Stryper Reborn

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Stryper guitarist Oz Fox checks in from the road on the band’s Reborn U.S. tour. The heavenly metallers are back and are currently out on the road across the U.S. in support of their most recent release, Reborn. I had the distinct honor of being able to chat with guitarist Oz Fox by phone from his hotel room in Austin, Texas on November 11, 2005 on a day off of touring between Austin and Houston. He gives us some insight into the current tour, original bassist Tim Gaines’ departure and what the immediate future holds for Stryper. Enjoy!

KNAC.COM: You guys are rapidly closing in on the end of your U.S. Reborn tour. How’s the tour going so far?

OZ: It’s going pretty well, we been playing a lot of like House of Blues type places and doing a few smaller places here and there and it’s been pretty cool, all the crowds are coming in and getting real excited about us playing again and the new album and whatnot. It’s been a lot of fun.

KNAC.COM: Are you finding a lot of new Stryper fans at the shows or is it mostly just the diehards?

OZ: There’s a lot of diehards and there’s a good handful of new fans coming in, so no matter what it’s kind of a mixture of young and old. I mean we’ve seen people come that are in their 70’s and kids that come that are 5, 6 years old, it’s just an array of all different ages.

KNAC.COM: How are you guys holding up physically? I’ve heard reports that you all have been looking pretty exhausted of late.

OZ: Well, I know I’m fine, you know, I haven’t had any problems with keeping the stamina up although when you do 4 and 5 shows in a row that can tend to be a little grueling, but other than that I mean this is what we do and I haven’t really had, at least as far as Michael, Tracy and myself, the person who’s been the most tired I would say is probably Robert just because he’s you know, working his stamina back up.

KNAC.COM: That’s the one person in particular I had heard about as looking pretty exhausted. It’s amazing what 20 years does to a person’s stamina, isn’t it?

OZ: Well, you know, we haven’t done this in a long time to this capacity so it’s going to be a little grueling, in fact it’s weird because you know I’m finding when I play my guitar now, I haven’t played my guitar in so many years that I kind of lost that stamina in my fingers, so it’s a little bit difficult sometimes to keep it going.

KNAC.COM: Have you had problems develop yet on the tour?

OZ: No, actually no, we haven’t had any problems, everything’s been going pretty well other than somebody busting their laptop every once in awhile you know you get something that freezes up…

KNAC.COM: How is Michael’s throat holding up? Some fans have been reporting that his throat has been giving him some problems lately.

OZ: Not really that much of a problem you know it’s just, again, it’s doing this every night and sometimes you kind of, depending on how good your monitors are you can kind of thrash your voice and he’s real belting it out there and making it happen every night you know all of the high screams and all of that kind of stuff just kind of wear on your throat.

KNAC.COM: Yeah, and it’s incredible that he can still do that after so many years. Now, I have noticed that the set list has changed a bit recently. Does that have anything to do with Michael’s throat or is it just a normal tweaking of the set?

OZ: No, No, we actually, to be honest, there’s a couple of tunes we haven’t done in a long time that we just kinda added to the set and there was a vote online of what people’s favorite songs that they would like to hear and so out of those votes we took a handful of them that were kind of ones that were challenging we thought would be great to do so we did those songs. Of course, you have to squeeze in the hits and the classic Stryper tunes and you gotta squeeze in the new songs and so it ends up being, you know, you can’t do ‘em all, but we did do some changes on songs that we haven’t done in awhile so it’s kinda nice.

KNAC.COM: So what’s your favorite song to play live and why?

OZ: Oh geez, my favorite song, I think one of my favorites would be ‘To Hell With the Devil’ just because it’s usually our encore song and it’s great to come out rockin’ and running around and that’s an easy song to run around on because it’s got a lot of like simple chords and you can kind of just mesmerize your audience by performing when you’re running around doing crazy stuff.

KNAC.COM: What do you guys like to do in your free time out on the road, as if there is such a thing?

OZ: Well, like today, you know we’ll take a day off and, not everyday off, but today we did an hour sitting and reading devotional materials, kind of getting into our bibles and just talking about things, like about situations and things and how we deal with them as Christians and that kind of energizes our spirits and helps us to look forward to having a better lifestyle and a better way of looking at things. Christianity has really helped us get back together, so that’s one of the things we do. We like to go out to shopping malls, just kind of walk around, hit the nearest Starbuck’s, kinda just do some looking around to see if there’s anything cool to buy or record stores or I shouldn’t say record stores, music stores with CDs and then there’s always the nearest local actual instrument music store that you can go into like the Guitar Centers, the Sam Ash’s and all that. We go in and check out guitars or sometimes there’s like local guitar stores, the ones that are like more independent and you can see some really neat stuff. Sometimes we just kick around in the hotel room, watch TV, you know, the History channel, stuff like that. OR, we might go to a movie or like tonight I think we’re gonna try to go out and our bus driver is a Country pickin’ guitar player, an awesome player, and we’re in Austin so he’s picking out a club for us to go out and see a good Country band with some good guitar pickers and stuff so…

KNAC.COM: Alright, Stryper has a new CD, Reborn, which is out now and the musical sound on the new record is somewhat of a departure from the classic Stryper sound. Was this done intentionally to try and reach out to a broader generation of fans or was it merely just a normal progression of the band that occurs naturally?

OZ: I think it’s mostly just the band evolving into something new, you know I think we still have it in us, I mean, my gosh, we were weaned on, as far as metal goes, we were weaned on Judas Priest, Black Sabbath and all that kind of stuff so that’s never gonna leave us. That influence is never gonna go away but of course there’s also the Journey and Van Halen and all of those kinds of groups that kind of influenced us in a lot of ways and, of course as time went on the evolution of the writing has kind of come full circle and I think with this album we were able to cross that bridge of old and new influences cuz we’re into a lot of the newer groups as well, I know I’m into stuff like Switchfoot and I like Audioslave guys like Blink 182, Linkin Park. These are all just sounds that have kinda infiltrated my influence in the last years and I know Mike has a handful just like it, if not some of the same ones so some of those things kind of blend in and get into what you write and rightly so, I mean, you’re only gonna come up with ideas that are gonna be by the influence of what you listen to. I really got into Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots heavily, I really dug them a lot and of course now everybody’s doing their own thing and you don’t have those bands anymore, you look at the offshoots like Velvet Revolver and Audioslave, it’s kinda cool, but you know, I’m not gonna say we won’t go back to some of that original metal influence because I know like with the next record we’re thinking it would be kinda cool to do a few tunes that were more in that realm so you never know, it’s just depends on what we’re inspired to do.

KNAC.COM: You guys obviously have a new member, Tracy Ferrie, who’s replaced original bassist Tim Gaines. Let’s set up a timeline here. When the band embarked on the 7 weeks tour that was originally supposed to be the band’s last, correct?

OZ: I wouldn’t say that. I think what that was, was that was a reunion tour because the demand for the band was there to come back and do it again and so many of our fans wanted to see it and we had just released the Hollywood Records ‘Best of’ album, 7, and we did 2 new songs on that, which we performed every day on the last tour and it was more an experiment to see how we felt about doing this again with all 4 original band members and we really didn’t know what was going to happen, it wasn’t like we were saying ‘We’ll never do this again’, it was more just a ‘Okay, let’s try this and see what it’s gonna be like see if everyone’s into it’ kinda thing and we got out there, I mean there were a lot of issues, a lot of struggles, a lot of questions about each other which eventually led to Timmy…Timmy..(pause and laugh), I’m sorry Michael’s …(laughs again)…sorry…

KNAC.COM: It’s quite alright, he’s (Michael’s) in the background listening to this, isn’t he?

OZ: He’s just trying to make me laugh. Um, anyway, which eventually led to Timmy’s decision to not do it anymore.

KNAC.COM: Okay, so the tour ends and how long was it then before Tim says ‘That’s it, I’ve had enough’?

OZ: I want to say around August of 2004. You know, we finally did, a few issues had come up and we had a conference call with Tim and we knew he was unhappy being in the band and it was like, he was kinda saying some things on his website about how he didn’t like this kind of music anymore and he was kind of wishing he could do something else and wishing that he could get more into a jazz mode and he was writing a lot more songs with his wife, Irene, and he had moved out to Nashville and just seemed very unhappy about being in the band and we confronted him and was just like, ‘Hey bro, if you’re not happy then, you know, what are you still doing in the band?’, and he just kind of agreed, he said ‘Yeah, I’m not happy. Things just aren’t going the way I want them to go’, and it’s hard for him in his marriage and he just felt like he just didn’t want to do it anymore so that pretty much is when he stepped down.

KNAC.COM: Well, I read a recent interview with Tim and I was left with the distinct impression that he was unhappy with his role in he band, particularly where it some to the songwriting contributions. Was that pretty much it in a nutshell?

OZ: You know, I’m gonna be honest with ya, I honestly feel that Tim, if he has come to the table with songs and, you know, the realm that he’s in just didn’t match the band. That’s just my opinion. You know, God bless him, I hope he can, when started writing with Irene, that was kind of his niche and he liked playing that kind of music and that certainly is not Stryper music. If you’re gonna play in a band and go in a certain direction and your chief songwriter writes most of your material and he’s goin’ in one direction, you know you gotta write like that. You gotta try to bring that to the table. You know, when we did To Hell With the Devil, I wrote ‘The Way’, which was obviously in the same vein and realm of the Stryper genre. The songs that Tim had written just weren’t quite there and it’s not that they were bad it’s just that he came from a different thing, he came from very piano-oriented, pop-oriented way of writing, and so for us the stuff that he brought to the table we tried working on it but it just never gelled. And then he never really came back with anything else after a few times that he tried to come up with something. I never saw him continue to write more music to try to get it in, he just stopped writing altogether. If you’re not continually writing and coming up with ideas and saying ‘Well, what about this or what about that?’ then how can you complain about that? So, to me, that’s just my opinion, you know?

KNAC.COM: Now, at this point in time had the band already committed to the Disney World show?

OZ: Yeah, by the time he had stepped down we had already committed to it and it was at a point where we didn’t know if it was gonna work out for us to play.

KNAC.COM: So Tim leaves and you guys really didn’t have much time before the Disney World show so Tracy was brought in almost immediately, right?

OZ: Well, Trace had been on tour with Michael and his solo stuff and it just so happened that right at that time, Tracy was moving, his wife’s family live in Cape Cod, which is where Michael lives, and it just so happens that right at that time Tracy was in the middle of moving back to Cape Cod and, you know, Trace and Mike are very close friends and I think Mike’s wife kinda raised an eyebrow said ‘Well, that’s weird that while this is happening, Tracy’s moving to Cape Cod’, so Mike gave him a call said ‘Hey, we’re doing this show and we were wondering if you’d be interested in coming and filling in since Tim’s left’ and we gave him the whole story and Tracy said ‘Sure’ right away.

KNAC.COM: So I guess that pretty much worked in the band’s favor that Tracy had previously played with Michael?

OZ: Absolutely! He’s an excellent player, he’s played with many people, played with many of the popular Christian groups. Probably the most popular at this time that he’s played with is Plum and Rebecca St. James.

KNAC.COM: He played with Whitecross too, didn’t he?

OZ: Yeah, he played with Whitecross but it wasn’t just those bands, he played with a BUNCH of people so he’s kind of well-seasoned and a guy that was influenced by, like he really dug KISS, and so that whole performer influence was in him to be that kind of a person, which is something that we never had before in a bass player, you know, it’s this guy that just wants to be outrageously crazy and do a lot of cool stuff which fits the band cuz both me, Robert and Michael, sorry, not both, but all three of us were oriented in that way and so he fit like a glove, you know, it was just uncanny. He came in and brought a new life to the band. That’s what really set Michael, who was really apprehensive about reforming the band, to say ‘Hey, this could work’, and so now here we are!

KNAC.COM: Now, of course Stryper played the Disney World show and, as Michael has stated in other interviews, he felt a new invigoration and connection within the band. Did you and Robert feel that rejuvenation as well during that show?

OZ: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Robert was extremely impressed with his performance and watching Tracy do all the antics he does, you know he just comes up with stuff off the top of his head. You know he’ll just drop to the floor and spin his bass around and play his bass upside down…

KNAC.COM: You never would have seen that from Tim…

OZ: No. And it’s not to downplay Tim. He’s a great player and Timmy always had a great tone and played the right things, but he wasn’t into being that kind of a player, he just wanted to play his bass and to me, Trace, for this group, has fit so well. It’s amazing. That’s what brought the new life into the band and when we went into the studio to record, the way he plays and the things he comes up with, it just sits well.

KNAC.COM: So I guess it would probably be safe to say that the frustrations of one band member really kept Stryper from moving forward?

OZ: Well, I mean there were a lot of other frustrations too but those have been suppressed due to Tracy being in the band. Tracy being in the band overshadows all of the other things so all of the other things are slowly being dealt with and being talked out. We’re trying to find a focus and a direction, cuz it’s all about being in a relationship with each other.

KNAC.COM: Now, most of the material for Reborn was already written by the time you guys went in to record and obviously it took far less time to get the album done than it would have otherwise had you started from scratch. Was there a sense of urgency within the band to capitalize on the momentum you had generated from the last tour?

OZ: Umm, well maybe, maybe a little bit. See, I was working a full time job with overtime I was a supervisor in inventory control, I worked a lot of overtime and worked pretty much 6 days a week and was working also helping my wife, she worked a job at night and on Sundays I’d help her out and it was just really impossible for me to take time out to write an album. I didn’t have the time, I was stressed out by all the duties I had and the hours I worked, I just didn’t have it in me to do any writing or playing my guitar or anything. The fact that Mike had all these songs already pretty much finished off, so to speak, as far as the writing is concerned and the arranging. We had a few changes here and there, but it wasn’t that big of a change. It was kind of like a blessing in disguise to have all of these songs kind of ready to go and fitting the sound of the band so well.

KNAC.COM: And the rebirth as well, a lot of the material fits that as well…

OZ: Absolutely. To me, I think it couldn’t have been a better situation than for us to have all these songs already done when I know I couldn’t have, it would have taken a lot longer for us to get something going and get out there and all of a sudden we have all of these songs that all we had to do was come in and record our parts and make it happen you know at different times when we could, cuz I couldn’t even come in to record until the first week of January of 2005 because, the way my job was, as soon as I asked for time off after doing the 7 Weeks tour eyebrows were raised and it was like ‘How much more of this are you gonna have to do, Oz?’. You get that kind of pressure on you and it’s like ‘Well, I think we might be…’ you know, eventually I had to tell them, I had to say ‘It looks like we’re gonna reform the band but I need your help so I can continue to have an income until I leave the company’ and I guess that was a little bit of a shock to them but then after awhile, see the owner of the company is a Christian, he goes to my church, and when I approached him about it, he just was like ‘Oz, we’re here to help you in any way we can’. That’s a blessing and you know, that’s how God works. Speaking of God, this band still is a full-on Christian group that trusts God and believes in salvation through Jesus Christ and that’s what we’re really going to continue to do, I mean, we were successful saying that, believing that and living that in the 80’s and we’re gonna continue to do it.

KNAC.COM: Christian rock as a musical genre has taken a lot of heat, especially from evangelists and the like, who say that you can’t combine rock music, which is perceived to be inherently evil, with Christian lyrics and even I find myself somewhat torn on this issue. How do you guys respond to this type of criticism?

OZ: Well, music in general is neutral, I mean there’s really no, it’s what kind of lyrics you put to the music that makes it either good or bad. People continue to try to argue that it’s the beat or it’s the sound or this or that that causes this or causes that but that’s just not true. It’s ridiculous to say anything like that and expect it to really have any validity in your accusations because music is so neutral and you can say so many things but you’ll say it through lyrics that you write and the lifestyle that you lead. I mean obviously if we were writing music about living a lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll and then living that lifestyle in actuality that would tend to influence people the wrong way. That’s not what we do. All of our music is about being Christian and about Christianity and about God and situations that we face being Christians or situations that someone may face before they, you know, they might need an answer for a trouble in their life that they’re having and so we sing and write about those kinds of situations. We could tell people to go and do something stupid, which, you know, a lot of rock bands do or their lifestyles, a lot of groups are being seen by their audience as being cool because they booze it up and they have all these women, you know the whole drug thing or whatever, and their friends are doing that and it just leads them to be more like that and maybe go down a path that’s gonna destroy their lives. Another thing is like sex, the sex thing is just outta hand throughout all of the media, the movies and whatnot and it’s a wonder that we’re having 12 and 13 year old girls getting pregnant because the influence is there and the way girls dress now, there’s just no integrity and it’s because of our world and what the media and TV and movies have portrayed as good and cool. For us, we’re just gonna continue to try to stay on a path of integrity and holiness and try to show people a good path, one that’s going to lead to an eternal life in Christ. You know, life is about relationships, you have these relationships with all these people and if your relationship with God is not right, all of your other relationships will suffer and that’s something that we’ve learned because you don’t have that influence of unconditional love and complete peace and complete contentment with your life and with what God is doing in your life and no direction and waiting on God, letting God allow things to happen and doors to open in your life. You start making your own decisions and the bible says ‘the heart is deceitful, who can know it?’ You know, we can really make our own decisions; we really have to go to the word of God. The word of God, the bible, is our manual for life and people don’t seem to understand that and to us, that’s what needs to happen, people need to get back to those simple ideas and we’re gonna continue to do that and continue to push people in that direction. After every show we pray for people it’s amazing the reaction we have and we’re just hoping that we can maybe be somewhat of an affect in some small way in people’s lives that we can influence them to start looking that way.

KNAC.COM: So what’s next for the band once this tour wraps up? I’ve heard rumors of a possible package tour maybe coming up, what’s going on in the future for you guys?

OZ: Well, those kinds of things are possible as far as doing some multi-artist concert dates, in the summertime those are pretty popular. I believe we’re working on doing kind of an unplugged acoustic guitar tour throughout the churches. We think there’s an audience there that probably has never really had the chance to come see us or have had the chance to really see what we’re all about and of course, if we’re doing an acoustic guitar thing they really aren’t gonna see the whole show but at least we’ll be able to touch base with a core Christian audience that may have never seen us before and may never get the chance to see us and that’s gonna make a connection with people that are there that probably would come to see us at their church and that kind of thing. For us, that’s kind of exciting and it’s never been done before by us so it’ll be an event that maybe, you know, we’ll get a few recordings out of that.

KNAC.COM: So the church tour thing is still kind of in the initial stages then?

OZ: Yeah

KNAC.COM: Do you have any idea where that would fit in to your upcoming plans if it were come through?

OZ: Well, doing that wouldn’t be hard because we’d only be taking acoustic guitars and maybe a small drum kit, that’d be easy to do I mean, it’s like we could do that for a couple of weeks and then come home, go out and do some kind of huge show with a bunch of different groups then come back and continue to do more of that (acoustic) kind of touring and then we have plans to go to Europe sometime this spring, which we’re working on that right now. We can do really anything we want with all of this. To me the church the tour would be more of just like visiting different churches and connecting with people….

KNAC.COM: Almost like the Town Hall meetings….

OZ: Yeah, and in a sense, well, when the word got out that we were gonna do this the emails went out from our management to certain churches I think we got a response back of like, I think they said it was like 400 emails the next day from different churches saying ‘Yeah, we wanna do this!’. That is amazing to me because we’re only doing I think they only had like 50 dates that were on hold for THIS tour and we were waiting for responses back, that’s what William Morris, our booking agency had for feelers out for about 50 dates and we got about 37 of them back and that’s why we’re doing THIS tour, but 400? That’s amazing! I think we need to do this and I’m definitely gonna go where the opportunities are open and where I feel God is opening doors, so that’s a big thing.

KNAC.COM: So is there any possibility of seeing the back Stryper catalog being remastered and re-released at some point?

OZ: I don’t know, that’s never been talked about really to be honest. That entire catalog is owned by Hollywood Records and Hollywood Records isn’t interested in doing anything else with Stryper at this time. They did the 7 album but that was just a one off thing that they wanted to do to have, you know, another ‘Best of’ type album. We still sell the old CDs at our shows and I think you can still get online at Stryper.com, there’s a link to it.

KNAC.COM: Now, this might be a little premature but has the writing process to the follow-up to Reborn started yet or is that something that will happen off the road?

OZ: I don’t think that’s happened yet. There’s a few ideas, you know Mike, he stamps out songs like there nothing, you know, like pancakes you know, just kinda slap ‘em on the grill and flip ‘em over and there done, ya know. I’ve got a handful of songs in my head that need finishing and work and whatever and we may hook up and work on them and some of them may not even fit the genre. We haven’t really discussed it that much but we did talk about going away somewhere, to some remote location and just sit around and see if we can inspired, ya know? I’ve got access to a really nice cabin up in the mountains in Colorado in the Rockies so we’re talking about possibly doing that, maybe going and hanging out somewhere like Florida, or someplace where there isn’t going to be a massive hurricane. Maybe we need to go through a hurricane, maybe it’ll inspire us to do something, I don’t know. Anyway, we’re just kinda thinking about right now, we have some time so we’re not really rushing it too much.

KNAC.COM: Okay, we’re gonna do just a little bit of role reversal here for just a second. Think back for a minute on all the interviews the band has done over the years. What is one question that has never been asked of the band that you would ask if you were giving the interview?

OZ: Oh man, that’s like….man you put me on the spot, now I really gotta think and I just woke up a little while ago. Umm, I haven’t had my coffee yet, you know, no Starbucks, ummm, lemme think a minute, uhh………(long pause)…question, a question, umm, gee, umm…(another long pause)…wow, a question that has not been asked. Well, I guess if I were going to ask a question to us I would probably say ‘Have you ever had a problem with men…thinking that you’re women and wanting to go out with you or wanting to dance with you at a party?’ KNAC.COM: And your answer would be Oz?

OZ: For my answer, I would say ‘Yeah, I did’ (hard laugh). I was at a party one time at a friend of mine’s house and some guy must have forgot his glasses, and I was walking around, I was all decked out, had my hair up and he came up, kept stopping me as I was walking by him in the hallway saying ‘Hey, Hey, Hey how are ya?’ and I was like, I just ignored him and then he kinda says ‘Hey, Hey, listen, you know, ya wanna dance?’ I looked at the guy and I said ‘Dude, you’re making a BIG mistake!’ and he goes ‘OHHH!’ and he grabs his mouth and he goes ‘I’m sorry! Man, oh my God!’, he like really tripped out. He thought I was a girl!

KNAC.COM: That’s hilarious!

OZ: (Long laugh) I don’t look like a girl anymore, thank God! (more laughing)

KNAC.COM: Looking back at how much the world has changed in the past 20 years do you feel that it’s now more important than ever to get your message out?

OZ: Absolutely. I honestly think that now is even a more of a desperate time to get this message out. As far as I see with what bible prophecy says, I mean we’re so much closer to the end times, the time the bible says is gonna be the end of time for this world. It’s just incredible all of these prophecies that have come true in the bible and now this one is coming to pass, you know it’s happening so fast that there’s no time anymore. For us, we need to get out there and give people this message and hopefully people will hear. It’s not time to be foolin’ around anymore if you’ve been kind of a believer then it’s time to really just get into why you even have that notion of being a believer and trying to find out the reasons why Christ came and what he has to offer and really it’s all about a relationship with God, that’s what we were created for, the purpose for our lives is to have a relationship with God and many people don’t see that or don’t want to hear it, but that’s what I’ve found out and so it’s time to find out what kind of relationship you’re supposed to have with God so that you can find out what your purpose is in life. You can’t be yourself until you really know God, you’ll become more of who you’re supposed to be when you get closer to God and have that relationship with him. That’s what we’re doing; we’re trying to let people know that.

~

A big shout to Oz Fox for taking the time on his off day to do this interview and to Kaitlin at KSA Publicity for making this happen, you rock! As you can plainly see, Stryper isn’t just talking the talk, they ARE walking the walk and I gotta give them props for doing something they KNOW is going to create some controversy and even generate some anger and hatred from those that dislike what they stand for.