Stryper The Rise and Fall of The Band

Stryper: Whatever happened to the popular 80's hair metal band who were also known for being super religous.

0:00 - Introduction
1:30 - Stryper's Early Years
3:38 - Stryper Finds Religion
5:07 - Stryper's Albums/Resistance
6:08 - Stryper's Success/Downfall
9:02- Stryper Reunion

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I’ve done quite a few videos on bands from the Sunset Strip and I’ve got more in the pipeline When I think of the Sunset Strip I think of debauchery and having a good time, but Stryper seemed to be the antithesis of everything going on. They would not only be the biggest selling christian band of the time, but the biggest band from Orange County as well. Today let’s focus on the early years of the Stryper up until their breakup in the early 90’s and how they brought religion to the sunset strip and beyond.
Before we can really talk about Stryper, we have to look at how religion and popular music went hand in hand leading up to the 1980’s. It all began in the Church’s with gospel music that was heavily influenced by the blues, which first became popular during the roaring 20’s. Of course with anything that’s popular in music, record labels came calling signing numerous gospel singers. By the middle of the 20th century, this style of gospel music started influencing big artists of the day including Elvis, Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. The populra musicians of the time typically had several gospel numbers they would perform pretty regularly and by the 60’s psychedelic rock acts influenced by religion soon sprouted up including the Larry Norman and the All Saved Freak Band. By the 80’s though, country music started to adopt more religious undertones, while Rock N’ Roll seemed to stray further away with Punk taking aim at organized religion. Soon enough, metal bands including Mercyful Fate, WASP and Venom would become the targets of religious groups for corrupting america’s youth. That's where Stryper came in.
Hailing from Orange County, Stryper was formed by two brothers in 1983 vocalist and singer Michael and his drumming brother Robert Sweet. Originally identifying themselves as Roxx, then Roxx Regime after somebody else already took the name, the band were a common site at LA hottest in clubs at the time including The Whisky A Go-Go, The Troubadour, & Gazzari’s & it was at those gigs the band could frequently be seen covering the Judas Priest’s breaking the law. The brothers would see musicians come and go in their band in their early years including future poison guitarist C.C. Deville. He eventually had left the group after disagreements over the band’s on stage fashion. But the band would soon find stability with the addition of guitarist Oz Fox and bassist Tim Gaines.
The band would catch the attention of Bill and Wes Hein who were co-founders of Greenworld Distribution who owned Enigma records. The label loved the sound of the band, only requesting they changed their name. The pair of brothers soon changed their name to Stryper using a y instead of i, so they wouldn’t actually refer to them as stripper, The name refers to the lashings or “stripes” Jesus got from the Romans. Soon enough, the band would adopt the colours of yellow and black and even use a passage from the the bible in the band's logo.
Stryper would even serve as an acronym standing for Salvation Through Redemption, Yielding Peace, Encouragement and Righteousness. What’s funny though is that Enigma Records didn’t even know Stryper were a religious band. Their live shows and demos had the vocals so muddled they couldn't really make out what the lyrics said. And t wasn’t until they were in the studio for their first record EP in 1984 that they finally realized Stryper was a Christian band. Producer Ron Goudie recalled in the book Nothin’ but a good time “they hid the whole jesus thing from us.while Wes Hein who signed the band recalled in the same book “The lyrics were a lot cleaner in the studio than on the bad cassette dub they had given us. We’re listening and one line is 'jesus is my way.' We look at each other and we look at Robert and Michael. There’s this silence and we say. 'Are you guys Christians. And they’re like Yes.
Religion wasn’t always a part of the band’s music. In the early days they were like any other band from the su