Honestly: My Life and Stryper Revealed (19 page)

But he didn’t stop.

Despite him knowing that
I
knew about the gum, he started yelling even louder, pointing at my feet even more aggressively. This guy just wasn’t going to quit until I dealt with the issue at hand.

So I struck a power chord during the second verse of the song and leaned down with my right hand to flick it away. I sent it six or seven rows back into the audience and when I did, my middle finger felt the pain. It was more like flicking a marble then a piece of gum.

Keep in mind we’re a loud band—a seriously loud band. But the moment I sailed whatever it was away, I could hear this guy even louder than before. He was yelling at the top of his lungs, so loud I could hear him above everything else.

I tried not to focus on him but he was impossible to ignore. Finally, I was able to make out what he was screaming. “That was my f**king eye!” he shouted as he pointed to his empty eye socket.

At that moment it hit me. I had just sent this guy’s glass eye into the crowd! Apparently he had been banging his head so hard that his eye popped right out of the socket and rolled over to where I was standing. I had just destroyed any hope of him getting it back. With a flick of the wrist, it was gone forever.

He was furious. He continued screaming at me throughout the show, occasionally taking breaks to look around the floor in futile attempts to find his eye. I felt terrible, but what could I do? “Hey guys. We need to stop the show for a moment, turn on all the house lights, and take a moment to look for this guy’s glass eye that I just flung into the crowd.” No, there was nothing I could do.

I tried to focus for the rest of the show, doing everything I could to not look at this guy, which was impossible. Not only was he the biggest guy I had seen in all of Australia, he was the loudest as well.

For the remainder of the night I made one mistake after another. I forgot lyrics that I had been singing for years. I fumbled over guitar parts that normally I could play in my sleep. And in between every single song of the set, that guy would yell at the top of his lungs “That was my f**king eye, mate.” He didn’t let up on me the entire set. I thought for sure he was going to jump on stage and get a few shots in.

I attempted to speed the set up, noticeably so, going from song to song quicker that normal. Usually I have a few scheduled breaks to talk to the audience where I’ll catch my breath as well. Not tonight. The band must have been wondering what was up because I skipped breaks all together, just to get to the next song faster so that I wouldn’t have to listen to this guy or face the humiliation any longer. The crowd also must have wondered what was up because I barely took a pause the entire night, taking one song right into the next.

I made it through the show somehow, and I must have washed my hands a dozen times afterward. We had three more shows in Australia on that run. I kept thinking this guy would show up out of nowhere and to get revenge or take my eye. You know, “An eye for an eye.” But he didn’t.

He lost an eye and I got a weird, great story to tell in interviews for the rest of my life. I never did hear from that guy again, but if he’s reading this, I’m really sorry, man! I thought it was gum.

Over the years fans have heard me tell this story so often, they will occasionally throw a fake eye on stage during the show. By the way, please don’t do that. I might have flashbacks of that dreadful night!

TWENTY-EIGHT

From the fall of 1989 through the winter of 1991, there were two notably great things that happened. The greater of the two, to which there is no comparison, was the birth of my beautiful daughter, Ellena. The other was the making and release of our fifth record,
Against The Law
, which, despite being considered a commercial failure by industry standards, was, in my opinion, a solid album.

Aside from those two things, most of that time period is somewhat fuzzy. It’s fuzzy primarily because, for the most part, I did my best to suppress the memories from that era. They’re not particularly fond ones. It may also be a bit blurry because we were drinking a lot during that time.

Allow me to clarify “a lot.” I’ve read other rock-star biographies, and our drinking was mild by comparison. Still, it was enough to cloud my judgment and send me into a downward spiral farther from God than I had ever been since re-committing my life to Christ.

The break between the end of the
In God We Trust
tour and the beginning of the
Against The Law
tour was the longest time we were off the road between tours, although it wasn’t much of a break. I went straight into writing mode, only there was one potential problem—the song ideas and creativity coming out of me were very different musically and lyrically.

For the past four years or so we had been beat up pretty hard by the church. There’s just so much a band can take from so-called Christians screaming into bullhorns outside their shows, calling them fakes and wolves in sheep’s clothing. It can wear you down after a while, and it definitely got the best of me to the point that I had little desire to write spiritually uplifting lyrics. What we really wanted to say to the Pharisees who had judged us for so many years was, “Screw you. We don’t live by your laws. Who are you to tell us what we can or can’t do, what we can or can’t wear or say, or who we can be?” So I did, in so many words.

I knew I still loved God—I just didn’t like some of the
people
who claimed to love God too.

I was ready for change in a number of ways. At this point thoughts of leaving Stryper came more frequently, but I couldn’t bear the thought of telling the guys. Also, there was still a glimmer of hope in me that the ship just might turn around, that by some miracle I might wake up feeling good about being in Stryper. I felt that maybe we did have one more good record to make.

But things had to change. I began inquiring more into our finances. For the past several years we’d owned this really large (almost 5,000-square-feet) house sitting on a golf course that was used for the Stryper offices. Rob also lived in this house. I eventually found out that he’d been staying there rent-free, and I wasn’t too happy with that. I had just assumed he was paying rent to Stryper to live there.

My mom and I seemed to be growing farther and farther apart. From my perspective, it was largely due to my constant questioning of the management of the finances. I didn’t think she was stealing from us—I just felt things had been mismanaged for way too long. It wasn’t as black and white as stealing—it was more like a grey area of questionable spending habits.

One day I went over to the Stryper house/office and noticed a bunch of new indoor plants and expensive landscaping. Again, I questioned it. Where did it come from? Who paid for it? Come to find out,
I
paid for it. Well,
we
as a band paid for it. Why didn’t anyone ask me or the other guys if this was a worthwhile expense? Had they asked, I wouldn’t have agreed to it, which is probably why they didn’t ask. I could understand an occasional small business expense without our consent, but when thousands of dollars are being spent and it’s your money, it’s time to say no.

Additionally, we had wasted so much money on the
In God We Trust
tour, there was no way we could be financially sound. I was continually reassured that everything was fine. Still, it was driving a wedge between my mom and me, and to some extent between the band members as well.

Likely through my persistence, we did manage to eventually get rid of that extravagant house. Robert finally moved into a place of his own, and we housed the Stryper offices there. Robert paid for that house, and we rented a portion of it from him to use as office space as we should have all along. I took comfort in knowing that we had made a small step in a positive financial direction by downsizing.

I began to write the music for
Against the Law
and brought it to the band. What came out as I was writing surprised me. We were angry, we were bitter and we wanted nothing at all to do with the part of the church that had given us grief for so many years. So I wrote songs like “Against The Law,” “Lady,” and “Caught In The Middle.” These songs weren’t necessarily anti-Christian, but they weren’t uplifting songs either. I toned down the lyrics the best I could, but in my heart I was basically flipping off anyone and everyone that had ever given us a hard time for the stance we had taken with the band.

We began rehearsing these songs as a group at Robert’s place. That’s when the drinking started (at least collectively). We’d come in with a case of beer and before the end of the day our rehearsals were useless, so we’d go shopping for guns (read on). It wasn’t as if we were waking up and reaching for a bottle of Jack before breakfast, but each day as rehearsals took place, we started drinking a little earlier. Sometimes, we would just drink and not even get through a rehearsal.

Somehow, with everything going on, we felt for some odd reason that it was a good time in our lives to start buying guns. Yep, firearms. Robert was really into all types of guns, and he had an entire walk-in closet full of them.

We’d rehearse for half-an-hour or so and get bored and decide to go gun shopping.

Kyle thought I was crazy. I’d leave for rehearsals and then come home with a semi-automatic AK-47. She’d say,
“Why did you buy this?”
and I would try to justify it by claiming protection or our rights as Americans or, better yet, “because it’s awesome!”

And if that wasn’t bad enough, we’d go out into the desert shooting and drinking. Now there’s a good match. One time we were out shooting near some sand dunes and this guy comes driving around the side of one of the dunes in his Jeep. Apparently he had been there all along and we almost shot him and his girlfriend. He was ready to kill us, and rightfully so. He said he could almost feel the bullets whizzing by his head. They were probably my bullets.

We just weren’t thinking. I guess it was all that pent-up aggression over the years and it was coming out in the form of clichés, booze and guns!

Don’t get me wrong—I am a believer in the right to bear arms. I believe the bad guys are going to own and use guns whether they’re legal or not. Bad guys are going to do what they do, so I believe every American has the right to protect his or her self. But I believe in sensible and responsible gun ownership. I was neither sensible nor responsible then. I’m surprised someone didn’t get hurt or killed during that period.

By the time rehearsals for this album had wrapped, I bet I had purchased more than 20 guns. And, yes, I too see the hypocrisy in all of this. I’m questioning the money that Stryper is spending yet I was putting thousands of dollars into a gun collection? Nothing in my life was rational during this timeframe.

As I suspected, when it came time to take meetings with the label about the next record, our budgets were cut considerably. We would be making this next record for about one-third the budget we had for
In God We Trust
. To me, this was actually a good thing. I was ready for change, in more ways than one.

All within a series of a few short meetings we agreed to drop the yellow and black, change the Stryper logo, change the image and create a project that was the polar opposite of anything we had done in the past. We wanted a raw and in-your-face approach, musically and lyrically.

We chose Tom Werman to produce the record. Tom was partially responsible for getting Boston signed to Epic Records in the ’70s and was also known for having produced Cheap Trick, Ted Nugent, Blue Oyster Cult, Motley Crue, and Poison. Tom’s a smart guy. He eventually got out of this unpredictable business and opened a Bed & Breakfast called Stonover Farm in Lenox, Massachusetts. In 1990 he was the most sought after producer in town, and we wanted the best. I give equally as much credit to Eddie DeLena, who was the engineer on
Against The Law
and who was responsible for getting most of the tones for that record. There was a solid chemistry between Tom, Eddie, and the band.

As pre-production and songwriting continued on this album, Oz brought in a song called “Not Yo Huggy Guy.” Rob and I talked about it and agreed that the title would not make its way onto this record, so I suggested the phrase “Not That Kinda Guy.” Oz tried to convince me that the phrase “Not Yo Huggy Guy” would become a popular catch phrase, but I just didn’t catch the vision. I never really cared for the song personally, mainly because I was afraid of getting sued by Van Halen for it was too close for comfort to being a replica of their hit song “Hot for Teacher.”

Eventually the songs came together and we hit the studio with Tom and Eddie to get this record done. To no surprise, the alcohol consumption continued.

I remember the first night we were in the studio and Tom looked at us and said,
“You guys drink? Well, okay.”
Here was this Jewish guy who’s probably seen it all from previous bands he had produced, thinking he’d get to take a break from all of that with this Christian band, and we proved him wrong. We had every opportunity in the world to be good examples to Tom and we blew it. I can say with assurance, nobody came to know Christ during those sessions. They came to know Jack and Jim, Bolla and Bud pretty well and that’s about it. It’s pretty embarrassing—here we were a supposed Christian band being as bad an influence as any band Tom had worked with, or so it seemed.

This was a dark time in my life that I’m really not proud of, yet at the same time it taught me a lot and brought me to who I am today. I look back on it all and wonder,
“How did it get to that point?”
I can tell you this: it didn’t happen overnight. It slowly crept into our lives, and before we knew it, we were exemplifying the hypocrisy that drove us to this anger and frustration in the first place. That’s the way the devil works. He slowly convinces you that you’re not wrong. He convinces you, without you even noticing, that there’s no longer a need to hold each other accountable. It must be okay if we’re all doing “it,” whatever sin “it” may be in the moment.

We were an angry band during this era. We were angry at the church, and we were sometimes angry at one another. We were also angry that our popularity and success had started to slip away.