning more about the phenomenon of rock 'n' roll music, and the devastating impact that it has had on American culture. Produced and narrated by Eric Holmberg, director of the Center for Cultural Apologetics, Hells Bells deals exhaustively with the social, moral, political, and religious implications of rock music, backed with fascinating, if sometimes unpleasant, footage of rock concerts, rave parties, music videos, MTV, and celebrity interviews that reveal rockers' revolutionary agenda. At the same time, Holmberg's low-key, non-confrontational style is unlikely to offend intellectually honest devotees of rock music. In many instances, Holmberg lets the images and the stars speak for themselves to make his case.

Eric Holmberg is the father of five home-schooled children, a graduate of William and Mary college, and for many years a dedicated student of culture who reads four or five books a week. He spoke to THE NEW AMERICAN recently about his work.

TNA: How did you become convinced of the dangers of rock 'n' roll?

Holmberg: I was once a successful hippie. About all I owned at the time was a Carmen Ghia and a very extensive record collection. After my conversion to Christianity, I went back to my digs and looked at my record collection and sat there and knew in my heart that a lot of the craziness I'd gotten involved in -- a lot of my rebellion, a lot of my attitudes about sexuality, and all kinds of other issues -- authority, parents, government -- had been influenced by the worldviews that were being communicated through the music I'd been addicted to for so many years. I made a decision that I didn't want to listen to that type of stuff any longer, and walked away from it. I immersed myself in the Bible, in reading C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, books like that, and in the process developed a burden to really try to communicate to the culture that I'd been a part of. I felt basically that I'd been lied to and deceived. I didn't really blame anybody -- I blamed myself first and foremost. Human nature being what it is, everybody wants to try to reaffirm what they believe and to walk under cognitive dissonance, where you believe one thing and do something else, and somehow try to keep your head from exploding. I wanted to find a way to speak to all my buddies, the people I went to college with, people I cared about deeply as friends. All of it came out of a desire to communicate with my peers and my generation using the metaphors of popular culture. Hells Bells 2 is ostensibly an expose on rock 'n' roll; that's how it functions on one level. But really, it's just a presentation of a Christian worldview using the metaphor of popular music.

TNA: Is rock 'n' roll any different from other kinds of music?

Holmberg: I still appreciate music probably now more than ever, all different kinds of music. There's good music, some of it created by Christians, some of it by non-Christians. But every person has the image of God in them, something that resonates with the beauty and the wisdom and the integrity of heaven. I would say that of all the musical styles used, rock 'n' roll probably resists the good, the true and the beautiful, to use the old classical/medieval triad, more than other musical forms because of its raison d'etre. One thing I do is go into a high school and ask, "What was the last song you listened to that really encouraged you to be sexually pure and save sex until marriage?" And everybody laughs, because that's not what rock 'n' roll's about. Let's be honest. It's not about sexual chastity; it's about pushing the envelope. So -- although there's some of it in jazz, folk, country and western, and other music as well -- rock 'n' roll in particular is about rebellion, it's about pushing the envelope, it's about sex, it's about drugs.

TNA: Why do so many people who don't approve of the standards of conduct promoted by rock 'n' roll see no contradiction in listening to music about it?

Holmberg: We've done a lot of man-on-the-street interviews and when you ask the question, "Does the music you listen to impact you?" nine times out of 10 people will say "no." But if you phrase the question as "Does the music other people listen to affect them?" nine times out of 10 they'll say "yes." People tend to think that what they listen to and watch (and this isn't just about music; it's movies, television, all the arts) doesn't really have any impact on them -- unless it's positive. People are happy to say things like "Yes, I was powerfully moved by Beethoven's Ninth Symphony' or whatever. But when you talk about the negative, everybody always says things like "I'm able to pick and choose, I'm my own man."

TNA: What do you see as the solution to the problems posed by rock music?

Holmberg: I propose that people substitute good for bad, that they enjoy good art. Art goes to the very center of what we're about. We human beings are, if anything, creatures of imagination. We love art, and that's probably the single greatest image of God in us. But we need to recognize that there's good art and there's bad art.

I have a lot of affection for these artists. I pray for them and I feel sorry for them. Many older people look at someone like Mick Jagger and turn their nose up and say "Pervert!" or "Idiot!" But I'm just thankful that I wasn't as talented as he was. If you have the ability to get on a stage and have people essentially worship you, that's heady stuff. I think it would destroy anybody.

TNA: I was impressed at the immense amount of research, and at the intestinal fortitude of whoever plowed through all the material, gleaning the appropriate things that really drove the point home. How long did it take, and how did you go about getting your material?

Holmberg: It took about three years. We had a lot of help from young people in our church who volunteered. We did web searches, lyric searches. It was an enormous amount of effort and sacrifice.

Hells Bells 2 is not a sound bite. It is really a primer on worldviews and is designed to be watched in eight sessions. That way, people can understand that Marilyn Manson didn't just drop out of the sky overnight. The videos deal with things like the occult revival in 19th-century Europe and the notion that the primitive savage is somehow in touch with things that European moderns have lost -- all these different worldviews that have coalesced over the last century. I think people need to have at least a passing understanding of this to understand the world in which they live.

TNA: What would you say to people who insist that rock is just harmless youthful rebellion, a lot of kids blowing off steam? Or that youth has always been this way?

Holmberg: I think there's a necessary vitality to youth. Young people do have a lot of energy and a "we-can-change-the-world" type of optimism, which is wonderful, but it needs to be channeled.