Honestly: My Life and Stryper Revealed (20 page)

But we made a record, miraculously, despite all the irresponsibility. And now came time to shoot the videos, again on a much smaller budget than we were accustomed to having.

During the making of that album, I shared with Tom Werman my frustrations with what I felt was mismanagement of the band. I knew we were at a major crossroads with Stryper and if we didn’t make some drastic changes, it would be impossible to turn things around. We were changing our sound, look and style but it just didn’t feel like it was enough.

After sharing with Tom my interest in seeking new management, he introduced us to Danny Goldberg and Ron Stone of Gold Mountain Management. They were the biggest management company in the business at the time. The two of them have managed some of the biggest and most respected artists in the business, artists such as Neil Young, The Eagles, Bob Dylan, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Bonnie Raitt, Joni Mitchell and the list goes on.

We took a liking to both of them, and we felt this was the right fit for Stryper. After our meeting with Gold Mountain, they agreed to take us on.

Rob and I agreed it was time to let Mom go as our manager. We met with her, and although it was difficult, we let her know that we’d be entering into a contract with Gold Mountain. We told her that we wanted to try something new and that Gold Mountain would be the best place to start.

Firing a relative, especially your mom, is never an easy thing to do. Rob and I spent a lot of time talking about it ahead of time, wondering how she would take it and how we should tell her. No matter what kind of a job we felt she was doing at the time, she was still our mom. We did, and do, love her. It was a difficult thing, probably more for us than her, to let her go.

I suppose she took it as well as could be expected. Mom encouraged and supported me every step of the way. Her response to the change was fairly typical of the way she usually responds to conflict. She said something along the lines of, “Fine. I was going to quit anyway.”

Who knows? Maybe she was thinking about getting out of the business and this was a relief to her. I know it was a relief to me. We also removed our mom of the financial responsibilities by hiring Haber, a business management firm.

Danny and Ron continued to drop by the studio listening to tracks and they seemed to really like what they were hearing. It felt right. No longer were we under mom’s management, and we now had a solid professional team in place to help us with the next phase in our career.

Our first video, and single from
Against The Law
was “Shining Star,” a song on which we had brought in Randy Jackson, now of American Idol fame, to play bass. I still can’t watch that show without thinking of the session we had with Randy, who was a really nice guy.

“Shining Star” was our first video featuring a group of women dressed to kill. That wasn’t much of a stretch for the typical rock band of that era, but for us it was a totally new approach. Still, it was tame by comparison. The concept of that video was some sort of futuristic roller coaster loaded with women. We had fun making it, and I’m still very proud of our rendition of that song. The video? I could take it or leave it. But I feel our version of that song really pays proper respect to Earth, Wind, and Fire, and for that we’re proud.

We shot two other videos, the most controversial being “Lady.” Again, featuring a woman that I was supposedly singing to and singing about. But this time we took it a bit further. We put this girl in a bathtub, bubbles and all, and she gave a sultry performance for the camera throughout the shoot.

The “Lady” video caused some grief between Kyle and me. She was a little hurt that I was a married Christian man singing a song to another woman, or at least that’s how it was perceived. In hindsight, she was right. We wound up taking it on the chin from the Christian community for making that video. It’s a great song that was somewhat tarnished by a questionable video.

The same day we shot “Lady,” we decided to get our money’s worth by keeping the cameras rolling and shooting another video for “Two Time Woman.” We basically put our hair in ponytails, changed our clothes and kept shooting in the same location. Aside from the extra editing costs, we got two videos for the price of one. But that was the kind of tight budget we were on. Seven years after signing our first record deal, we were just now learning the concept of frugal spending.

Against the Law
was released in August of 1990. How we ever got it finished and maintained quality and productivity, I’ll never know. God was definitely watching over us, despite us not giving Him a second thought at the time.

Kyle was almost three months pregnant when the record coming out. This seemed like a good time to hit the road and continue a lifestyle of debauchery and sin.

TWENTY-NINE

In support of
Against The Law
, we performed only 23 shows in about five weeks, the least we had ever toured for a release. Part of that run was with the band Bride as support, and the other part with the band Trixter.

I was impressed with both bands. Bride was a great band who crafted solid songs and delivered them with passion. They were definitely committed to their faith, but they weren’t too preachy.

They were just regular guys that tried to lead by example. I wish their example had rubbed off on us a little more during that tour, but I really enjoyed the time we got to spend with those guys.

The Trixter leg was particularly eye opening and humbling. We were playing mostly small clubs and theaters on this run. Most places we played were roughly 1,000-capacity venues. Planning this tour there were catch-industry phrases thrown around among our managers and agents like “getting back to your roots” and “stepping things up.” Sometimes those are proper descriptions of what an artist is doing, but in most cases they’re polite ways of describing an artist’s declining popularity.

Our first show with Trixter was to about 1,100 people. As I looked out at the crowd, about half of them were young girls wearing Trixter t-shirts. Not only could we not sell out arenas any longer, but also we apparently couldn’t even sell out small clubs. We needed the help of a band like Trixter, a band who much like us, was getting little respect from the critics.

The members of Trixter were a great bunch of guys who had just hit it big with their single “Give It To Me Good,” so they were living the rock-star lifestyle for the first time. And in some regard, so were we. Until now we had sheltered ourselves in the goody-two-shoes persona, but not in 1990. We were drinking it up right alongside Trixter, and anyone else who cared to join us. I liked Trixter, and I still remain in contact with my friend Steve Brown, the guitarist and founding member of the band.

The first night of that tour was particularly memorable at Rock and Roll Heaven in Toronto. Aside from the many Trixter fans in the crowd, I also noticed Rob Halford of Judas Priest in attendance as well. Apparently Judas Priest was in town performing a few nights later at the arena. It was quite a compliment to see Rob in the crowd taking in a Stryper show. Toward the end of the set, I took a chance and asked Rob to the stage to join us for a song. He did. We played “Breaking The Law,” a song we often sound checked with, and it was surreal to stand alongside one of my biggest influences. In my opinion, Rob is one of the best singers and performers of our generation. . For a moment, I was able to forget all the hardships and questions going on in my mind, and I just took in those four minutes with one of metal’s most notable singers.

We continued to tour with Trixter, and I continued to see teenage girls in Trixter t-shirts piling into the clubs we were playing night after night. I continued to think to myself, “
We’re blowing it. We’re not honoring God.”
We had always tried to honor Him, but we weren’t doing so during this tour. And why would God bless us when we were dishonoring Him by being complete hypocrites night after night? You can’t make a mockery of God. Good luck trying if you want, but it won’t work. We know this firsthand.

Aside from the traditional live performance touring, we did a promotional tour leading up to the release of
Against the Law
. Robert and Tim went out together and conducted interviews in a portion of the country, and Oz and I went together covering another part of the country.

We would fly or drive into cities and hit every radio station we could. We shook a lot of hands, rubbed a lot of elbows, and did a lot of interviews, all in hopes of this record getting some airtime. After all the elbow rubbing and hand shaking subsided, we’d go out on the town, sometimes escorted by people from the label or local radio stations. They usually knew the hot spots in town and we were always willing to tag along. We even went to Solid Gold, a strip club in Minnesota, and sat at a booth with the guys in Cheap Trick. I believe David Cassidy was there as well. They said everything about our hypocrisy with a simple glance. I remember when we met Lemmy from Motorhead in a pub in Germany and discussed God as we drank more beer then he did! We were digging our holes deeper and deeper, and the guilt and shame was starting to set in.

One day in particular stands out in my mind. Oz and I met two women at a restaurant/bar who recognized us and struck up a conversation. The drinks were flowing and we talked about getting together later that night. Oz and I, with our two new female friends, continued drinking at the hotel. Oz eventually left with one, leaving me alone with the other.

There’s something about booze, a private hotel room, and being hundreds of miles away from home that will allow you to let your guard down and make poor, dishonorable decisions. Within a few minutes after Oz and his companion left, I started kissing this woman. Eventually we found ourselves stretched out on the bed.

By the way, I’m not withholding her name to protect her. I don’t remember her name. That’s how fuzzy my memory is regarding this time of my life.

But what I do remember vividly is how that night ended so abruptly. I had my shirt off, and she had taken most of her clothes off. We were rolling around on the bed, not thinking about reality. Passion was flowing, as it often does between two strangers alone in a hotel room filled with vodka and gin.

I have no idea what came over me. Well, actually I do have an idea. I’m a firm believer that God speaks to us when we need to hear Him the most. I got up from the bed, half naked, with a beautiful, strange woman lying there staring at me like I was crazy. She asked what was wrong.

“I’m married. I can’t do this. I’m sorry,” I said, not really even believing the words as they were coming out of my mouth but thankful that they were.

She stood up from the bed, slightly embarrassed, as was I. She started putting her clothes back on after realizing that coaxing me back into bed wasn’t going to work. We made some small talk and she left the room within 10 minutes.

Usually when I hung out with women on this tour, it was in the back of the bus. Prior to this moment, I had never taken a woman back to my hotel room alone.

I cheated on my wife, Kyle.

I never had sex with another woman while married to Kyle, but what I did was undoubtedly cheating. We had women around all the time during the
Against The Law
era, usually on the bus. I’m shocked nothing scandalous came out during that period. As a Christian man and a married one at that, I had no business behaving the way I did. For years I had been telling people “You don’t need this path,” and here I was going directly down the same path I had warned people about for years.

The feelings of guilt were insurmountable during this era. Feelings of wanting out of Stryper were starting to take serious root in my soul at this point, and I think it’s partially due to the guilt that I was feeling about what being in this band was doing to my marriage. But I was doing very little to correct it. I wasn’t seeking God like I should have. I just continued going down the path of temptation, knowing that I was playing with fire, yet not really caring at all. Well, I’d care for a while, and then I wouldn’t, and then I’d care again.

It wasn’t as if I was addicted to anything, but I very much compare this sort of behavior to an addiction. You know you don’t need, or even want, that next cigarette, but you smoke it anyway. I knew intellectually and spiritually that I shouldn’t be living like this, but my actions weren’t lining up with my intentions.

That moment with the woman in the hotel room really started to push me toward changing my ways and cleaning up my act.

The other moment that had a profound impact on me during this time was what I touched on earlier in Minneapolis with David Cassidy and the guys in Cheap Trick. There was a promotional event and a party at the biggest strip club in town afterward. Oz and I met David who, at one point early on during the night, turned to Oz and I and said, “Man, I thought you guys were a Christian band.” He wasn’t being mean or judgmental, just curious and perceptive.

That moment was another sword in my heart. I’m thinking to myself “We
are
a Christian band.” But we certainly weren’t acting like it. Again, we were the definition of the word hypocrite. I was going on stage night after night singing about Jesus, and yet not giving Him a second thought the other twenty-two-and-a-half hours of the day.

All of this was taking place while Kyle is home pregnant with our daughter and second child, Ellena Rae.

This short-lived
Against The Law
era is what really led me toward the Stryper exit door. I wanted out. And this is where it all began. Now I just needed to figure out
how
to get out.

I wasn’t putting any of the blame for this debauchery on Rob, Tim, or Oz. It was all on me. Although we all participated in the lifestyle, the only person to blame for my actions was myself. I felt the only way for me to put a stop to my downward spiral was to remove myself from the situation. I needed to apply the brakes soon and I needed to come to a screeching halt soon, before I destroyed myself and seriously harmed others.

I look back on these times and I’m amazed that my marriage didn’t fall apart. Kyle had every right to leave. Tim and his first wife, Valerie, divorced eventually. Oz and his first wife, Leslie, eventually did as well. And Robert was in a serious relationship that also ended. All our relationships took a beating during this period.