“…like
all heroes, [they are] there for the beating up. They wouldn’t be
heroes if they were infallible, in fact they wouldn’t be heroes
if they weren’t miserable wretched dogs, the pariahs of the earth,
besides which the only reason to build up an idol is to tear it down again,
just like anything else. … Plus part of the whole exhilaration of
admiring somebody for their artistic accomplishments is resenting ‘em
‘cause they never live up to your expectations. Plus which they
all love the abuse, they’re worse than academics, so the only thing
left to do is go whole hog nihilistic and tear everybody you ever respected
to shreds.”
- Lester Bangs
“It seems a bit pompous”, says Michael Roe with a slight chuckle.
“Legendary? Yes. But a legend? No,” he adds with emphasis
on the ay-arr-why in legendary. This is a good fifteen minutes after Roe
explained to me that he is a priest (but I am getting ahead of myself).
As if the interview couldn’t have been weirder, I nearly forgot
to ask the question, the question that all my other questions were leading
to: “Are you a legend?” But I had Bangs on my mind.
Mike Roe began his ascent to “legendary” status nearly two
decades ago. He has endured in the face of controversy and tiny marketing
budgets. His fellow California cool Jesus rockers haven’t been as
prolific, nor durable, as Mr. Roe and his hired gun collective. Undercover
and the Altar Boys called it quits years ago, Daniel Amos has only recently
recorded new material, and Gene Eugene of Adam Again is dead. Only the
Choir and bad-boy Mike Knott have consistently matched Roe in musical
output.
“When we first got rolling with this thing twenty years ago, we
were connected with a church that had connections with the music business,
the real music business in Hollywood,” explains Roe matter-of-factly.
It is obvious he has told the story before, but doesn’t seem to
mind retelling it to me. He continues, “But none of them really
bit at what we were doing. The one distribution opportunity that we had,
that we took up was with Word Records. They were willing to distribute
our little Exit label. Once we made that choice, that choice unleashed
us into this Christian music community for better or for worse.”
As the story grows, the band was victimized by their own inexperience,
by making music that didn’t match the trends, or by simple major
label neglect (see 1987 and their glorious self-titled release on Island
Records, which was pushed aside due to a “bad contract” and
The Joshua Tree).
Still I had to know, why Christian rock? Roe breathes deeply, sighs, “Well,
I think you’ve asked two questions: One is: Why did you begin there?
And two is: Why are you still there? I think the second question answers
the first one, because where you start in the music business is where
you finish… unfortunately.” Now, don’t get Roe wrong,
he isn’t complaining, he can go on for five minutes straight explaining
how much it means to have an impact on his audience. In the world of Amy
Grant and Petra, the 77s were literally an alternative, and a legit one
at that. “And so we became, in a sense, the saviors of a lot of
these people that were really bored with a lot of the music their parents
or the church was handing to them, and saying, ‘This is Christian
rock, get over it.’ We meant something to these people,” Roe
says with self-confident swagger.
No one can deny that the 77s were a shot in the arm to the whitewashed
world of Christian rock. The industry demanded that records have explicit
lyrics of the heavenly variety, a requisite number of Jesus’ in
each song, and a Puritan morality (no swagger, no sexiness, no primal
energy). The 77s did not follow the rules; they had swagger, sexiness,
and primal energy, so it isn’t surprising that discerning listeners,
demanding more from the Christian scene, latched on like leeches.
Throughout Roe’s career he has always been about the hustle, “We
have tried many times to break out of or at least expand our throw with
different kind of secular opportunities. Well, ya know,” he pauses,
“… different people liked us at different points and I think
we blew a lot of awful good opportunities, just through not being ready
or not having the right kind of management or situation help us get to
the next level. And we’ve always been looking for a way to get a
real record deal, a secular record deal; everybody wants that.”
He feels that with the band’s latest record, A Golden Field of Radioactive
Crows, he may just get that deal.
“It was written specifically to be the commercial kind of record
that could easily come across the desk of some A&R person at a major
label. Something that would be able to be an easy sell into that market.
Whether we hit it up with that? I’m not sure,” says Roe.
The pre-release buzz was that Roe reclaimed the glory days, but that is
not true. And it cannot be true. The record was supposed to be full of
songs that would make the fans of the self-titled, 1990’s Sticks
& Stones, and 1992’s Pray Naked, smiley smile. While Roe may
have brought back his snotty vocals, trademark guitar sounds, and snarled
hooks, the music is definitely about jamming. This is due to the fact
that Roe has very little input in the songwriting process, which he openly
acknowledges.
“Yes, I do try to surround myself with good writers. If it was left
to me to do it all, I think it would be a bit one-dimensional. Having
younger guys who are listening to younger sounds, and then combining that
with my old school philosophies and influences, generally you get a real
good combination,” he explains.
Or it could mean you just don’t have any good ideas or your melodies
stink or your hooks are dull or you simply cannot write a song anymore.
I laugh at Roe’s assertion that the record is quirky. It is anything
but quirky. And this is what is frustrating about Roe; he vacillates between
being the misunderstood artist and desiring pop stardom via the perfect
major label deal. One minute he talks about stretching out and taking
risks like Brian Wilson, the next he is talking about how he is happy
just playing guitar while his band mates write the songs.
Roe knows what it takes to write a good song, he knows his priorities,
but they aren’t helping now. He has an irrational fear of failure,
“I am afraid of getting too grand of a vision, because I am afraid
of what will happen to me is what happened to [Brian] Wilson. Where he
set his sights too high, he set himself up for disaster.” Roe continues,
slowly, deliberately, “Between the record company and the band you’re
in, a lot of times people don’t want to go that far out, they don’t
want to get … caught up … in your personal tormented vision.”
His voice is smiling, but self-consciousness creeps in as he hopes to
recapture his vision. And I feel badly for my Bangsian motives.
In 1997, he stated that he initially felt called to be a pop star, but
then that had changed to be an artist. “Well since that time, I
even modified my vision again. Um… I wanted to be a pop star, decided
that I had to be an artist, and found out that I had to be a priest,”
says Roe as if he has been waiting for the chance to have these words
put between quotation marks. “Does that make sense?” Reader,
what do you think? Yeah, what the heck?
Is it all right if I just let the tape roll? Thanks. “A lot of times
you are born with certain tendencies, with certain talents and certain
wants. And you end up pursuing them the best way you can unless you have
a talk with God. Sometimes you have a talk with God, and God has a more
specific direction for your specific thing he wants you to do, and yet,
you can’t let go of your desires and your talents. You got to find
a way to work out those things in the context of what it is that God has
made you to do and called you to do. In my case, there was a specific
calling, but it was not to be understood for many years, because I probably
wouldn’t have accepted it for number one. Number two, I probably
would have screwed it up. And number three, I don’t think I would
have interpreted it correctly, I think I had to live out a certain kind
of way of existence for a long time before my life would come around to
a place where I could completely understand what that calling meant,”
explains Roe quickly, but carefully.
He continues, “And I think what has happened is that as I have watched
over the years the response to the music, the kind of followers we have,
the kind of letters we get, the kind of effect that our music has had
and that I have had personally on the people that follow our music, along
with some other additional revelations to me spiritually, have all pointed
to one thing and one thing only: that the role and the calling is specifically
in the priestly form. That I am going before God, getting something, and
bringing it back. I am searching for language to describe the indescribable.
But I think you might know what I am saying.” Yeah…
Wait! Where did this come from? This is a guy who has openly separated
his faith from his art, and he chooses me to get all deep and spiritual.
I was ready to roast Roe for not writing any of the songs on Radioactive
Crows. Then he blindsides me with this priest talk, he bamboozles me with
this divine messenger role that he has been called to do! All I wanted
to know is why he didn’t write any songs! I was thinking of Bangs
and how he backed Lou Reed into a corner (or perhaps just deeper into
the pillows on his posh bed at some swanky hotel). Mike Roe the Idol has
never been about songwriting, that was my angle, and the bamboozler stole
my fuel and my fire in a fifteen-minute homily on his responsibility as
a priest!
But as I listened to the tape of my interview, I heard his voice. A voice
of a man who has made a career playing rock music, rock music that has
had an impact on people’s lives (even my life). He is not a young
man, and he knows that. He doesn’t write songs on the new record,
but he spoke openly, he expressed his fears and his hopes. He is a man
of paradox: a priest who’s art is misunderstood and a man of the
flesh still desiring the Big Hit so he can retire comfortably. His paradoxes
are so bipolar it is frustrating. Michael Roe is an idol to many young
musicians and fans, but he is also a human being, and a transparent one
at that. And because of that transparency, he doesn’t need to be
torn down, because he has already done it (albeit in his own egotistical,
self-centric way). Mike Roe isn’t an idol. He is a legend. |