HOLY SOLDIER: Last Train Cover Story

[Reprinted from Heaven’s Metal Magazine, January/February 1991 Issue #33]

HOLY SOLDIER, the band that packed out L.A. clubs for years and could no longer go unnoticed, has just finished what could prove to be an even larger test than its debut album – the risky “second album test.” After finally getting on the road late last year, but having to travel with a substitute lead singer, it looked like the road to rock ‘n’ roll success for these guys was filled with nothing but potholes. Guitarist Michael Cutting decided to leave to pursue his own musical paths shortly after the fall tour ended; which left the band needing a new guitarist as well as filling its vacant vocal slot. Early in the Spring of 1991 both were provided with guitarist Scott Soderstrom and the return of vocalist Steven Patrick.

Heaven’s Metal recently caught up with bassist Andy Robbins, new guitarist Scott Soderstrom and frontman Steven Patrick to talk about this train-traveling bunch of soldiers.

LAST TRAIN kind of shows a new musical direction. What led to that?

“It goes without saying that we have a new member in the band,” explains Andy, “and we have a new influence. I think listening to the record for a year and a half before we went and did the next one really made us say, ‘okay, what do you want to do on the next record?’ Since the first time I popped in the first record, I started thinking about things I wanted to do for the next record. There were songs on the first record that I thought would be big hits and big successes, and they might have been behind their times or ahead of their times, that didn’t even get used as singles on Myrrh or A&M. It’s kind of like the thing where we’re trying to find a balance between our choices of songs. We don’t want to sell out and say, ‘Okay, this song didn’t make it, so what’s going on in the industry?’ We didn’t want to turn into the next Guns ‘N’ Roses, because Guns ‘N’ Roses was successful, you know? We wanted to continue to write music that would make us happy.

“We definitely have to be smart and say, ‘That song ended up being an album filler more so than a single, and what can we do to improve that? ‘ That was one aspect. Another aspect was just the fact that a lot of our musical taste has changed or expanded. It also has a lot to do with the kind of music you’re listening to when you’re writing the song. When we did the first record. Jamie was listening to Dokken religiously. Steve was listening to Led Zeppelin a lot. David has his influences, him being a songwriter affected the style of music that we were playing. He had a wide range of influences. Mine had always been more pop and upbeat, but a turning point in my life was I had started heading more towards alternative. Terry had always been a high energy drummer that always liked to play, sometimes he really liked to over-play.

“When Steven re-joined the band and we came into this record, we sat down with David on the first day of pre-production and he said, ‘Where do you want to go with this?’ We just said, ‘Everyone’s gonna have their say. Every idea is going to be presented and tried. It might be painful. You might think you have this song the way you want it, and someone might come along with an idea and want to change it and we’re going to have to settle on that.’ I think what it turned out to be was this record was actually more of a group effort than the last record, and the last one was a big group effort. I think everybody really spoke their mind on this one and it just happened to turn out that way.

“We had so many things to take into consideration, because the last thing we wanted to do was put out a carbon-copy of the last record, because, if it didn’t show any growth or any maturity, we would’ve been like all the other bands that come out and have a good record and they just kind of stagnate and don’t progress. Those are things we’ve really admired in bands like Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, the bands we were listening to when we were growing up, when we were young record buyers. We wanted to do everything we could to keep our sound and keep our style, but just develop on it. I think lyrically, the reason it was a little bit darker and a little bit different and has given us a new direction is just because of things we’ve learned and things we’ve experienced in the past two years since we’ve done the record. These are all new, fresh lyrics. This isn’t something that we’ve been sitting on for any time. This was stuff that was written present-time, 1991. The first record is an open biography of our life. You read it and you see things we’ve experienced and things we feel strong about and believe in and things we like to share. The same thing in the second record: how we look at things, how things affect us.”

“Like the first record,” comments Steven, “when we write, it’s kind of like a musical diary. We want people to see that there are a lot of good things going on. You know, God does a lot of cool things in our lives. On the other hand, here’s my struggles and what I’m dealing with also. We always like to present Christianity like that, because we feel for one reason or another or just from seeing other people that a lot of people feel like they can’t become Christians, because they see these people and it just seems to them like, ‘I could never be like he is.’ I think, when people see the reality of Christianity, I feel like they can accept it more. Not only that, but I think people respect honesty. I think that whenever you appear to be something that you’re not or only show one side of your character, I think that is when you have a good chance of becoming a hypocrite. If you’re always honest and real about where you’re at, I think you can never be a hypocrite. I think people will respect that. That’s pretty much the way we write.

‘There’s some songs on there like ‘Crazy,’ which people might think, ‘Ahh, this isn’t a Christian song,’ but what people don’t understand is that Christians have the same feelings as other people. You have a relationship with God, but you still live life just like anyone else, but maybe it’s from a different perspective. You still fall in love. You still get your heart broke. You still get pissed off. You still make mistakes. You still do all those things. So, when we write, we just write from a real point of view.

“It just seems like Christianity lately here has kind of gotten a bad rap. I think so many people put their faith in other people. I think it’s a mistake to do that. People place expectations on other people. It’s kind of like what we joke about. We read certain interviews and things, and we say, ‘Man, people must that that we’re like, ‘Oh, God bless you, Jamie, as you pass the salt.’ (laughter) It’s really not like that. We all know each other well. The media only sees about 10%. People see only a very small part of us magnified by the media, but come live with me for about two weeks and really get to know me. See me when I’m having a bad day and I’m freaking out, or just whatever.

“I think that what happened with Stryper was really unfortunate. People just expected them to be more than they were, and when they found out that the reality is that they’re just like any other man. They make mistakes. I can’t believe that Christians are so uptight if somebody in Stryper smokes or has a drink. It shouldn’t really matter, you know? It kinda really had an impact on me when I saw how people kind of turned and dismissed them over little, trifle things. and so quickly forgot about all the good things they did and all the lives that were touched and all the souls that were saved. Those people have no idea what it’s like to be in Stryper. They don’t have to deal with people coming up to them day-in and day-out, asking them. ‘Why do you have long hair? Why do you play this kind of music?’ You know, just (being) under fire all the time. Nobody really takes that into consideration.

“It just seems to me that a lot of Christians kill their wounded. It’s sad. That’s something I wanted to write about in ‘Virtue and Vice.’ I guess everybody’s like that. You have your old man. You’re always fighting against that guy. He’s always trying to creep into your life. You try to walk and live a life for God, but it’s just like anything: you have your mountains and your valleys. You have your highs and your lows. Christianity is a process of highs and lows. You walk and you fall, you get back up off your knees, God kind of dusts you off, and sets you on your way again. You learn from your mistake and you just have your sights set on God. When you fall short, you keep getting up and you keep heading in that direction.

“Anyway, that’s pretty much what the album’s about: a lot of different things. Michael’s (Cutting) mom dying had a really big impact on us, because she was such a beautiful woman and a really good friend to the band. (She was) kind of like a mother to the band. We did our first record at her house. I got to know her really well. When I heard she died, it came as quite a shock. It really saddened me. We were writing this song (“Tuesday Mourning”) and the music was really sad, and I just started thinking about her. I just started to write it. I feel like it’s a really universal thing, because even if you haven’t lost your mother yet, one day you will. You’re always close to your mother. She’s the one who fed you and changed your diaper and nursed you and did all that stuff. We try to write songs that people can relate with, kind of universal themes.

“Then there were some things that we wanted to talk about, like drinking and driving, which isn’t cool. Basically, if you ‘re doing that, somebody’s playing you the fool. Self­-destructive behavior or attitudes. ‘Fair Weather Friends’ is kind of an interesting song. I read a magazine in Seattle when we were in pre­production, and it was a Christian magazine. I won’t go so far as to say what magazine it was or who the artist was that they were talking to, but that was really not the point. It was the fact that this person had written this article with a member of this band. It was kind of like the guy wanted to get through all the controversy or whatever, so the artist started to expose himself, and the guy was all buddy-buddy with him during the interview, saying, ‘Yeah, I can understand that. Oh, I can see this. Oh yeah, of course.’ After the interview was over, there was this thing, like ‘Note: This is unfortunately, the hardest part of my job. We can no longer support these brothers,’ and ‘they’re in sin, and they need help,’ and that kind of thing.

“It just really got me, because I didn’t really have a problem with what he said, but it’s like the guy didn’t have the guts to say it in the article. He totally had been talking to the artist like he was all buddy-buddy with him. He just didn’t have the guts to say what he had to say. It kind of reminds me of Simon Peter or Judas. It’s just like, how soon people forget the good that some people do, who do a lot of good. So quickly, at the least little thing, they can just tum around and be their worst enemy. They just dismiss them altogether.

“It seems like a lot of Christians are kind of a trip. Sometimes it’s hard for me to deal with it. Lately, I’ve been going through this thing where I really don’t want to go to church anymore. It’s not that my belief or anything is faltering or anything like that, but I just sometimes feel like, ‘Gosh, there’s only a few people I can talk to or I can really trust.’ I just kind of want to stay within that circle, you know?

“It’s kind of a darker album. Holy Soldier went through a real hard year. It was a good year. The first album was pretty much a success. It won a lot of awards. For a debut record, it was like the largest-selling Christian rock debut record to date. It was a good year, but shortly thereafter, a lot of things happened. I ended up leaving the band, because I had gotten married, I had a child that was unexpected that was on the way. I just felt like I needed the time to kind of sort things out, to kinda get my priorities straight and spend some time with my family. There were some other things that added to my leaving. Management wasn’t working out. The record company, A&M, wasn’t working out. Michael was having a lot of doubts. He kind of wanted to pursue another type of music, but I think he felt like maybe the Lord wanted him to stick with Soldier. And he felt maybe like it would be selfish for him to move on and do something else like he’s always wanted to do. like be in a one-guitar player band.

“I think it was a hard year. but it was a good year, because I learned a lot about myself being away from the band and kind of getting back in touch with who I am, a regular day-to­day guy. I think it was healthy for the band, because I think it made us re-evaluate a lot of things about our band. We kind of got rid of a lot of dead weight. The band is really cool, because there seems to be like a great like a great freedom in the band now. We’ve got new management, a new accountant, a new attorney, a new guitar player, who’s really, really cool. He’s really good, a great player. Everyone seemed to have an open mind towards music and writing and just one another. I think we’ve grown a lot with these people and this band. All those things we just wanted to write about, you know, what’s been going on with us. That’s pretty much where the album came from.”

“Gimme Shelter” was a wild choice for a cover. Why it?

“That’s just a song that we wanted to re-do,” states Andy. “There was no general purpose or general statement on why we did the song. We just liked the song. We felt it wasn’t a big, bad immoral song for a Christian artist to do. That was just something like, ‘Hey, we like this song. We’re going to perform it,’ just like it was a live concert type of thing. Hopefully people will appreciate it.

“We heard that song on the radio one day,” adds Steven, “and said, ‘Wow, that’s a real cool song.’ I don’t know why the Rolling Stones wrote it. I don’t know what their inspiration was for it, but we liked the song and, from what we can gather, we kinda figured out what it meant. It’s like, you can’t really understand Mick Jagger, so we kind of had to call the publishing company and had them send the lyrics. When we read it, it was right up our alley. Myrrh was into it. Basically, what it’s about is there’s a storm threatening the sky’s very existence, and you need to find some shelter from the storm or you’re gonna fade away. To us, there can only be one storm, you know. It’s very definite … what’s going on today, and the prophecies that are coming to pass, and I feel like this is the last days, or it’s getting close. It may not happen in our lifetime, but I know it’s getting close. What that song means to us is: we need some shelter, man. We need the shelter of Jesus Christ. We can’t have any peace without Him. The only thing that’s going to shelter you from the storm is Jesus Christ, that’s it. He’s the only One. With that, we decided this was the song for us.

“Ever since I can remember hearing that song, I’ve always thought, ‘I really lik’e this song, but I like the first part so much, I wish they’d do it again somewhere else in the song.’ The song is basically just a blues song in D. It doesn’t really do a whole lot, so we ended up leaving out a third verse, because we wanted to do something different, not that the verse was weird lyrically or anything. We wanted to add a breakdown section and bring in that part again. If we were to do that and add a third verse, we would make it even more redundant than it already was. We sliced it up a little bit. We didn’t want to just copy Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.”

“There’s a few things that we want to accomplish by playing Christian music,” states Andy. “We never really set out to be hardcore evangelists. We never really had a vision for going out and having altar calls and just doing that route. We really just wanted to show the realness of God’s love and do it with an open mind; and we want people to have an open mind. I think that is one thing that goes along with having an open mind: having an open mind to art. think that’s one thing the church has to do.

“One thing I’ve seen at Christian concerts, and not just our own, is how people have witch hunts on Christian artists. I don’t think that’s fair. I mean, people are always looking for faults. ‘Well, you say that you ‘re a Christian. Well, I’m going to come and I’m just going to tear it apart. Where’s Jesus in all of this?’ I don’t think that’s right. They’re not taking into consideration: here’s an artist who’s doing the best he can do as a musician and who’s doing the best he can do as a Christian. It takes a lot of love to be a Christian artist; a lot of compassion. You don’t want to rum bitter. You don’t want to look at people and lose compassion you have for those people, whether they’re believers or not, because people will do that to you. I look at moments in my life when I’d been bitter against the church at a younger age and I look at the things that made me turn that way.

“I was brought up in a Christian family. I was baptized at eight years old. My mom sent me on the church bus every Sunday morning. I looked at what happened at 11 years old that made me backslide for five years, and made me turn from the church, and I kind of relate that to modem day. Here I am in the Christian entertainment industry and I’m watching friends at concerts get this witch hunt thing happening to them, and I don’t think it’s fair. I’ve seen too many things that I think could be questionable by Christian artists in their performances. There’s certain things that go on in certain concerts that I don’t really practice in my life, but I’m not going to sit there and yell at the artist and embarrass the artist in front of the audience.”

I understand your vision (and like it too). How do you respond when someone says, “Well, these people that are corning to your shows, they might die and go to hell, and if you’re not preaching Jesus, you know, what’s the deal? They need to know Jesus or they’re gonna go to hell, and they might go to hell that night, and what are you doing about it?”

“Well, I’ve always looked at it this way: there’s one body and many parts. I think there’s a definite need for bands like Petra. There’s a definite need for bands like King’s X, U2, The Alarm, and The Call. I think there’s a definite need for the bands in-between: Holy Soldier, and whoever else kind of shares the vision we have. We do Christian concerts, and we do shows where we openly talk about our faith and we openly talk about the Lord. At Christian concerts it’s almost like a thing of fellowship and revival and celebration and sharing with other brothers and sisters, because you’re playing to an audience that’s probably about 95% Christians.

“We have learned in all the clubs we’ve played in–we’ve played in so many–what works and what doesn’t work. You walk on stage in a bar with a Bible, and the place is going to empty out, or you ‘re going to be wearing beer. You’re just going to be getting obscenities. Maybe there is a need for bands to go in and be bold in the bars. At certain times when we first started out, we were real green in the industry, and we used to do preaching in the bars. One time we had an altar call in the Whisky a Go ­Go.

“I don’t know, but us as musicians and artists that plan on continuing to make a living at this, it’s very important to be very, very, very wise as serpents and gentle as doves. You can kind of feel the vibe on when and what to say when performing in a club. When you’re performing at a Christian concert, there’s certain things that you know people wanna hear. Christians love to hear you talk about Jesus when you’re on stage. They’d be happy sometimes if you played two songs and preached for an hour. That’s great.

“We just said to ourselves, ‘This is Holy Soldier. This is the package. A band comes to town. They’re performing at such and such club. They go in and they’re a good witness to the promoter or to the bar owner, the bartenders, the bouncers that night, and the waitresses. There, you’ve established your friendship. You come in with a good attitude. When you do your performance, it’s a nice, clean show. Usually when you see five guys with long hair running around on stage with leather pants, or whatever, they’re either spitting or drinking beer and pouring it on the audience or cussing or talking about their manlihood, their macho-ism, and how many girls are in love with them. They’re singing lyrics that are trashy. They’re not really setting a good pattern of life, a good example, for these people. They’re basically endorsing debauchery. With Holy Soldier, it’s different. You’ve got guys coming in and they’re singing about the joys of being a Christian, or Christians going through pain and learning to deal with it, talking about Christians in love, or Christians looking for love, or non-Christians loo · g for 10\·e. We’ve even gone so far as writing songs about abortion, building walls, salvation, and stuff like that. The only difference is that it’s done in an art form where you really have to stop and think and listen to the lyrics and have an open mind to figure it out.

“The first record has four songs on it singing about Jesus Christ, and when the singer is in there singing ‘Jesus Christ,’ you see people take a double-look. They’ll go, ‘Wow! Did he say Jesus?’ They’re not used to hearing that. It’s a foreign language in a bar. When you’re speaking a foreign language to somebody, you’ve got to be real explanatory when you deal with that, so we put a lot of detail into our lyrics. Then we try and establish a relationship with the audience during our performance.

“When we first win them over with our music, and they look up and they go, ‘Wow! I haven’t heard that guy cuss tonight. How come they’re not drinking beer like the opening act? Their songs aren’t about how many women they had last week.’ Things change, and then we see the results afterward. We get off stage and people go, ‘Wow! That was a really good show. You guys are a Christian band, huh? Wow, that was really neat. Had I known it was a Christian concert, I wouldn’t have come, but I’m glad I did,’ and things like that. I think that’s the way that God uses Holy Soldier in His body. We’re one part of the body. We’re going to reach those people, because those are people that God has designed Holy Soldier to reach.”

How did you come into the band, Scott?

“My friend Dez Dickerson told me about Holy Soldier looking for a guitarist,” says former American Showcase player Scott Soderstrom, “so I called David Zaffiro and talked to him about the band, and then I called Jamie.

He said, ‘Why don’t you go out and buy the tape and learn the songs on it.’ I did and (laughs) I remember seeing Andy’s picture on the back, where he looked real menacing. I didn’t know if I wanted to talk to him. It’s funny now, because he’s really friendly and totally different than that picture would make one think. Anyway. I auditioned and they liked my playing. Jamie told me I had the gig if I wanted it. We hit it off really great right away. From the amount of time I’ve spent in the band, it’s worked out amazingly well.”

Did you get involved with songwriting?

“Yeah. I wrote most of the heavy guitar riffs, like in ‘Virtue & Vice’ and ‘Fair­weather Friends.’”

Any video plans?

“Not yet,” says Andy. “As of yet, we haven’t even decided upon the singles that will be pushed in the mainstream. Seeing that the mainstream funnels the money for the videos and the singles, it would be something that they’d choose. I’ve heard talk from Word that they want to use ‘Virtue and Vice’ as the first metal single, and ‘Last Train’ as the first rock single. If l had my choice, I’d love to do something with ‘Last Train,’ just because of the concept of the last train. I think it’s something that could be really cool if it was done right. As far as songs that we have, my guess is songs like ‘Love Is On The Way’ and ‘Crazy’ would be songs more geared towards mainstream. You don’t even know anymore, the market’s so twisted now.”

Now that you’ve finished your second album, what next?

“It was strange with the recording of this album,” explains Steven. “We decided to call it ‘Last Train,’ and the first studio we went to had a little black train sitting on top of the console. The guy who owns the studio just happened to have that train sitting there. One of the other studios had train tracks right across the street from it. It was weird. It seemed like everywhere we went, we saw trains and stuff. We went over to Guatemala and half-jokingly said, ‘Is this going to be our last record? Are we going to die or something?’ It’s kind of funny.

“I see the band really progressing musically on the next record. There’s a lot of things we want to do. We kind of changed our style a little bit. We kind of want to get out of the metal rut, you know? It’s kind of like a painter who only paints with red paint. All his fans know him, because he paints with red paint, but there’s only so much you can do with red paint. We kinda want to use the whole spectrum. That’s kinda one of the things I liked about Zeppelin: they weren’t using a formula. They weren’t locked into any one thing. That’s kind of what we’d like to do with the next record. We’d like to take a lot of chances. You never knew what to expect out of Zeppelin. We just want the next record to be different, not change drastically, like go punk or anything, but we just want to write some stuff with a groove, that just seriously grooves and that’s really fresh. Gosh. We’re already looking forward to the third record. We finished this one in August. It’s like we’re ready to start working on the next record.”

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