Honestly: My Life and Stryper Revealed (12 page)

To make matters worse, we had to play to tracks at that show. They wouldn’t let us perform live. They played the recording and we had to pretend like we were performing. They claimed they wouldn’t be able to set us up quickly enough for TV. We weren’t buying it, but we also didn’t complain.

We went through the motions and put on the best performance we knew how, and afterwards we received a standing ovation. It was unique to play the Dove Awards and receive praise from the Christian community, yet regularly on this tour we ran into protestors from the church.

As we made our way through The Deep South, Louisiana most notably, I experienced my first moment of feeling deeply betrayed. Jimmy Swaggart had sent his church members out to protest. Remember, Robert and I came to know God through Jimmy. He was our mentor of sorts, although to this day I’ve never met the man. Yet when the tour came through his neck of the woods, it was as if the devil himself showed up in Jimmy’s backyard. I couldn’t believe it the first time I saw protestors from Jimmy Swaggart Ministries with signs saying things like “Stryper: Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing” and “Rock Music is the Devil.”

This went on for years, Jimmy Swaggart’s contempt for Stryper, and really for all rock music. We were once featured on a CBS News program where Jimmy said that it was impossible for any rock music to be Christian, going so far as to say, “Christian Rock-n-Roll” was no different than “Christian Prostitutes” or “Christian Pimps.” Really?

“How can it be that Jimmy Swaggart is so against us?” I would think to myself. Supposedly we were on the same team, spreading the same message, loving the same God—yet Swaggart followers seemed to hate us with a passion.

Each time this would happen, and it happened frequently over the next few years, I, along with Michael Guido, or Kenny Metcalf, or Robert, would go and talk to the protestors. We would not approach them with malice or anger or even resentment, but instead we would approach them in love. We would invite them to the show, and all of them admitted never to have even seen us live. Again, how could it be? Protestors would be standing in front of an auditorium protesting a band that they had never even seen live before. Rarely would the protestors take us up on our offer to attend the show, but on those occasions when they would, they almost always left with a new respect for us. They may not like us, but at least they understood us better.

To my knowledge, Swaggart himself never showed up at one of these protests. However, the ultimate slap in the face came when I saw a video tape of Jimmy Swaggart holding up a copy of our album
The Yellow and Black Attack
on national TV, condemning us, telling his followers that we were fakes. He made references to our tossing Bibles into the audience saying that we were casting pearls to swine.

That hurt. It didn’t weaken my relationship with God, not in the least. But it did weaken my faith in supposed Christians who were so outspoken against us, with Swaggart leading the pack.

During this tour and subsequent tours it was normal for fans to show up seeing church protestors holding picket signs with bullhorns denouncing Stryper. You would have thought Slayer was in town. These protestors would spew Bible verses in an attempt to convince people that we were phonies yet few of them ever took the time to come witness the miracles that would often take place at a Stryper concert. There’s no denying that people’s lives were changed because of God’s work through the band. I saw it first hand on a nightly basis. People who were living in very dark places with drugs, addictions, suicide, alcoholism and anything else you can think of were turning their lives around because they first discovered God’s power at a Stryper show!

But the bullhorns kept blasting and the protestors kept protesting. And we kept inviting them to the shows. Some started to take us up on our offers and actually became Stryper fans once they saw we weren’t biting the heads off of bats or making porno films on stage.

In 1987 Swaggart would dedicate an entire section to Stryper in his manifesto “Religious Rock ‘N’ Roll: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing”—once again denouncing us, saying that we were just in this for the fast cash. How could a band look the way we looked, play the music we played, and still be Christians?

Sadly it was Jimmy who would take the hard fall in 1988 when he was caught with a prostitute.

We pressed on, like the young faithful soldiers we were, and continued the course tossing Bibles into the audience and sharing our faith knowing that God would protect us. But I have always felt somewhat betrayed by the man who first led me to God.

The
Soldiers Under Command
album definitely reeled in its share of controversy, most notably the album cover where we are pictured in front of a yellow and black van holding guns. We of course wanted to make a bold statement of being soldiers, and this certainly did it. That picture was taken in a church parking lot by photographer John Scarpati. The van came from the 1979 movie
Angel’s Brigade
in which Daryn’s brother Darby appeared in an acting role. Robert had it painted yellow and black and this would all add up to the infamous and highly controversial album cover. The guns, by the way, were plastic pellet guns we bought in Japan on our first visit there.

Soldiers Under Command
, the album that took us only nine days to record, would ultimately spend thirty-six weeks in the Billboard Top 100 album chart and would reach number 5 on the Contemporary Christian Album charts. We shot one video during that album. It was once again a low-budget video for the title track shot during a concert in Fresno. We went back to Smoke Tree Studios to stage some footage of us singing around a microphone, and that was intertwined with B-roll backstage footage. Although the album, for the most part, was recorded at Amigo, we recorded the song “Together As One” at Smoke Tree. We were looking to get a full, grand piano sound for that song and they had the right equipment for what we wanted to accomplish. John Van Togren played piano and would subsequently play on the
To Hell with The Devil
recordings as well as the
In God We Trust
album. We met John through John St. James, the original owner of The Casbah studio in Fullerton, where we recorded the demos that led to our record deal.

I first saw that video for “Soldiers Under Command” on TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network) and I recall the feeling of knowing we were one step closer to success. The video also had a few late-night airings on MTV as well but it wasn’t until the
To Hell With The Devil
album that music videos would change our lives forever!

EIGHTEEN

Believe it or not, I don’t really like most Christian rock, particularly that from the ‘80s. During the period when we were on the rise (’84-’86) there was definitely a Christian rock movement happening. Magazines like Heaven’s Metal were formed. Entire churches were developed around the Christian metal movement, the most notable being Sanctuary lead by the amazing Pastor Bob Beeman. Pastor Bob is still serving today. This was a time when Christian rock and metal started becoming a main attraction at festivals around the nation.

Christian rock was, for the first time, becoming a legitimate, or at least noticed, genre of music. And I wasn’t a fan of most of it. With very few exceptions, I didn’t like the genre or the industry that surrounded it.

If I were to name the top 10 times I’ve been “screwed” in the music business, I would say 9 of those 10 were from people in the Christian industry. Most weren’t intentionally screwing me—they just weren’t responsible business people and instead relied too much on God to provide, without taking responsibility for their own actions.

Some of the worst situations I’ve been in have occurred because Christian promoters, record execs, or managers relied too heavily on the term “just pray about it,” at the same time neglecting what God calls us to be—good stewards.

Stryper stood out from the rest of the Christian-rock-pack, I believe, for two reasons: We had a unique sound with great songs and we didn’t preach to the choir.

Let me address the first. I’m not here to judge other Christian bands from the ‘80s. Sure, there were a few that stood out in their own way, but most did not. The few and far between Christian bands that really stood out were the ones who were good enough or had something unique enough to cross them over into mainstream.

It’s sad. You would think someone called to play music by God would have talent and creativity far beyond that of the secular world and would excel far beyond the norm, but that just wasn’t the case, or at least it didn’t seem that way to me. I think a lot of it has to do with competition. Stryper grew up on The Sunset Strip where competition was fierce. We didn’t just have to be better than other Christian bands but we had to strive to be better than the best of the best on The Strip. The Strip had the most critical fan base in the world. So for us to sing about Jesus
and
appeal to the fans on The Strip was quite unusual. We had to have great songs, a great look, and really shine above and beyond the rest. Our competition wasn’t the church band from down the street. It was Motley Crue, Ratt, and Poison. So we did everything we could to try to be as good as, if not better, than the acts we were seeing on a nightly basis.

So as long as these Christian bands were moderately good, and inserted “Jesus” into a lot of their songs, they didn’t really have to try as hard to be accepted by most Christian rock fans. As a result, mediocre songs became good enough for a good handful of these groups.

We’ve been booed. We’ve been spat on. We’ve been taunted relentlessly. There’s nothing like brutal criticism from an unforgiving club or festival crowd to make you buckle down in your rehearsal space for the next month and do everything in your power to figure out how to keep that from happening again.

There’s an interview on YouTube where Scott Ian of Anthrax, with his selective memory and all, recalls their first gig in Southern California and he describes Stryper opening for them. It’s a good example of the less-than-welcoming atmosphere our band could often be subject to, but Scott blows it way out of proportion. He paints the picture that every Bible we threw in the audience that night got thrown back at us and implies it was a mistake having us on the bill.

In order to play the venue in question, The Country Club in Reseda, you actually had to draw people. We had a good following in the area already, so the promoter added us to the bill because Anthrax wasn’t capable of filling the room on their own.

We had a big following there that night. And yes, Stryper fans mixed with Anthrax fans was an odd pairing, I’ll admit. We may have had a few bibles tossed back at us when an unsuspecting Anthrax fan would catch one. We even received a few middle fingers from the crowd. But it was nothing like Scott describes in the video. Not even close.

As a matter of fact, most of the Stryper fans left after we played leaving the room less than full. And from what I recall, some of the Stryper fans that stayed, gave Anthrax an equally lukewarm reception.

These moments of receiving a less-than-stellar response from a tempered secular crowd didn’t faze us. It only made us want to work harder. And we did. But many Christian bands—not all, but many—were never met with these challenges of trying to win over a non-religious crowd. Most Christian bands played within the comfort zone of the church-going rock fans. Why improve when the audience already loves you?

Stryper stood out from other Christian rock bands because we had to, for survival. We either had to stand out and rise above musically and professionally, or we were done. Clubs wouldn’t book us if we couldn’t hold our own with a skeptical and primarily non-Christian crowd.

Barren Cross, Whitecross, Bloodgood, Rez Band, and Guardian were a few that danced with crossover success. I’m not sure if it was because of Stryper. Maybe the world was looking for other great Christian rock bands and these guys just happened to be climbing the ladder, or maybe it was because these acts truly had the capability of appealing to an audience outside of the Church. Yet, all of them sadly fell just a bit short of making that complete crossover to mainstream.

In saying all of this, I should emphasize that not everyone’s calling is the same. The choir sometimes needs preaching to. And if their calling was to preach to the choir, then they were doing just what they were supposed to do. That was not
our
calling, however. O
ur
calling was to take the Word to the streets and share our faith with people who never in a million years would dream of stepping foot in a Church. And you don’t do that through mediocre music or visual presentation.

I know—who am I to speak about fashion? Yes, we had some of the most ridiculous outfits ever. But it worked, for the time. The spandex, the hair, the make-up, and even the yellow and black—it all played a part in an image that was suitable for mainstream.

Although our songs were bold lyrically, we didn’t preach. We stated two main points at our shows, points we still carry with us to this day. Those were we believe in God, and you can believe anything you want.

This, I feel, set us apart from other acts in the Christian rock genre. Most other acts, although I’m sure they wouldn’t admit it, came across more along the lines of we believe in God, and you too had better believe in God, or else.

That doesn’t work. People don’t want to be pushed or pressured into anything. Fear rarely works in motivating people to accept Christ. Love does. Acceptance does. Unconditional understanding and appreciation for someone’s background—that will make people pay attention to what you have to say. “Turn or Burn” has never been my preferred method of leading people to Christ.

The Christian rock scene that was emerging in the mid-80s felt a bit like a bandwagon to me. This was likely more the part of the Christian music industry than it was the bands themselves, although I would imagine it to be a little of both.

If Iron Maiden was popular, the Christian music business needed a Christian version of Iron Maiden. Enter, Barren Cross. If Ratt was popular, the Christian music business needed a version of Ratt. Enter, Whitecross. If AC/DC was buzzin’—X-Sinner. It was as if the Christian music industry needed an answer for every mainstream band.