Rockstar oct 2015 by Rockstar Magazine

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“Alien Rock” Feature Part One Elvis Presley, David Bowie and John Lennon Make Contact With UFOs By Sean Casteel

Among the many stories that Michael Luckman likes to tell about the connection between rock music and the alien occupants of the UFOs deals with the birth of Elvis Presley. “Elvis, to me, was totally wild,” Luckman said in an interview conducted by phone. “To have one guy, namely the guy who popularized rock and roll, be so closely involved with UFOs – he had contact when he was a kid with cosmic beings of light that communicated with him and showed what his life would be like in the future, onstage as a performer. Elvis would have a lot of sightings throughout his lifetime. He was told, and actually believed, that he was from a blue star planet in the Orion Constellation. “This is quite amazing,” Luckman continued. “And of course there’s

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the story about the blue light. The moment Elvis was born, there was apparently a blue light over his family’s small, two-room shack in Tupelo, Mississippi.” One immediately thinks of the Star of Bethlehem that preceded the birth of Jesus Christ and wonders whether Elvis might be more on an even footing with Him than most of us mere mortals. Which begs the question, does Luckman feel rock and roll came from outer space? “It’s a legitimate question,” Luckman replied, “particularly based on Elvis and the blue light story. But I still don’t think that rock and roll came from outer space, no. But I think it’s been INFLUENCED by forces or beings or intelligences from outer space.” Luckman’s personal interest in the subject of UFOs and the aliens inside them began when he was a child himself, in the 1950s, and first saw the sci-fi classic “The Day The Earth Stood Still,” with Michael Rennie as the benevolent alien sent to scare a

little peace into us. By 1971, Luckman was teaching a college-level course about rock and roll, the first in the country, at the New School For Social Research in New York. Around that same time, he also published an alternative newspaper called “The New York Daily Planet,” intended to compete with “The Village Voice.” Luckman’s newspaper featured a department about UFOs, which helped him make connections with some of the major UFO organizations at the time. “There was a lot of very interesting material in evidence,” Luckman said, “and I was especially struck by the existence of so many photos, even back then, that pointed to the reality of the subject.” The parallel tracks his career was taking led him to realize that for a long time many rock musicians had written songs about UFOs and aliens as well as having had sightings and other experiences of their own. “But I never imagined,’ he said, “that the subject cut as deep as it does and involves so many musicians. I never imagined, for example, that there were a great many rock stars, not just a couple, but at least eight with recognizable names, who have had classic UFO abduction and missing time experiences.” The many years of research resulted in a book called “Alien Rock: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Extraterrestrial Connection” (VH-1 Books, Pocket Books, 2005), which offers many, many anecdotes about rock stars and their fascination with, and even participation in, the UFO phenomenon. Luckmans’ research involved everything from combing through CDs and older record albums to voraciously reading books and magazines, as well as many hours spent searching the Internet. He also personally interviewed several rock stars, their management people, associates, friends and, in some cases, their wives. There are, as Luckman rightly claims, a surprisingly generous number of rock star encounters with the UFO phenomenon in the book. “I particularly like the one about David Bowie,” Luckman said. “In the earlier part of his career, when the he was touring the United States doing concert appearances, he bought a telescope and had it mounted on the rooftop of his limousine. And he would go out looking for aliens between stops on the tour. This was

almost like an all-consuming passion on his part. “But I would have to say,” he continued, “that David Bowie has in recent times played down the reality factor of UFOs. He’ll say on the one hand that he believes in extraterrestrial life, but on the other hand he’ll say that his use of aliens and UFOs in his songs were ‘just imagery,’ and weren’t meant to suggest hardware. But the fact was that in the 1970s he was very heavily involved with it. He had a thousand UFO and related books, had a telescope, had his own sightings, and, when he was a teenager, he edited a flying saucer magazine in England. He had sightings both when he was younger and also during the filming of ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth.’ So to me, Bowie’s one of the most interesting stories in the book.” The late John Lennon also had his share of alien encounters.

“There are two accounts about John Lennon,” Luckman said. “The first is one that a few people know about, which is when he saw a UFO from the rooftop of a penthouse he was living in with his then girlfriend May Pang. They were both naked, as it happens, and John saw this thing outside. He went out on the roof naked, and he sees a large flying saucer that he said had lights around its rim and a red light on top. He said it was capable of holding two human-size passengers. It was just hundreds of feet away. It really got his juices flowing. He had subscribed to ‘The Flying Saucer Review’ in England for many years, and here he was seeing one face-to-face. He was very excited. He said he yelled, ‘Stop! Take me with you!’ Because he was all prepared to go.”

The world-renowned psychic Uri Geller related another Lennon anecdote to Luckman. “Shortly before his assassination,” Luckman went on, “there was another UFO encounter that involved some beings – now this is according to Uri quoting John – that were presumably grays that came into the Dakota, where John lived at the time. John saw a strange light coming through the door and the small beings came into his apartment. They had some kind of telepathic communication, then they left him with a small, eggshaped, smooth object that John passed along to Uri. “And Uri still has it,” Luckman added. “It’s never been analyzed, but if it’s real, that is, if it’s extraterrestrial in origin, then presumably there would be something in the metal that would not be on the periodic chart of elements when they do an analysis on it. But Uri has kept it and hasn’t chosen to have it analyzed, although I’m pressing him to do that because it could really be the ultimate evidence of UFO visitation.”

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