Changing his tune: Once a fan of rock 'n' roll, Eric Holmberg now sees the threat it poses to American culture. He talked to The New American about his efforts to make these dangers known. (Cover Story: Music).(Interview)

Interview of Eric Holmberg

The three-video set Hells Bells 2: The Dangers of Rock 'n' Roll is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in learning more about the phenomenon of rock 'n' roll music, and the devastating impact that it has had on American culture. Produced and narrated by Eric Holmberg, director of the Center for Cultural Apologetics, Hells Bells deals exhaustively with the social, moral, political, and religious implications of rock music, backed with fascinating, if sometimes unpleasant, footage of rock concerts, rave parties, music videos, MTV, and celebrity interviews that reveal rockers' revolutionary agenda. At the same time, Holmberg's low-key, non-confrontational style is unlikely to offend intellectually honest devotees of rock music. In many instances, Holmberg lets the images and the stars speak for themselves to make his case.

Eric Holmberg is the father of five home-schooled children, a graduate of William and Mary college, and for many years a dedicated student of culture who reads four or five books a week. He spoke to THE NEW AMERICAN recently about his work.

TNA: How did you become convinced of the dangers of rock 'n' roll?

Holmberg: I was once a successful hippie. About all I owned at the time was a Carmen Ghia and a very extensive record collection. After my conversion to Christianity, I went back to my digs and looked at my record collection and sat there and knew in my heart that a lot of the craziness I'd gotten involved in -- a lot of my rebellion, a lot of my attitudes about sexuality, and all kinds of other issues -- authority, parents, government -- had been influenced by the worldviews that were being communicated through the music I'd been addicted to for so many years. I made a decision that I didn't want to listen to that type of stuff any longer, and walked away from it. I immersed myself in the Bible, in reading C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, books like that, and in the process developed a burden to really try to communicate to the culture that I'd been a part of. I felt basically that I'd been lied to and deceived. I didn't really blame anybody -- I blamed myself first and foremost. Human nature being what it is, everybody wants to try to reaffirm what they believe and to walk under cognitive dissonance, where you believe one thing and do something else, and somehow try to keep your head from exploding. I wanted to find a way to speak to all my buddies, the people I went to college with, people I cared about deeply as friends. All of it came out of a desire to communicate with my peers and my generation using the metaphors of popular culture. Hells Bells 2 is ostensibly an expose on rock 'n' roll; that's how it functions on one level. But really, it's just a presentation of a Christian worldview using the metaphor of popular music.

TNA: Is rock 'n' roll any different from other kinds of music?

Holmberg: I still appreciate music probably now more than ever, all different kinds of music. There's good music, some of it created by Christians, some of it by non-Christians. But every person has the image of God in them, something that resonates with the beauty and the wisdom and the integrity of heaven. I would say that of all the musical styles used, rock 'n' roll probably resists the good, the true and the beautiful, to use the old classical/medieval triad, more than other musical forms because of its raison d'etre. One thing I do is go into a high school and ask, "What was the last song you listened to that really encouraged you to be sexually ...