LYRICS PANNED : EVANGELIST SEES SATAN IN ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

In evangelist Dave Benoit’s opinion, it’s time rock music takes the rap for promoting many of the problems today’s teen-agers face: violence, suicide, unwanted pregnancies and even devil worship.

The founder of Pennsylvania-based Glory Ministries has been taking his message on the road for three years now, traveling around the world to give kids and parents his warning about the dangers of rock ‘n’ roll. Today and Tuesday at 7 p.m., he brings his mission to Orange County for two seminars at Liberty Baptist Church in Irvine. (He will also speak at West Anaheim Baptist Church Wednesday through Friday.)

“One thing a person needs to know about rock ‘n’ roll,” Benoit said in an interview Saturday at the Irvine church. “It’s not just the music. It’s a life style they take on. And that’s what makes rock and roll a little more dangerous than some other musics.”

In tonight’s seminar, Benoit will address Satanism and occult tendencies in rock music, especially in favorite targets such as heavy metal acts Motley Crue and Black Sabbath. He dismisses the argument that the groups merely take on the trappings of the occult--Satanic symbols and album titles like AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell”--for shock value. To Benoit, they are selling a way of life.

“Whether these guys are actually into devil worship or not is immaterial,” the evangelist said. “What they are doing is promoting a product, and the kids are going out and purchasing that product. It’s not a game.”

Even many mainstream acts promote the occult, Benoit says. And the Eagles’ 1977 hit “Hotel California,” commonly interpreted as being about a mental institution, is about Satanism, the evangelist says.

To Benoit, the promotion of the occult is more than a theological issue. He says crime related to Satanic worship is on the rise (he uses the Night Stalker killings as an example), and he lays much of the blame on rock.

“People say, ‘Well, maybe he was just looney tunes to start off with, and this is just a product of that.’ Well, maybe not everybody who ever killed anybody has a direct link to rock ‘n’ roll, but to say it has no effect is taking it to the other extreme,” Benoit explained. “I don’t blame every person who ever got involved in the occult on rock ‘n’ roll. I don’t blame every suicide on rock ‘n’ roll. I’m fair in saying that. But I think people need to be fair in saying, too, that maybe some people are (affected by rock music) and take a serious look at it.

In Tuesday’s seminar Benoit takes on violence in rock music. “I talk about suicide. I talk about children rising up and killing their own parents--you know, that is a growing problem in America.” He uses Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” video, in which a teen-ager’s father is by turns blasted out of a second-story window by the volume of his son’s guitar and dragged around by the hair, as an example.

“These kids are taking this stuff literally,” he said. “You can’t sit in this stuff day after day after day after day and say it doesn’t affect your thinking.”

In a study released last year by Cal State Fullerton professors Lorraine Prinsky and Jill Rosenbaum, only 7% of junior high and high school students surveyed perceived their favorite songs to be about sex, violence, drugs or Satanism. In fact, the study concluded, most teen-agers can’t accurately describe their favorite songs. Benoit hadn’t heard of the study, but he is familiar with the argument that kids listen to rock for the beat and don’t really absorb the meaning of the lyrics.

“I talk to rockers all the time--and we’re talking serious rockers--and they can tell (what the songs are about). They don’t need a hymn book when they go to their concerts,” Benoit said. “They know the words to the songs.”

Advertisers, he noted, use rock to peddle their wares. “If they can sell cars and designer jeans and everything else, or beer or whatever through music, why can’t they sell Satanism?”

On the other hand, Benoit is skeptical about rock’s ability to promote what he considers positive values. “I’m not saying it can’t be used for good. Anything can be used for good. What I am saying is that the primary message going out there is to have a good time with your girlfriend--which isn’t so bad except when you as an American and I as an American have to pick up the tab for it.”

Even groups that play contemporary Christian rock are targets in Benoit’s seminars, because he is afraid they will draw Christian youths into the rock ‘n’ roll life style. He blasted Stryper, a successful Christian heavy metal band, for its “Heaven and Hell” tour with the group Megadeth. “I wonder how many Christians out there have gone to see Stryper and walked out Megadeth fans,” he said.

He discounted the possibility that some youths who are already rock fans might find the church through the music of a group like Stryper. “I’m not sure the devil minds losing a few souls to Jesus if he can get a lot of people to leave the church and go to rock ‘n’ roll,” Benoit said. “A young person knows where to find the church.”

Benoit, a stocky red-haired former boxer, said he has had his own run-ins with drugs and other problems. He was in reform school by age 15, and two of his brothers and an uncle have all been in prison.

One-on-one, he speaks in calm even tones, but he showed his evangelical fire in a sermon Sunday at Liberty Baptist Church. In a lobby outside the service, a table offered brochures and taped seminars from his Glory Ministries in Sellersville, Pa. Two books that claimed to uncover occult influences in other areas, children’s toys and cartoons and fantasy games like Dungeons and Dragons were also offered.

Benoit knows his ideas are unpopular with many in the secular world, but he claims he is only trying to inform parents and children and has no designs on banning rock music. But he does advocate a strict ratings system, based on the one used for movies, to keep what he calls pornographic music out of the hands of children.

“I often say the best friend a rock musician has is an ignorant parent,” the evangelist said. “Ignorance is not the best policy on some of these things. . . . Warnings are good for us--we ought to know what’s going on. That’s the reason I spend 300 nights a year doing these seminars, because I believe that parents ought to know.”

For Benoit, rock ‘n’ roll is not simply a symptom of a society gone wrong, but a cause. “You know, I’d like to meet society one day, and shake society’s hand. because it gets the rap for everything,” he said. “Well, I’m a little tired of hearing society get the rap. I think it’s time we put some new perspectives there, so we get some recognition of what is wrong.”