Rebel for God

by Eddie DeGarmo

  Pat, Shirley, and the whole Boone family were coming to the second show. That was good news. We should be able to work any bugs out during the first performance.

  The stage had a large, curved, curtain across the front. We would be on stage, behind the curtain, while being introduced. Then the curtain would open as we started our first song. Very dramatic. We even made an intro tape. Humble as we were, we chose to play John Williams’ “Theme from Superman” as our walk-on music. Nothing wrong with that. It fit who we thought we were at least. We had issues with that from time to time. We thought we were a bigger someone else.

  As the fanfare began we were behind the curtain, dressed cool and holding our rock ‘n’ roll poses. As the intro ended the curtains opened and we jumped into our first song. It was epic fun. We played that first show to a packed house. It went well.

  As the curtain began to open for the second set I could see Pat and the whole Boone family sitting in the second row. Remember, Pat was one of the owners of our label, Lamb and Lion. It was a bit unnerving to see the whole Boone clan sitting together watching us, but the set went extremely well. Afterward we were scheduled to see Pat and his family backstage in the green room. We had a wonderful time. We knew Pat, of course, but it was the first time we met Shirley and their four beautiful daughters.

  Pat needed to visit the men’s room, so he got up, excused himself, and went to find it. While he was gone we continued our conversation with Shirley and the girls. Shirley began by saying, “Pat’s travel schedule is so hard on him. He is always away working on the weekends, so he almost never is able to attend our church with us.”

  Then Shirley looked straight at Jack Holder, our new guitar player, formerly of the loud and rowdy Black Oak Arkansas band, and asked him, “Jack, just how do you guys get fed when you are on the road for so long, away from church?”

  Jack raised his head. “At a lot of truck stops, Mrs. Boone,” he said honestly. “But occasionally Eddie will take us to MacDonald’s or even a better restaurant.”

  You could see by the confused look on her face the wheels in Shirley Boone’s head were grinding to a halt. Of course, that was not what her question meant. In Christian jargon she was asking about how we got fed spiritually. But Jack didn’t know that language. He called it like he saw it. Fortunately, Pat showed back up in the nick of time to save us.

  The second highlight of that day was I was able to meet Keith Green after our concert. I was a fan of Keith’s and respected his stand for Jesus. He was wearing farmer’s overalls when we met that day. He was very gracious.

  The third thing I recall about that night at Knott’s Berry Farm happened after we packed up and left. We made a bet with Petra, who was also playing at the park, that we could beat them on the way back to Tennessee to a big truck stop in Fort Smith, Arkansas on I-40. Whoever got there first had to buy the other group’s dinner. Of course, it was 1,400 miles to Fort Smith, so we both had to stop several times along the way.

  Our first stop was just a few miles outside the park at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant. They were known as HoJo’s back then, and they were open twenty-four hours a day. It was around one in the morning when we pulled into HoJo’s parking lot in Anaheim. It was nicer than many others in the chain, probably because of its proximity to Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland. There were a few cars in the parking lot. When we entered the front door I noticed an elderly couple sitting in a booth along the plate glass windows. I thought to myself it was peculiar to see people as old as them out so late at night.

  In those days Howard Johnson’s had a long counter with round swivel stools bolted to the floor, like a vintage ice cream shop. Farther around the corner of the bar was a dining room with booths lining the walls and larger round tables in the middle. I also noticed the dining room was carpeted, and the chairs around the round tables had wheels on the chair legs. Very swanky, and, it turned out, quite useful.

  As our band was seated at one of the round tables I put my brief case next to me on the floor and pulled it up close to my chair. It was full of the cash from our merchandise sales and checks from concert promoters we collected on the entire tour. We didn’t dare leave it in Happy Truck since it didn’t have a safe.

  Suddenly, from behind me, I heard two screams! The first was a man screaming at the top of his lungs, “Open the register! Open the f—-king register!”

  I remember realizing he had a pronounced Brooklyn accent, which was completely out of place in southern California. Then I heard a woman screaming at the top of her lungs. She didn’t say any words. Her wailing and screaming didn’t stop. I looked over my shoulder, past the soda bar to the cash register, where the ordeal was happening. I saw the man had a very big handgun trained on the waitress, with the barrel actually touching her forehead.

  Back in the days of mechanical cash registers, waitresses would often have the register key on a retractable clasp with a cord hanging on their belts or dress pockets. It wound up like a yo-yo into a silver reel. This waitress had one of those gadgets and the robber was freaking out at her, demanding she open the register. The only problem was, she couldn’t. She was in a state of shock with that pistol barrel on her forehead. You can’t blame her. Her only response was to scream uncontrollably with her eyes bulging out like Marty Feldman’s in Young Frankenstein.

  After a second or two she reflexively began to back up from the pistol and through the double swinging doors behind her that led into the kitchen. I really thought the guy was going to blow her away, and then start shooting all of us witnesses who were left. That’s what happens in these situations, right? As this crazy drama was playing out, about thirty feet from us and just a little around the corner at the bar, I decided to take my chances. I reached down, placed my brief case on my lap, and began to drive that chair backward away from the table like a sports car wheelchair, through the restaurant and toward the bathroom in the rear.

  In just a few feet I would be completely around the corner and out of the sight of the robber. Instead of looking forward, my eyes were trained over my shoulder to avoid crashing into all of the other tables and making noise. Because the floor was carpeted, my escape was quiet. I then turned my head and looked in front of me to see our whole band also driving their chairs, winding through the tables, backward, following me. It was like a surreal picture of the old video game “Centipede” playing out in Howard Johnson’s in real-life color.

  I finally got to the bathroom and only let the others in one by one after they convinced me through the door the robber hadn’t taken them hostage and was on the other side of the door with his gun to their heads. You gotta make sure, right? I let the entire band into the men’s room with me, and we waited for a few minutes until it was all clear outside.

  Fortunately, the robber ran away as fast as he arrived and nobody got hurt. That was a miracle. The waitress got her wits back and the cook called the police. They asked us if we would stay until the police arrived to give an eyewitness account. Of course we would. But in the back of my mind I thought about Petra racing ahead of us to Fort Smith. It was a premonition of things to come, as we seemed to race them one way or another for our entire career. Needless to say, they won the race to Fort Smith and we had to buy dinner.

  Remember the elderly couple sitting in the booth by the plate glass windows? They never moved throughout the entire ordeal. I don’t think they missed a bite that night. They just kept on sipping their coffee, too. Only in California.

  Much to our surprise and delight, This Ain’t Hollywood was nominated for a Grammy Award. It was the first time a rock band was ever nominated in the Gospel category. The other four nominees included The Imperials, The Archers, Cynthia Clawson, and our good friend Amy Grant. It was such a big deal for us to be nominated, my parents, Dana’s parents, Susan, and Dana’s sister, all went to the awards in Hollywood. Pat Boone kissed my mother on the cheek that night. I thought she was going to faint and melt on the floor. We didn’t win, which was a bummer, but it r
eally was an honor to be nominated. It was also cool to make a little history.

  Life was really busy in those days. I was managing Ardent Studios full time, while also occasionally producing other artists’ records for Mint Productions and traveling to play significant one-off D&K shows and short tours. We dug ourselves out of needing government assistance and Susan was saving every spare nickel in hopes of making a down payment on a house someday. I was so busy she came to me one day to talk about her goals. “Eddie,” she said. “I love staying home with our babies, but with you gone so much I think it’s important for me to make a life decision for myself, too. I want to attend art college and really study art and graphic design.”

  Susan was always the creative one in her family. From a very young age she could draw, paint, sew, or make anything that came to her imagination. She was voted “Most Creative” in her high school. When it came time for college, however, her folks were unwilling to help her go. They were divorced and never once tried to help her attend college. She had long wanted to study art, though. We just got married and started having kids so fast she sort of missed her window.

  When Susan made the decision to attend art college I was committed to help her any way that I could. I wanted her dream to become a reality. She enrolled full-time in the prestigious Memphis College of Art in the fall of 1979. She qualified for a few scholarships and grants and we were able to get loans to cover the rest of the costs. It was a great investment.

  The amount of work she had to do to earn that degree was mind blowing. After our girls went to bed, Susan stayed up into the wee hours working on homework or studying for tests. It took almost five years, but she graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Advertising and Design. My parents, our girls, and I, were so proud to see her walk for her graduation. It was an especially incredible accomplishment since she was left home alone most of those years, raising two little girls, while I was gone so much. I’m very proud of her for sticking it out through the tough times.

  I was also thrilled to see her graduate because it meant no more Life Drawing and anatomy practice sketches around the house. I was sick of seeing drawings of naked men and women lying around. “Geesh!” I’d sometimes complain. “We have little kids here!”

  TWENTY-SIX

  She Believes

  We did a string of dates in the Midwest later that year. The final show was for a roaring crowd in Chicago with Resurrection (Rez) Band. It was a great way to end the weekend. That’s what I thought, anyway. The weekend was not quite over.

  The next morning I was driving Happy Truck and Dana was riding shotgun. It was around 5:30 am and the dawn was breaking on a new day. I recall a beautiful sunrise with the light bouncing off the bottom of the clouds, refracting shades of purple and orange. Dana and I were discussing how great the previous night’s show had been. Traveling southbound on I-65, about thirty-five miles north of Nashville, all was well with the world when the “Demonic Hamster Squeaky Nightmare Noise” began.

  We’d heard that noise before, but this time it got very loud, very quickly. Suddenly all sound was drowned out by a massive crashing noise. All I saw through the windshield was that beautiful sunrise sky as I was facing almost straight up. It was like the truck was doing a wheelie. Dana began to scream and bodies were flying everywhere out of the rear bunks! Looking left, toward the median of the interstate, I saw Happy Truck’s entire rear axle and differential, with all four tires still on it, careening past us on fire. It was like a parade in hell.

  The rear end of the truck was scraping on the pavement. It’s remarkable how fast a truck can come to a complete stop from seventy miles per hour using that particular technique. It wasn’t pretty. Two or three truckers immediately stopped to help. It seemed the rear end of our beloved Happy Truck was in flames too! Yikes! All of our equipment was in there. We rolled up the rear door, which was flapping like a window shade, and began heaving equipment out onto the highway while the truckers were battling the flames with fire extinguishers.

  I learned a couple of things that day.

  Number one: it’s pretty hard to throw a Hammond B3 organ, but it can be done. Number two: we shouldn’t have put out that damned fire. We had insurance on the truck, but because we put out the fire and managed to somewhat salvage the gear, the insurance company considered it to be a repair job instead of a fire loss. And of course, we had no coverage for repairs. Despite our ability to stomp out the fire, I am sad to report Happy Truck never recovered. She was put out of her misery.

  Following the demise and disintegration of Happy Truck, we bought a Dodge Lark RV from my dad. It was an ugly Winnebago looking thing that had been my father’s prized possession for years. How I arm-wrestled it away from him, I’m not completely sure. Seems like we rented it for a time and when we brought it back and he saw the condition, he didn’t want it anymore. Imagine that. A rock band can screw up and break anything, including a ball bearing.

  Riding in the Lark was only a trifle better than riding in Happy Truck. It had air conditioning—sort of. It had a rooftop unit powered by a generator engine that never worked right. It had heat, too—sort of. The heat came from the kind of butane furnace a travel trailer was meant to have. When we lit the furnace and drove down the road at night passing drivers could see flames shooting out of the side of the RV into the darkness. It kind of looked like we mounted a jet afterburner to the side of our camper. Truckers honked at us as they passed, and reported the fire to us over the CB radio. Over and over. Constantly.

  One night, while touring in Canada, the temperature dropped to forty degrees below zero. I remember seeing Dana driving the Lark with a blanket over his head and draped over his shoulders. I was behind him looking at his hooded silhouette lit up by the dashboard lights. The rest of us were huddled together in a pile of bodies on the floor trying to stay warm. I actually had ice form in my mustache from breathing because it was so cold in the Lark. I could see the large side mirror to Dana’s left, and in that mirror I saw the reflection of long flames shooting out of the butane heater, spewing down the side of the RV. It was as if the Grim Reaper was driving us down the highway to hell.

  The Lark wasn’t all bad, though. We could at least stretch out a bit. It had a bunk bed that lowered on a scissor-like mechanism from the ceiling across the rear of the RV. We called it “Acid Bunk” because when you tried to sleep in it, you felt like you were tripping on LSD. We used to flip for that bunk. If you lost, you had the opportunity to have a nightmare in “Acid Bunk.” That was the Lark. That was life on the road.

  This Ain’t Hollywood was the last album we made for Pat Boone. Lamb and Lion had moved their distribution from Word to Benson Distribution before that album was released, and they were not happy about how things were going. Most of their frustration surrounded the first Debby Boone album Benson distributed. “You Light Up My Life” sold millions of copies. Her meteoric rise to fame created its own set of problems. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to maintain that kind of breakout success. It also seemed Benson was failing the test in Lamb and Lion’s eyes, so the two companies began to look for a way to end their business relationship.

  Bob MacKenzie and Wayne Ericson were the savvy business executives saddled with the task of running The Benson Company. Benson was the oldest music publisher in the city of Nashville, and it was expanding rapidly into record label and distribution work. As the company negotiated a settlement for the exit of Lamb and Lion, MacKenzie decided he wanted to keep “that little rock band,” DeGarmo and Key. “I kinda like them,” he reportedly said. “I think they have a lot of potential.”

  MacKenzie was like a little dynamo. He was of modest size—just like Napoleon. His tank was full of unbridled energy and passion. He had a voice that blasted like a trumpet. Ericson was the quiet New Jersey power guy of few words.

  That’s how D&K ended up recording for The Benson Company. We stayed with them, in one way or another, for the rest of our career. />
  Because our relationship with Lamb and Lion ended, This Ain’t Hollywood was also the only album we had the opportunity to make with Dan Raines. After his time with Lamb and Lion, Dan went on to form Creative Trust, one of the most successful and effective artist management companies in the industry. In the future, during my tenure with EMI Christian Music Publishing, which later became Capitol CMG Publishing, I was honored to serve Steven Curtis Chapman, Third Day, and several other artists and writers Dan managed at Creative Trust. We enjoyed working together for many years.

  Going back to the early eighties, Mike Blanton, then with the newly formed Blanton/Harrell management, called me at Ardent one day. He asked if he and Dan (Harrell) could come to Memphis to meet with us about an idea. They came a few days later and told us they were going to record a live album with Amy Grant and wanted it to include a full band. She had never toured with a complete band before, and they thought DeGarmo and Key might be a good fit. “You’re both pretty studio savvy,” Mike said. “We think it might be a good blend. It seems like a good artistic stretch for Amy, and maybe for you guys too.”

  “What an interesting combination,” I thought to myself as he spoke. It might be comparable to pairing Aerosmith and Ariana Grande today.

  Dana and I thought about it for about five seconds, and enthusiastically said, “Yes!”

  Mind you, we didn’t completely understand what we were in for. Dana and I came from a purely rock ‘n’ roll background, so mashing us together with Amy Grant was as much a stretch for us musically as it was for her. When it was done, however, I think it was a challenge worth accepting. Mike sent us a song list and a box of her records. I made tape copies of the songs for Dana, Tommy Cathey, and Greg Morrow. I have to say, we dug into her material and learned it completely. We stayed pretty true to the recorded style, but probably rocked it up just a bit. That would be like us to do that. The first time Amy came to Memphis to rehearse with our band I think she was pretty impressed with the quality with which we played her music. Brown Bannister, her producer, was impressed as well. He was awesome to work with. He helped to dial in slight changes in the arrangements of the songs, but we had done our homework. It sounded very natural.