I’ve often had Christian artists tell me they want to be like Jesus and hang out with the “tax collectors” and others in the bars and clubs. That is an awesome and worthy thing to do. Sometimes, however, I think a person might have a far more effective ministry if he or she simply sat on a bar stool and talked to people rather than trying to effectuate evangelism from the stage. If the audience is not already a fan of your music, or is not even familiar with it, there’s little chance they’ll be listening close enough to hear what you have to say. If all they want is to have a good time, and you are up there preaching, well—let me just say from experience, it often ends badly. I’m not saying music in those places can’t carry a positive message. It certainly can, and should. But unless you’re talking about reaching people who are already fans and are coming to that place to hear you specifically, there are probably more effective ways to spread the Word. Of course back in 1972 we didn’t know that quite yet.
The first time I experienced any kind of censorship of my music was when Hi Records said they didn’t want us to write songs that openly shared our faith. They just had no idea what to do with those songs. That was a massive hurdle for us to jump. Artists don’t want to be censored. Could we find a way to perform our Jesus music in bars and clubs? Every band needs an audience and a place to play. The bars didn’t want to hear about Jesus. The label had no idea what to do with us. The churches weren’t the slightest bit interested in our loud rock-n-roll. Where would we fit?
We began to invite friends and people we met around town to come to Allied Record Studio for our rehearsals. As that group grew we started to become known as the “Christian Band” around Memphis. We thought it was too prideful at that point to honor the band with a real name. “Christian Band” suited us just fine. We painted big red crosses on all of our equipment with blood dripping off the crossbar. It all fit nicely.
One cold night in January of 1973, Tony Pilcher brought a girl from his neighborhood to our band practice. Her name was Susan. I still recall meeting her and being a bit shy about it. She was very pretty. We started every rehearsal with a prayer. That night we prayed earnestly for Susan, even though the rest of us didn’t know her. Later on she shared with me that was the first time anyone ever prayed for her. She was struck and moved by it.
I didn’t see Susan again until February nineteenth. I remember the date because it was her birthday, and she was throwing a party at her home. I decided I would go see how she was getting along. At her party we talked for hours on end. She made me laugh by saying the most interesting trait about me at band practice that night was I played bass pedals with my sock-clad feet, and I had really cool looking boots that laced up the sides. Other than that she thought I was stuck up. On a more serious note, she shared with me, the day after she came to our rehearsal she gave her life to Christ. She said she didn’t know how to pray, she certainly didn’t know how to recite the Sinner’s Prayer, but she said, “I told the Lord I want what those guys have.”
That night at her birthday party I could sense the overwhelming joy she had living in her soul. That was magnetic to me. Joy is a powerful thing in a person. It’s rare. A few months later Susan and I started dating. A few months after that, we got married. We’ve been married since October 1973. She is still my girlfriend to this day. I affectionately call her my first “groupie.” I usually get smacked when I say that.
After Susan’s birthday party, things began to clear up and focus a little more for the band. Lewis met with us and heard our new songs. We did some simple two-track demos of a few of them he took over to play for Willie Mitchell.
Lewis came back with a resounding message. “No. Hi and London are not interested. They didn’t sign you guys to do music about God, and they don’t understand or have any desire to market religious rock music.” After that episode they released us from our contracts. That was when I first realized there were underlying rules to be followed in order to market and sell music. Making music is different than marketing music. Oh well, it was just another hurdle I had to learn to jump.
For some reason, though, Lewis still saw something in us and continued to allow us to practice at his recording studio. We began to invite other friends who in turn invited other friends, and before you knew it on a given night we could have a hundred or more people at our rehearsals. One night we had over two hundred people show up in the big old converted furniture store.
One thing led to another and we started to get invitations to play in public and away from the confines of the studio in other venues. That’s when things got really interesting.
Our band was invited to accompany a regionally known evangelist at a rally at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. We were going to play music to attract a crowd and then he would come up to the platform and speak. That was the plan, anyway. Union, being a respected Southern Baptist school, was known for its great biblical teaching and its conservative leanings. I respected it then, and I still do now. That particular day, as we were setting up our Marshall amplifiers, Leslie speakers, and our sound system, I noticed that the auditorium looked as though it was probably built at the turn of the twentieth century. It was completely constructed of hard wood with zero sound baffling. The floor, walls, and ceiling were a beautiful, polished wood and had certainly been built long before electric sound amplification had been invented. I wondered if that wood had ever experienced anything like our crazy brand of rock-n-roll. That evening the auditorium quickly filled up with students and folks from all different backgrounds. After a brief introduction we started attacking the first song and immediately the young folks were completely into the music. However, the adults looked to be in a state of shock. They had never had seen or heard anything like us before. They all looked like they were sick to their stomachs and wanted to throw up. I think that racket is probably still vibrating in those walls to this very day! It was a beautiful thing. But about midway through the first song a leader from the university and the featured evangelist of the evening ran up on stage and waved their hands for us to stop.
The evangelist looked directly at Dana and screamed, “You have ruined this program!”
“Amen!” Dana immediately responded. “What did you expect?” He could always be the consummate smart aleck. His timing was impeccable.
Actually, he was dead right. What did they expect? We were a rock band! After that intrusion, we were powered down and not allowed to play anymore—much to the chagrin of those attending. We were asked to pack up and leave. That’s not the only time we were shut down for being too loud and offensive, mostly by those dang adults in charge. The young people loved us, but the establishment was wary. And we were just getting started.
Folks in the South weren’t accustomed to long-haired boys playing rock-n-roll and preaching about Jesus at the same time. I recall on more than one occasion playing in some backwoods town, setting up on a flatbed trailer in a parking lot somewhere, or on a street corner, and people were stunned. They looked at us like the guys in Globe did when we shared our faith with them, like we were goons from outer space.
Sometimes folks got offended and threw stuff at us. Yes, we have actually been pelted with half-rotten tomatoes. It was mostly the religious folks who got that upset. Sometimes people jeered and cussed at us. Many times though, people came to the Lord. It was an amazing time. We were blazing a trail, as it were. Dana and I used to joke in those days, we should always leave the truck running for a quick getaway “just in case some church person wanted to ‘lay hands’ on us.”
One early Sunday morning during the “Christian Band” era in the spring of 1973, I woke up after sleeping over at my parents’ house and went downstairs to find my father watching one of the local church services on TV. My folks hadn’t been regulars at any church in years. They stopped going about the time I started playing in dance bands, and the Vietnam War was raging and sought my brothers. But they would watch church on TV sometimes. As the TV pastor got into his sermon he got pretty wound
up. He was shouting about folks being deceived by the world and the devil, and how Satan would trick you into thinking you were doing the right thing but it would ultimately lead you to the pit of Hell.
“Take this rock-n-roll music about Jesus for example,” he shouted with a grimace. That stuff is straight from Satan himself! This fellow, Eddie DeGarmo, (that’s right, he said my name) is the ringleader who’s going to destroy our young people’s hearts and minds with this smut. He’ll lead them to a fiery Hell as surely as I stand here!”
As the preacher’s frenzy went on my father’s head turned slowly toward me. His eyes locked directly on me with a snide look. Then he said, “Boy, what in the world have you gotten yourself into now?”
Later that month, we were invited to play at another local Christian college by some students we played for several times before when we were in Globe. The next week I received a call from the college saying they had to cancel. They didn’t realize we played “Christian rock” music now and their church denomination didn’t permit rock music with Christian lyrics. Talk about weird.
So, we were asked by club owners not to come back, shut down by an evangelist, preached against by TV preachers, and now canceled at a Christian college that used to let us play there when we were a mainstream band. It was a cross-cultural train wreck. It felt like trying to push magnets together when the poles repel each other. I was a little hurt, and a little confused by the reactions. What did God lead me into? The kids liked it, but the establishment on either side of the aisle, mainstream and religious, didn’t.
Now, there’s a rock-n-roll story if there ever was one. It turned out the controversy was what drove the press machine wild. The newspapers and magazines couldn’t keep themselves from writing about us; kind of like people not being able to turn their eyes away from a car crash.
* * *
I refer to this entire period in my life as my apprenticeship. The word refers to a relatively unskilled person who works for and learns from someone with highly developed skills. During my life I have learned from various masters of the trade, including my music teachers, my parents, my fellow band mates, the other Hammond B3 organ players like Booker T Jones, Gregg Rolie from Santana, Rick Wakeman from Yes, and Jon Lord from Deep Purple whose records I spent countless hour mimicking.
Locally, I learned from Terry Sawyer who worked at BerlOlswanger music store across from Graceland during my high school years. My dad’s real estate office was in that same group of buildings as that store. Today those buildings house all the Elvis archives, cars, and tourist paraphernalia.
I walked to BerlOlswanger Music almost every day after school and asked Terry Sawyer to teach me organ licks on the B3 as I gazed at Graceland out the plate glass windows. He was passionate about it and helped infuse that passion in me. He played in a very popular local band by the name of The Village Sound. Terry was also extremely patient with me. I needed that. He tutored me endlessly.
I also had the privilege of learning about the fundamentals of the music business from the creative to the technical, and even the financial, from Lewis Willis. That’s the stuff that continually trips up young artists and entrepreneurs. Lewis showed me that making music is not the same as selling music. There are completely different disciplines and principles to each side of the process. When you’re in the creative zone it’s about art and passion and moving the audience. But, none of that can happen if not for a solid back room business. That’s where office management, HR, distribution, accounting, legal issues, and money management is so important. It takes both sides to make the wheels move in the music business, and thanks to Lewis I learned about it all.
Apprenticeship is vital and biblical. The best example, of course, is the relationship between Jesus and his disciples as described in the four Gospels. There are several other great biblical references as well; Paul and Timothy (2 Timothy 3:10-17, 2 Timothy 2:1-2,) David and Solomon (1 Chronicles 22: 5,) and Moses and Joshua (Numbers 27:18-23). Apprenticeship has been part of human social culture since the very beginning. It’s the way knowledge and crafts, from cooking to golf, have been passed down from one generation to the next. Even classroom knowledge is often best learned through a hands-on instructional approach.
There is definitely potential for abuse within an apprenticeship system. From feudal indentured servitude systems, to modern-day unpaid “internships,” to whacky religious gurus and cults, history is full of examples of the unfair exploitation of apprentices. But there is definitely some real value to the practice as well.
Maybe it’s time for a new review of the whole subject. The last major U.S. legislation related to apprenticeship was the Fitzgerald Act of 1937, aka The National Apprenticeship Act. That law served to protect workers from abuse. As our culture and economy has evolved we have all but lost the value of apprenticeship. Now students pay, and often go into major debt, for a college education or a trade school certification. And while I’m certainly no fan of child labor, many young people would greatly benefit from an earlier start with their craft. When it comes to music, I know I was working a lot younger than today’s laws would allow.
All that to say, when I look back on the experiences I had musically, and spiritually, I pretty much had to learn on the job. There were no college classes on the subject of using rock ‘n’ roll to talk about Jesus. There were no workshops or trade schools with programs related to balancing business needs with ministry objectives. Dana and I were pretty much on our own. We learned about music by playing in clubs from a very young age. We got our diplomas in the bars and at dances. Then God saved us and put those skills to work for his kingdom. I’m sure glad he did.
EIGHT
This Ain’t Hollywood
There were voices that surrounded us and whispered in our ears on both sides of the “rock ‘n’ roll vs. ministry” issue. We cautiously became involved with East Park Baptist Church, a small but growing congregation on the other side of town. No other church had accepted us before. The people of East Park Baptist were the only ones in the entire city of Memphis to publically embrace our music—and us as who we were, not what they wanted us to be. They even invited us to set up and play concerts on a flatbed trailer in their parking lot a few times. Years later, I learned a teenager named Pat Scholes attended one of those concerts and committed his life to Christ. He later became one of the principle owners of Ardent Music, a legendary studio in Memphis where Led Zeppelin, ZZ Top, Isaac Hayes, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Big Star, and many other world famous artists recorded. Ardent also signed and developed Skillet, Big Tent Revival, and other Christian groups for their in-house record label. He and I worked together for many years as my company, ForeFront Records, marketed and distributed Ardent’s faith-based records worldwide. But, that was twenty-five years later.
Finding God’s calling on your life and choosing a career have been intermingled and exchanged with one another quite a lot in modern thought. I don’t think they are the same thing necessarily. They can work in sync, but are not the same. I have discovered this can be confusing for many seeking their career choice and path. In Christian history for example, the Apostle Paul’s calling was to evangelize the Gentiles. His career was to make tents. Jesus’s mission and calling was to save the world. His career was to be a carpenter.
All of us Christians, or loving human beings for that matter, have a calling from God in our lives. Generally, that is fairly easy to deduce for the person of faith. We are all called to love the Lord with all our heart, love each other, take the Gospel into the world, serve the poor, take care of the widows and sick folks, feed the hungry, be kind, and be humble. In short; be imitators of Christ. Easy to say; not so easy to do.
All of us need to be part of those acts of serving mankind with compassion. Career is somewhat different. It’s more associated with how we earn a living and support ourselves and our families. I think one’s career should be able to support his or her calling. Simply put: if your career is being a plumber, once a month fix
the pipes of someone who’s poor for no fee. If you are a physician, give a week a year to a free clinic somewhere. You see the connection.
That’s using your career to support your calling. Our careers should not be ends all in themselves. Whether you are a person of faith or not, you’ll find that if a career is all you seek out of life rather than helping people, be assured you will find emptiness at the end of that rainbow.
While I was serving as president of Capitol CMG Publishing in the 2000’s, I had meetings everyday with talented artists, producers, and songwriters. On one such occasion a young artist came to visit me. I can still see his swagger as he entered my office. He was definitely portraying the artistic image through his choice of clothes, hairstyle, tattoos, and his leather shoulder bag. He fit the part for sure. After we exchanged names and greetings I asked him what he wanted to do.
He replied, “I want to write, sing, and play my songs.”
I immediately asked him, “Are you any good?”
I can find out a lot through that question. People who are good usually will tell you confidently they are. That’s important. I don’t at all perceive that as negative ego. One has to have a certain amount of positive ego to believe he or she is supposed to stand on a stage, sing to people, and expect to be paid for it.
I think the same is true of a public speaker or even a preacher in a pulpit. If they don’t have the confidence and drive to stand up before a crowd and expect people to want or even need to hear what they have to say, it just won’t work out in the long run. So, I start with that question. “Are you any good?” The ones who aren’t will usually show their lack of confidence in their answer early on.
When I asked this particular young man that question he immediately replied, “Of course I am.”
Rebel for God Page 7
