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Pat Boone sheds light on the tumult that followed his heavy-metal album, the inclination to judge by appearance and more.
By GAIL HOLLENBECK
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 15, 2003
CRYSTAL RIVER -- Pat Boone performed his "40 Years of Hits" before two enthusiastic audiences last Saturday at Rock Crusher Canyon.
With 63 records on the charts, six No. 1 hits, 18 Top 10 records and 13-million sellers, he had a lot of songs from which to choose.
Boone concluded his show by singing his new hit, Under God. The song is his response to the recent controversy over taking the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance and is part of his patriotic American Glory album.
An elder at the Church on the Way in Van Nuys, Calif., Boone was selected by the Presidential Prayer Team to receive the February 2003 American Inspirations Award. (On the Internet, see presidentialprayerteam.org/aifebruary2003.htm.)
In a recent candid interview, Boone talked about the difficulties Christian performers face and the harsh reaction to his In a Metal Mood heavy-metal album released in 1997.
Q: If you mention Pat Boone now, somebody will say, "Well, you know, he did that heavy metal thing and I think that ruined his image." So you had the one extreme where you're saying you came across as a "goody two shoes," and you have the other extreme where Christians are criticizing because they don't think you should have done that. How do you respond to them?
A: When I decided with my musicians to do this album of heavy-metal anthems with big band jazz arrangements, I went over all the lyrics and carefully hand picked songs that had nothing objectionable in them. I knew that would raise eyebrows, so I wrote ahead of time to most of the influential ministers that I know that might be fielding a lot of confusion about me being associated with heavy metal. So I wrote to D. James Kennedy and Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and Paul Crouch and on and on. I said, "Be forewarned, I've done this album. I've gone over the lyrics with a fine-toothed comb. There's nothing at all in this album except good music and thoughtful or fun lyrics, but I want you to know ahead of time that it may cause some confusion in the beginning."
Well, that didn't contemplate my going on the American Music Awards, which was Dick Clark's idea, (and) presenting the award for hard rock heavy metal with Alice Cooper, whom I had known for some time, had become my Christian brother and was very serious about his relationship with the Lord and still performing as Alice Cooper, but he's made changes in what he does on stage and his lyrics and so on.
So here were two Christian brothers walking out on the AMA and Dick's idea was we would swap images. He would wear a V-neck sweater and white buck shoes and a golf cap and be me, and I would wear a garish heavy-metal costume and be him, and we would together present the award for hard rock heavy metal. Dick knew that the next day my record was being released and he thought it was going to be a hit, and that would associate me in a funny way with heavy metal. At the last minute Coop backed out of his part of it. He thought that I was going to come out in a tuxedo and he was stunned when I did what Dick asked me to do, which was wear this crazy costume with tattoos and all. To me it was like going to a costume party wearing a crazy outfit.
But millions of people, especially Christians, took it very seriously and thought that I had flipped out. They hadn't heard the album, didn't know anything about it. They just began to bombard the ministers, especially TBN and Paul and Jan Crouch, saying, "Pat has betrayed us. He's gone into heavy metal. He's got tattoos. It's just unacceptable for him to be hosting a gospel music show on TBN, and if you keep him on the air we won't contribute another nickel." So Paul and Jan, though they knew in advance what I was doing, they felt they had to take my show off the air for about two months until we had a two-hour discussion of the whole thing on TBN with Jack Hayford and a couple other Christian performers who understood exactly what I was doing. The audience that night was made up almost entirely of Christian bikers.
Q: So you got back on the network?
A: Yes. After that explanation and they played some of my records that night on TBN. I guarantee it's the first and only time that those songs have ever been played on Christian TV, but it was to illustrate that this was good music, that there was actually nothing wrong with it and that I had done nothing wrong.
But I was learning something. I think all of us Christians need to learn that we are so quick to judge others by external appearance. The Bible says God looks on the heart. But we feel that we can judge in an instant other people simply by the way they look to us. I've done that. I had been very harshly judgmental of heavy-metal performers, of Alice Cooper himself, of a lot of these performers, and I saw nothing whatsoever good about it and had been openly condemning of it.
Q: But you weren't out to change your image?
A: No, I wasn't out to change my image at all. That didn't occur to me that that would happen. I thought that if we were successful, people would say, "Oh, look at that. Pat found some good songs that nobody else thought to do that way. He's sort of an innovator." It really was full circle for me because my career began in 1955 with me doing my pop version of rhythm and blues songs, which were sort of forbidden content to pop radio. So it was full circle for me to find songs and do them a different way and perhaps have some commercial success.
Now, what I've learned from the whole thing, which was very valuable, was that if we don't find things to commend in other people as well as to condemn, we're never going to have any communication with them. As I was linked with these heavy-metal performers, suddenly I was embraced and welcomed and what it reminded me of so forcefully was what Jesus went through when he went into the homes of the publicans and the sinners and everybody condemned him. Now imagine what the media and the church particularly would have to say about that. And yet Jesus said I enjoy these people. I came to save them.
Now I think, I could be fooling myself, but I think most Christians have finally come to realize that I did not sell out, I didn't flip out, that there must have been some purpose, at least in my mind, reasonable, good purpose for doing what I did, and there was. What the enemy might have meant for evil, God turned to good because he knew my heart. I even relished the controversy for a while because I knew that in time my Christian brothers and sisters would realize what I was doing, and I would have opportunity to explain.
Meanwhile, I had become known and accepted to a much wider audience. It was mainly college kids and bikers and other folks like that that rushed out and bought the album, and now everywhere I go these days, people like that are open to what else I say. And when I do Under God, they listen, and they receive it, where before if their perception of me was, "Oh, there goes preacher Pat again, I can't stand that guy, he's so self-righteous," now it's, "Hey, that's our biker dude friend and he's saying we ought to keep 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance, and I agree with him."
Q: Are Christian performers held to a higher standard than other Christians?
A: Yes, I do think that Christian performers need to be held to and should hold themselves to an even higher standard than most Christians. I think they have an even greater obligation to live good lives, to try to exert good and wholesome influences and not necessarily take advantage of every offer that comes along.
I myself have turned down movies, including one with Marilyn Monroe when I was under contract to Twentieth and they wanted to team us up in a film. Of course, as a young actor, I would have loved to be in a movie with her, but it was a very immoral story and I risked suspension at Twentieth saying, 'I can't do this.' I turned down songs that I knew would be hit songs because they were very suggestive, and again that makes me sound like a prude, but I was always conscious as a Christian in the entertainment business (that) I did have an influence and I also had the obligation to try to make it a good influence.
Q: Why did you write The Lone Ranger?
A: I've always felt empathetic with people like B.J. Thomas and Bob Dylan. B.J. began to record gospel songs and he did them just beautifully and he became an open, avowed Christian. I've been to more than one of his shows in which it stunned me that the secular fans did not want to hear him do his gospel stuff and would even call out while he was singing and disdainfully want him to stop doing that. The Christian fans wanted him to do just Christian music and not do his pop stuff to the point where B.J. just washed his hands.
In an interview in Switzerland which was reported in Christian magazines, he said, "Don't call me a Christian anymore or don't even call me country. I'm just B.J. Thomas, I'm a singer, that's all, I'm an entertainer, that's all I want people to know about me." He paid an awful price. So did Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash.
I am, I think, a notable exception that has been largely accepted by both Christian and secular audiences even when I do a mix of both kinds of music.
The Lone Ranger I really wrote about B.J. Thomas and friends and brothers who have felt somehow, in crucial times in their lives, that they didn't need fellowship with the church and to be under the oversight of elders, that they were like mavericks, like the lone ranger, and they could travel and sing gospel songs and make it on their own and be the guy outside the structure of the church.
Sure, there is some hypocrisy, some double standards, some missing the mark there. The church is full of failures, people trying to get right and not making it most of the time. Too many performers have tried to be the lone ranger and think that they could exist and make it and have great witness without the support and the covering of elders and church leadership and involvement.
To learn more about Pat Boone or to order his new American Glory album, visit patsgold.com/pat.php3?page.