I have been interested in what we can learn from two theologically significant faces of rock — how it can be with Christianity, and without it — in the transition from one version to another of the song “Up Above My Head.” More specifically, from a 1960s soul version of this song, where Christianity rehearses an appropriation of rock culture, into the 21^st century where secular rock rehearses a dispossession of Christianity.

On YouTube, one can view Sister Rosetta Tharp in the 1960s, playing a version of her 1940s gospel tune, but now wearing a Gibson SG (thanks to Michael Iafrate for the heads-up) and soloing in front of a gospel choir.

The lyrics proclaim “Up above my head, I hear music in the air,” that suggests, in a less committal stance than one might at first expect, “There must be a God somewhere.” In this version, however, Tharp sings the slightly more denominative, “I really do believe there’s a heaven somewhere.” The scene shows rock’s gospel atmosphere. The gospel choir declaims and sways, Tharp is front and center with alternating solos of voice and guitar, playing with what are already becoming defined rock guitar gestures. Rock culture seems to be an outflow of church culture, and black performances help define that relationship. Tharpe is performing on a gospel music television show.

Fast forward to 2009 in Eindhoven, Netherlands, and the rock band “King’s X” is playing a live show. They are a hard rock trio with an African-American singer-bassist and white drummer and white guitarist, that when first formed in the 1980s were commonly thought of as a Christian rock band. Now the singer, Dug Pinnick’s public coming out over the last decade, and his gradual disillusionment with Christianity, put the band in a situation that makes a certain sense in rock culture: a gay African-American lead singer who is going through a long and public decompression chamber in regard to his Christianity. The band has lost almost all aura as hard-edged defenders of the faith. At this 2009 show, they performed their version of “Up Above My Head,” “Over My Head,” referencing the religiousness of Pinnick’s family.

When this song was first recorded and performed in the late 1980s, it was easy to hear it as a scrapbookish tribute to the steadfastness of his grandmother’s faith, even simply as a harder rocking iteration of Tharpe’s own rocking version. The years since became pivotal for Pinnick in digging into the failures of the rock industry, racist and capitalist limits on music and more, and in coming to terms with his sexual identity, and in finding his own voice about his spiritual life.

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