When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.<\/i><\/p>\n Argent circa 1973 (L-R): Russ Ballard, Jim Rodford, Robert Henrit and Rod Argent. | Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd<\/p>\n It was early 1973, and as Russ Ballard sat down at the piano in his parents\u2019 Hertfordshire home, the Argent<\/a> guitarist felt the stirring of an emotion he thought he\u2019d lost.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt blissful when I started writing God Gave Rock And Roll To You,\u201d he reflects, \u201cand that was the opposite of how I\u2019d felt the year before. My parents had both been really ill; my dad had prostate cancer, my mum had bowel cancer, at the same time. I\u2019d felt so low. During that period, I remember writing I Don\u2019t Believe In Miracles, and at the end of the song I just put my head down on the piano keys and cried.\u201d<\/p>\n Work had been Ballard\u2019s lifeline through those hard times, with the songwriter typically getting home from Argent gigs at three in the morning, then rising at dawn to wrench out his feelings in song.<\/p>\n His band \u2013 led by and named after former Zombies<\/a> keyboard player Rod Argent<\/a> \u2013 was riding high, and Ballard was already \u201cmaking good money\u201d, with 1972\u2019s hit single Hold Your Head Up reaching No.5 in the US and UK. But it was God Gave Rock And Roll To You that represented the end of his own dark night of the soul.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was wonderful to feel myself come out of that depression,\u201d Ballard recalls. \u201cI felt so \u2018up\u2019. It probably only took twenty minutes to write it. I\u2019d always liked gospel. With the lyric, I was saying that we live on this incredible planet, and when you find a passion, this world makes sense. Whereas, if you settle for a job to pay the bills, it\u2019s very sad.<\/p>\n \u201cThe song was written on this heavy Eavestaff upright piano I\u2019d been given for my twenty-first birthday,\u201d he continues. \u201cThat might seem strange for a rock song \u2013 but I wrote Since You\u2019ve Been Gone on a piano as well. As a kid I\u2019d learnt classical piano. As soon as my mum and dad left the room, I was playing Jerry Lee Lewis.\u201d<\/p>\n Ballard presented the song to Argent at the band\u2019s rehearsal space in St Albans, and marvelled as they cooked it up to the seven-minute version that appears on their 1973 album In Deep (the song also reached UK No.18 on the singles chart). But he had misgivings about it: \u201cRod thought the song should be slower,\u201d he says. \u201cThe recorded version dragged, to me.<\/p>\n \u201cThe song didn\u2019t do a lot for my career,\u201d he adds, \u201cbecause I decided to leave Argent around then \u2013 I was gone by 1974. We were getting very jazzy, when I was more about rock\u2019n\u2019roll.\u201d<\/p>\n For almost two decades, God Gave Rock And Roll To You lived a quiet existence as a semi-successful rock anthem, periodically exhumed by the cover versions of Christian rockers Petra, and Dennis Greaves\u2019s The Truth.<\/p>\n Then in the early 90s, Ballard was sitting in the lobby of a US record label, when former Blondie<\/a> bassist Nigel Harrison stopped and told him about an upcoming movie called Bill & Ted\u2019s Bogus Journey, the sequel to a hit comedy about two rock-obsessed slackers, played by Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter. \u201c<\/p>\n “Nigel told me he was collating the soundtrack, and he\u2019d suggested God Gave Rock And Roll To You for the final scene. They tried out a few bands, then came back and said: ‘Kiss<\/a> are going to do it.’\u201d<\/p>\n By this time Ballard had already made the acquaintance of Gene Simmons<\/a> and co. \u201cOne night in about 1973, we were playing in New York with Wishbone Ash<\/a> and Kiss,\u201d he remembers. \u201cThey weren\u2019t known at the time. At the sound-check, they weren\u2019t in any slap. That evening, when they came on, I was in the wings, and suddenly Kiss walk up in their makeup and platform heels, about seven-and-a-half feet tall. And it was a brilliant show.\u201d<\/p>\n The tweaked title of Kiss\u2019s version, God Gave Rock & Roll To You II, denoted that the New Yorkers had raised the tempo and rewritten the verse lyric. Now, instead of the quaint instruction to \u2018love your friend and love your neighbour\/Don\u2019t step on snails, don\u2019t climb in trees\/Love Cliff Richard but please don\u2019t tease\u2019, listeners were urged to \u2018put your faith in a loud guitar\u2019. Ballard approved.<\/p>\n \u201cThat new lyric was more universal, perfect for what Kiss were doing,\u201d he says. \u201cFunnily enough, when I wrote the song, it was about the speed Kiss made it. I don\u2019t mind that most people think it\u2019s a Kiss song. Apparently, Gene said on the TV show School Of Rock: \u2018When I wrote God Gave Rock And Roll To You\u2026\u2019 But at least the royalties are good. God knows how much money that song has made me, but it\u2019s probably bought me my house.”<\/p>\n Although Kiss reached No.4 in the UK with their version, in January 1992, for once the song\u2019s commercial performance was not Simmons\u2019s chief concern. Touchingly, God Gave Rock And Roll To You II marked the final contribution to Kiss of drummer Eric Carr before he succumbed to heart cancer, aged just 41.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen it came time to shoot the video, Eric begged to be in it, even though he hadn\u2019t played on the record,\u201d Simmons wrote in his book Kiss And Make-Up. \u201cWe were concerned about whether he was healthy enough or strong enough to do it. But we agreed. Eric showed up and stayed until the very end of the video shoot, which lasted until three in the morning. He never complained, not once. I believed that he could somehow turn things around. It was not to be.\u201d<\/p>\n Russ Ballard believes God Gave Rock And Roll To You\u2019s message lives on, now more than ever. \u201cI think the song will resonate for the next hundred years,\u201d he considers, \u201cwhether people want to believe there\u2019s a god or not. For me, music has been my saviour. God gave rock\u2019n\u2019roll to me, basically. That\u2019s what I was trying to say. And that line: \u2018If you\u2019re young and you\u2019ll never be old, music can make your dreams unfold\u2019, I still believe that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Argent circa 1973 (L-R): Russ Ballard, Jim Rodford, Robert Henrit and Rod Argent. | Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd It was early 1973, and as Russ Ballard sat down at the piano in his parents\u2019 Hertfordshire home, the Argent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2137779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[407507,308854,407506,400332],"class_list":["post-2137778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-piano-keys","tag-rock-and-roll","tag-rod-argent","tag-russ-ballard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/The-story-of-the-Kiss-classic-Kiss-didnt-actually-write.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2137778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2137780,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137778\/revisions\/2137780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2137779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2137778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2137778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2137778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/span><\/div>\n