Honestly: My Life and Stryper Revealed (7 page)

Despite our naiveté about the steps leading to getting signed and putting out our first record, our hearts were truly humbled. We were praying and having Bible studies more than ever, and really looking to God to lead the way, and boy did He, right into the fast lane.

We didn’t know what we were doing business-wise, but our hearts were pure. We just wanted to do whatever we felt God was leading us to do. And we believed. Our faith was strong. We didn’t doubt the path we had chosen. It all seemed to come together at the right time almost as if God was saying, “Now you’re ready.
That’s
the kind of faith I’m looking for.” It was the faith of a mustard seed.

It’s mindboggling to me as I reflect on that period of my life and realize all that was accomplished with such little knowledge of exactly how to accomplish it. I can’t explain it any other way other than God’s hands were upon us. And this was just the beginning.

ELEVEN

A black 1984 T-Top Corvette. This was the first indication that I’m a spender. Some people are spenders and some are savers. My wife Lisa is a saver. My daughter Ellena is a saver. Saving money comes as naturally to them as one would expect. But spending, on the other hand, comes naturally to me. That’s not to say I’m incapable of saving money. I can, and I do save. But it’s like playing guitar both left handed and right handed. It doesn’t come easy. It requires a lot of extra thought and effort.

We sold an astonishing amount of
The Yellow & Black Attack
in the third quarter, and it was time for Enigma to pay fourth quarter mechanical royalties. A mechanical royalty is a royalty paid to the songwriters, and since I was the primary songwriter, I got the biggest check—almost $40,000!

I cashed it. I didn’t open a savings account. I didn’t even put any in a checking account. I cashed the check and was walking around with a stack of hundred dollar bills rolled up with rubber bands wrapped around them.

That same day I walked into the local Chevy dealership and was treated like a complete loser by a pompous salesman. His attitude told me all I needed to know—that he was completely wasting his time showing a 21-year-old longhaired kid around the showroom. He was condescending and rude.

I, of course, wanted to test-drive the car before purchasing it, although that was just a formality. As long as it started and smelled new, I was buying it.

I glanced around the showroom filled with exactly zero customers and only two other salesmen. My guy made it pretty obvious that he thought I was “just looking” and certainly couldn’t afford a new Corvette.

He didn’t join me for the test drive, which I thought was a little odd. If he didn’t think I could buy it, surely he must have considered the possibility of me stealing it.

Regardless, he didn’t go with me on the test drive. When I returned I walked into his office and pulled out a ball of cash from my jacket and laid it on his desk. “I’ll take it,” I said. I plopped down the cash on his desk, rubber bands and all.

The look on his face was priceless. I think I enjoyed that part of the experience as much as the actual car—although in hindsight I wish I hadn’t given him the satisfaction of making a commission.

Chalk that day up to a “coming of age” experience. I suppose there are worse ways I could have spent that money and worse people who could have received it. Drug dealers, tax collectors and televangelists come to mind
(I may get letters for that statement but wait until the end of the book before sending any out. You may want to add more to your letter)
.

I came to know Christ through Jimmy Swaggart. But that was about the extent of my appreciation for Swaggart. Shortly after we became successful, he spoke boldly against Stryper and said some really hurtful things about us.

It was confusing and hard to understand since he was so instrumental in my conversion. He actually held up our records at quite a few of his telecasts and told his viewers that we were “wolves in sheep’s clothing” and not to support us! Of course not long after his judgmental rants about our ministry, his ministry came crashing down. More about ministries crashing down later.....

Within a year of purchasing my dream car, I got in a minor fender-bender with my Corvette on the way to Robert’s house. My wife Kyle, who was pregnant at the time, was in the car with me when it happened. Knowing that Corvettes are made of fiberglass, it was enough to scare me into selling the car. I sold it to Rob minutes later for $20,000. I said “Dude, it’s yours right now for 20k if you’ll just take it.” He did.

I bought a brand new ‘Vette and sold it less than a year later for $20k? Yep, I was shaping up to be quite the businessman with choices like that. Don’t let Rob tell you I never did anything for him. I took that $20k and bought a sensible 4-door sedan complete with cup-holders, seat back pockets, and an AM/FM/cassette radio.

In 1984, having been on the air for almost 3 years now, MTV played music videos and featured VJs such as Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, J.J. Jackson and Martha Quinn, who would come on the airwaves with all the authority and integrity of Walter Cronkite and tell, or rather
show
, young music fans what they should be listening to. Although I believe there are a lot of variables that led to our success, one decisive element was MTV. They liked us, and we liked them.

Our first music video was for the song “You Know What to Do” from
The Yellow and Black Attack
that we shot at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium during an actual live performance.

Matt Crouch, son of TBN’s Paul and Jan Crouch, directed the video. To this day he’s a dear friend of mine and has always been there for me through thick and thin. He’s gone on to become a very talented director and film-maker with his company Gener8ion.

We were working on a very limited budget so Daryn Hinton called in as many favors as possible to help with the video. One of those favors was a makeup artist—a beautiful woman by the name of Kyle Tucy. Kyle was one of the most sought after makeup artists in Hollywood working on films like
Terminator, Repo Man
and
Wisdom
.

Having makeup applied is a unique experience. I’m in a chair while the makeup artist leans in close, walking around from side to side getting up-close and personal, attempting to achieve the perfect look. It’s a very intimate experience that can either be really comfortable or really awkward. In this case, it was a little of both. I didn’t want to get out of the chair that day because something just happened from the moment I met Kyle. I could sense something special, and I literally felt my stomach turning. She was beautiful, but it wasn’t about that. I got the strangest feeling around Kyle from day one. It was a feeling I had never felt before.

She wasn’t a Christian and was thrust into this job with a bold Christian band. She didn’t know what to think. I believe she was a little shocked by the whole thing, but I do recall her telling me how nice she thought we were. But here was this makeup artist getting thrown into the ring—the hair, the spandex, the Christian lyrics and message. She must have thought, “What in the world is this?” But back then everybody seemingly had that reaction to us.

She and I exchanged numbers and talked almost nightly on the phone the next week. I talked to her a lot about my faith and my beliefs, not so much hoping she would believe the same, but just wanting to gauge whether or not she would be okay dating someone who had dedicated his life to Christ.

I finally got the nerve to ask her out the following week. I drove to her house on Flores Street, just off Santa Monica Boulevard. We walked a block away to the famous Barney’s Beanery, a casual Burgers and Billiards place, located less than a mile away from the Whisky A Go Go and the Key Club. It was an amazing night. Time stood still, yet moved so quickly. Before I knew it we had finished our food, but I didn’t want the night to end. Neither did she.

We decided to walk another block up Santa Monica to an ice cream place where we sat and talked for another hour or so, until they finally had to tell us they were closing for the night. I walked her home, briefly kissed her goodnight at her front door, and then I drove home thinking about all the possibilities that might lie ahead.

I was a bit skeptical about jumping into a relationship with Kyle. She had moved to LA from Massachusetts with her fiancé, a musician named Dave Amato. The two of them had only broken up a short while before I started seeing Kyle, and it was a bit awkward at first. He was still coming around and occasionally I would be there when he’d stop by. I got the sense it felt to him as though I had taken Kyle away from him, which wasn’t true. They had already broken up before we started dating. Nonetheless, it was a little uncomfortable to say the least.

Dave was and is quite the admired musician in LA. Not long after his breakup with Kyle, he would become the guitarist for Ted Nugent, and now he is a member of REO Speedwagon. Ironically, his first band back in Massachusetts was called Aftermath, formed around the same time Rob and I had a band in LA by the same name.

He’s a great guy and a dear friend now and I can see why the two of them connected. Dave and I have actually remained in touch and I recently joined REO Speedwagon on stage when they were touring through Boston. Dave pulled me on stage, handed me a guitar, and I faked my way through the REO hit “Keep Pushin.” It was classic.....

Kyle was 7 years my senior. What this 28 year old, well educated woman saw in a Jesus-loving 21-year-old musician, I’m not sure. But thankfully we clicked.

Getting to know and grow closer to Kyle was a bit of a roller coaster thanks to my childish erratic behavior. We got serious about each other fast, and as a result I began to back-pedal, wondering if I should play the field. Stryper was dancing with success and I was questioning the idea of settling down. And I was a jerk throughout the process.

I couldn’t be a man about it and just tell Kyle how I was feeling. No, that would have been the smart thing to do. Instead, I just started being mean. Not calling. Treating her rudely. Or just ignoring her altogether.

We didn’t really break up. I just stopped calling.

I did this not once, but twice. After the first time, I came to my senses and she took me back, miraculously. And then I did it again, and again a few months later. That was me at the time—a selfish kid who didn’t know what he wanted or needed.

The second time she wasn’t quite as understanding and just moved on, dating a stunt man she was working with on a movie.

So like the yo-yo I was, I went running back to her again. This time on bended knees asking for her forgiveness, apologizing profusely, realizing what a fool I was. I told her that I realized there was most likely no way she would take me back, but I would be forever committed if she would.

Thankfully, she took me back and I was committed. We were obviously very attracted to each other and passionately in love. One day after band practice I came to her apartment and the look on her face told me that my life was about to change forever. Kyle was pregnant.

A few days later we eloped, telling nobody—not my parents, not the band. Nobody.

We went to a friend’s house in Palos Verdes, got a minister and a couple of necessary witnesses, and we got married. The next day I moved out of my room at my parents’ house and into Kyle’s apartment. My parents were obviously upset. But I was ecstatic. I was 22 years old and embarrassed by still living with my parents and sleeping in a bunk bed. Bunk beds should end pre-teen, right? Friends would come to the house and I wouldn’t even take them to my room! Well, I was outta there as fast as I could pack and gather my belongings. But between my immaturity, the pregnancy, eloping, and upset family members, we weren’t exactly standing on solid ground.

We had previously not lived together, so we were also learning all the quirks and idiosyncrasies a new couple endures. Toilet paper roll over or under? Squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom or the middle? Should the dishes get washed nightly or sit in the sink? We were now financially joined at the hip, a situation that never makes for an easy adjustment, particularly when one of us has spent his entire, and to that point, only paycheck on a depreciating sports car.

Yes, there was a definite learning curve, more so for me. She was a much more mature person than I, and she was capable of handling this lifestyle change. Kyle was a college graduate with a major in Child Psychology from Colby College and I had only a G.E.D. Throughout our life together, although I was envious of her at times, I appreciated being married to a woman who was smarter than I was.

We were in love and worked through things. I learned to squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom and she learned that toilet paper should always dispense under, never over.

Most importantly, in a day when it wasn’t uncommon for a Sunset Strip rocker to get a girl pregnant prior to marriage, it
was
, however, uncommon for a Christian rocker to own up and take responsibility for it. Although I was young, I knew I needed to do the right thing. But it really didn’t have as much to do with that as the fact that I loved Kyle with all my heart and soul. She was the one that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Getting Kyle pregnant prior to marriage was not part of my plan. Regardless, I had committed my life to her, and the fact that we had a baby on the way made life even greater.

Within a year we purchased our first home in Fullerton, California and our son, Michael, Jr. was born. We were living the fairytale life in our new home with great neighbors, a well-manicured lawn that I took pride in maintaining, and an interior of designer furniture and state-of-the-art appliances. No more bunk beds for me. We were a family now. And I was happy.

TWELVE

I have a love/hate relationship with our Yellow & Black motif. Actually, it’s mostly a hate relationship. Just the thought of yellow and black and I begin to feel anxious and uneasy, wishing we had never gone down that road. It has been the single most persistent antagonist of my career.

That is not to say I wish we had eliminated the motif all together, I just wish we had toned it down a bit. By the time Stryper was in full force, Rob had everything painted in yellow and black stripes. If it wasn’t yellow and black, it wasn’t on stage. I even remember Rob suggesting we dye our hair yellow and black. Seriously.