VICKY HAMILTON I was working as a cocktail waitress at Gazzarri’s in ’81 and Ratt and Roxx Regime seemed to play, like, every Friday and Saturday night. They both did versions of Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law.”
MICHAEL SWEET As Roxx Regime we were playing Gazzarri’s all the time. But we wouldn’t make any money. And I remember Bill Gazzarri used to always pay us with a smile on his face, as if he was paying us really well. Then we would lug our gear out the back door and load it into our station wagon and drive an hour back home to La Mirada, just thinking, Man, this sucks … But we never thought the gig itself sucked. We were thrilled to be able to play at Gazzarri’s. So we were there what felt like every weekend.
ROBERT SWEET (drummer, Roxx Regime, Stryper) Hollywood was where we really cemented the beginnings of what we have today.
MICHAEL SWEET When I was a kid I was hearing about Van Halen and seeing the name around town. I never saw them, but I saw Quiet Riot. I went to the Starwood a few times and saw Y&T when they were Yesterday and Today.
ROBERT SWEET Our mom and dad and so many people in our family were really into music. We used to have these get-togethers where seven, eight, ten people would come over and there would always be music going on. And for some reason I gravitated towards the drums.
MICHAEL SWEET Our family moved around a lot—Pasadena, La Mirada, Fullerton, Whittier. We moved to Oklahoma for, like, a year. But then we moved back.
ROBERT SWEET Probably around the time I was seventeen and Mike was maybe fourteen we started playing music together. And I knew my brother could sing. I had a lot of people coming to me, saying, “You two as brothers have something that’s kind of unique, you vibe off of one another.” And I’d seen it with other brothers, like the Van Halens.
MICHAEL SWEET I joined my brother’s band and we started playing backyard parties and local venues. And then I found myself in Hollywood, playing the Whisky, the Troubadour, Gazzarri’s. I was playing those places when I was very young, lying about my age because I looked older than I was. Our band was called Firestorm. And we were also called Aftermath. But then we wound up joining forces for a brief period with this local guitar player, and he had a band called Roxx.
ROBERT SWEET Then we found out someone had already used that name. So I just tacked “Regime” onto it.
MICHAEL SWEET We were just trying to find our sound and the right team. We were even a three-piece for a while, with me as the only guitar player.
ROBERT SWEET We had gone through probably five or six guitar players. C.C. DeVille was one of them.
MICHAEL SWEET We met C.C. out in front of Gazzarri’s. This was ’82, ’83. He had come out from New York. He was all glammed out with big hair. He was looking for a band. And we’re hanging out and we go, “Hey, dude, what’s going on? What’s your name?” He was still Bruce [Johannesson] at that time.
ROBERT SWEET We gave him a phone number and he called us. He came down and jammed and he was awesome.
MICHAEL SWEET He was a great guy. We liked his energy, we liked his attitude. And he was going to join the band. But I recall that when we told him about how everything’s gotta be yellow and black, he wasn’t into that. He said, “Ahh … it’s not really my thing. I’m more into pink and purple.”
ROBERT SWEET He wanted to do, you know, pink fingernail polish and pink lipstick and fur. And, hey, more power to him. But I didn’t really want to wear lace. I didn’t want to wear lingerie. I enjoyed seeing women in it, but I dunno, it just wasn’t my thing.
MICHAEL SWEET I remember one time my brother was talking to C.C. about his guitars—he had some B.C. Riches, I think one of them was pink. And Robert was saying, “We’re going to have to make that yellow and black…” And you could just see C.C.’s eyes bulge out. It was like, “No, god, no.”
But Robert loved everything yellow and black. He was just fascinated by it. He painted his kit yellow and black and then it eventually spread over a two- or three-year period to everything being yellow and black. We started going out and taking road signs off of poles and putting them on the garage walls where we rehearsed. And then the walls were striped yellow and black and then we were wearing yellow and black and we became the Yellow and Black Attack.
ROBERT SWEET I’m not a guy that was super in love with wearing yellow clothes. But I thought it was cool when you put it together in the form of stripes. Only because it stood out. I wanted an idea that was an eyepopper. And you know, the last time I talked with Bill Gazzarri, he walked up to me and he said, “Robert, you guys are too big now. A lot of bands are complaining. You bring in too much gear. You’re too loud. You’ve made it. Get the hell outta here and go become famous.”
MICHAEL SWEET We did a showcase for Enigma Records [initially launched as a division of Greenworld Distribution] at this rehearsal studio/warehouse.
WES HEIN They came out and everything was striped. All their equipment. Every guitar, all the drums. I think their girlfriends and moms had made their outfits. It was probably just yellow clothes and black electric tape.
MICHAEL SWEET We would go buy pieces of, like, white shag carpeting, and we would paint them yellow and put black stripes on them and pin them around our legs from the knee down. And then we would wear black spandex underneath. From a distance it looked amazing. But then you got up close and it was like, “Oh, man…” They still smelled like paint.
BILL HEIN We thought it was nuts. But you have to remember—at that point nuts to us was good.
WES HEIN Honestly, the only thing I ever really asked them to do was to change the name. Because I was not crazy about Roxx Regime.
MICHAEL SWEET Thank god they didn’t care for the name. I didn’t either.
ROBERT SWEET They felt it was too hard to remember. We needed something more to the point.
MICHAEL SWEET We came up with Stryper, and obviously it just made perfect sense, as we were sitting there looking at striped walls and striped gear. We spelled it with a y because otherwise it looked like Stripper. Then we applied the scripture with the stripes—Isaiah 53:5, “by His stripes we are healed.” And then we had an acronym for the name: Salvation Through Redemption Yielding Peace Encouragement and Righteousness. Everything took on a meaning and made sense.
RON GOUDIE (producer, Enigma Records) They hid the whole Jesus thing from us.
WES HEIN We had no idea. But then Ron and I were down at the Casbah [Recording Studio] with them one day, because we wanted to listen to some of the tracks they were working on. And the lyrics were a lot clearer in the studio than on the bad cassette dub they had given us. So we’re listening, and one line is “Jesus is the way.” We look at each other. And then we look at Robert and Michael. There’s this silence and we say, “Are you guys Christians?” And they’re like, “Yes.”