Honestly: My Life and Stryper Revealed

by Michael Sweet

  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.

  Would Stryper have become successful without the yellow and black? I would argue we would have been even more successful. Although Rob was the first to introduce it, and push it to extremes that left me uncomfortable, I’m also to blame. It wasn’t as if we suddenly, in one day, painted everything we owned yellow and black. No, it started with the drum kit, then the guitars, then the clothing, then the mic stands, then the guitar cables, then the cars! One element at a time, and before I knew it, we were living in a striped world and I was getting a headache.

  Rob was always focused on the show whereas my focus was the music. Rob was the visual guy hence the name “The Visual Timekeeper”, and I was always the music guy. It’s always been that way as far back as I can recall.

  Rob was consistently and acutely on the lookout for our next big gimmick—Always on the search for new ideas. I can’t say for sure where he got the idea for yellow and black stripes, but I can say that he had an obsession with that combination of colors. As teenagers, long before the development of Stryper, we would go out and steal yellow and black road signs to line the walls of our studio. For me it was just fun to get rowdy and go out stealing road signs. For Rob it was a quest to acquire more yellow and black, or so it seemed.

  Rob was really into Kiss, and I think that played a role in his desire and need for us to have a visual gimmick. I liked Kiss too, but not like Rob did. I was more drawn to bands like Bad Company, Van Halen and Journey who had great songs, talent and production. I couldn’t care less what the band looked like. But Rob really enjoyed seeing a band and saying, “Look at those guys! Look at those outfits! Look at those lights, look at that stage!!!”

  In that sense I suppose we
are the perfect Yin and Yang. Yet I can’t help but feel the attire, makeup, and glam of Stryper often detracts from the substance of the music and the message.

  We certainly weren’t the first band to introduce stripes into our overall theme. Honestly, a lot of things that fans may perceive as unique to Stryper aren’t that unique at all. We weren’t the first to do many of the things that became synonymous with Stryper. Matthias Jabs of The Scorpions, for example, used to wear stripes, as did David Lee Roth and Kevin DuBrow of Quiet Riot. Matthias even implied once in an interview that perhaps Stryper had stolen his yellow and black striped look. Perhaps we did subconsciously. I honestly don’t know how it all got started. I just know that I went along with it but I wasn’t necessarily a huge fan of it.

  We also weren’t the first to introduce a sideways drum kit either. I believe Kelly Keagy of Night Ranger was the first to do that.

  I would like to think the name Stryper largely came about because we had already donned stripes. That may have been part of it, but I’ve heard stories that the idea for the name Stryper may have been inadvertently planted in Rob’s head by a local band from Texas named Stryker, whom Rob supposedly had met in a local park several years earlier during our Roxx Regime days. Stryker, according to insider legend, had met Rob and told him about their band, even going so far as to telling him that they chose the name Stryker and spelled it with a “y” because it rhymed with “hyper.” Hmmm, sounds a little all too familiar. Stryker’s logo even looks a lot like the Stryper logo. It wasn’t until after we hit it pretty big that Stryker released their first national album having changed their named to Stryken— so that made them look like the copycats although if the stories are true, it just may have been the other way around.

  I did always wonder why they changed their name from Stryker to Stryken though. You would think if a band were going to undergo a name change, partially because your name sounds like another band, then you’d make a more drastic change than one letter. Who knows?

  The name, the colors, the outfits, it’s a bit of a tender spot with me.

  For almost 30 years, whether in a hardware store, a grocery store, a book store or wherever, some form of the following conversation has haunted me.

  “You look like you’re in a band.”

  “I am.”

  “What band?”

  “A band called Stryper.”

  “Hmmmm. I’m sorry. I’m not familiar with you guys,” they say with apologetic overtones.

  “No worries. I don’t expect you to be.”

  “Would I know any of your songs?” they say, hopeful to redeem themselves, or at least to make the already uncomfortable conversation a little more comfortable.

  “Maybe. We had a few songs you might know. ‘Honestly’. ‘Calling On You’. ‘To Hell With The Devil’. ‘Always There For You’.” I don’t expect them to recognize any of these. Continuing the list would only prolong our mutual embarrassment.

  “Hmmmm. Doesn’t ring a bell, but I’d probably know them if I heard them.” Ha! Or then again, probably not.

  I take one last stab at it, more for their sake than for mine, and say “We wore yellow and black outfits.”

  “Oh yeah,” I do remember you guys. The yellow and black band. Yeah. Wow. That’s cool! That’s REALLY cool!”

  “Not really,” I think in my head. You have basically just told me that you don’t know our band or our music, but you do know that we dressed like bumblebees.

  Oh well. We could have done the yellow and black thing in a much cooler way. It was just so over the top that it opened the door for mockery at times. I feel as though it diluted the legitimacy of the band. Had I been more outspoken about it in my younger years, I think we could have found a way to have an image that wasn’t so gimmicky. Elements of yellow and black stripes here and there could have still given us a visual edge without making us look like, well you know—bumblebees.

  To me, bands that use visual gimmicks do so because they don’t often have the music to back it up. I believe that we did and do have the music to back it up, and as a result, I always found myself fighting against our image.

  I feel we have something incredibly unique without all the bumblebee crap. Oz, Tim, and I sing well together creating some unique and impressive harmonies. Our songs. Our message. Our harmony guitar solos. Rob’s drumming. All of that sometimes takes a back seat, or isn’t taken seriously, and to me that’s very unfortunate.

  It’s depressing to pour the very core of my heart and soul into writing a song or an album, only to read discussions, often jokes, about our attire. So much time, thought, and effort go into the music and the production. It’s not 3-chord rock. Some of it is pretty intricate stuff. And to work so hard on something, musically, vocally, and lyrically, only to be overshadowed by the look—well, it’s frustrating to say the least. We didn’t need a gimmick, but we got one any way.

  I’d like to be remembered for our message and music. Had we just toned down the yellow and black, even just a little bit, our legacy might hold a little more legitimacy.

  From the moment the yellow and black stripes extended beyond the drum set, I have always encouraged toning it down, but it wasn’t until the Against The Law album that I put my foot down. Rob seemed to resist the color change. Our compromise was to keep elements of stripes in the band, but we did away with the yellow and black. To me, that was the best the band had ever looked. Visuals aside, that was a humbling and even embarrassing time in my life for other reasons.

  THIRTEEN

  If I were to describe John The Baptist, I might imagine him to be a lot like my friend Michael Guido. Strong facial features, a defined jaw line hidden behind a salt and pepper beard. Long, curly hair, callused hands and sun tanned skin from his time outdoors praying for and with people. Outspoken in his faith, but quick to listen intently. Deep set eyes that speak to your very soul when you gaze into them. Sometimes his eyes are saying, “Well done my child” and other times they are saying, “I’m disappointed in you.” Nonetheless, they always say, “I care.”

  Guido accompanied us, along with 10 of our closest friends and crewmates on our very first tour following the release of The Yellow and Black Attack. 15 of us filled every available seat in a 15 passenger van on a ten day tour through Texas and Arizona. It was our only tour to support that album before we went on to record Soldiers Under Command. By the way “15 passenger van” is a terrible name for those vehicles. Yes, they can hold 15 people, but there’s no accounting for all the gear that a band must carry along.

  As we headed deep into the heart of Texas, most of us took turns driving. I, of course, was the best driver, meticulously obsessing over every road sign and turn signal (at least that’s what I thought but I guarantee you everyone else would tell you a different story). I required a co-pilot at all times, glued to the Rand McNally, ensuring the most direct route to each venue. I remember driving late one night and being especially tired. As we approached the outskirts of the next town, we came to a fork in the road and I had already decided to go to the left, at 85 mph! Oz was to my right and shouted “No, No... Stay to the right! Stay to the right!”

  A sudden jerk of the steering wheel and I lost control of the van. The screech of the tires was muffled only by the uncontrollable outbursts of fear within the van. The women were screaming. I was screaming. It was a miracle the van didn’t roll. Our first “real” tour outside of LA and we almost met God that night. I could see the headlines: “Christian Rock band’s fatal crash on I-20. 15 people dead.” I gained control and sighs of relief filled the van. Then laughter. We’re alive, and on tour!!

  Later that month, I read a national automotive report declaring 15-passenger vans have a 400 percent greater chance of rolling over when they are filled to capacity. It was time for us to get on a tour bus or reduce our number of traveling companions. To this day I won’t tour in a van. Not because I’m above it. I just don’t feel safe.

  We banged out 7 shows in 10 days on that f
irst tour, including an amazing show at The Bronco Bowl in Dallas where we sold over 1000 tickets. The incredible turnouts at each show pleasantly surprised us, but at every stop on the tour I was confident nobody would show up. And then miraculously, each night, we had more than respectable crowds. I was absolutely amazed by the outpouring of fans. Hundreds, sometimes thousands in each city turned out, many of them already sporting yellow and black attire. This helped me realize we were about to embark on something big with Stryper and made me even more excited and anxious to get back into the studio to record the album that I knew we were capable of making.

  Despite having seen a smorgasbord of diverse cultures back home in Los Angeles, we were relatively naïve to the world. We had not yet toured beyond a 60 mile radius of our home, so we were thrilled to be away for the first time. To this day, Texas remains one of our strongest markets and I attribute that to the early years of touring there regularly. Los Angeles is our home. Texas is our most beloved home away from home.

  Three days into the tour, I’m already beginning to wonder why we have brought so many people. This van was just too small for 15 of us. But we loved it. We needed the 15 of us, especially Kenny Metcalf and Michael Guido who helped embrace us with the love, encouragement, and support to be strong and self-reliant.

  Guido prayed over everything. “Guys. This is the venue. Before we go in, let’s pray over the venue.” And we did. In the middle of the day, as people strolled by, we would put our hands on the walls of the building and Guido would lead us in prayer over the venue. Before sound check Guido would gather us to pray over the instruments. We would of course pray before taking the stage as well. One night in particular the local opening band was obviously nervous about their performance. Guido gathered us all around to pray for them, and with them, so they might experience God too. This shocked the band as they were not Christians—but they still smiled with appreciation, or perhaps confusion, as the prayer concluded.