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| MYLON - WE BELIEVE by Mylon LeFevre (1970) Cotillion - SD 9026 |
The secular music biz boasts several artists who can be instantly identified by one name only: Elvis. Cher. Madonna. Beyonce.
We've got one of those, too. His name is Mylon.
Whether he was inside the Church, lurking around the periphery of organized religion, or on the outside looking in, Mylon LeFevre was always a rock star. He's reinvented himself multiple times, going from Southern Gospel royalty...to rock 'n roll rebel...to sold-out Christian rocker...to international evangelist and motorcycle enthusiast. And at each stop along the way, he was always larger than life, with a personal charisma that caused people to sit up and take notice. Most importantly, Mylon LeFevre became a soul-winning machine in the 1980s and, from that time to now, has seen hundreds of thousands of people surrender their lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
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| Mylon with The LeFevres |
Mylon was born in Gulfport, Mississippi to Eva Mae and Urias LeFevre, leaders of one of the most storied family groups in Southern Gospel music. He, of course, joined the "family business" as soon as he was old enough to sing and play. But Mylon eventually rebelled. After being kicked out of Bob Jones University, he actually joined the Army. While in the military, Mylon wrote a simple Gospel song called Without Him. Elvis Presley heard it and asked to record it. Mylon's life changed at that moment.
He had been making $84 a month as a soldier; his first royalty check for Without Him was $90,000 (about $700,000 in today's dollars). Without Him was recorded by countless Gospel groups and even ended up in hymnals. LeFevre bought a Corvette and joined another iconic brand in the Southern Gospel world -- the Stamps Quartet.
In the late 1960s, LeFevre started recording solo albums, but they were still within the traditional, Southern Gospel style that was acceptable to his parents and their peers. He soon began to feel that he was somehow suspended between two worlds, not fully belonging to either. Mark Heard later sang about this phenomenon in his 1981 song, Stuck in the Middle:
Well, my brothers criticize me
Say I'm just too strange to believe
And the others just avoid me
Say my faith is so naive
I'm too sacred for the sinners
And the saints wish I would leave
Mylon, with his long hair and sideburns, was too rock and roll for the Chruch, and too religious for the rockers. As the turbulent Sixties were drawing to a close, LeFevre ditched his polyester stage suits and began toying with the idea of creating an album of rock and roll music that gave praise to God. At the time, Larry Norman had released Upon This Rock and, by some accounts, had become a positive influence on Mylon. This new musical direction was interpreted by the Southern Gospel subculture as a slap in the face. It was not understood; in fact, it was publicly rejected. But Mylon would not be deterred. His first mainstream album entitled Mylon - We Believe was released on Cotillion Records in 1970. It's considered to be one of the very first true "Jesus Rock" albums and is included on this list due to its historical significance.
Produced by Allen Toussaint, Mylon - We Believe is said to have actually rocked harder than Norman's Upon This Rock. It was not a commercial success -- none of LeFevre's solo albums in the seventies were -- but it did deliver some gritty, Gospel-influenced southern rock to the music-starved Jesus People. There was plenty of heavy rock organ, female background singers, and tasty guitar work, but the album really was a hybrid of the Gospel music Mylon was trying desperately to leave behind, and the southern rock he was so adept at creating. One reviewer described the album's sound as "an early-'70s country-blues-rock vibe." But try as he might, Mylon could not outrun his history -- not on this record, anyway. There would be plenty of time for a deeper plunge into the world of sex, drugs and rock and roll (as they say), but Mylon - We Believe contained many lyrical clues that the young rocker still had a grudging respect for his spiritual heritage.
Several members of the group that would become the Atlanta Rhythm Section -- including Barry Bailey, Dean Daugherty, and Paul Goddard -- were friends of Mylon and were invited to serve as Mylon's backing band on this record.
Mylon - We Believe opens with an absolute classic. The Imperials were responsible for bringing this arrangement of Old Gospel Ship to a wider audience, but Mylon LeFevre did it first. Gospel Ship is actually a song found in Pentecostal hymnals in churches across the South. LeFevre gave it a rock beat and made it palatable to fans of the Allman Brothers or Bonnie and Delaney.
Sunday School Blues was a funky, crunchy, bluesy little number. Mylon was in fine voice, and the lead guitar work was very bold for a "religious" album in 1970. The song gives you the impression that LeFevre had grown up with more than his fair share of rules and regulations, spiritually speaking. He was more than ready to just live and let live:
I don't wanna tell you how to live
I don't wanna tell you what to give
I don't wanna tell you what to do
Got to be me
You got to be you
I don't want you to refuse
No, I never want you to refuse
I want you to love, not hate
Understand and appreciate
What He's done for me and you
Please don't get those Sunday school blues
I'm not tryin' to tell you I'm right
I'm not tryin' to tell you you're wrong
I'm not tryin' to tell you anything
I'm just tryin' to sing this song
Next up was Who Knows, a rockin' tune that extols the character and attributes of God. The ever-present female backing trio lends some hey hey heys.
The album's first ballad was Sweet Peace Within. Dean Daughtry's Hammond B-3 really adds to this one. This lyric passage definitely seems happily autobiographical in light of Mylon's efforts to free himself from the burdens of family expectations and the cultural baggage of the Southern Gospel subculture:
Sometimes I feel like I'm all alone
But I'm so happy just to be my own
And I'm so thankful just to be alive today
The song later takes an evangelistic turn:
There's one question I gotta ask you, my friend
What's gonna happen when you reach the end?
Are you going to have that sweet peace within, my friend?
Sweet peace within...
You're Still On His Mind found Mylon preaching with the zeal and fervor of an old-time tent revival evangelist. The passion of his love for God really comes through.
Side One of Mylon - We Believe wraps with Trying To Be Free. Musically, this one was a forerunner to early Atlanta Rhythm Section. The song featured some melodic bass and once again revealed details from Mylon's personal struggles with the family of origin:
When I was young I told myself I didn't need my family
But as I grow I realize I only wanted them to need me
And, perhaps in a nod to his upbringing, Mylon delivers a spoken-word paraphrase of John 3:16 during the song's bridge.
Side Two finds Mylon waxing philosophical in Searching for Reality. The song touches on drugs and alcohol as ineffective means of coping with the problems of modern life, and, yet again, mentions Mylon's Christian heritage:
Mentally, it's so complex
I fear that I might be the next to lose my soul
And that affects my philosophy
But when I was young my Mama taught
That doing wrong would bring you naught but tears of pain
And then I thought, Rationalize, son...
The lyrics are somewhat clunky and seem to have been written by an armchair psychologist. There's a really nice lead guitar soloing over a bed of strings during the song's instrumental break.
Clocking in at under two minutes is the country-flavored Pleasing Who, Pleasing You? It's followed by an acoustic ballad titled Contemplation. Contemplation came across as more of a straight love song and was reportedly released by Cotillion as a promotional 45.
Hitch Hike also had somewhat of an Atlanta Rhythm Section vibe (even though it predated the group). Easy, mid-tempo rocker with a nice vocal by Mylon and a tasty lead guitar solo from Barry Bailey.
Peace Begins Within was an almost 7-minute in-studio jam written by LeFevre, Bailey, Venable, Burrell, and Daughtry. While the back-up vocal trio wailed, the band turned in some funky solos. The song's central theme: We believe peace begins within.
Mylon-We Believe wraps up with The Only Thing That's Free. One reviewer called it "a country tune for folks who didn't really like country."
And, just like that, an important audio artifact from the earliest days of Jesus Rock drew to a close.
Was it a truly great album from a sonic standpoint? Production? Songwriting? Musicianship? No, no, no and no. But it was a big, fat chunk of history that would become even more important about a decade later.
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| Mylon (L) with Alvin Lee |
From all accounts, Mylon basically slipped into a typical rock and roll lifestyle in the early seventies and drifted far away from his faith. He signed with Columbia Records and toured with some of the biggest names in secular rock music -- Eric Clapton, Elton John, Billy Joel, Duane Allman, Berry Oakley, Little Richard, & the Who, among others. But his excesses kept him from ever achieving true stardom in the music business. His drug use escalated to a near-fatal heroin overdose. Interestingly, some in the burgeoning field of Jesus Music reached out to Mylon. Producer Buck Herring invited him to sing on Phil Keaggy's Love Broke Thru album in 1976 (you can literally distinguish his voice in the background vocals on the song Abraham), even though Mylon was not walking with the Lord at the time. Four years later, at a 2nd Chapter of Acts concert, a prodigal came Home. Mylon prayed with Buck at the end of the concert and once again made Jesus the Lord of his life.
The rest is history. After submitting himself to work as a janitor at his home church -- Mt. Paran Church of God in Atlanta, GA -- he eventually began a band called Broken Heart. Mylon was back...but this time he was more than just a rock star. Over the next 10 years, Mylon & Broken Heart released 10 albums and traveled over a million miles, won Dove Awards and a Grammy, and saw tens of thousands of people born into the Kingdom of God as a result of their efforts. Personally, I identify strongly with that era. I went to hear Mylon & Broken Heart with our church youth group in the early 80s. The concert was basically in a glorified gymnasium on the campus of a small church in Greenville, SC. I vividly remember Scott Allen and Kenny Bentley joining Mylon at his mic, near the end of the concert, to sing...
More of Jesus, less of me...
Broken Heart was a force of nature throughout the 1980s. The music videos...Ben Hewitt's Simmons drums...Kenny Bentley's headless bass...Paul Joseph's "keytar"...David Payton's blistering lead guitar solos...Mylon's red leather jacket and white boots...the bandanas and parachute pants...flash pots and fog machines...and the live concert videotaped at the PTL "Barn Auditorium" (I was there, by the way).
There was also plenty of controversy. Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart railed against Mylon's music, often calling LeFevre out by name. Mylon frequently forgot the lyrics to his own songs during live performances (and blamed it on his drug use in the 70s). Some people were shocked to learn that the band used sequencers in their live shows (now you can hardly find an artist that doesn't). And some complained that Mylon preached too much and sang too little. [That one never made sense to me, because I absolutely LOVED to hear Mylon preach the Word of God in a live setting. I'd gladly buy a ticket, even back then, just to hear the man talk.] All in all, the Broken Heart years were truly a decade to remember...and to treasure.
After suffering a heart attack, Mylon retooled and focused on life as a preaching evangelist. "We've seen the goodness of God at every turn, and this new season of ministry has become even more glorious than anything we've experienced in the past," LeFevre says. "More than ever before we need to proclaim the Word of God and to emphasize to every nation His promise to perform it for whoever believes it."
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| Mylon LeFevre today |
Mylon is still writing music, but it plays a secondary role in his ministry these days. "I will always write songs to and about my Lord," he says. "I believe the music that God gives me is anointed and has an important place in my ministry. But I am compelled to share His Word. It is the best news on this planet!"
In the sixties, he was a good looking, son-of-a-Gospel-singer and successful songwriter in his own right. In the 80s, this giant of a man with the smooth, southern drawl and rock star persona made a huge impact on the Body of Christ and helped define the term Christian Rock. But he will also be remembered for contributing an important album of "Jesus Rock" in 1970, well before we had even heard of that term.
Thanks, Mylon.
Fun Facts
- Mylon has spoken at motorcycle rallies, NASCAR chapel services, NFL and NBA chapel services, and in Russia, Australia, Canada, the Philippines, the Cayman Islands, and Mexico.
- His daughter is married to Peter Furler, former longtime member of the band Newsboys.
I was surprised and delighted to stumble onto this album at a record store several years ago. I never even knew it existed. When I took it home to listen, my expectations were low, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it really is a good album, remarkable in fact considering the time period in which it was recorded.
ReplyDeleteI must have seen Mylon in concert 5 times in the '80s. He must have toured relentlessly; he certainly toured Alabama and the South relentlessly. I felt he and the band became more and more gimmicky as the years went by. But his love and enthusiasm for Jesus were undeniable. They had some great songs ("More" being a favorite), and put on a very entertaining show. I, too, loved hearing him talk in that thick southern drawl ("If y'er free in Jesus, y'er free indeed").
One things that's always kinda puzzled me was when they came up with the whole idea for trying to go under the name "Look Up" in the secular market. I've heard the idea originated because Mylon still had an obligation to fulfill with his previous secular record label. But that's not the story he gave us at the time. I remember him spending the better part of one of his concerts sharing the vision for what they wanted to do as "Look Up." He said they had signed with a secular label and that the label was real excited about the album, and that they were going to do a big tour under the name Look Up and it was going to be huge! He said it had been prophesied that they were going to play in huge stadiums to over 100,000 people at a time, and lots of people were going to be saved. That God was going to give them all this fame and it was all going to be for His glory, etc., etc. And he was telling us in advance because he didn't want his Christian fan base to think he had sold out. This was all part of God's plan, he told us.
I confess I was more than a little skeptical at the time. I believe that was the last time I saw Mylon in concert, and I never heard anything more about "Look Up," except that I think a friend of mine somehow got a hold of a copy of the album on tape. But none of Mylon's big prophecies or claims ever came true. I certainly never heard about Look Up from any secular sources. And word of mouth was that the album was subpar in quality.
I consider myself a charismatic, or at least friendly to the charismatic movement. But I can't tell you how many times I've heard people in charismatic ministries prophesy that God is about to make their ministry huge to give them a big platform for Jesus. And not once have I ever seen it come true. Personally I don't think God works that way. He doesn't need a big worldly platform to get His message out. Instead, He prefers to fly under the radar, changing the world one heart at a time. But whenever I hear someone claiming that God is going to cause their ministry to explode in popularity and influence, I always think back to Mylon's Look Up aspirations and remember what happened there.
Interesting. I was a huge Broken Heart fan as a teenager in the South in the 80's. I saw them twice live, and had never even heard of Look Up until I saw something about it just a few years ago, so yes, clearly, it didn't do what Mylon anticipated at all. This explains his train of thought now, though; he became a follower and speaker of the prosperity gospel, name it and claim it variety, following the likes of the Crouch family from TBN and Kenneth Copeland, which is all heresy in my mind. Which saddens me, because I really looked up to him and his story and message back in the day.
DeleteMorgan, I agree with your comments 100%. God doesn't need superstars to get his word around, it's one person at a time, friend to friend. A friend of mine got this album ages ago and played it non stop. Still brings back good memories of those days.
ReplyDeleteStill one of my favorite albums since I heard it. One of those albums I would want with me on desert island (that kind of thing). Thank God that Mylon wandered the wilderness but God kept him in plain sight until it was time for the prodigal to come home. Mylon was a great rocker and he had soul. For all we know he still does.
ReplyDeleteThe album cover of We Believe was shot in front of the church....Mt. Paran....where I was part of the youth ministry team for years in the 1970s and 1980s. I was there when God got a hold of Mylon in the late 70s and didn't let go. He came back to Mt. Paran, and he was a janitor there for several years as he allowed the Lord to clean the drugs out of his body and restore his mind. I know, because I was his supervisor during that time there at the church. On a number of occasions in those early years I would drop by Mylon's home after midnight to just give him someone to talk to, pray with, and hang with....since he was still on rock and roll time and was up all night and slept during the day.....lol. I was there in a Bible Study/Prayer Meeting that we had with Mylon, Kenny, Stan, Scott, Dean, Ben, Tim.....all original members of Mylon's new band....when he shared a "killer verse" in the Bible that God had led him to. It said God would exalt a man with a broken heart and lift him up. That's when Mylon said the band was going to be called Broken Heart. I remember driving home one night around 3 or 4 in the morning after listening to Mylon talk about the wasted years of his life in rock and roll and getting home and writing a poem about how what he said touched me that I gave to a few days later. He read the first two lines, "My mind has been a battlefield where many wars were fought. My soul has been a market place where others sold and bought." He told me those two lines perfectly described his life up to the moment Jesus redeemed and restored him from all of that. I even got to play the air raid siren in one of Mylon's first new Christian rock songs, "Air Born" that he used to play in our church gym before he started touring with Broken Heart....lol. I have been close to Mylon and watched him grow over the years. We may have a few theological differences from time to time, but this one things I know beyond a shadow of a doubt......he is a man who loves God with all his heart, soul, mine and strength. He has lived to minister the word of Christ and draw all men to Jesus. He will die one day and he will hear the words, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." I have never tired of hearing Mylon share the word of God....because I see the greatness of God revealed in someone whose life was such a train wreck at one time, but who now continues to live everyday with a broken heart, bowing down to worship at the foot of Almighty God. I thank God that I got to witness the miracle(s) of Mylon's life and how God has used him in such a special way since we first met those many years ago.
DeleteWow, Bill...THANK YOU so much for sharing your insights and memories. Amazing stuff.
DeleteI grew up at Mt.Paran COG...raised as a Pentecostal (now a Baptist). I attended Mt.Paran Christian school during its inception and into the 80s (when Mylon and Airborn/Broken Heart) also worked a played concerts there. I was fortunate to see them in concert numerous times at Mt.Paran (& once in FLA). I knew of Mylon's family SoGo background, but didn't appreciate it (as I do now). These days, I'm a huge fan of 'old time' SoGo (like the Singing Lefevres, etc.), and wish (in hindsight) I would have to talked to Mylon (or Eva Mae) about their experiences in that industry. Mylon is indeed a legend in Christian music...both SoGo and 'Christian' rock.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your memories!
DeleteI agree Mylon's music in the 80's was great but I'm disappointed that he's now involved in Word of Faith theology. I don't question his faith, but WOF does have a lot of false teaching.
ReplyDeleteJoe English - former Wings drummer, and CCM star in the 80's - is in the same fellowship. He stopped drumming because WOF is against "wordly rhythms", rock music with spiritual lyric.
DeleteNone of this matters anymore since Mylon is with Jesus in Heaven.
ReplyDeleteOh, but it does matter. We don't want the flock being lead astray with false theology, do we?
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