Honestly: My Life and Stryper Revealed

by Michael Sweet

  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 an
d 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.

  It’s important to note, at least to me, the comparison between the Against The Law era and the earlier years. All the early days were the real deal. There was no questioning in my mind, nor should there be in anyone else’s, about our genuineness of our faith and relationship to Christ. We were completely committed to God back then. But somehow the muck and garbage started creeping in and as time went by, it was as if hell was seeping in right behind it. It was almost like it was 1981 on Sunset Strip all over again. We reverted back to our old ways, the old man if you will, and I felt a tremendous amount of guilt over it all.

  What is truly a miracle about this weak time in our lives, late ’89 to ’91, is that it didn’t blow up in our face. Call it what you will, but I say humbly that it must have been God’s protection—protection that we neither deserved nor were wise enough to ask for. But all of this could have exploded at any time. I’m equally amazed that with all the booze flowing, I never actually ended up sleeping with anyone. I did plenty of promiscuous acts, but somehow it never went beyond that. It had to be God’s protection over us, with Him knowing that one day we’d come to our senses. And He waited patiently for us to do so, as only God can and will do.

  We were primed and ready for a huge scandal. We were acting like idiots and for years the press had looked for any reason to bring us down and call us out as imposters. Now was the time they could have done so, and we were making it all too easy. Sometimes we wouldn’t even try to hide our actions. After many a show, we’d sit at the bar, the same bar we had just played, and drink with everyone. Some fans would look at us with disappointment, and rightfully so. I recall one night after playing Hammerjacks in Baltimore, we sat at the bar drinking and one fan stopped by to talk to us. We were doing shots and obviously getting drunk. He approached with a photo in hand wanting to get an autograph, but as he saw what we were doing, he just turned around and walked away, saying nothing, yet with the most disappointed look it his eyes. It was another sword in my heart.

  Yet, somehow, none of this made its way to the press.

  This timeframe, about 1990, was filled with religious scandal. Jessica Hahn and Jim Baker. Jimmy Swaggart had just made his infamous “I have sinned” speech about a year-and-a-half earlier after being caught with a prostitute. Religious leaders were dropping like flies, so it would seem only natural that our dirty laundry would be hung out for all to see as well. But it wasn’t.

  Not to downplay anything we did, because I was truly embarrassed and ashamed by it all, but I do believe there are different levels of scandal. And truthfully, what we were doing probably just wasn’t big enough news for the press. There was Jim Baker and his affair with his secretary. There was Jimmy Swaggart and his joyrides with prostitutes. And then there was Stryper, a Christian rock band drinking alcohol and kissing strange women. Again, I don’t at all downplay what we did. But in comparison to Baker and Swaggart, we just weren’t enough of a scandal perhaps. For whatever reason, God’s protection was over this band and I think for that very reason, our actions never really saw the light of day.

  The most saddening part this time in our lives was the spiritual break-up of the band happening long before the physical break-up. In the mid-80s we used to encourage one another to do the right thing. We held each other accountable, as Christians should. We were always lifting one another up, really trying to strengthen each other to be better stewards and examples of Christ. Yet somehow, in a matter of just a few short years, we went from that to, “Hey man. Wanna go to a strip club tonight?” We’d laugh and say to another member, “Let’s go get another case of beer,” and we’d always just go right along with whatever was at hand. It’s almost as if we were whispering to ourselves, “Well, if he wants to do it too, it must be okay.”

  Once sin creeps its way into your life, it’s hard to turn around. You can’t pull yourself back up on your own, and certainly not while you’re surrounded by people who are helping you dig the hole. This is why we all need Christ. We can’t do it on our own. I can’t do it on my own, and that’s why I’ve devoted my life to serving God, or at least trying to. I need Him. Michael Sweet can’t do this alone. And in 1990, I needed God more than ever to help pull me out of the abyss—but in order for that to happen, I needed to make some drastic changes. God will only help you if you’re willing to yield to Him and turn your life around.

  After that really short tour, it came time for me to do some serious soul-searching and attempt to take some major steps to repair my life and my marriage. How I was going to do that, I had no idea. I just knew I needed change, and fast.

  THIRTY

  In November of 1990 when we came off the road from supporting Against The Law, we found ourselves without a record label for the first time since 1983. Through a series of industry maneuvers, mergers, and acquisitions, our key-man at Enigma, Wes Hein ended up at Hollywood Records. We had a clause in our agreement that if Wes ever left, we were free to leave as well, a “key-man” clause. But by this time, our sales were plummeting. Capital/EMI had acquired Enigma, and there were talks of other mergers. Enigma was no more and Wes was now at Disney/Hollywood Records. And we were without a record label. The worst part was nobody really seemed to care or even notice outside our inner circle.

  I started talking to Wes about bringing us over to Hollywood Records, and he eventually got everyone else on board, as only he could do. They put up a small amount of money for us to do another album. We were going to record two new songs and re-package the hits for a “best of” compilation record.

  But I was done, mentally and physically. The idea of igniting that creative fire and touring again made me sick.

  I had already started talking to Robert and expressed to him that I needed a drastic change in my life. I was ridden with guilt over my lifestyle, and it was tearing apart my marriage. He knew the writing was on the wall as well, and if change didn’t happen, I’d be leaving soon. It wasn’t threatening talks that I was having with Robert but instead heart-felt conversations about how unhappy I was. So together we explored options.

  Ultimately Rob and I agreed to clean up Stryper. I agreed to stick by Rob and he agreed to be supportive in getting Stryper back on the right path. It wasn’t as if Rob was resistant to cleaning up our act—I think he wanted to as well. But if I’m being perfectly honest, what I think he wanted the most was to keep the band together, and he could see that changing the scenery was something incredibly important to me so that made it important to him as well.

  Throughout our career it’s always been kind of a “Robert and me against the world” mentality. The saying that blood is thicker than water holds immensely true in our relationship. I appreciated Robert during these times for wanting to get on board with my idea of change. I think deep down Rob wanted it, too. We probably all did. It was exhausting being who we were, or who we were pretending to be, on the Against The Law tour. Aside from the obvious physical exhaustion that our lifestyle provided, it was also spiritually exhausting trying to be something we weren’t.

  From the days at Whittier High when Oz’s outburst got us into trouble, we had seen reoccurring patterns of defiance from Oz. We can all be a little defiant at times, but Oz seemed to take it to a new level. I recall in the early ’80s Oz getting punched by Tommy Lee’s bodyguard/bouncer outside the Troubadour in West Hollywood. After a few drinks, Oz decided to moon Tommy and started mouthing off about something. A few seconds later, Tommy’s fist came flying through the crowd in full force, past my face and Robert’s face, as he tried to punch Oz for his “body language.” A few moments later, Tommy’s hit man came over and started punching Oz. That incident was a blur and one of those moments you look back on and think, “How did that happen?” I guess if you show your backside to someone for no apparent reason, you’ll most likely find out.


  So aside from being exhausted from all that was going on in my life, it was uncomfortable for me to consider the idea of discussing change with Oz.

  I couldn’t, and still sometimes can’t, approach Oz with my thoughts like I can my brother Robert. At least that’s the way I perceive it. I’m sure Oz might say otherwise and probably even say that I’m difficult to approach. It certainly isn’t the case all the time but from my point of view, it can be a little uncomfortable talking to Oz about issues that he doesn’t agree with, no matter the magnitude or significance of the topic. I can open up to Robert, and although we may not see eye to eye, he will at least understand my point of view—but I feel Oz can take a bit more of a defensive approach. Don’t get me wrong, Oz and I have been the best of friends over the years and often he’s been the only one I felt comfortable talking to, but when it comes to certain issues, discussing them with Oz can be a challenge.

  At this time, I was entering a chapter in my life where I wanted to get my act together. I wanted to regain my spiritual composure and really focus on my marriage more than my music, and I could talk about these things with Robert, and I did. Robert is even-keeled, slow to anger and a good listener, so I chose to share my concerns with Rob for fear of rebuttal.

  I knew I wanted out, but perhaps there were solutions I hadn’t considered. Robert provided a way for me to share my feelings in hopes that just by talking things through, I might find the answers myself. Maybe it was our bond as brothers and growing up together.

  We had agreed, through Wes and Hollywood Records, to record two more songs. Rob and I were discussing doing this without Oz. It was the easy way out with less stress and fewer complications. I wasn’t ready to deal with the situation so Robert had a phone conversation with Oz and they eventually settled on Oz playing on one of the two songs we’d be recording. Oz played all guitars on the song “Can’t Stop The Rock,” and I played all guitars on the song “Believe.”