Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 12th, 2015 | Kerry Livgren Q&A

Transcript

April 12th, 2015 | Kerry Livgren Q&A · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: This is a kind of a life that none of us, by the way, is that the same jacket you were wearing in this picture?
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same jacket I wear everywhere.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um this kind of a life you live is not one with which many of us are familiar.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: So some of we want to ask you some questions.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: By the way, any of your family here that you can introduce to us?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: Well, my son is here, Tom.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I see his girlfriend, Becca.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Vicky, for awesome.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'll never get never get a little over that.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: This is John Bows and I'm just John of her.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: John's a fellow musician.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: We've by the way, John, while I've known Kerry for years, read his book and so forth, I learned so much from this documentary.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if that's there's plenty that I learned from this documentary.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I wanted you to come up, John, because you're a musician.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: You also know Kerry extremely well.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: Would you mind sort of m saying this?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: And if you have a question, you raise your hand.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: John will repeat the question and uh translate it uh for Carrie or whatever, and then and then can can you do that?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: John?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I can do that.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_07: I've I've got a couple questions before we get started.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_07: I want to borrow that uh finger-picking exercise book if you're done with it.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_07: But uh um watching that, I noticed that there's a couple guitars that you had very on early in the band, and then I didn't see them again throughout the rest of the uh production.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_07: And I'm particularly thinking of your Gibson Les Paul that you had when you were playing around Topeka.
• 2:34
  unknown: Oh gosh.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that guitar, um several years ago when I was living in Covington, Georgia, Vicky went down to visit her folks who were living in South Georgia.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I had some time on my hands, and I had my airplane at the time at that time.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I took off.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I'd go fly around a little bit.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it was a beautiful day, and one thing led to another, and I got farther and farther away, and pretty soon I thought I'm just gonna go on to Topeka.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I landed at Forms Field, I rented a car, I drove to the music store where we used to hang out, steam music.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: And as I as I walked into Steam, they were hanging this guitar up on the wall as I walked in the door, and I looked at it, and he he looked at me as if he'd just seen a ghost.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Don, is that my Les Paul?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, Yes, it just came in the store just this morning.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: The sheriff brought it by.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: It had been stolen.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: It went to it was done in Albuquerque, New Mexico for a while, went through all this.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a miraculous thing.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, these this this theme of this thing, miracles out of nowhere, it continues on and on and on in my life.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's not really miraculous in the sense, but when I think about it, I guess it is.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_07: Well, just this week you told me another story.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: We were out at the studio like Tuesday and A friend of mine from Atlanta who had just seen this film, called me up and he said, Hey Carrie, do you want your guitar back?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Want my guitar back?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, this guy is not a guitar player.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: I said, uh Bob, what are you talking about?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: He says, You know, the good the guitar that you wrote Dust and the Wind on.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: I said, What?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you have that guitar?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: He says, Yeah, you gave it to me, remember?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: I gave away that guitar because I didn't think Dust and the Wind was going to be a hit.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so he here he calls me back because of this film and says, You it's on the way to you.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I get to get to have that guitar back.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_07: Good.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_07: Well, uh keeping with the theme of Miracles Out of Nowhere, I was on eBay last week.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_07: John and I found on eBay a Kerry Livrin one-of-a-kind collectible that used to belong to you.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I used to have that stuff up here, and now it comes out of my face.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Very creatively.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um that that's no lie.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: We we got a dollar a day to live off, but what you didn't hear was uh of the times that we uh went fishing in order to eat.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I used to go up to Lake Perry at the at the dam and uh fish fish to eat.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh walking along the roads to pick up pop bottles, you in those days you could take them and get two cents for them or something like that.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Two cents was a lot of money.
• 5:48
  unknown: Wow.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_07: Well, the bandhouse, you got six guys living in a bandhouse.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_07: What's that kitchen look like?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the kitchen was actually boarded up.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: No lie.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: It got so foul that we just we boarded over nailed boards on the walls.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: And and you it I don't know whatever happened in that kitchen, but I have pity on whoever opened that door.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_07: Let's let's talk about your journey a little bit more uh besides the musical aspect of your journey, the spiritual aspect.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_07: You've been writing uh uh from the very beginning about uh spiritual things in your life and seeking.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's one thing that the the film here uh only touches on very briefly.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: But the um the spiritual aspect of uh the songs that I wrote literally from our first album all the way to the present day for that matter, uh we're we're very spiritual in in nature.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um why is that?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've asked myself that question a thousand times.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: It was something I was driven to do.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: I I just felt this incredible pull on myself in that direction, and there was no no escaping it.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh it came to a conclusion on July 25th, 1979, when I got down on my knees in a hotel room in Indianapolis, Indiana, and surrendered, surrendered to Jesus Christ.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's the short version.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: I have a very long version of that story, but that that is quite a spiritual journey with ups and downs and around corners before that, wasn't there?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I was kind of the uh well, I used to carry around a uh two suitcases on the road.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: One of them had my clothes, obviously, and toiletries and all that stuff.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: The other one was full of books.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: The roadies used to hate that thing.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: They had to lug it around.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: They called it the library, and uh, it was full of every sort of spiritual book you can imagine.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I went through all the major religions of the world, then through all the minor ones, then through some that nobody ever heard of except me, and uh before I finally came to Christ.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a full full circle, by the way.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: I started out in the Lutheran church here in Topeka.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was raised up in the in the Lutheran church.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: I uh went through confirmation.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: That word is supposed to mean confirmed, but I was not confirmed.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: I was uh I uh embarked on this uh chasing after the wind until I finally came home.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, any questions from out there?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: We're all of the members of Kansas Christians.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Three of us are, to my knowledge.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Phil Ehart, the drummer, and Dave Hope, the bass player.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: I was the first one to to get saved after I came to Christ.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh about a year later, Dave, our bass player, came to Christ.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know when Phil made the decision, but he uh is very clearly a Christian now.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: He's uh of the Baptist persuasion.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Dave is actually an Anglican priest.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Can you believe that?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um So that's the three of us are uh Steve Walsh, Robbie Steinhart, and Rich Williams.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Although on one occasion, the reason I say I don't like to second guess God, number one, but uh on one occasion Rich said to me, you know, Carrie, I believe exactly as you do.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't know what he meant by that, but I would take that to mean, okay, I'm a Christian.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: But uh I don't know where Rich's heart is now, but uh I continue on a daily basis to pray for those guys.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I'm sure the record label was really excited when you wanted to write songs about Jesus.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that that was an that was a real eye-opener.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: All my like I say, from the beginning, all my songs were very spiritual.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Carry on Wayward Sun, surely Heaven Waits for You, Dust and the Wind, all the they were very spiritual, but they weren't specific.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: But the minute I my songs had the faintest aroma of Christ to them, boy, do the sparks start to fly.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um I remember my uh first solo album.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: I walked into Don Kirchner's office and played the entire album for him, and he just went, hmm.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that was all he said.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: And uh then this by the time I did my second solo album, they were in the process of dropping me as a solo artist.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that began the process of my exit from the band.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: I never really totally left Kansas because I'm I'm not in the band now.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: I played with them last week in Kansas City, but um I had to get away from them after a while.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody can keep up this kind of pace that you see in this in this film.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: The the pace of my life during those years was just exhausting.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: And when I got when I became a Christian, I realized this is not my life.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is not what I want my life to be about.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: And um that's when I had to make some changes.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_07: Well, Carrie, you mentioned your first solo album, uh Seeds of Change, and you also were writing an autobiography at the same time by the same title.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_07: But I noticed on the album uh a couple of the songs, you went out and got Ronnie James Dio, the lead singer for Black Sabbath, to sing on your Christian solo album.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_07: Could you talk about Ronnie a little bit?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if I figured if the sparks were gonna fly, I'll give you something to I'll give him something to talk about.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um Ronnie James Deal was the right vocalist for those two songs that he sang on my album.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Hands down.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: He sang them like nobody else could.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to not only take the lead singer from Black Sabbath, put him in a Christian context, and have him sing his heart out.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to witness to him, and boy, did I get a chance.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I sat outside the studio for gosh, about an hour and a half one night, he and I in our in my car, and I just let him have it with both barrels over and over and over.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: And finally he says, uh, Carrie, stop.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Stop.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't stop, I'm gonna end up believing like you do.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Well, Ronnie, that's the whole point.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but he he he always uh was very respectful of me.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: He uh he spoke very highly of me, I as I do of him as an individual.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't believe he actually believed what he was singing about in the Black Sabbath.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, he told me it was just a a big publicity thing with him.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: So um, but to this day I still get asked that question, John.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Another question.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: What was your inspiration for Point of No Return?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: And when did that come out?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it came out in 1977.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: You mean an in inspiration for the whole album or perfect?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: For the title or for the whole album?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that was not my that was not my song, that was Steve Walsh's song.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: He wrote the song as a response to what we had named the album.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: He thought, wow, what a great title.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: So he went home and wrote the song.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: And when did that come out, that album, do you remember?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: 1977.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, the the question is uh, and this is this is being taped, so for for for many people who wanna who want to hear it.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: The question is, uh, could you tell us update us on what you're doing now?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: You read the newspaper and it mentions uh you know you've been on a 20-year sort of a deal.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: So what's uh what are you doing now?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well I get up in the morning and I let our dog out and I I feed the cattle.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, actually, Kyle does that.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm joking.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm I work in my studio every day.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've been working on several different projects over the years.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've actually released more albums than I can even count.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I'm currently what what you're asking about, I believe, is my cantata, which I've been now all those songs, like for Left Overdrip, for instance, where I went down that night, wrote a song, learned it the next day.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Next next day I wrote another song that night, learn it the next day.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: This song I've been writing for 35 years.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: 35 years.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: That that's gotta set some sort of record.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't I say of writing it, I haven't been constantly writing it for 35 years.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: I've been working on it over a period of 35 years.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a cantata uh on the resurrection of Lazarus from John chapter 11.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it started out as a whole um, I was just setting the scriptures to music.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then it snowballed into this big production um where I I use what uh Verd Holsing used to call sanctified imagination.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: I would take the uh the scriptures and I would wonder what was Lazarus thinking at the time that Christ called him out of the tomb.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: What could he possibly what was going through his mind?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then I set that to music, always with the idea that it had to be totally consistent with what the scriptures say.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what what's been taking, and then I have to orchestrate the whole thing.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a rock and roll piece by any stretch, it's an orchestral piece, and I have to orchestrate it, which I can continually am refining and tweaking, and so if I if I live long enough, eventually maybe someone will hear it.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, right down front.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: Is there a story behind that?
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is gonna get very theological.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like I told you I became a Christian on July 25th, 1979, at 3 o'clock in the morning.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know for sure if I was not already a Christian before that.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: If I was, I was it was very latent, it was very suppressed, I wasn't living the life of a Christian by any stretch of your imagination.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: So if I got saved on July 25th, then that's the moment I became a Christian.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Why was I wearing a cross all those years before that?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was compelled to wear this cross.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: I never went anywhere without it.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: I had it on stage all the time.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I don't know what was behind that.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's a great question because the religions you were into had nothing to do with the cross.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: No, they didn't.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: They've in fact they had uh they ranged from contempt for the cross.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: The the kindest thing I ever heard, well, one of the gurus uh that I followed, um, he had somewhat high regard for Jesus as a teacher.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: But then the thing that ate away at me was, well, if you have such high regard for him as a teacher, how come you don't follow any of his teachings?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Which this man didn't.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: So that that was one of the many, many things that ate away at me.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I don't I can't answer that question, ma'am.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what in the world was going through my mind, except that I felt compelled to wear that cross.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead, sorry.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and uh to further that thought, the lyrics that I wrote, if you've if you read the lyrics to all my songs, they they read like uh um a road map of a person who's searching, searching, searching until he eventually finds.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe I was wearing that cross because I knew I somewhere deep inside me, I knew where I was gonna end up.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_05: I was just wondering, um you always played in K.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: Don, would you speak it on the mic?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_05: I was just wondering why you always played in western Kansas.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_05: Why did the bus always go west?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_05: And and I mean, because you could have gone east.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_05: And what was it like when you played before a hundred thousand people?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know that song The Wall?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: There was a great wall between us on the east side.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: We could go west, but we couldn't get past that wall.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't recall, I recall one occasion where we played in Kansas City.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's that was it.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that was with the second version of Kansas with not this band here.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: So uh we never went that direction until we became a recording act, of course.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: But then with them we played um all over the world, so that's not uh not an explanation for that.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't I don't know why that was, but we had to go west and we played in every little we played in Goth, G O F F.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: We played in gypsum, Kansas gypsum.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how in the world?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's miraculous.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's just so the flip side of his question was what did it feel like to play in front of a hundred thousand people?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: Can you describe that?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's very electrifying.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's very the whole time you're on stage playing, I'm thinking, my gosh, I cannot believe that we're standing here in front of this crowd, and this crowd is just going crazy.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that this is people ask me sometimes, what what concert do you remember above any other?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: There was one concert where it was shortly after Dustin the Wind became a hit.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're playing in Philadelphia at the Spectrum, which you may be familiar with if you're uh basketball NBA.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, right.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Philadelphia Summer Section.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're we're playing at a sold-out show at the at the spectrum, and we walk out on stage, and this crowd was roaring so loud that we couldn't play.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: We couldn't we couldn't play, we couldn't hear ourselves play.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: We had to, but we stopped playing and just stood there.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And they kept applauding and kept going and kept going and kept going.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it was so humbling.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, that's that's one of the things that made me it it renewed the urgency with which I was seeking to find God.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because I thought, my God, these people are they're treating me as if I'm a God, and I am clearly not, not even close.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it may it ate away at me and it made me uh search all that much far harder.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it it's a weird thing to be in front of uh audiences, it really is.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Question over here, yes.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah, fit your conversion experience date, the 3 a.m.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: on June, whatever it was, fit that into your songs.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: Was it right after Dust and the Wind?
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: Was it where where was it in your songwriting?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we had just finished recording um Monolith, the album called Monolith.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I was into, I had I was scraping the bottom of the barrel.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, all the major religions, all the minor ones, remember I made that remark already.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: And um one of our engineers gave me this book.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Carrie, you need to read this book.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's this it's called the Urantia book.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Well, what is it?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Well, it's it's this really weird, it's like the history of the whole history of the planet Earth, the history of the universe, um, answers to every question you ever had.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's a big thick book, isn't it?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, big thick volume.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I started reading this book.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Vicky Vicky can attest to this.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: In the middle of the night, well, it was it was so engrossed in this book, I could not stop reading it.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I would wake Vicky up at 3 o'clock in the morning, honey, you gotta you gotta see, listen to this.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: She go, go to sleep, will you?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't put it down, and I kept on uh reading this book.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then I got to the last, the book is divided into the literally the history of the planet Earth, which the authors call Urantia.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, the authors are they're not listed.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: There are no authors listed.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's a totally mysterious book.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, the history of the planet earth, which I read, which was fascinating.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then the last part of the book is the life and times of Jesus Christ.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: I got to that part, I thought, wow, this is this is going toward Jesus.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I started reading the Gospels of according to Urantia, and it was absolutely fascinating.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: It just grabbed me, and I I thought, man, this is incredible.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it's inspired some of the songs that I wrote for this uh monolith album.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh shortly after that, just when I became a Christian, uh, but I desperately wanted um to lead someone else to Urantia because I never the whole time I was a Urantian, I never met another one.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: As far as I knew, I was it.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I desperately wanted some form of fellowship.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the lead guitarist of the band that was opening for us, they were called pardon me, I had a stroke.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: They were called LaRue.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: Larue.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Larue.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: Louisiana's LaRue.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: And um their their their uh guitar player had long blonde blonde hair as I did.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: He was the their lead guitar player, I was our lead guitar player.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: We had so much in common.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: And uh as we were touring, he began to uh to talk with me a lot, and I talked with him a lot.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: We had breakfast together every day, and eventually our conversation led to spiritual things.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, okay, here's my opening.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna lead this guy to Urantia.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I started talking about Urantia, and Jeff says, Hey, you need to come ride with us on our bus.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I gave up our seat on our jet to ride with him on their bus.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this is a very curious bus.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: The front section of the bus, if if the bus is this long, they had boarded up the back of the bus.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that was where Jeff rode.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't realize at the time, but Jeff was a Christian.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: So they had the Christian section and then everybody else in the front of the bus.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: No, no lie.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I went back in the Christian section with Jeff, and we sat down and I opened my Orantia book, and he opened up his Bible, and we began to go back and forth and back and forth.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm I was a pretty good debater.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: I could debate my way out of almost any situation.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I I was fairly proud of that.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: But I noticed this weird phenomenon.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: When I said something to Jeff, it was well thought out.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it was an impregnable argument.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: But Jeff's words, when he read from this from the Bible, it was like he was sticking an uh an ice pick and sticking to my heart.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: His words went right.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: My head, my words were head words, his words were heart words.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that's uh that's what I went back to the hotel room after a few months of this, and I I I had all I could stay in.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I I sat, he he they they left the tour, and he gave me this little book by Hal Lindsay called The Liberation of Planet Earth.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Not even one of his better known It wasn't the late Great Planet Earth, it was the Liberation of Earth.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: The Liberation of Planet Earth, sure, yeah, which is a uh treatise on Romans.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't remember what passage I read in that book, but it just it was the ultimate ice pick.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I got down on it was three o'clock in the morning and I got down on my knees and I used the word surrendered because that's what I did.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: I I gave myself up.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: I surrendered to Jesus because I was so driven to find God.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time, I was so repulsed by the cross and Christianity, and I didn't want to become a Christian.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: I I just didn't want to do that, but I gave up.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: And when I got up off my knees, I was a new man.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_07: Wow.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_07: Jim.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_07: We got a question back here, Jim.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_06: Huh?
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_06: Question back here.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_06: Question back here.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, can you explain how it is you transition between inspiration and composition?
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_06: You know, writing a song, what what happens in the middle in between?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: That has always been, oh gosh, that's an impossible question to answer.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how I don't know how I write songs.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know where they come from, I don't know how it happens.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: Trying to analyze how you write a song is exactly like trying to analog analyze the exact moment that you fall asleep.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: You can't do it.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you're awake, you can't be asleep at the same time.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: You can't do that.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: I made the the comment in the in the documentary that it beams in.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't I told you about that cantata.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't recall writing any of it.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: I have no memory of having written this music.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: I listened to this music, I thought, wow, where did this come from?
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think that about some of these Kansas songs.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Where did this come from?
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: It just happens.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's just some sort of gift that uh the the Lord gives you, or you're or you I mean, I don't know any other way to put it.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't know how it happens.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: John, let's take one more question.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I I guess we're way over time, so you pick it out.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: You just mentioned your stroke, so I just want to say it's great to have you here.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know how great it is to be here.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just the question.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: I assume you do reminisce.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you could go back to one moment through your career, is there one moment that always sticks out or that you wish you could go back to?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: The moment that I met my wife.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: Big points, big points, um.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: So Vicki, uh, we love you.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: We're glad you're here.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you all for coming, Carrie.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: What a wonderful documentary.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you all.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: You've stayed.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's over time.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, feel free to come up and greet them afterwards, but uh but thank you for coming.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: You're dismissed.