Hey you there, you can't ignore me. No one can ignore me. I'm Todd the announcer and Eric lets me do his announcing. I'm always right there by his side to allow the announcer everything he does.

He's like coughing and sneezing. His wife hates it. And now Eric Mataxus. Hey there folks. This is Eric Mataxus because it's the Eric Mataxus show. One of the things I get to do on this show is have fun by talking to people who I find interesting. One of them happens to be my friend Mark Joseph. He's written a book called Rock Gets Religion, the battle for the soul of the devil's music. Mark Joseph, welcome to the program. Eric, great to meet you.

What do you think to be with you as always? Well the freakyest thing about the book is that there's a forward by Alice Cooper. What am I supposed to say? Really? Alice Cooper, you couldn't get Tim Keller. You had to get Alice Cooper.

Well let me tell you what this came about. I actually had asked Alice for a short blurb and he had given me the usual three sentences. I got the book to cover back from the publisher and I took one look at it and I said, I've got to, this has to be an Alice Cooper forward just because of the look of the cover. That's how shallow I am. So I went back and I said could you just expand on that those three sentences a little bit and he did. He was kind enough to do so.

I just thought that Alice, all kidding aside, with the cover but with the story itself, Alice personifies a lot of what the book is about, which in the old days, an Alice Cooper type would have a conversion experience, become a boarding and Christian. And then he would cut his hair, change his name back to his original birth name, and then go and sing hymns at churches across America.

And that was the pattern. We did that for 20, 30 years. And the problem is, there's a lot of problems, but one of the problems is all the old fans weren't signed up for hymns in short hair. They were signed up for the character that had been developed by that artist. And so you would lose your fandom and sure you'd make nice new Christian fans. But it's sort of the purpose of why God had led you to that experience. And so Alice really personifies the new idea of hey, stay put. Keep doing what you're doing and change the way you're doing.

And that's what's been happening at a pretty massive scale.

Well, whenever I interview somebody who's a friend, I forget really to tell my listeners a little bit more than it's a friend of mine who wrote a book. So you, my friend, you've done a lot of stuff. So you're tough to sum up. You're a, you're a Los Angeles based music and film producer. You've written many books. You write commentaries.

You wrote another book on the subject of rock and roll and and faith titled the rock and roll rebellion. Why people of faith abandoned rock music and why they're coming back before that you wrote a book called Faith God and rock and roll.

And even been involved in producing soundtracks for movies like The Passion of the Christ, all kinds of amazing stuff. So what was it that led you to write this particular book titled Rock Gets Religion?

Well, I did write a book in 99 as you said called the rock and roll rebellion. The second was in 2003 called Faith God and rock and roll. And both of those books for chronically what I was seeing happening and was was helping along, helping happen as well in my own way.

And that was just to really encourage these artists to come back to the mainstream. If I can go back and you know there are books out right now, Rodgers, the Benedict option. This is not a new temptation for the people of faith. This has been around for a long time.

And so in my books I traced back to the Scopes trial as sort of one of the moments in culture where people of faith decided, you know this is too tough to be in the center of public life. So let's retreat and form various subcommunities.

And so music was really the same thing around 1969, 1970. A lot of Christians found it very difficult to try to be in the rock music world of the pop music world. And so they retreated and formed contemporary Christian music or CCM.

And so I grew up in a world in which you know in the 80s you and I are roughly the same age. We grew up listening to pop radio and Casey Casey. And then we would have our Christian music over here and the twain would never meet.

And so what I've always been sad about is Christian music, Christian rock had a number of artists who are really really talented but the world never heard of them.

And so for a normal American in the 70s were about you know classic rock and the Bee Gees and Led Zeppelin and this and that and the Rolling Stones. And they never heard of Phil Keggy or DeGarmoan Key or really some terrific artists.

And so this is just a temptation that people who faith have from time to time is it gets tough in the kitchen until they got out of the kitchen. And so what I was really writing about it and encouraging with those books was really to say hey as a person of faith come back to the mainstream and make your music for everybody.

Don't hide your music. Don't hide your faith. But try to make it in places where it can be accessible by the average person who doesn't share your faith.

Well you know all of that is music to my ears no point intended but I have to say that you know for for people who became Christian let's say in the 70s.

I think that there was such a religious hostility that people would say if you're a Christian you cannot play that kind of music anymore or it really was hard. It's like they had to choose.

They look even in 1990 or 91 when Amy Grant decides to produce an album that is not specifically Christian people freaked out on her as though she had said all let's all hail Satan she never said that she just had the sweet thing but they said well if it's not specifically overtly Christian you are a black sheep you know it's just insane that people have that kind of view of things.

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