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 though 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 ‘God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You’
Kiss ‘God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You II’
Feel free to get in touch with any other unknown covers that you think we should feature!
Michael Shanks says
Hello,
I would like to respond to your article. You really need to get your facts straight before writing. Being a huge Kiss fan since I was 7 years old and being a christian who has been a huge Petra fan since I was about 15 years old I can tell you that Petra covered God Gave Rock and Roll To You long before Kiss ever dreamed of doing it. In fact Petra has covered it twice in two different styles. The first being on thier 1977 album “Come And Join Us” and the second being thier hugely successful album “Beat The System” in 1984. Kiss did not cover the song until the Bill and Ted movie in 1991 and then they also put on the Revenge album also in 1991. Petra’s first incarnation of the song was actually very close to the original song (music) wise. The second incarnation of the song was more to the style of the 80’s rock keyboard sound. As far as the lyrics of Petra’s version thier is nothing wrong with changing the lyrics. Thier change of the lyrics only reflected thier spiritual beliefs. I love both Petra’s versions and Kiss’s version! I also love the fact that the Kiss version is the last video with the late great Eric Carr. So again please check your facts before you print something.
Thanks
Petra and Kiss both ROCK!
Michael Shanks