Performance

The Creatives are coming! The Creatives are coming!
Above is one of my covers at Performance Magazine, a concert industry trade. Most of the time those covers were glossy art featuring recording artists on tour. It wasn’t Billboard, Cashbox or the Hollywood Reporter, but there wasn’t another trade magazine in those years focused on concert tours from the business end. We could make a difference for concert promoters, book agents, concert arenas and facilities.  

But why am I posting about this here on a blog called Spirit and Soul? 

I always felt like a black spiritual sheep because I didn’t stay focused solely on the beauty and the good reports , the “whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely”. Honestly, I could not ignore the ugly details I saw. We are who we are. Even in the music business I was drawn to the serious issues of crowd control before any of the ‘suits’ were willing to admit steps had to be taken to protect lives. Of course they weren’t interested: it would cost them out of their share of concert earnings. 

What I began to sense recently about the CREATIVES coming to faith, believe it or not, has challenged me like the challenges I experienced when I began to follow terrorism as a secondary interest to the Messianic Jewish ministries in Israel. It felt like I was being drawn away from the main calling I had, instead of putting everything to use. 

When I first began to see the Hamas in Israel beginning to get its agenda organized and connected in the United States, it was like so far from the what most Christians focus on it seemed unspiritual. My interest was there anyway and a good portion of my commitment to the Israeli Messianic Jewish ministries was to understand what was up with the Islamist enemies of Israel. 

My belief is that as Christians we cannot afford to live our lives in a LaLa Land bubble of “See no evil, hear no evil”. If that is our idea of being a good Christian, we are pretty useless. SALT-FREE CHRISTIANITY is not balanced!

In mid-September, just six or seven weeks ago I became attracted in a way I couldn’t shake when I followed the music on a reel on Facebook over to YouTube to see the original version of Tears for Fears, Everybody Wants to Rule the World. This was in 1983, the same year I left the music business, and Roland and Curt looked like baby-face teenagers to me! Next up I watched them perform the same song in 2022 and they are now in their 80’s, Roland with long, flowing white hair and Curt with a buzz cut instead of hair.  

I do not remember them from my last days in the music business but I sure knew their song, and some of the others too as I continued to listen. One of the interviews or online music analysis’ videos I watched said something that really intrigued me about Tears for Fears. It was that they always made music for the hurting. See I know that means they were hurting and that’s what they wrote songs about. Writers to best when we write what we know, that goes for songwriters too. I bought Roland Orzabal’s new book, “Welcome to Your Life” and that confirmed my call on that hypothesis. The more I read and listened to their interviews and music, the more I thought this was the leading of God about what He is going to do among the creatives. They may consider us the last people they would consider with any answers for them. I know that’s how I felt. But here I am. Forty plus years later still following in the faith.

CREATIVES are going to come to faith in the days ahead and already some have been coming hungry for truth, healing and freedom. Nothing else has proved to have the answer. It has softened my heart toward the music industry in just a matter of weeks. I still enjoyed great music, but so many seem so dead set against all the values I hold dear.

The same goes for the younger generation too. I find my heart softening towards them. Just recently I saw that 42% of Gen Z Americans have been diagnosed with a mental health condition. Unfortunately, only 2 out of 10 are self-aware that they have a problem. Some of it, if we are being honest, is the young people are trapped in the mental illnesses of lies they have adopted as truth. The indoctrination has not be “for” young people, it has been imprisoning them, not setting them free.

Instead of holier than thou, some of us believers better remember where we came from before we were pulled out of the abyss of  our own pain, sorrow and misery. Sometimes it came by the indoctrination of the times in which we live, and some by our own bad decisions but many times by circumstances that were not our choice at all. Sometimes we were born into bad choices our parents made. We can love them without wanting to carry forward to our offspring the same things we have lived through. 

As for the musicians, singers and songwriters, even though I never met Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith of Tears for Fears, I did meet many others and as I think back now on what I knew about them, I’m convinced we need to be open to the creatives who come seeking answers for their own personal lives. I have already written many short articles about some of them which I hope to get most uploaded this week. Here are a couple more of my memories.

I remember a singer-songwriter I met in the 1970’s named Tom Jans. He is now dead, but his life was full of pain and misery. I thought he was a really nice guy, but his life continued to spiral out of control until his death at 36 from drug overdose. He gave up after a tragic motorcycle accident shattered his leg. It apparently was the last straw of his disappointing music career, “a stereotypical music business casualty.” It is not that Tom never had success, both Bette Midler and Tom Waites paid tribute to him after his death. He just did not reach what he envisioned for himself and he saw no hope going forward. 

Or Tommy Bolin who had been the guitarist of Deep Purple. I saw him headlining in an incredible showcase appearance one week before before he died at the age of 25. Bolin walked offstage that night at the Electric Ballroom in Dallas and passed out straightaway when he hit the cool air outside the stage door. The show I saw was described as “one of the incredibly rare, highly energetic club dates of the Private Eyes solo tour before he transitioned to the larger stadium package dates opening for Jeff Beck and Black Sabbath.”

It was an electrifying performance. But that night in Dallas the band was incensed that Bolin was overdoing the drug and alcohol intake. Invited to the hotel after the gig, my friend and I could hear an explosive band meeting going on from the hallway. We decided to make our exit. One week later Tommy Bolin would die just after a major arena show with Jeff Beck in Florida. The promising ‘next big thing’ went up in smoke because of whatever pain and sorrow Bolin was self-medicating for.

Why am I telling these stories?
First because I was eyewitness to them. I haven’t told these stories to people, except maybe my husband, a former drummer with a Capitol Records band in the early Seventies. He has his own painful stories about the business. After coming to faith, I never wanted to glorify my concert days… and I didn’t want a load of Christian judgmentalism either.

When I walked away from the music business to began my journey of learning who God and Jesus really were, and to begin my own healing from pain and sorrow, I cut all ties to my music past. I rarely thought about it or the people I met in the business.  I did not want to dwell on that stuff. It may impress people who have never been in the business and only see the star facade of their favorites, but I did not want to ride that that wave. 

Now as I am 75 and walking in the last miles of my life, I have been experiencing a growing compassion for those people I met, and also many I never met. I can read between the lines because I realize they are not “idols” they are human beings like the rest of us. After all this time I’m seeing their tears and fears through different eyes: they were just like me. Only the details of their personal pain and sorrows are different.

We need to be ready to receive them – and protect them by prayers for them too. Spirit and Soul is about my journey, and it would not be complete without acknowledging where I’ve been.