A curious phenomenon of the late hippie era, Jesus rock is usually considered an American fad, one that encompassed rock operas like
Jesus Christ Superstar, AM smashes like
Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky," and funky FM roots rock like
the Doobie Brothers' "Jesus Is Just Alright with Me."
Grapefruit's triple-disc set
All God's Children: Songs from the British Jesus Rock Revolution 1967-1974 tells a parallel narrative, one centered in the United Kingdom, where an uprising of Christian rock bands intersected with folk and prog groups who also sang about Jesus, albeit in occasionally elliptical ways.
All God's Children spends as much time with secular interpretations of gospel as it does with the faithful, a decision that makes the Jesus rock trend feel fairly widespread while also adding considerable musical depth to the compilation. Much of this set occupies the slipstream separating folk-rock and art rock -- it opens with a song called "Prelude," after all, a fanfare where
Salamander incorporate elements of "He Is My God" into their pomp -- but the sharpest moments often are from the bands who demonstrate a love of song elsewhere:
Richard Thompson,
the Hollies,
Clifford T. Ward,
Gerry Rafferty,
Fairport Convention, and
the Kinks provide the melodic backbone for this set. If it sometimes seems if the compilers are stretching the definition of Jesus rock --
Roy Wood's manic "Songs of Praise" seems like a parody of faith, not a recitation of it -- that also makes
All God's Children an effective document of its time: it suggests that this was a real pop culture phenomenon, one that wasn't limited to just true believers. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine