News Archive October 2010
From: hecklerspray.com
Posted: October 16, 2010
It's time to tell you about a song you didn't know was a cover, again. Which means of course, facing people who did know so they can roll their eyes and cuh! "I thought everyone knew that!" And this time, we're looking at a stadium rock classic in 'God Gave Rock 'n' Roll To You.'
You probably remember this song from 'Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey' as performed by KISS. One of the ways that the band attracted attention to themselves around this time was to get out the cotton wool balls and take all their make-up off, leaving everyone to coo about how painfully ordinary they looked.
However, the song was originally released in 1973 by Argent, which had some rather famous people behind the kit themselves.
Between the band members and songwriters for Argent were a couple of members of ace '60s group, The Zombies. Remember them? They did 'She's Not There' and 'Time of the Season' and weirdly, were one of Elvis's favourite bands in the whole world.
However, it was non-Zombie Russ Ballard who penned 'God Gave Rock 'n' Roll To You' which of course, went onto be a giganto hit for Gene Simmons & Co.
After KISS brought the song out of retirement, the track went onto become something of a Contemporary Christian rock anthem (covered by the Christian Rock outfit Petra). Of course, being Christians, they couldn't help but meddle with the words to fit the agenda and the godly version has rewritten lyrics.
With vaguely fortuitous timing, rumour has it that Argent will embark on a full tour in the not-so-distant future, which will please the Bob Harrises amongst you.
Anyway, enough chat. Here's the two most important versions of the song, starting with a badly mimed version of the original.
[Argent]
[KISS]
