It’s two-birds-with-one-stone time! Who better to explain his lyrics than the Great Gary himself? This interview was brought to my attention recently - it’s from Christian rock mag Heaven’s Metal, in their regular ‘What So & So Sez’ feature; among other things, Gary talks about lyrics, and gives a rare insight to his views on faith. Thanks to Heaven’s Metal for permission to print this.
Heaven's Metal can be contacted at: PO Box 17367, Austin, Texas 78760-7367, USA.

This issue our ‘What So & So Sez’ feature brings back an old friend, Extreme’s Gary Cherone. We had a little to catch up on, as well as talk about the band’s new album, Waiting For The Punchline.

I loved III Sides To Every Story. I’ve worn it out. My wife doesn’t like to hear it, because I’ve played it so much. I was surprised it didn’t do better.
“Yeah, you make a record and then it’s really out of your hands. It was somewhat frustrating, but, you know... in time, maybe people will discover it. Looking back, the third side is my favourite. "

I wish I could’ve seen the tour.
“It was fun. It was a little elaborate, because we kind of split the show into three parts, like the record, and we brought the horns out for the last section. It was pretty cool. I’m glad you liked that one. The new one is a little different, eh? It’s not III Sides. It’s a little more raw. If you break down all the Extreme songs, then that’s probably what you’ll get. With III SIdes and previous stuff, we might have put textures on it and added a lot of sugar. This is raw Extreme”.

Are you still listening to Chuck Swindoll?
“Absolutely. He’s going to be the chairman of a school (Dallas Theological Seminary). His radio ministry is still going to be going on, but he’s moving, so you’re lucky (being in Texas)”.

I’ve read one of his books, Grace Awakening, since we last spoke.
“He’s just amazing. You can just understand it when he’s talking or when you’re reading him. He’s not like some other writers. I try to read C.S. Lewis and I have to read a page, like, five times and have a dictionary and a thesaurus. Chuck’s the man”.

How’s your relationship with Christ going?
“My relationship with Christ? That is the only thing that keeps me afloat. I had some problems, maybe, with depression - the ups and downs of whatever, the business or the highs and lows of your life - and I’ve come to the conclusion, I don’t think it’s a great big revelation, but it’s not necessary that I’m supposed to be happy all the time. There’s these ups and downs. I for no reason think I’m Job, but he never lost his faith. I think that’s the rock - the only thing that can’t crumble in your life. It’s grown. The more I learn, the more I realise that I don’t know. It keeps you humble. I love gaining more knowledge about Him. I’m as strong as I am at this point - stronger than I was when I last talked to you, I feel”.

I guess that’s the way it’s supposed to be, huh?
“Yeah. I’m sure with you, and any other Christian, life can smack you in the face every once in a while and life’s disappointments can get you down, but that’s life. We’re not supposed to be the happy-go-lucky guys all the time”.

Some people kind of paint that as the norm, and I think that sets people up for a fall - when they really do hit the struggles, it’s like, “It’s not supposed to be like this!” and they get all confused. I’ve seen that happen before, and it’s kind of a drag.
“Right. It’s not a magic pill. I think what Christ was talking about is the inner peace. It’s not what’s outside, with all these things going on, from deaths in the family to financial bankruptcy... these things happen. The highs and lows of my life and career - these things happen. It’s really on the surface. One thing that doesn’t change is God. If you can keep that in perspective, then the highs and lows of life are trivial.”

How do you deal with the struggle of being a believer in a non-believing music industry?
“I think in the past I might’ve ducked and skirted and avoided the subject. In the past I used to go home at night and say, ‘Why should I deny my Savior?’. So, I feel a little bit more stronger now. As far as this music business, the difference between Christian and secular... I get annoyed at it, because the thing that bothers me when you profess your faith is that they put you in a little box and they don’t want to hear you. You follow me? They have their stereotype. I’ve been asked, ‘Are you a Christian? Are you a Christian?’. I don’t like answering that question, because ‘Christian’ is such a general term. Someone in an interview just the other day said, ‘Do you believe in God?’. I said, ‘What is that question?’. His intepretation of God could be a four-footed monkey man. The same thing with ‘Christian’. You have Jehovah Witnesses and different sects and different factions that proclaim they’re Christians, and they’re not. I’ve tried to come up with, ‘How would you answer that question? What do you believe in?’. I can talk to you and you can understand me, because we have somewhat of the same background, but talking in a secular world, how would a sound byte explain your faith? It’s a frustrating thing. I probably went in left field with your question, but those are the things that go through my mind”.

I definitely understand some of the frustrations with some of that... I think some media have an agenda and when the Christian issue comes up, it’s like, ‘Put it in a box and ignore it’ is the agenda.
“Probably that’s the point of (the song) ‘There Is No God’. It relates to this question. We’re biased. There’s no such thing as ‘unbiased’. We’re also subjected to the knowledge we accept as true. In ‘There Is No God’, there’s, ‘You gather information as much as you can and, if you’re humble enough to realise that you don’t have all the answers you take the leap of faith’, whether it’s in God or in science or whatever. Without being arrogant, I like to turn the question around. Why should they paint me in a corner? Let me question your faith. Where do you come from? It’s inevitable with me. Obviously, it’s going to come. Before, I was unprepared. I probably sound unprepared, but there’s too many things going on in my head when these questions are asked. From a secular standpoint, I just want to shut up, because anything I say they’re going to twist and turn or paint me in a little corner and no one’s going to want to hear our music.”

I think that’s the kind of thing that Jesus faced. Your approach is kinda like His approach. He tried to turn the tables around and, you know, asked where they were coming from. Oftentimes He gave them mindbending puzzles that they couldn’t figure out and they went away. He’s didn’t let ‘em put Him in a box.
“I think that’s probably the root of the ambiguity in the lyrics. I see, personally, getting heat from both sides. But that’s okay. I’m trying to be honest with myself and my faith and put it up for grabs. I know where I’m coming from with these songs. Throw it out and some people are gonna dive into it; some people it’s just going to be meaningless jargon. Who am I to say it isn’t to them? It’s just stuff that I think about, that’s all.”

I just want to let you know that I definitely support what you’re doing and who you are. If you ever need some support or encouragement, give me a shout.
“Thanks Doug. Now I have your Texas number. How do you deal with it? Do you have the same avenues with such a title as ‘Heaven’s Metal’?”

Yeah. People don’t interview me a lot for Heaven’s Metal. Maybe someday they will as Christian music grows. From the secular media I don’t get it a lot. I talkd to some press people in Dallas. I was at this big thing called ‘Promise Keepers’, where Chuck Swindoll was at, and there were several people from the normal, mainstream press there. And they were real interested in what I was doing and really listened to what I had to say and didn’t seem to put me in a box. But, some of the heat that I get is from, like, the other side of the fence. If I vocally give you my support in this interview, there’ll be a couple people - just a handful of noisy people - who will say, “How can you support him when he doesn’t talk about Jesus in every song”, or “He does this or that”. So, I’ll get some of the heat for that - when someone’s not “Christian enough”. It’s a silly argument. It’s not an argument about the Truth. It’s really about style and culture in a lot of ways. I guess I handle that by trying to give an intelligent defense towards someone whose approach about art is different, and kind of boil it down to what they want to see. They really want to see, I think, “Is this person compromising?”. And I want to try and help people and say, “Okay, let’s suppose for a second that they may be compromising. Let’s analyse it,” and try to show them that they’re not or that, if they are compromising, their approach to correcting the person is totally out of place.
“In answer to some of these questions about approach: There’s not a day in my life - whether it’s music or walking through the street with a bunch of buddies - that you better be aware of compromise. You don’t have to be playing music or singing about Jesus to compromise. You could be hanging out at a cafe with four or five people and things get said and silence is also a compromise. Every day it’s a question. I question if I’m compromising. At the end of the day... at the beginning of the day, too, I get on my knees and say, ‘Do not let me deny my faith’. Sometimes I have better days than others. Today I felt comfortable in talking to you, because I know you, but also there was an anxiety of the questions. This is the stuff that makes you tick - makes me tick. We’ve had a couple of weeks of press and sometimes an interviewer will just not be prepared, or know nothing of your music or what you’re saying, and it’s, like, I have a choice: I can either dive into this half-hour that I’m giving; or it’s just not worth it to talk, because I’ll spend half the time telling where we got the name Extreme, and then I’ll have five minutes to dive into what we’re saying - and it’s just not worth it.”

‘There Is No God’ seems kind of like a follow-up to the song ‘God Isn’t Dead’ from the III Sides album.
“Lyrically, the connection starts way back with ‘Hole Hearted’ way back on Pornograffitti. I thought the third side of III SIdes, from ‘God Isn’t Dead’ to ‘Rise And Shine’ to ‘Am I Ever Gonna Change’ to ‘Who Cares?’ kind of like was the continuation of the ‘Hole Hearted’ theme. In ‘There Is No God’, I think the correlation is just in the title. Obviously, they relate. I tried to pick apart the lyrics and I’ve pitted religion verses science and the parallels that they have and the leap of faith that you have to take with both. You know what? I’m glad I have to take this leap of faith of believing in God. I don’t think God would have it any other way. You know, you hear that argument, ‘Well, if there is a God, why doesn’t He come on television and show us?’. Coincidentally, I just read something in Romans this morning about how men profess to be wise, but are foolish and that God makes Himself known. The creation of God is the evidence of God, you know? If you can’t see that, then you’re blind and you’re letting your intellect be your God - and that’s pretty vain - you have to have a pretty big ego. That’s ‘There Is No God’. That title... I don’t know where that came from. Obviously, it probably came from the paraphrase from Time magazine’s headline - ‘God Is Dead’.
     “I could easily say it’s devil’s advocate (and) I’m playing the role. I don’t think it’s so much a devil’s advocate. It ends up being a question. I’m sure you have friends or you like to have heated debate when it comes to evolution and stuff like that. I guess that’s one of my pet peeves. The amount of faith that it takes - the leap of faith you have to take - to believe in an ameba coincidentally, by chance, evolving into a human being. This Carl Sagan quote: ‘billions and billions of years...’. Does he realise what a billion is? I might be babbling here, but it’s always interested me”.

How did the audience respond to III Sides?
“Fans, I think stuck with us in what we did. Whether they though we were experimenting, I thought we broadened our horizons somewhat with that. Actually, it was something we wanted to do on the first record, but we just couldn’t afford it. I’m glad it took those three years to do. The reaction of III Sides... I don’t know. When I think of III Sides, I think of the third side. You know where those lyrics are coming from. I wonder if our audience does, because I plagiarised the Bible with some of those lyrics (he laughs), which I think is the only way you can’t go wrong”.

Did you have any real reaction to the lyrics from anybody in particular?
“Umm. I thought the press was pretty kind to the band. There was one article that I still have, and it encourages me. It was written by Ann Powers from the New York Times, who talked about ‘heavy metal aligning itself up with the devil... and these characters from Extreme seemed to be aligning itself up with the other deity’. If you consider the devil a deity? I don’t, but you know what I mean. That’s something I keep to encourage me. When things get down, I read it and I go, ‘Okay, well someone gets it out there’. I don’t know if it got the attention I thought it would”.

You mentioned a little bit about the tough times you’ve had. Do you wanna elaborate on any of that?
“My tough times? We got off the road in late ‘93. We started our new record and things were going well recording the record. In the process of recording that record, Paul Geary, our drummer... it came to a head, as far as his passion for the music and his passion for doing something else, so we called him on it. We all came to an agreement - the four of us - that he’d go his way and start his management company and do that, because there was a passion there. So, we parted ways and, believe me, you hear it over and over, ‘They parted amicably’. Paul’s been my friend for 15 years and I’ve been in 8 or 9 bands with him, so I love him and I wish him well. So, we had to get a new drummer. Here comes Mike Mangini, who we’ve known and who has been waiting in the wings for 8 years. We’ve been fans of his local bands and stuff like that. So, these are little sub-facts. We got rid of our manager. (There were) two different visions. That I could go into forever, but it just wasn’t working, so we moved on. The year was spent interviewing manager after manager - all these things that are separate from music, which kind of takes you away from your passion. It seemed like it was engulfing us. Then that bled into the insecurities with the record company. You know, ‘These guys are four chickens without any heads’. We made a special trip to LA to calm things down. We’re floating now. If it was all to go, I would deal with it; but it was a tough year for Extreme as a band.
     “Did you know the good thing about this year was I did Jesus Christ Superstar. The music was great and I worked with some local artists in Boston - a small Boston rock opera. I had a chance to act. Will I ever do it again? I don’t know. It depends on the reviews... who knows (laughs). Saying that, in retrospect, ‘the woes of the band!’. Maybe it wasn’t as bad. Maybe it had to happen for us to get where we are now”.

Some of the people that read my magazine, who listen to Christian music... I’m sure, if they got the III Sides album, that they had a problem with one of the words in ‘Warhead’. And, in the song ‘Cynical’ (from Waiting For The Punchline). What’s your attitude on swear words?
“I knew you were going to ask this question! Would I try to answer it? What’s my take on swear words? For people who do and people who practice it, it’s just a lack of vocabulary, which I can be guilty of. ‘Cynical’, which you saw on the lyric sheet (on the advance cassette), has been changed. But not that I don’t say it. If it wasn’t written, would you have heard it?”

Uhh, probably not. There’s that one part where I think you’re singing it, and you’re kinda carrying the note out.
“At the end. I did say it (f-word) and I don’t deny it. I mean, I don’t have a reason for saying it or not saying it. I don’t like it. The only answer would be that I’m guilty of cursing. I’m not a fan of someone who curses. When I hear it on record, I wonder why. But, in defense of it, sometimes I don’t think there’s any other word for it. I don’t think that any other word could be stronger. ‘Cynical’, as a song, is kind of like that futile, nihilistic attitude, like on ‘Tell Me Something I Don’t Know’. I’m not that person, but I think someone who is... what other definition would you have? By no means am I trying to defend what I said. It’s there. What do I think of it? I don’t know. With a few of my lyrics... In ‘Am I Ever Gonna Change’ I swear in it.”

Really? I’ve listened to it a million times and have never heard it.
“Yeah. I’m surprised you didn’t get it. It says ‘futile fight’ in the lyrics, but ‘this futile fight’ was replaced by the other f-word. I don’t know. It’s an emotion. (long pause) That’s a part of me. I’m honest. I get emotional when I sing and sometimes that happens. I don’t know. I think it would be a little bit of a lie if I wasn’t honest with myself, and then I’d be deceiving everybody. I think the point is made. I don’t necessarily like to do it, like in ‘Get The Funk Out’. Does it really matter what I say? Isn’t it the same sentiment? Are we dealing with semantics here? I’m not trying to convince you. It’s just there. That definitely would be interpreted as a compromise. In my life, there’s probably more important things than that, which I would consider a compromise for my faith. That’s the question, like you said, you’re probably going to get some grief from some people from my approach. Who knows? Maybe it’ll change. I know it won’t get worse.
     “Go ahead, ask me more about this. Get in there. You’re holding back, Doug. This is horrible. You’re compromising. (laughs)”

I can’t think of what else to say. I think there’s a theological argument to be made. Some people can argue that, “Hey, it’s okay. It’s a form of speech,” and another person can argue and say, “Hey, it’s unwholesome. It’s what Jesus talked about here”. I don’t sit here in judgement of you. Personally, I’ll listen to ‘Warheads’, but I don’t feel as good about playing that song over and over again as I do about all the other 13 songs or whatever. So, for me, it kind of bothers me to hear that; but I don’t sit here and say, “Oh! What a bad person. He made this mistake”. On the other hand, there are people who think that cussing and drinking and smoking are the three worst sins a person can commit. I think the response from somebody who feels that way might be a little more lenient towards hatred towards you than love and acceptance, which I think is wrong, too.
“In our culture, it’s considered a swear word and it’s a vulgarity, and we could sit down and define everything. We could put all the do’s and don’ts down. There’s hypocrisy there, because I’m not a fan of it. I can’t think of anyone. Maybe the Rolling Stones. That song, ‘Some Girls’... the whole thing was pretty wild. When I was a teenager, I thought it was cool, but now it’s all over the place. The Pandora’s box has been opened. I don’t mind that it bothers you. It makes me think. That’s great.”

What direction is the band going right now?
“Well, the record’s coming out January 17th. We’re shooting a video two days from now. We’re getting ready to go overseas and do some promo. We’ll be touring extensively in the US starting in February. In the past we neglected the States. That’s probably one of the reasons we got rid of our management. So, we’re gonna concentrate on the States. Wherever we play and how big it is really doesn’t matter. Where the band is strong, we’ll play theatres; and the places that don’t know us, we’ll play the clubs. Whatever we have to do, God willing.”