What’s your comment and have you met them?Ī: "I think that KISS did a great job on covering the song… they got the tempo right… they sped it up a little giving the song the right edge, a rockier edge. Q: Over the years you had established a business relationship with KISS, a band whose members have used songs of yours let alone the fact that they achieved great success with a rendition of 'God Gave Rock N’ Roll To You' in 1991. 'God Gave Rock N’ Roll To You' was my first happy song after the depression period." Every single song I wrote during my depression was sad but it was also natural. Of course, when KISS did another version of the song, they changed some of the lyrics because they didn’t fit with the overall image of a rock band in America. ![]() The lyrics were all about that optimistic feeling that I had at the time. So, the first song that I wrote after my depression was 'God Gave Rock N’ Roll To You'. For me personally, being an artist, it was a fascinating experience because as you probably know there were many artists through the centuries that produced their finest works when they were suffering from depression. You suddenly get in touch with very deep emotions that you didn’t know that they even existed. You know, Sakis, what’s the great thing that you realize afterwards about depression? It’s an illness that becomes, in retrospective, a unique and rewarding experience. It goes away and one must be strong until that time. Let me tell you this: one day I woke up and I felt reborn! It was the most incredible feeling and having said that I want to point down something to all those people suffering from depression… it’s something that it doesn’t stay there it’s not something permanent. ![]() It took nine months to get totally out of depression. The problem with being a depressed man is that you feel unstable and you can’t really control your emotions. So, that’s what I did… I went to America with Argent and I didn’t cancel any show. The doctors recommended that the best for me to do is keep on working, keep on being busy because there is absolutely no hope for cure if you stay at home. I remember I didn’t stop working… at the time, I started a tour with ARGENT in America. I remember finishing the song… it had such an effect on me that by the time I finished it, I started crying… I felt so emotional about it. So, I sat at the piano and I wrote 'I Don’t Believe In Miracles', which was really all about my depression. I haven’t experienced that feeling before in my life but at the same time I was writing songs that reflected my depression which –from an artistic side - was good. In 1971 I started to feel very kind of low, you know… for some reason. When I look back and I listen to that song I know exactly that it refers to what I was going through at the time and how I felt. I remember that I wrote a song called 'I Don’t Believe In Miracles' when I was going into the period of my depression. Q May I ask you to describe to us the period when you suffered from depression but especially the time when you finally recovered and wrote 'God Gave Rock N’ Roll To You'?Ī: "Yeah, it’s strange but I knew what I was doing when I wrote it. Although their version is a straightforward cover of the original, it has the title “God Gave Rock ‘N’ Roll to You II.Greece’s Rockpages has issued interview with the legendary songwriter/musician Russ Ballard, in which he discusses the longevity of his career. Kiss performed a cover of the track for the second film in the Bill & Ted trilogy, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. “God Gave Rock and Roll to You” might have remained in obscurity if not for a certain 1990s film. How the world reacted to Kiss’ version of ‘God Gave Rock and Roll to You’ During that decade, some Christians saw the genre as inherently immoral. The fact that a Christian band could sing the lyrics “God Gave rock ‘n’ roll to you” without incident shows how the public perception of rock ‘n’ roll changed a lot since the 1950s. ![]() Given the lyrics of the song have to do with God, the track actually works as a Christian song - which isn’t something you could say about a lot of other rock songs. A Christian rock band named Petra covered the track for their album Come Join Us and their cover arguably became more famous than the original. Whereas, if you settle for a job to pay the bills, it’s very sad.” How ‘God Gave Rock and Roll to You’ became a Christian rock songĪrgent’s released their version of the track but it wasn’t the final one. With the lyric, I was saying that we live on this incredible planet, and when you find a passion, this world makes sense. It probably only took twenty minutes to write it. “It was wonderful to feel myself come out of that depression,” Ballard recalls. RELATED: The Kiss Song That’s Supposed to Sound Like Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’
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