Honestly: My Life and Stryper Revealed

by Michael Sweet

  We caved and re-edited “Honestly” to be less patriotic. They still used some of the scenes shot back in California, but the bulk of it was footage from London.

  And once again, it went to #1 on the video charts. I will never be able to thank our fans enough for all they did to prove to MTV, and the world, that there is indeed a place for Stryper in the world of music.

  The original version of “Honestly” was eventually included on the release of In The Beginning, our behind-the-scenes video about the band and our path up to this point.

  To Hell With the Devil went on to become a multi-platinum selling album and, despite all the hardships and hurdles, the battle seemed to have just begun.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  If I were to point to a time in my life where I graduated from youth to adulthood, it would be during the To Hell With The Devil tour. In the middle of this tour, on February 11, 1987, Kyle gave birth to our son, Michael Jr., or “Mikey” as we know him.

  I was a new husband and still hadn’t come into my own as to what exactly that meant, but I was learning. I was in the middle of unprecedented professional success and suddenly responsible for the life of a beautiful baby boy.

  With the birth of a child, life began to come into view through a different set of eyes. I began to question things that I otherwise would never have questioned. Life is precious as I started to realize more profoundly each day, and one of my primary questions was, “Am I doing what’s best for my wife and child?”

  That question was motivated partially by my eagerness to be a financially responsible father. Was I laying the groundwork for the most financially secure life for my family? Turns out, I was not, but these topics were becoming more and more a part of my daily thoughts.

  For example, a few years earlier in 1983 my parents began to talk to Robert and me about music publishing. They taught us basically that most the money in music was primarily in publishing. I trusted their wisdom as my father had experienced some success as a songwriter already in his career. They very lovingly, or so it felt at the time, wanted to help us get our music publishing affairs in order.

  Two parties, the songwriter and the publisher basically own a song. I of course was the primary songwriter. The publisher of a song, however, is the company that traditionally helps to exploit and represent the song. In many regards, a publisher is a partner to the songwriter or songwriters of a particular song.

  A publisher will typically shop songs for film, television, and commercial licensing. He will ensure proper use of the song with the record label and ensure that proper payments are collected from the record label for the sale and use of the songs. A publisher, at least a good one, is a friend to a songwriter and can be very instrumental in the growth of a song or collection of songs. The publisher also owns part of the song, thus making money off of it as well.

  More specifically here’s the way it works. A song is 100 percent. The songwriter owns the entire 100 percent until he decides to sell a portion of that to a publisher. If he doesn’t sell it, then he owns his own publishing and 100 percent of the song.

  A publisher may come to the table with an offering of $50,000 for the rights to half of your songs on a particular album. When the album is released, if it does well, the publisher will make his money back. Furthermore, if the publisher upholds promises to find additional outlets for the song, such as television or film, both the publisher and the songwriter stand to make even more money.

  So going in to this situation, as the primary songwriter, I owned most of the songs and theoretically should decide which, if any, publishing company I go into business with.

  That’s how it works in most cases, in the real world.

  But, we don’t always live in the real world. I was 20 years old at the time these discussions were taking place, so everything I knew about the business of publishing was based on what my mom and dad had told me and taught me.

  And in 1985 they said that they wanted to help Robert and me start our own publishing company. And since they were the smartest people I knew at the time, I agreed.

  So, starry eyed and all, I put pen to paper at my parents recommendation and signed over almost 50 percent of my songs. They convinced me that we were forming a company together, the four of us, and technically we did form a company, Sweet Family Music. But in reality, what I was doing was giving away, for free, very valuable assets, assets that at the time I didn’t even really know were mine.

  I’m almost 50 at the time of writing this book, and I still don’t fully understand the complicated business of publishing. I certainly didn’t understand it at 20. So when my parents suggested signing a contract and signing over to them part of the most valuable asset in my life, I had no reason not to trust that they were giving me the best advice possible. And perhaps in their mind, it was good advice. But looking back on it, it’s certainly not the smartest decision I ever made.

  We all had equal shares in this new publishing company, Sweet Family Music. I still owned the songwriting, half of the song of course, but for absolutely no money in my pocket, I just gave my brother, my mom and my dad 75 percent of the other half of the songs, the publishing half. We each owned 25 percent of Sweet Family Music, which in turn owned one half of each song.

  Like I said, in the real world, publishing companies would pay big money to own such a large portion of the publishing rights to a national recording artist but again, we weren’t always in the real world.

  Over the past 20 plus years this topic has obviously come up, almost daily, in my business dealings. Since my days of youth, I’ve met and worked with some of the most brilliant minds in the business, all of whom look at me like I just told them I was born on the planet Mars when I share the story of Sweet Family Music. Maybe I was born on Mars.

  I was 24, and I had a son. I had bills to pay. I had to provide for my family’s future. So I began to examine, and question, my business affairs a little more closely in 1987.

  There are complications with Mikey’s birth. Kyle was in labor for more than 48 hours due to a clinical trial she participated in to induce labor, a situation that ultimately led to many other complications. Finally, despite the extensive labor prep, Mikey was born by Cesarean, and it was a really frightening ordeal. The doctors were baffled by some of the difficulties taking place during labor. Mikey’s heart stopped multiple times whenever Kyle was on her right side, so they eventually rushed Kyle in for an emergency C-section. Although it was against protocol back then, I was allowed to be present during the surgery. I even got the chance to show my bravery and look over the “curtain” that separated my eyes from Kyle’s incision as they lifted Mikey out of her womb. He was a beautiful, healthy baby boy—eyes wide open, a full head of hair that would make any rock ‘n’ roll dad proud, and long, expressive fingers that cried out, “I’m playing piano or guitar.” Kyle, unfortunately, had postpartum difficulties including deep vein thrombosis, and we almost lost her.

  Mikey was born on February 11, and I was scheduled to return to tour in Houston on February 14, which would have been fine except Kyle was still in the hospital with many complications.

  I left on the 14th to continue the tour, but I flew home every night before each day off to visit her, then turned back around and flew to the next city on the tour. This went on for about two weeks until she thankfully recovered enough to go home.

  I, however, would not see another tour break until the end of April. So Mikey was born on the 11th, I left for tour on the 14th, and I was gone for the next 10 weeks straight. And when I came back, it was only for three weeks before we left again to go overseas.

  February 11, 1986 I was single. The sky was the limit and all of life was ahead of me. If I had enough food, money, and happiness, that was all I needed. One year later, however, the world looked considerably different.

  With all of this going on, and countless lonely nights in hotels on the road, I couldn’t help but ponder everything, especially the music business and whether or not I
was making the best of it.

  Questions continued to weigh heavily on my mind and heart regarding the entity of Stryper. What are we? Are we four friends making music together? Are we a corporation? If we are a corporation, who owns it? Years earlier I thoughtlessly gave my song rights away for nothing. What about the rest of Stryper? The records, the tours, the merchandise? Was I also giving my rights away here as well? The topic of us incorporating had come up before, but it never really went anywhere. Should I re-address the topic?

  These things didn’t matter to me when I was 21, but now I was a husband and a father who needed to be a responsible man. And a responsible man examines his business affairs.

  I didn’t have all the answers yet, and no doubt I was enjoying a hugely successful tour, but I knew that these questions in my head were about to start coming out of my mouth. I needed to start gathering answers, for my family’s sake.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The To Hell With The Devil tour took us through August of 1987. During the second half of that run, we began playing arenas for the first time. Times were changing for Stryper. Our popularity seemed to be growing by the minute. Money was coming in as fast as we could spend it, and that trend would continue over the next year or so.

  We took a short break before we were right back in the studio working on our next record, In God We Trust.

  In our post-tour meeting with Enigma, we shared that we wanted to produce the next album ourselves. Although Enigma gave us incredible freedom and support throughout our tenure with them, self-producing the next record was met with some reservations on their part. Our compromise was to bring in an acclaimed producer, one who had a track record and hit list in pop. That producer was Michael Lloyd.

  Michael is a great person and one of the most humble guys I’ve ever met. Michael was known for having produced groups that were a lot more polished, poppy and slick, like Donnie and Marie Osmond, Shaun Cassidy, The Bellamy Brothers, and The Monkees. And in our meetings with Enigma, it was clear that they wanted our next album to follow in the footsteps of To Hell With The Devil, only bigger and better. We did our best to deliver just that.

  In God We Trust would become our definition of an over-produced, over-abundant record. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s my least favorite album in the Stryper catalog, but it’s certainly not my favorite. There are some great moments that shine through. That album contained some of our very best material and some of our worst. I’m of the opinion that songs like “In God We Trust,” “The Writing’s On The Wall” and “Lonely” are some of the highlights of that record yet songs like “Come To The Everlife” are some of the low points, at least for me.

  In 2005 we did an informal poll with the fans asking what songs they thought we should play for an upcoming tour. We asked fans to rank the Stryper catalog from favorite to least favorite. “Come to the Everlife” came in rock bottom on that poll, and that was no surprise to me.

  In general, I think that In God We Trust was about as unimaginative as any project we had recorded. I answered almost every shining moment from To Hell With The Devil by providing an equivalent. “Honestly” was a hit ballad? Then I’ll give you “I Believe In You.” A hard hitting, title track opener worked for the last album? I’ll give you “In God We Trust.” “Calling On You” was a pop-metal #1 video? I’ll counter that with “Always There For You.”

  It was as if I went down the track list of our previous album and wrote its counterpart for this album. I hate to acknowledge it, but that’s exactly what I did. What a disservice that was both to Stryper and to God, who has blessed me with the ability to be creative. Honestly, I was as un-creative as an artist could be on this album. And despite all of that, it turned out to be our second most successful album, selling only slightly less units than To Hell With The Devil.

  I don’t blame Michael Lloyd for this record being overproduced. I was the one who really navigated the ship in terms of production. I don’t say that to try to win favor with anyone. Had Tim produced it, I would give credit where credit is due. Had Rob produced it, I’d give him the credit. But for all intents and purposes, I was the producer of most of In God We Trust. I just didn’t get the credit, or the producer’s paycheck.

  It wasn’t as if Michael Lloyd sat in the break room all day and collected his check. He did indeed play an instrumental role in helping us achieve a great album.

  The album was recorded at three different studios: The Village Recorder, Cherokee Studios, and last but not least, the infamous A&M Studios. We spent more than $600,000 making the album, in comparison to the roughly $200,000 we spent making its predecessor. Most of that $600k was wasted, not on your typical strippers and cocaine that most rock bands wasted money on during that era. It was wasted simply by not managing our time wisely. We’d spend all day working on a guitar solo or a vocal part trying to perfect something that was better on the first take. The $2,500-per-day studio rate added up quickly.

  Also, just prior to tracking the lead vocals, I got sick and my voice didn’t recover so well. It took me almost a month to get the vocals wrapped. I was facing a couple of hurdles vocally during the process. The most obvious was the physical barrier I faced with my diminished vocal capacity due to illness. But the more prominent underlying challenge I faced was psychological.

  These songs were written at the peak of my vocal range. I had a mental war going on inside my head thinking, “I can’t sing this stuff. It’s just too high.” Daily, I struggled to achieve that perfect vocal take. We were purposely trying to get the tightest, most radio-ready recording we could possibly achieve. Eventually, we did, but accomplishing that “polished” sound was difficult.

  It is part of the reason we rarely play any of the songs from that album in our set today. Truthfully, it’s just too difficult to pull off, and the problem isn’t just the vocal challenges. That album is layered and stacked with multiple guitar parts and an exorbitant number of backing vocals, keyboards and whatever else we could throw in. Often as we get together to rehearse for tour, we’ll make a feeble attempt to perform acceptable renditions of a few of the songs from In God We Trust. I feel that it’s easier said than done, not without playing to pre-recorded tracks, which is something we haven’t done since the tour we did to support that album.

  During that tour Robert played to a click track so that we could run backing tracks along with our live performances. Included in those tracks were extra guitars, keyboards, and a lot of extra vocal harmonies. I’m proud to say, that era of our life—the “playing to tracks” era—was short-lived. Even then, we always performed live. It’s not as if we weren’t playing our instruments—we were. We just had a little help, or a lot of help, enhancing the sound with some pre-recorded backing tracks. Funny thing is, you’d be shocked to learn not only how many bands did it then, but how many bands do it to this day.

  In addition to label meetings laying out the sonic goals for this album, we were also coming to a crossroads with the business of Stryper. Dissention was brewing within the band over songwriting. There seemed to be a definitive division starting to build between the band and me concerning songwriting and royalties.

  Songwriters usually make more money and this was starting to cause some friction within the band. I began to feel an obligation to split all the songs with the band in response to indirect comments and criticism.

  In an effort to keep the peace, I lined up a meeting with our attorney Stephen Ashley to discuss my proposition. I told him that I wanted all the songwriting to be split equally, regardless of who wrote what songs. Oz wrote two songs on that album (“Come To The Everlife” and “The Reign”). I should never have agreed to those songs making the cut (at least not without undergoing some major changes), but in 1988 I was more interested in keeping the peace than ensuring we had the best songs possible on an album.

  Because I remained silent, “Come to the Everlife” and “The Reign” are now forever etched in the Stryper archives of recorded music. I mentioned pre
viously that I had two major barriers when singing this album: the physical constraints of being sick and the physiological constraints from the high vocal range. But, there was a third—I just wasn’t “feeling” these two songs. I sang them, as best I could, but it was difficult as a singer/songwriter to relate to not only the lyrics of “The Reign,” but also the music of “Come To The Everlife” as well. I didn’t truly believe in those songs, and therefore I couldn’t quite sing them with the same passion that it takes to make them believable.

  Stephen Ashley privately consulted with me after our meeting on splitting the songwriting and strongly advised me against it. He told me that I would be giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars by doing so. But again, I wanted to keep the peace. I could tell that I was becoming the bad guy, or at least that’s how I perceived it. How did that work out by the way? How was I becoming the bad guy? I wrote what I felt—and apparently what the fans felt—were some really good songs that obviously played a major role in our success. Somehow, though, I was feeling like the bad guy.

  That’s what being in a band can do sometimes. Somehow spending relentless hours alone refining and re-refining songs to become the greatest they can be for the band can be turned around to be a negative thing. What should have been gratitude appeared to be resentment, at least from my perspective.

  I allowed mediocre songs to creep into our repertoire just to make everyone happy. I gave away what probably amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars in songwriting royalties just to smooth things over. Everyone seemed happy for now, except me.

  Fortunately Stephen had the wisdom to convince me not to allow my idea of splitting songwriting to stand in perpetuity. After a certain number of years, the songwriting credits would revert to the original writers. So short term, the term when the bulk of the money was earned on a song, we all split the money equally. Long term, the term when minimal money rolls in, I retained the songwriting credit for the songs I wrote. We all agreed to this arrangement and moved forward. For seven years I gave 25 percent to each band member and songwriting credit on songs they didn’t write.