Reviewed by Tony Cummings

Fully revised and expanded from the 1988 version, this is still the definitive work dealing with a vital topic - the seam of spirituality which runs through mainstream pop/rock. There's a lot here, the haunted religious guilt of Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley; the nihilism of punk; the Christian faith of U2; the Rastafarianism of Bob Marley; the acid dropping hippies and the techno pagans. Considering its sweep it's a marvellously ambitious book. It would be easy to criticise its omissions (surely there should be a few lines to record that Marley accepted Christ on his deathbed and was baptised into the Coptic church). And his assessment of Madonna is far less incisive than the brilliant few paragraphs about her in Os Guinness' new work 'Fit Bodies Fat Minds'. But it's still a very helpful resource in helping us get a grasp of what's going on in this culture of ours.