God's Jukebox: A Fourth Testament (1991)

The following piece and its accompanying graphics appeared in the July/August 1991 issue of the Door.

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In his book A Third Testament, the late British curmudgeon and one-time Door interviewee Malcolm Muggeridge wrote of Augustine, Blake, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Bonhoeffer, and Dostoevsky as “God’s spies”--men “in search of God” whose “special role” it was “to relate their time to eternity.” While they were, he wrote, “quintessentially men of their time” (men who, like actual spies, merged “into the social and political scene … echoing the current consensus”), they nevertheless provided a “bridge … between the darkness of the will and the light of the imagination … and a prophetic voice calling on us to cross it.”

Now, Augustine, Blake, Pascal, et. al may have been God’s spies at one time, but mention their names to a Baby Boomer and watch his jaw go slack. It’s clear that God needs new spies, and at the risk of blowing their covers, I propose, from the field of rock ’n’ roll (common ground between the literate and the il-) the following canon: T Bone Burnett, Bob Dylan, Al Green, Little Richard, the Mercy Seat, Van Morrison, Maria Muldaur, and Sam Phillips. Consider the evidence …

T Bone Burnett: Truth Decay (Takoma ’80). Another Door interviewee, Burnett has seen it all, done most of it, and written about it with the goofy abandon you’d expect from a guy christened after a steak. By the time he made this record, he’d already made three country-rock, gospel-inflected LPs with his fellow crazies Steven Soles and David Mansfield as the Alpha Band, toured with Dylan, and returned to the church of his youth. Truth Decay bridged the carnal-spiritual divide by marrying Tom Waits-ian piss-factory narratives to Sun Studio rockabilly and leavening its preacher talk with seaminess and wisecracks. It’s true that later albums found naked women occupying more and more of his attention, but better babes than an obsession with the Rapture or some other Evangelical black hole.

Bob Dylan: Shot of Love (Columbia ’81). Born-agains know all about Slow Train Coming and Saved, but this album has always smelled of bad faith. The problem was the middle of side one, where the world’s most famous “completed Jew” followed the right-on “Property of Jesus” with a hymn to Lenny Bruce. Born-agains didn’t know who Lenny Bruce was, so they went out and bought How to Talk Dirty and Influence People and maybe Albert Goldman’s exhaustive bio. When they found out that Bruce had been an unregenerate drug addict, a sex fiend, and a foul-mouthed comic whose jokes didn’t strike them as all that funny, they were sure Bob had lost his Christian marbles. In a sense they were right. But in another sense he was reconnecting with a world in which the unregenerate call the shots. Further proof of Shot of Love’s greatness: Rolling Stone hated it.

Al Green: Live in Tokyo (Motown’81). For the complete scoop on Green, one of the greatest soul men ever, rent The Gospel According to Al Green from your local video store. Meanwhile, this recording, made in ’78 but unreleased for three years, captures plenty of Green’s legendary transition from sexual healer to Pentecostal pulpiteer. There are strong versions of “Belle” (“It’s you I want, but it’s Him [sic] that I need”), “Love and Happiness” (in which Jesus gets a name check before the fur starts to fly), and “You Ought to Be with Me,” a come-on to a woman that on this night metamorphosed into an ecstatic sermon replete with KJV quotations. Don’t know whether the cultural Buddhists in attendance got the gist, but they cheered anyway. Question for the ages: Were they moved by the Spirit or by a premonition that in fifteen years they’d own our corporate butts?

Little Richard: Lifetime Friend (Warner Bros. ’86). Talk about a man ahead of his time. According to his own bad self, Little Richard Penniman has spent much of his life overdrugged and oversexed every which way. But, according to his good self, he loves the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. On this all-but-ignored major-label “comeback,” his bad self kept the music rockin’ while his good self kept the lyrics biblical. Every song bespoke a faith at least as big as Sandi Patti (er, Sandi Patti’s), yet church folk were quicker to buy the Police instead. Maybe they were put off by Richard’s effeminate leer as captured in the cover photo or by that trace of eyeliner. (Goop it on like Tammy Faye and you’re O.K.) Or maybe they didn’t think that a man with whom they wouldn’t trust their sons could be trusted with God’s one and only.

The Mercy Seat: The Mercy Seat (Slash ’87). Fronted by Gordon Gano, the leader of the acoustic sleaze-punk trio the Violent Femmes, this oddball quartet’s gimmick was to sing gospel, traditional and new, to acoustic sleaze-punk rave-ups. Actually, that was just gimmick number one. Another was to have guitarist Gano, drummer Fernando Menendez, and bassist Patrice Moran dress in matching tuxes. Gimmick number three was to have the lead singer, a statuesque black bombshell named Zena Von Heppinstall, wear dresses so tight and short that you couldn’t help wondering what Gano really meant by “mercy seat.” But it was the husky spunk of her singing as much as her great legs that sparked the concept. Best line ever about being ready for Judgment Day: “I don’t wanna be caught doin’ my nails when the world comes tumbling’ down.”

Van Morrison: Common One (Warner Bros. ’80). This album is regarded by most as the Morrison not to own because it’s weird and amorphous. Besides, he’s sung more snappily about Jesus on Into the Music, Avalon Sunset, and Enlightenment. Yes, but remember this about God’s spies: They’re often up to more than they seem. Morrison has always been weird, from his go-to-hell attitude toward fans to his freakish overnight corpulence. As for amorphousness--well, when one sets out to convey the instant of conversion in a fifteen-minute song with few words and no melody (“When Heart Is Open”), he will sound somewhat “out there.” Out there for Van means growling and wheezing and howling and otherwise almost speaking in tongues. Or maybe he just had to sneeze really bad and didn’t want to funk up the mic. Stuff costs money, you know.

Maria Muldaur: Live in London (Making Waves/Stony Plain ’85). Homiletic excerpt from the final three minutes of the last song: “Y’know, people, something might seem so very tempting to you, something might seem so very attractive to you, something might seem so very irresistible to you, ’til you feel like you just can’t rest, ’til you go out there, and you try that thing, or you buy that thing, or you, I don’t know, maybe you smoke that thing, or, mmmmm, you might drink that thing, or maybe you think it’s cool to go out and snort that thing. Whoa! You might even shoot that thing in you arm. I know temptation comes in a lot of different sizes and shapes. Yes it does. And, y’know, you might not even have to wait ’til the hereafter to pay the price--you might start payin’ the price as soon as tomorrow morning’! So before you do it, you better think about it twice! Before you do it, people, you oughta think about the price! What about the price? What about the price? Whoa, people, I want you to steal away to the quiet of your room sometime and have yourself a little private talk with God and just ask him from the bottom of your heart, ‘Oh, Lord, what is it you want me to be doin’ down here?’”

Sam Phillips: The Indescribable Wow (Virgin’88). As Leslie Phillips she was a bright spot on CCM playlists. As Sam Phillips she recorded this gorgeous folk-pop hookfest with some knob-twiddling and band-member selection from her producer (and future husband) T Bone Burnett. No, Leslie didn’t get a sex change. She just thought that “going secular” merited a new appellation, and in her sweet innocence she didn’t even know that rock ’n’ roll already had a Sam Phillips. Like her namesake (who produced Jerry Lee Lewis, after all), she knew that sexy music, when it was good, could feel like a struggle between flesh and spirit. Unlike her namesake, she was something to look at (and probably still is).

Phil Keaggy & Alan Shacklock: True Believers (1995)

(This story was supposed to appear in Syndicate, the title under which Brian Q. Newcomb's Harvest Rock Syndicate continued in its last years. And appear it did--in the last issue of Syndicate ever published and in a form so truncated that it made almost no sense. I felt bad not only because my byline was attached to such a deformed piece but also because both Keaggy and Shacklock had given me a lot of phone time. Not surprisingly, I've had no contact with either of them since. There was, however, a happy ending of sorts. During our conversation, Keaggy admitted that he was moving back toward his Catholic roots, and the subject of Malcolm Muggeridge and his latter-day conversion to Catholicism came up. I offered to send Keaggy a book I had about Muggeridge's view of scripture, and he accepted. Two years later, he appeared on EWTN's Life on the Rock show, performing six songs and discussing his spirituality at length. I'd like to think the Muggeridge book had a little to do with Keaggy's ending up where he did.

Below, you--and, I hope, Keaggy and Shacklock--can finally see the story as it was supposed to appear..)

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The critic Robert Christgau once concluded a review of a T-Bone Burnett album by writing, "I'm a sucker for a humble man with a proud guitar."

He was referring to Burnett's Proof Through the Night, but he could've just as easily been referring to Phil Keaggy's True Believer (Sparrow), the excellent new recording by one of the humblest wielders of a proud guitar ever.

"I think it's more of a tighter-fit type of album," says Keaggy. "It fits more like a tuxedo than like the loose, baggy clothes of Crimson and Blue."

Keaggy laughs, referring with typical self-deprecation to the lukewarm critical reaction engendered by the jam-oriented nature of his last album.

His self-deprecation also extends to the credit he's willing to take for the tuxedo-like nature of True Believer. To hear him tell it, the credit belongs to Alan Shacklock, the English pop producer and founding member of the art-rock '70s act Babe Ruth, whose involvement on True Believer marks his official entry into the American Christian-music scene.

"Peter York, my A&R guy at Sparrow, was aware of Alan's production skills, and he wanted to see me come into a kind of artistic expression and a style of album that was different than the direction in which I had been going. Alan has a track record for coming up with good-sounding songs that are radio friendly."

As if Keaggy himself doesn't. How does he think he's managed to maintain a twenty-five-year recording career?

"II write songs," he admits, "but I don't work them over or craft and hone them to fit into a specific radio format. I've never been good about that."

If Keaggy's unwillingness to toot his own axe borders on the incomprehensible--this is a man, after all, whose vast discography Guitar Player magazine recently characterized as ranging "from exciting, fusion-tinged rock to sweeping acoustic statements"--Shacklock is more than willing to expound on the guitarist's gifts.

"I've worked with a lot of the big ones," Shacklock explains, "and Phil is every bit up there with them. He's a genuine artist, and I'm just so blessed that he's working for the kingdom of God because, with the technique, the voice, and the writing ability he has, he could easily be on the other side."

Some of the "big ones" whom Shacklock has worked with since he began producing albums in 1980--coincidentally, also the year of his conversion--include Roger Daltrey (Under a Raging Moon, Can't Wait to See the Movie), Jeff Beck ("Wild Thing"), Meatloaf (Bad Attitude), Steve Gibbons (Saints and Sinners), Dexys Midnight Runners (alas, not "Come On, Eileen"), and the Alarm (Declaration). It was, in fact, Shacklock who buttressed the Alarm's 1983 "Sixty-eight Guns" single with an everything-but-the-cuisinart wailing wall of sound that still sounds Jericho-esque today.

"When I became a Christian," Shacklock recalls, "I expected the Lord to take me straight into Christian music. In fact, he took me in quite the opposite direction, right into secular music, where I hope I was salt and light."

In England, according to Shacklock, the Christian-music industry barely exists. Therefore, it wasn't until he moved to the U.S. that he had the opportunity to work with other believers. Ironically, it was an album by a fellow Englishman, John Perry (who also wrote the chart-topping "Be in My Heart" from Keaggy's '89 album Find Me in These Fields), that allowed Shacklock to get his feet wet.

"John said, 'We should ask Phil to play on this.' So he called Phil, and Phil came along and played some beautiful solos on a couple of tunes. That's where I met him."

According to both forty-something rock-and-roll veterans, they hit it off from the start.

"There are parallels in the music we grew up listening to," says Keaggy. "He was into the Shadows in England, and I was into the Ventures here. But we also loved the Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, and Elvis Presley."

"We sort of went to different schools together," Shacklock laughs. "He had Glass Harp and I had Babe Ruth. So I could look at that history and say, 'Where does Phil Keaggy need to be now?'"

In Sparrow's opinion, Phil Keaggy needed to be in a place from which he could broaden his audience beyond the 90,000 guitar and CCM devotees who normally buy his albums.

"Their desire," Keaggy remembers, "was that my music appeal to a larger audience, one that would include housewives, ladies, and even kids."

As the father of three kids and the husband of both a housewife and a lady, Keaggy knew a little something about the audience Sparrow was talking about.

"One thing Phil said to me," Shacklock recalls, "was 'I want my fifteen-year-old daughter to like this record,' and I got the point because when the Who came here in '89, Roger [Daltrey] invited me down, and standing in front of me was a fifteen-year-old kid singing every lyric of 'Won't Get Fooled Again.' I wanted it to be the same with True Believer. And I think a lot of the younger fans will appreciate this record for the young element in it."

One way in which Shacklock and Keaggy sought to include the "young element" was to emphasize hooks over guitar solos. The album's catchiest songs--"Wild Heart," Shacklock's "Only You (Can Wash My Sins Away)," "Don't Let Go of My Heart," and "Son of Man"--embellish Keaggy's natural tendency to evoke memories of vintage Paul McCartney with a production style that that's as deep as it is slick. Shacklock's tube bells, for instance, on the chorus of "Only You" subtly draw attention to the other instruments and effects swirling just beneath the surface.

And in "Be Thou My Vision," Shacklock simply pulls out the stops: Keaggy sings the well-known hymn over a chockablock mixture of chants, weird percussion, and otherworldly sounds and rhythms. The most interesting element of the performance, however, is the story behind Keaggy's inadvertent transformation of the line "Nought be all else to me save that thou art" into "Nought be all else to me save that thy art," a slip of the lip that should sound familiar to those who know Van Morrison's performance of the same song on Hymns to the Silence.

"Alan was attempting to write new lyrics to it," says Keaggy, "because he didn't really know the words and I didn't have a hymnal."

"I used to sing that song in school with different lyrics," Shacklock explains. "In English schools, we sing hymns because the church and the state are one. But that tune came back to me, and I thought, 'That would be great for Phil to do.' So I said, 'Listen to this melody. Do you know it?' And he said, 'Oh, yes. I know it as 'Be Thou My Vision.'"

At which point, without a hymnal, Keaggy enlarged the lyric page from the Morrison CD booklet, convinced Shacklock of the superiority of the 'Vision' lyrics, and proceeded to record it, Morrison-esque pronoun gaffes and all.

"Van Morrison can get away with it because he's Irish," laughs Keaggy. "I'm only half-Irish.".

As usual, Keaggy exaggerates his shortcomings. But his willingness to acknowledge them combined with his refusal to take credit for the strengths of True Believer underscores the degree to which humility has become a deep-rooted part of his personality.

"I was very honored to be asked to work with Phil Keaggy," says Shacklock. "He's a unique man."

And how does this unique man account for the seemingly inexhaustible abundance and quality of his ever-growing body of work?

"All I know is that I manage to stay active at what I do because people keep requesting to hear me. It seems to me it's all been God's graciousness, and it's something I'm aware of daily.

"However long it lasts, I'm grateful."