Gods and Guitars

by Gilmour, Michael J.

• ISBN13: 9781602581395
• ISBN10: 1602581398
• Edition: Original
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-11-15
• Publisher: Baylor Univ Pr

Summary

Though American attitudes toward religion changed dramatically during the 1960s, interest in spirituality itself never diminished. If we listen closely, Michael Gilmour contends, we can hear an extensive religious vocabulary in the popular music of the decades that followed—articulating each generation’s spiritual quest, a yearning for social justice, and the emotional highs of love and sex.Probing the lyrical canons of seminal artists including Cat Stevens, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, U2, Ozzy Osbourne, Pearl Jam, Madonna, and Kanye West, Gilmour considers the ways—and reasons why--pop music’s secular poets and prophets adopted religious phrases, motifs, and sacred texts.

Author Biography

Michael J. Gilmour is the author of Call Me the Seeker: Listening to Religion in Popular Music and Tangled Up in the Bible: Bob Dylan and Scripture. He serves on the faculty of Providence College in Manitoba, Canada.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Preface: Opening Notes	p. ix
Introduction: Spirituality in Post-1960s Lyrics	p. 1
Religion on Record: Popular Music's Anxiety of Influence	p. 37
Church in a Guitar Case: Comfort and Compassion in Popular Music	p. 69
Outrageous Religion: Sex, Defiance, and Obsession with the Sacred	p. 95
Looking beyond the Steeple and Menorah	p. 129
Fade Out: Stealing from the Sacred and Rewriting Religion	p. 147
Notes	p. 159
Bibliography	p. 185
Index	p. 195
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.