GOD ROCK : Caught Between Their Music and a Hard Place, Christian Bands Strive for Commercial Appeal

Stuffed into a gaudy pair of black nylon pants and a studded belt, his long, shaggy hair teased out into a wild blond mane, Ken Tamplin is standing in the middle of a tiny and tawdry dressing room backstage at the Roxy and grinning it up.

“Hey!� he yelps at a visitor. “Where were you? You missed a great prayer session.�

That’s how Tamplin and his band, Shout, get psyched up for a show. They stand in a circle, link hands, ask God for help and guidance, go downstairs and spend the next 45 minutes turning the Sunset Strip nightclub into a kind of high-decibel revival meeting.

Their audience is composed mostly of young “born-again� Christians, but they respond to the hard-driving music in the same way as do their more secular counterparts. They crowd close to the stage, gyrating to the music, occasionally clapping with their hands high in the air.

And, sometimes with prompting by Tamplin, but mostly spontaneously, they jab their index fingers at the ceiling in the recognizable “one way� salute of the “born-again� Christian.

Shout is one of many Southland rock bands that are beginning to be recognized outside of what has formerly been a precisely defined musical pigeonhole. They bill themselves as a Christian rock ensemble and, like most other religiously grounded rock bands of their type, have enjoyed limited commercial appeal. But they are emerging from the semiprofessional world of concerts in church halls and from occasional musical sessions with weekend Bible study groups into the realm of professional club dates, foreign tours and recording contracts.

It is no accident that Shout, and other bands that had their start or are currently operating out of Orange County, should be among the first Christian groups to gain wider commercial recognition. Orange County has been the spawning ground for Christian rock--in several forms--for almost 15 years. Since the early 1970s, when the Rev. Chuck Smith enthusiastically opened the doors of his Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa to young musicians who had rejected the commercial-music fast lane, Orange County has become a center of what some might consider an unusual ministry: punk rock, heavy metal rock, new wave rock and hard-core mainstream rock--all in the name of God.

“Orange County is literally booming with Christian rock acts,� Tamplin said. “It’s fertile ground. Some of that has to do with the Stryper ministry, but also it’s because some of the largest Christian ministries in the world are in Southern California and (the bands) can go from church to church and be supported, both spiritually and financially.�

Stryper is perhaps the best-known Christian rock band in the country. Based in Southern California, it has enjoyed success not only in Christian circles, but to a surprising extent among mainstream audiences. Many Christian rock musicians consider Stryper to be the band that led Christian rock out of the churches and into the clubs. Christian bands, say local musicians, are beginning to believe that it is possible to satisfy their spiritual and financial needs at the same time.

“Most of us would certainly like to think in those terms,� said Steve Shannon, lead singer of the Orange County-based Christian band Idle Cure. “There’s always been a kind of dichotomy between Christian and secular bands, with the attitude that Christian rock ‘n’ roll is not on par with secular rock ‘n’ roll. Now there are more bands coming in, and there are bigger budgets for albums, and we can start to approach the production standards of secular bands. We’re thinking that we’re not just Christian musicians; we’re musicians, period.

“We’re not saying that (commercialization) is what we want and we’ll do anything it takes to get it, but we’re saying that this can be the Lord’s will, too.�

The wider commercial appeal of Christian rock is perhaps a product of the natural evolution of the genre that began in Orange County during the past decade, with many disenfranchised young rockers turning to Christianity. Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa became the source.

“Calvary Chapel was definitely the birthplace of Christian rock,� said Randy Zigler, a local Christian rock promoter who formerly was in charge of Calvary’s weekend rock concerts. During the ‘70s and early ‘80s, he said, “we put on punk and heavy metal bands and others and we had an average attendance of about 2,500 every Saturday night. The concerts were geared to reach kids who were messed up on drugs or sex or whatever and present Christ to them. The music was a kind of extension of the kids who were there. We wanted to give thanks and bless God and people said, ‘Why not do it our way? Why do we need an organ?’ We had the kind of music the kids related to.�

Richard Cimino, one of three youth pastors currently at Calvary Chapel, said that the concerts were a local phenomenon.

“They were huge,� he said. “It got to the point where we had to have two concerts every (Saturday) night. There was never really a plan to do that, though. No one said, ‘We need to assemble Christian bands.’ It just grew spontaneously and it was a very relevant means of communicating, definitely a non-churchy kind of setting. People would say, ‘Wow, you can still play rock ‘n’ roll and do it for God.’ It was kind of taboo until it got started here.�

The success of the concerts at Calvary Chapel prompted many other Southern California congregations--both mainline denominational and “born-again� Christian churches--to book Christian rock bands for every purpose from youth group meetings to full-size concerts in their sanctuaries. In recent years, theme parks such as Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm have periodically presented evenings or festivals devoted to Christian music.

“About five or six years ago,� said Shannon, “outside of Calvary Chapel, there wasn’t a tremendous ministry for Christian rock ‘n’ roll groups. The churches were reluctant to book you because they weren’t sure what they’d be getting and the schools were reluctant because they thought they’d be getting a bunch of Jesus freaks. But now, the churches are finding that it’s a tremendous way to enhance their outreach.�

Also, said Shannon, “club dates (for Christian bands) are becoming more acceptable. Before Stryper, if you tried to play one of the clubs in Hollywood, you’d be walking a very thin line. You wouldn’t be accepted by the secular crowd and the Christian crowd would think that you were doing this evil thing called crossover.�

Re-enter Calvary Chapel. As the congregation there grew and matured, say Orange County Christian musicians, the ministry became more conservative in its approach. While the musicians say the church continues to be the mainstay of Christian rock in the county, “they’ve become substantially conservative,� Tamplin said. “They’ve toned down the concerts because they’ve gotten a lot of flak from the Christian community. It’s not quite as free and accessible now.�

Still, Tamplin said, “even though Calvary Chapel isn’t the epicenter of rock anymore, the majority of people in the area who are in (Christian) bands still go to church there. It’s their mecca, their home church.�

It is not conservatism on the part of the congregation, but a changing perception of the Christian bands’ music that has prompted cutbacks in Calvary Chapel’s rock concert programs, Cimino said. The church, he said, believes that many bands are doing too much rendering to Caesar and not enough to God.

“We’ve always been real flexible,� Cimino said. “We’ve said, ‘If God’s in it, let’s do it.’ (Rock) music can still be effective in the Christian realm, but it’s become a kind of marketing of Christian entertainment and it’s lost its evangelical thrust. Ten years ago, people were recording records, but it wasn’t an industry. It was just, ‘Hey, we’ve got something we want kids to hear.’ The first albums from Maranatha (a record company originally affiliated with Calvary Chapel but now an independent company) were sold out of the trunk of a car. Now it’s a slick, profitable industry and there’s a tremendous demand for Christian music, but it shouldn’t be confused with a ministry at all. It can look good and slick and the heart can be gone.

“The tragedy is that the shift has been away from the ministry. The world’s standards and the world’s values crept into the work God was doing. God was doing quite well by himself. He didn’t need marketing or advertising. I just look at that and say, ‘Who needs it?’ �

Some local musicians say they do. And, they add, they believe they can succeed with their purity of purpose intact.

“It’s not easy to get into the market now,� said Juan Casas, a local concert promoter and the manager of the Orange County-based Christian rock band The Altar Boys. “You’re starting to see tighter, more professional attitudes and you’re starting to see crossovers--a few (secular) people from the clubs that also go to the church gigs. Before, (Christian rock) was concerned with quantity instead of quality. Now it’s quality. We want to serve, and not burn any bridges with the Christian church, but we want to be treated as viable musicians in the world’s eyes and compete with other secular acts in Southern California. We need to survive. We don’t want people to buy it just because it’s Christian music, but because it’s good music. You get a gig at a church and the pastor says the musicians are ministers. Well, the musicians say they’re musicians.�

But, say Shannon and Tamplin, Christian bands almost inevitably are associated--either as individuals or as a group--with a “home� church, a certain Christian congregation to which they regularly turn for spiritual renewal, advice and grounding. Both musicians used the word “accountability� in reference to their musical and religious relationship with their home churches--in effect, a method of keeping a Christian band honest.

Still, misunderstandings persist, particularly among conservative Christian congregations not accustomed to reconciling the sight and sound of heavy metal or punk with Christian ethics.

“There’s a notion in some churches,� Shannon said, “that if you’re going to be a Christian and if you’re going to play music, then rock has no place. There are always closed minds on the other side of the fence, but it’s changing. If you don’t change your spiritual and moral ethics and adhere to those standards, it works.�

Even bands that project the “angry� image of many punk or heavy metal bands have their place, said Zigler.

“That’s not inconsistent with God’s nature,� he said. “Jesus made a whip and got angry and cleaned out the temple. Anger can be used to get people right and straight and reconciled.�

Some listeners, Casas said, “expect obvious spiritual nuggets in the lyrics and if they don’t hear them they say it’s not spiritual. But what some of the bands are saying is not, ‘Jesus loves me, yes I know,’ but ‘Jesus loves me and I’m having problems with my life and I know there’s an answer.’ �

Many bands’ lyrics, in fact, offer little clue to the band’s Christian orientation. In Shout’s “Never Stop,� for instance, the chorus reads:

Never stop, never stop running Never gonna stop, nothin’s gonna stop us now Ain’t givin’ up, we hear it calling Now we know, love is gonna show us how.

Other lyrics, however, give hints of the musicians’ beliefs. In Shout’s “Find A Way,� for example:

As I recall the years that all slipped by I can’t deny My foolish pride Well someday I’ll hold You forever And never let go Lord I’ll be yours.

Christian rock isn’t breaking into the secular Top 40 yet, but Shannon said that “there’s an increasing curiosity among the secular crowd in general. I don’t know if the lyrics are softening or not, but more people are open to hearing what it’s all about. We’re trying to touch people on the street level, on a day-to-day sort of experiential level.�

It was on that level that both Shannon and Tamplin first found themselves drawn to the genre. Both said they had gone through what Tamplin called “the party band era with the typical sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.� Both men said they used drugs before they embraced Christianity and Tamplin said he was dealing cocaine at the age of 12.

Today, Tamplin doesn’t preach during Shout’s set at the Roxy, but during a break between numbers, he announces to the audience that the song to come is a veiled warning against drug abuse. He turns to the band and back to the audience and declares, “We . . . do . . . not . . . believe . . . in drugs . . . at all!� The capacity audience cheers loudly.

The new Christian bands are beginning to smell commercial success but, Shannon said, “one of the things we like to hear most is that people can appreciate our music and where we’re coming from both spiritually and morally. There’s plenty of sinister music out there and people like to know that there’s something on this side of the fence morally that they can relate to.�