Paul Kantner vs. the Catholic Church

By 1982, the Reagan era, the religious right had gained enormous power in the United States. With nothing more important to do, many of these God-fearing extremists went after rock and roll (long a target of religious zealots), finding blasphemy in every groove. Jefferson Starship by this time had become a favorite whipping boy of the music press. Now here was the Catholic Church to put in their two cents.

As if the critical drubbing wasn't enough, there was the church to deal with. It was inevitable, one might say, that some clergy person somewhere during that heyday of the Christian right would decide that the devil inhabited this music. With all of Paul's and Grace's lyrics condemning the church and proposing that Jesus had fathered a child and whatnot, it was only a surprise it had taken so long.

There had been one incident, when a bunch of anti-rock and roll religious zealots had picked up on "A Child Is Coming" from [Paul Kantner's album] Blows Against The Empire, claiming that if the record was played backwards, a devilish message could clearly be heard.

Paul Kantner: Jim and Tammy Bakker of the PTL Club had a guest speaker on their show. This particular group of religious geeks was in the basement of a church listening to every rock and roll song, backwards, at various speeds, for a long time. They had the top 10 of Satan songs, like "Hotel California" and "Stairway To Heaven." Well, on "A Child Is Coming," they heard, "The child is Satan, the child is Satan." They were hoping the child was Jesus until they played it backwards to find out the child was Satan. So I, of course, ran my record backwards to find what they were talking about but I couldn't find anything. The song was one of the most beautiful, naive, child-supporting, earth-supporting songs.

But it wasn't until October 1982, when the Starship were in Illinois, that–excuse the expression–all hell broke loose. Reverend Wesley Ates of the First Pentecostal Church in Bloomington had stated publicly prior to the group's appearance at the University of Illinois in Normal that he hoped to debate Grace about her songs that "mock and blaspheme" the name of Jesus. Ates wanted her to apologize and called for a boycott of the group's concert.

Ates and members of his congregation held a press conference, singing–what else?–"Amazing Grace," and then proceeded to burn rock albums on the church's steps. Ates said that the group was "anti-God, anti-Christ, anti-establishment and anti everything else that makes America great," and called on Grace and "lead guitarist" [sic] Kantner to "get down on their knees" and repent.

Paul Kantner in Catholic military school

Jesus Christ

[Starship publicist] Cynthia Bowman, entrusted with defending the group to the press, pointed out that Pete Sears was an active, practicing Christian and that the others came from Christian homes, that Paul had even attended Catholic school and been an altar boy. But the Reverend wasn't swayed. He wanted to save them.

Grace didn't want to get involved but Paul couldn't resist. Debate a preacher on the relative merits of Christianity and rock and roll? Are you kidding? He'd be there.

In a room at the university, before the concert, Kantner met with Rev. Ates for two hours to discuss the issues. An audience of about 75 listened, and the debate was carried over two local radio stations. Rock and roll, claimed Ates, alienates youth from their parents, advocates drug use and causes sexually transmitted disease. Erroneously perpetuating the myth that Paul and Grace had named their daughter god, Ates, saying he was "representing Jesus Christ and the Bible," urged his audience to attend a prayer meeting instead of the concert.

Kantner, to the surprise of the audience, agreed with Ates to some extent: "Most of the things you say about us, we're guilty of, but we're proud of our beliefs. They're rationally held beliefs." Paul explained that he believed neither in God nor Satan, because he could not believe in anything he couldn't see. "I just don't believe in believing," Paul said. He had talked to God, he continued, but God had never talked back. "What kind of father is it that won't talk to you when you talk to him?"

Jesus, Paul said, was "the last true Christian. Since then, everybody else has been making money on his name."

Ates, even while admitting that Paul seemed to know his scripture pretty well, was unmoved. "I denote a cry in Paul Kantner." he said. "He's looking for the light, but in the wrong place."

Summing up, Paul said that the two men actually "have similar aims–to make the life around us better," and then the rocker and the preacher hugged and went back to their very different lives. That night, about 40 people attended the prayer meeting at Ates' church. Thousands went to see Jefferson Starship.

On Paul's next solo album, which he was working on at the time, he made sure to give a little reward to those religious fanatics who delighted in spinning records backwards to find satanic messages. Paul placed about five backwards phrases on the record: "devil's food cake," "deviled eggs," etc.