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Home , Michael Sweet, Richard Christy, Stryper, To Hell with the Devil

HONESTLY My life and revealed.

By

Founding member, singer, songwriter, and guitarist of the pioneering band Stryper tells his life story…. Honestly.

with Dave Rose and Doug Van Pelt

© 2014 Big3 Records ONE

I drink. Occasionally I smoke. If you ask my wife, my kids, my tech, my agent or my manager they'll all tell you that I curse more than I should. I've fooled around with women on tour buses. I’ve been arrested for indecent exposure. I've been reckless with money to the point of bankruptcy. My favorite bands are The Beatles, and . I was pissed at God when my wife died of cancer and I despise religion.

I am a Christian.

I'm Michael Sweet. I’m a singer, guitarist, songwriter, producer and a founding member of the pioneering Christian rock band Stryper. We've sold almost 10 million records to date and were the first Christian band to air on MTV, and to have four #1 videos. We even had two top-10 videos at the same time, back when MTV actually played music videos. We've played soccer stadiums and biker bars, sometimes in the same week.

Despite having done all of that, I'm still often known as the -Tossing- Yellow & Black-Bumble-Bee guy. The guy. The 80's hair/glam guy. An irrelevant joke. Or, even worse-- sometimes I'm not known at all.

So who am I? I'm a guy that grew up in Southern California – sort of a surf punk kind of guy who absolutely loved music. My brother, Robert, and I are the founding members of Stryper. Our band hit at the right time in the right place, and I thank God for every experience that I've had.

If you've picked up this book in hopes of reading stories about me hiding in a closet shooting up heroin, buying prostitutes with all my earnings or beating the crap out of a club owner because he looked at me funny, you should probably read the Motley Crue book instead, because you won't find that here. I’m not better than they are, but my story is different. I’m not an angel, either, and I think you'll find some pretty eye-opening stories, and I hope – whether you know my music or not – you'll find them enlightening or at least entertaining.

When I casually become a little introspective, I conclude that I'm a fairly normal guy; but that might just be wishful thinking. You read through the stories of my life and then you decide – am I a regular guy or am I just a big mess?

In one lifetime that seems like an instant I've gone from being a struggling musician on The Sunset Strip to being the songwriter in a multi-platinum selling band (Stryper), to going bankrupt (Stryper), to leaving Stryper, to topping the charts on Christian radio (solo years), to working at a campground and harvesting cranberries, to reuniting with Stryper, and then being a co-lead singer and guitarist in another multi-multi-platinum selling band (), to losing my wife to cancer, to remarrying, to leaving Boston, to recording more Stryper records and producing more solo . God only knows what's next.

I live near Cape Cod and I’m blessed with two incredible kids, Mikey and Ellena, and an amazing wife, Lisa. I have a handful of people I would call friends and a whole lot of people who I know by face, but couldn't tell you their names if my life depended on it. My life is good. Still to this day I can’t believe that I get paid for what I do, and not a day goes by that I take that for granted.

I have the most unique legion of fans. The vast majority of my fans are, like me, middle-aged family people. Good, normal people, many with some sort of Christian upbringing, but yet out of nowhere I find out that people like Larry The Cable Guy and are fans. That Mike Wengren (Disturbed) and () are fans. I read an article once where Wyclef Jean said he grew up listening to Stryper. Twiggy from Marilyn Manson saw us back in the day and even dressed up as a member of Stryper for career day when he was in high school. John 5 (Rob Zombie) saw us multiple times when he was growing up and even caught a bible that he still has to this day! Drew Barrymore recently used a Stryper T-shirt in her film Whip It.

To the mainstream public or maybe even to the hobbyist musician, I'm the guy that may be slightly cooler than Kip Winger, but isn’t nearly as cool as Bono. But if you get a couple of beers in people, you'd be shocked at who is willing to say, "Stryper? Hell yeah. They're one of my all-time favorite bands. , baby."

How it got to this point, I have no idea. Some would call it luck. Some may call it a curse. I call it humbling divine intervention.