Over his 35 years in the music industry, Michael Sweet has demonstrated his ability to dextrously morph in and out of genres with relative ease, maintaining the intensity of his melodies, the passion and emotion of his guitar playing and singing, in a natural and authentic manner.
From the 1980s’ bombast and hook-laden ballads of his primary band Stryper, through is dynamic and diverse solo career, to his seamless ability to collaborate with the likes of Tom Scholz of Boston and George Lynch (Dokken, Lynch Mob), Sweet allows what he is thinking and feeling at the time he begins to write to flow over him, acting more as a creative conduit, following where the muse takes him and in the process creating memorable rock and metal music with exceptional compositional excellence.
In the case of Ten, his new solo record, released through Rat Pak Records on Oct. 11, and the previous solo outing One Sided War, released in 2016, there is a definite and definitive edge and heaviness not only to the music but to the lyrical tone as well.
“I have been in more of a heavy mode these days, so I have been writing more in line with heavy music. But that day may come very well soon where I wake up and write an album that’s more acoustic driven, or a little more poppy or a little more on the lighter side. I am just in this heavy mode. It’s the stuff I am listening to. I am listening to heavier music, old school, nothing new to be honest because nothing new does it for me. I listen to a lot of the old traditional metal. For example, the newest album that I recently purchased and have been listening to is the latest Judas Priest album, Firepower. But that’s more of a throwback to traditional metal as well,” Sweet explained.
“That’s the stuff I love. I love Priest, I love Maiden, I love Van Halen, I love Dio and I grew up on that stuff, so it’s just what’s coming out of me at the moment. Now, that can change, and it may very well change, and I don’t say that to make people go ‘oh no’. It’s just that I like to explore the different sides of Michael Sweet and I’ve definitely got different sides. I grew up listening to Iron Maiden equally as much as listening to Journey. I am a firm believer in the notion that a good song is a good song, whether it’s a ballad or even a country song.
“There are a lot of country songs that I love, more so traditional country. I was a kid in the late 1960s and 1970s and cut my teeth on a lot of the old school country. My parents would listen to everything from Buck Owens to Ray Price to Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette and George Jones. And it was because they were just great songs. You just can’t deny the songs, the emotion, the lyrics, the melody – some are phenomenal. And I think no matter what the genre or style, if it’s a good song, it’s a good song and it’s going to affect people and move people and touch people.”
Sweet admitted, only half-jokingly, that if he could spend every waking hour of everyday writing songs, he would do so.
“I am a music guy; I am a song guy. When I was literally two or three years old, I would rock and bop all the time. I would rock back and forth in any chair or couch that I was sitting on and I would hum melodies. I would just sit there as this little kid humming away. I was born with a song in my head and in my heart. And you know, writing just for myself has nothing to do with Stryper. It’s just how I’m made, how I am as a human being, how God made me. I am a song man; I’ve got a song in me all the time. I have gone to the market and my wife gives me a list of 10 things to pick up and I will come home with five things, half of them wrong, because I was writing a song in my head at the supermarket. I mean, that’s my life, it’s just how I am wired,” he said.
“I have this endless desire to write songs and have an everlasting flow of music coming out of me. So, I need a way to express that. Stryper doesn’t give me the opportunity to do that 100 per cent of the time, that’s why we do an album every few years and then in between I do other albums. Now, if I could, I would probably alienate my wife, kids and all my friends and family, but if I could I would release four albums a year – easily. It would just be non-stop. I would be in the studio right now, wrapping another one up and releasing it three or four months after Ten. I could do that no problem. As a matter of fact, I almost think that more would come out of me and maybe even the best is yet to come situation would fall into place in that scenario. I do think the best is yet to come. I don’t think I have recorded or written my best work yet – I really believe that. But I try to keep a grip on things, so I don’t make everyone else nuts around me, because their plates are full.
“My wife manages the band and manages me. She is working on stuff 24/7 already, so if I gave her any more, it really wouldn’t be feasible or possible. But I could if I was on my own, although it really would be a scary situation. I have this picture of me in a dingy apartment somewhere, unbathed for six months, long scraggly hair and fingernails, just like Howard Hughes, with 1,000 songs and working on another 1,000 songs.”
Solo material allows Sweet a pretty much clean slate on which to create, with far fewer restrictions and expectations to have to contend with than in a band scenario.
“I do enjoy doing the Stryper stuff equally as much as I do the solo stuff. It’s very exciting. I love the process and hanging out with the guys and everything. I will be honest, I won’t whitewash anything, I do enjoy the freedom of doing solo work. I am not saying I don’t have freedom in Stryper because I do. But I have even more freedom when I do solo stuff. I don’t have to go to three other guys and show them what I am working on and get their opinions and say, ‘hey, what do you think we should do here?’ I just do it,” Sweet said.
“And there’s something to be said for that. It’s kind of nice to just go in the studio on my own and work with the engineer and boom. I can just start and not have to kind of wait or ask for anything or pause. There is something to be said for that, that’s kind of cool. But at the same time, I love working with Stryper and I love working with the guys and it’s very exciting and always an incredible time. And we are able to still, thank God, get great results and make really good albums.”
As the second decade of the 21st century wraps up, there continues to be great discussion within music circles as to the viability and rationale behind creating and releasing a collection of songs as an ‘album’ be it digital, or in physical forms or a combination thereof – even though everyone from Taylor Swift to Foo Fighters is still putting out albums. Sweet is firmly in the camp of many of his contemporaries who still believe in the importance of albums.
“I think it’s a way of life and how we were raised. I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s and those eras were all about albums and full lengths. Yeah, we had singles and the labels would release a single, but they would be as a way to promote an album. People would go out and purchase an album, whether it was an 8-track, or vinyl or cassette and then eventually CDs. It wasn’t about downloads or streams of one song. To me, it’s such a sad way of thinking today, because you’re missing out. It’s like your talking home just one scene from a movie. ‘I liked the beginning, so I want just the first 10 minutes of it.’ How sad and how weird,” Sweet said.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me and most musicians that are peers or people I grew up listening to. But these are the times that we live in because of technology. Technology has advanced us but crippled us as well, especially musicians, because with technology, musicians are really getting the bad side of the deal. We don’t sell hard copies like we did in the past, in fact we sell very little. CDs are becoming obsolete; vinyl has made a surge but it’s still not selling a lot. I am very fortunate to sell 10,000 copies of an album the first week out. You go back to 1989 though and it would have been 100,000 copies of an album. Musicians rely on that income because of royalties; it’s where the bulk of the money came from in the old days. Now you have to rely on going out and touring yourself to death just to make a buck and just absolutely burning yourself out trying to survive from touring money and from merchandise money because you make no money on album sales unless you’re Lady Gaga or number one on the pop charts.”
Another reason Sweet still prefers the medium of a full album is it allows him to create an overall soundscape, where he takes time to make sure there is a sort of logical and emotional flow to the song order, even if there isn’t necessarily a coherent narrative winding its way through the material from start to finish.
“People have actually asked me many times to consider doing a concept album like a Queensryche or Rush, but I have never really felt led to do that. There’s not a flow to the ideas or the thought behind this album necessarily. On this album I did try to go in a more positive direction lyrically, versus the last Stryper album [2017’s] God Damn Evil, which was darker. I do try to make sure there’s a flow to it as well. I always like to start with an eye opener, something that’s going to kick your butt, which I did with Better Part of Me, and then end with something that’s also going to kick your butt [Ricochet] like bookends. Everything in between are the books that you’re going to read throughout, and I try to make it a little bit of a roller coaster ride, keep the flow going for two or three songs and then bring it down a little bit, putting a balled there in the middle before bringing it back up and then end with a bang,” he explained, adding that he also wished to add some sonic diversity to Ten by bringing in a number of guest performers.
“I don’t sit down and think too much about it. I just start writing and then if I am feeling I go with it. If I like it, I keep going, if I don’t, I say, ‘okay let me come up with something else, this one’s not doing it for me.’ I am getting out of the corporate music way of thinking where it’s got to be so long and be of a certain format and thinking of radio. I don’t think of radio ever. And that’s no disrespect to radio, but radio has never been a fan or Stryper or Michael Sweet and they never will be. And as for guests, I play all the guitars, but when it came to solos, I found that when I did them it made the album sound more like a Stryper album because I have a very recognizable style. For the last album, I wanted to take the songs a little away from the Stryper direction, so I brought in a couple of guitar players to do the solos: Ethan Brosh and Joel Hoekstra [Whitesnake].
“On this album I decided to take that even a step further and bring in different players for each song. I am still playing all the rhythm parts and all the overdubs, but each song has a different soloist. And I am glad I did that. Better Part of Me starts out sounding like maybe a Stryper song and then Jeff Loomis [Arch Enemy] kicks in and takes it in a different direction. Son of Man starts out again like a bit of a Stryper song and then Andy James comes in and now it has a European progressive metal vibe. My thinking was to bring in these guys [including Brosh and Hoekstra again, as well as Tracii Guns, Gus G, Rich Ward, Howie Simon, John O’Boyle, Mike Kerr and Ian Raposa] to add some different flavours to the album. And then at the same time showcase their talents because these are some of my favourite guitar players. These are the guys that I rave about and I think are brilliant, like a proud dad. These guys are the best of the best and I am just grinning from ear to ear like I am watching them play baseball and they just hit a home run.”
Hard rock/metal music continues to be a powerful and prolific concert draw throughout Europe, South America and parts of the Far East, but remains almost a niche market in North America. Sweet believes it is coming back but is disappointed that the nation that essentially created rock and roll seems to have fallen out of love with it on a mass level.
“The sad part is hard rock and metal is taking a back seat now and has for many years. But I will say, and people can say I am a jerk for saying it, which is fine, I am sure they will, but hard rock and metal is the best genre out there in terms of talent. At least in my opinion. You go find any players from any other genre that are as talented as musicians in hard rock and metal bands – drummers, bass players, guitar players, vocalists – some of the most talented musicians have been in hard rock and metal – always have been and always will be. Unfortunately, that’s not recognized and not given the credit it’s due because of who knows what. It’s almost looked at like some type of circus or freak show,” he said, warming up to the subject.
“Stryper is signed to a label in Italy and has been for quite a while, and Frontiers has always believed in what we do and really pushes the Stryper name and Stryper brand and God bless them for it. There are other international labels doing the same thing. Audience numbers are different. I see that when we perform here in North America we will play to, say 1,000 people at the House of Blues in Orlando or whatever. And we thank God for that, and the people are great and year after year they support us, and we love them for that. But then Stryper goes to Puerto Rico and we play to 5,000 people. Puerto Rico? A small, little island and 5,000 people turn out? It’s mind boggling. Or we go to South America and play for 3,000, 4,000 or 5,000 people – and even more. And we would sit there and go, ‘gosh, I wish we saw those kinds of numbers in the States.
“But at the same time, the flip side of that coin is that when we release an album, the majority of our hard copy sales are here in North America: not in Europe, not in South America where are numbers in terms of audience are much higher, but not in terms of actual sales. There’s something that’s twisted there, something is out of whack.”
What isn’t out of whack is the passion and proficiency Sweet puts into every song, every album he creates, and Ten is no different. Now that the album is out, Sweet said work will soon begin on a new Stryper album, to be released next year, as well as continuing work on a documentary about the band.
For more information on Michael Sweet, Ten and his other projects, visit www.michaelsweet.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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