Honestly: My Life and Stryper Revealed

by Michael Sweet

  This constant prayer could be both comforting and yet annoying at times to a young rock band out on their own for the first time, but Guido knew we needed a foundation and he was happy to help provide it. Sometimes we didn’t want to pray. Sometimes we just wanted to get out of the van and head down the street looking for the local music store or coffee shop. Sometimes I just wanted to get away from everyone and be by myself, a tendency that would never abandon me as I grew older. But we prayed. Over the buildings. The van. The clothes. The equipment. The shows. I was thankful to be surrounded by this sort of commitment. And as inconvenient as it may have been, I didn’t lose focus on the importance of prayer.

  The fans at these shows were so supportive. Most were Christians who had heard about us through fanzines, word of mouth, and what little radio play we received. We were still flying safely under the radar from the skeptics and naysayers. They, for the most part, didn’t rear their ugly heads until after Soldiers Under Command started to climb the charts.

  As we headed back across Arizona into California, there was a quiet sense of accomplishment inside our van. We were of course pleased to have completed our first tour, but we basked in silence. All of the shows far exceeded our expectations and we felt strangely at peace with our place in the music business. Yet I was sad to return home, despite knowing the next item on my agenda was to make what was certain to become the groundbreaking album of my career. Still, as I saw the “Welcome to California” sign I missed the call of the road already. The uncertainty before each show. The near fatal van accident. I missed the smell of the venues and the nervous butterflies I got when the house lights dimmed and I could hear the roar of the crowd from behind the stage. It had been only 24 hours since our last show, and I missed it, terribly. I was already being pulled back to the ambivalent role I would play on the rock-n-roll touring circuit. And I realized, “This is what I live for. This is who I will be for the rest of my life. Forever I will be constantly torn between home and the nomad’s life where every city looks the same. Forever I will constantly battle between the need to make music in the controlled environment of a studio and the anything-goes chaos of a tour.” As I crossed the California State line I knew that for the rest of my life, wherever I was, I would want to be somewhere else.

  FOURTEEN

  In 2010 I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Today I make light of it, laughing at it from time to time. It’s just my way of not letting it get to me, because it can be very frustrating at times. It’s probably the most confusing thing I’ve dealt with throughout my life.

  Not long ago I was working in my studio hanging pictures on the wall. With hammer and nails in hand, I hang my first picture. Stepping back to make sure that it’s level, I realize I’ve lost my hammer. I haven’t left the room so it’s got to be here, yet I spend the next five minutes looking for it. I’m too focused on whether or not the picture frame is level to remember where I put it down. While searching, I find some old pictures of Lena and Mikey, and I get further distracted. Finally, I find the hammer and hang the second picture. Somehow, I lose it again. I spend another five minutes looking for the hammer, all the while continuing to try to take my focus off questioning whether or not my pictures are level. The phone rings (my most common distraction), and after the conversation I spend another few minutes looking. I find it again. A few hours later, I complete a job that would take a “normal person” 15 minutes, but I’ve found some pictures and now I need to figure out what to do with them. Maybe this is why I can scream so high and so loud—it’s the frustration! That is what my life has been like for as long as I can remember.

  In the mid seventies, as I was developing my signature guitar tone (and ultimately the signature Stryper guitar tone), ADHD was not widely accepted by the medical community as a disorder. Back then I was just hyper. Or I just didn’t pay attention. Or worse, I paid attention to only one thing and nothing else, but that one thing had to be really interesting to me in order to keep my attention any longer than a few moments.

  The one thing I did pay attention to at the time was my guitar tone.

  I can sit in a room for hours trying to achieve the best tone from an amp, guitar or pedal. I’ll change pickups, strings, readjust the amp, readjust the pedals, change the pickups again, and so on and so on. Before I know it an entire day has passed.

  At the age of 13, after hearing the first Boston album, I became hyper-focused on achieving greatness with my own signature guitar sound. Later in life I discovered there were a gazillion tracks of guitars on those Boston albums, but at 13 all I knew was that I too wanted the perfect guitar tone. I spent many afternoons as a young teen working with different gear to achieve just that.

  Tom Scholz, founder of Boston, capitalized on his sound by selling rack mount EQs, pre-amps, choruses, and delays—and every aspiring guitar player wanted that Boston sound. I would go so far as to say that the Boston guitar sound created one of the most influential tones ever recorded.

  It’s funny how something can be so profound when you’re a kid and then when you’re older (and perhaps a little wiser), you see it for what it truly is. I had the opportunity to join Boston and play alongside Tom Scholz. As a contributing member of Boston, I realized that the simplicity of a guitar tone is often the root of its greatness.

  Ultimately, a Gibson Lab Series L-5 head combined with a Marshall head would be the combination to create what would become known as the Stryper tone. But to get there, it took hours and hours of obsessing over every small detail and countless combinations of knob-turning and "tweaking.”

  In the ‘80s the most guarded secret on The Sunset Strip was how a guitarist achieved his guitar tone. If aspiring, or even established musicians liked your tone, they became obsessively inquisitive about how you achieved it. And The Strip was a battle ground competition toward the ever coveted recording contract, so to just freely give away the secret of your guitar tone would be like handing the opposing team your playbook before the game. You just don’t do that. Every band wanted to win the race to the front door of the record label, and part of that was hiding your playbook.

  Back when we were a trio, I used to hide some of my equipment so the audience, or more specifically other musicians, couldn’t see what I was using. One night playing with Ratt at the infamous Gazarri’s, Robbin Crosby and Chris Hager began asking me questions about my guitar tone. “Hey man. What are you using to get that sound?”

  I showed them what I was using, but I hid the main ingredient, the Gibson Lab Series, and it seemed to successfully confuse true guitar aficionados. No way was I sharing my trade secrets, at least not yet. Oddly enough, the unique configuration of guitar amps that I and my fellow Sunset Strip musicians were developing in the ‘80s is now commonplace among today’s artists. I get a certain guitar-geek satisfaction from knowing I was at ground-zero of an era that set the pace for many of the sounds you hear on today’s modern day rock records.

  Now when people ask me how I achieve my guitar tones, I just tell them that I hang really straight pictures. If said with a smile, they smile back, more confused than before.

  When you’re ADHD, finding someone you trust to be your guitar tech is a major task. I put my trust in a guy by the name of Rick Pietila. I love and trust Rick. He’s a martial artist, so not only is he great with guitars, he’s also great at protection when it’s needed. He’s probably 160 pounds soaking wet in his work boots, but I’d never want to take a punch from him. Thankfully we get along great. I’m equally as thankful that he’s never used his martial art skills for my protection (at least that I'm aware of), but it’s nice to know he’s there. Sometimes early in the morning I’d wake up and look out the window of the tour bus or hotel room and see him practicing his routines as if nobody else in the world was around. He’d find a small space of solitude behind the hotel or in a corner of the parking lot, and spend hours practicing and meditating. He’s a really disciplined guy and it shows both through his lifest
yle and his guitar tech skills.

  When I joined Boston, I brought Rick over from our camp to the Boston camp. One night on the 2008 tour, Tom Scholz’s limited edition Les Paul (one of 100) got kicked over on stage and the headstock broke off. This is a guitar that is easily worth in excess of $100,000. Rick fixed Tom’s guitar and you would never know the headstock had broken off. Tom was incredibly impressed, and that’s saying a lot.

  For the better part of my life I’ve been a somewhat frustrated guitar player for a number of reasons. The most lingering frustration has been that I don’t feel as though I’m looked at as a guitarist often. I’m viewed as a singer, which I am, of course. But the idea that you can’t be both, and be good at both, has always frustrated me. The industry and often fans alike want to compartmentalize musicians. You're either a drummer or a bass player or a guitar player or you are a singer. The idea that someone can be equally skilled at more than one thing often seems like a foreign concept. This can be frustrating to me as it relates to my guitar playing.

  Virtually everyone who has followed Stryper’s career, whether fan or critic, has viewed Oz as our primary guitarist. Honestly, I’d venture to say that many people probably see him as the band’s only guitarist. Even though I do my best not to care or think about it, it’s a difficult pill to swallow when you work so hard at something and don’t get recognition for it. Actually, I’ll go one step further and confess that it really irks me from time to time. Yes, Oz is a guitar player in Stryper, but he’s not the only guitarist in the band.

  It’s difficult to write this without coming across as petty, but the fact is that I’m the one who created the Stryper tone and sold Oz on it (and still do). I also take the time and energy to write many of our guitar solos and even most of the harmony solos. Often enough, I’ll teach Oz a guitar part and we’ll sit with a metronome and or a small recorder, and we’ll go over it again and again until he works out the right harmony part.

  By saying this, I don’t mean to insinuate that Oz is not a good player. He is, and I appreciate our work together. Our work has inspired many players over the years. Steve Vai even made a positive comment once about our solos and harmonies and hearing that from guys like him makes me appreciate the hours I have spent working hard.

  But despite my role in developing our tone and solos, Oz remains, at least in the public eye, the primary guitar player for Stryper, and I remain somewhat frustrated by that perception.

  I try to remain reasonable and realistic about it all. I try to remind myself that it’s really not that big of a deal. Who really cares if Oz is viewed as the guitar player? Well, as hard as I try to tell myself it shouldn’t matter—it does. And I do care. I’ve obsessed over my guitar playing a thousand times more intensely than any crooked picture ever hanging on a wall. So yes, I do care. And even though in my heart of hearts I know that it shouldn’t matter, it does. It matters a lot. I wish it didn’t. But it does.

  Fortunately, as I would soon find out, all of this—having ADHD, my obsession over guitar tones, my relentless rehearsing of guitar solos—would pay off in the making of the Soldiers Under Command album. ADHD, for the first time in my life, would prove to have a very positive side.

  After our recent tour of Texas, we played a hometown show at Knotts Berry Farm in Buena Park California, and a rising and now legendary metal producer by the name of Michael Wagener came to see us perform. Michael had produced Motley Crue’s Too Fast For Love as well as Dokken’s Breaking The Chains. Up next on his agenda, from a hand-shake deal in the dressing room of The Good Time Theater, he would be producing the album that would soon become Soldiers Under Command.

  FIFTEEN

  The guys in Metallica seemed nice enough, although we didn’t speak a lot other than exchanging a few words here and there. The obligatory “Hey, how are you?” was the extent of our conversation. They certainly weren’t rude, but neither of us really made an effort in getting to know one another. They appeared light-hearted and care free.

  Conversely, I’m focused and ready to work, sitting quietly on a ‘70s style burnt-orange loveseat in the lounge at Amigo Studios where we are recording Soldiers Under Command, the album that would one day become my favorite in the Stryper catalog. Michael Wagener is in the producer’s seat, and we’re thrilled about the possibilities that lie ahead.

  Amigo Studio sits a few blocks off the Hollywood freeway in an undistinguished industrial section of North Hollywood surrounded by mid-rise apartments, pastel California-style bungalows, and mixed-use office buildings. Just down the street sits the slightly more modern Record Plant. All of this is about a 45 minute drive from my parent’s house in La Mirada where I’m living at the time.

  I prefer the vibe Amigo offers over the area’s surrounding studios. It’s creative, warm, and comfortable—like our garage, only with much better equipment. It’s a vintage studio with light fixtures and décor suitable for an Austin Powers movie. Rustic shag carpet lines the walls only to be covered by a plethora of Ted Templeman gold and platinum album awards. Ted has used Amigo to track many legendary artists from Van Halen to Little Feat to Christopher Cross. Somehow I’m not intimidated. I’m as confident in the band as I am the songs and myself, and I’m ready to get to work.

  But for the moment our work will have to wait.

  Metallica is here today meeting with Michael about producing their Master of Puppets album. Their meeting takes precedence over our recording time and as we all sit in the narrow back-room lounge of Amigo, one of them shows his manners by burping and eventually, passing gas. Don’t get me wrong, we burp and fart too but when you meet someone for the first time you usually restrain yourself. After all, there are ladies present. Aside from Darren, Kyle is also in the room.

  I try to not be thrown off by what I view as a lack of respect. Instead I focus on my hand-written lyric collection on sheets of paper scattered across the empty half of the loveseat. I’ve been writing the songs for this album for almost a year and we’ve been performing them live almost equally as long. Only “Battle Hymn of the Republic” would be created while at Amigo. Everything else on this album has had time to develop, both in the garage and on stages throughout southern California. But despite these songs having been rehearsed time and time again, I continue to obsess over the lyrics. I analyze each line of every song just to ensure no last minute changes, all the while attempting to ignore the rudeness in the room. But it lingers and I think to myself “Seriously? Come on guys. Have a little respect.” Then one of them burps, and then laughs. I refocus toward the lyrics and what I’m there to do.

  Looking back on this it’s pretty hilarious. Had this taken place twenty years later it would have been one of us that farted. I have definitely loosened up a bit in my old age but I’ve always tried to retain some level of respect.

  Today we’re recording guitars a few days ahead of schedule because Robert managed to hammer out his drum parts in one very long day. Michael Wagener was convinced we needed two to three days to record the drum tracks and he had scheduled as much. Robert, however, was convinced he could get them all done in one day. That session lasted a grueling 15 hours into the early morning dawn, but he delivered as promised.

  The band is sounding tight and together. Although I feel like it’s just the beginning for us, (and in many ways, it is) more years under my belt would teach me that this album would be our shining moment musically and spiritually. This album would be the one I believe best captures what Stryper is all about: the unity of the musicians, the boldness of the message, and the energy of the performances. Yes, in my opinion, the second album in my 30+ year career would be Stryper at its best, keeping in mind that your best moment doesn’t always equate to your most successful one.

  Oz and I burn through the guitar parts with relative ease. I am particularly pleased with our performances on the title track and “Reach Out.”

  During our two weeks in the studio we rarely break to go out to eat. We order take-out from down the street. A lot o
f Chinese, Mexican and Italian food is consumed during the making of Soldiers. To this day I can’t eat Mexican food without fondly remembering Amigo Studios.

  Days after wrapping guitars I find myself unnaturally at ease when recording my vocal parts. Our first album saw respectable success, and by all accounts I should be nervous. A band’s sophomore album is typically the time when the group either turns the corner toward success, or they stall, like an old used car. By that measure I should be concerned, but I’m not. I’m confident not only in my personal abilities but in the band as well. We’re playing and singing as a group. We’re on a spiritual high and surrounded by love, support and encouragement. Even the last minute changes I make to the lyrics don’t seem to affect me. With each scribble of my pen, each lyric marked through to be slightly revised, I remain confident that God has His hand on this band and a definitive plan for our future.

  Throughout the making of Soldiers, I’m present for every aspect of tracking and although I’m a member of the band, I feel as much like a fledgling producer eager to soak up all I can about the recording process.

  Despite having recorded many times before, this was my first project on a big label with a highly respected producer. I hang on Michael Wagener’s every word, learning all I can about his reasons why he does what he does in the studio. Mic placement. His opinions on guitar and drum tones. Performance techniques to get the best out of each musician. I soak in all these details and don’t dare to miss a second of it for fear that I’ll miss something important. If I could have, I would have slept there every night. But instead, each morning, as I drive North on the 5 to the 101, the anticipation of learning more about the recording process excites me almost as much as the process of being a musician making the album.