I read his recent article in Rolling Stone:

"People called rock & roll "African music". They called it "voodoo music". They said that it would drive the kids insane. They said that it was just a flash in the pan--the same thing they're saying about hop-hop today. Only it was worse back then, because, you have to remember, I was the first Black artist whose records the white kids were starting to buy. And the parents were really bitter about me. We played places where they told us not to come back, because the kids got so wild. They were tearing up the streets and throwing bottles and jumping off the theater balconies at shows. At that time, the white kids had to be up in the balcony--they were "white spectators". But then they'd leap over the balcony to get downstairs where the Black kids were."