Brown: Judgment day comes early for Amy Grant
August 24, 2002
Christian singer Amy Grant got divorced more than three years ago. But her Sept. 1 concert at Fiddler's Green got canceled as a direct result of that divorce.
Promoters and her agent say Grant was in effect blacklisted on Denver's biggest Christian radio station, KLDV-FM (91.1), and the chain that owns it, California-based K-LOVE.
Grant divorced husband Gary Chapman in 1999 after 16 years of marriage. She married Vince Gill in March 2000.
"There's probably just two or three people who really know what went on (with Grant's divorce). Is it really our business?" Road Home Productions' Rob Marshall said.
"When I got my divorce in the mid-'80s, there was one artist who supported me and her name was Amy Grant. She never judged me or my acts."
Grant's agent, John Huie at Creative Artists Agency in Nashville, Tenn., bristles at the subject: "Does anyone go to church where the pastor has been divorced? That's a question to anybody - to K-LOVE, any radio station, any pastor. I'm the last guy to point a finger, but that's a statement that goes to everybody."
In the aftermath of Grant's divorce, "there's been a lot of prayer, a lot of suffering, a lot of healing," Huie says. "Let's get on with life."
But forgiveness was too slow in coming to save the Grant concert.
"There is an element of backlash from the Christian community concerning Amy's personal life, which I think is a total abomination," Marshall says. "Some people have judged her for a bad marriage, a divorce and then a remarriage. This is real typical in the Christian entertainment industry. They expect these people to be superheroes. The Christian community is very judgmental toward their own. They play God."
Representatives from K-LOVE's Denver affiliate and its Sacramento, Calif., headquarters didn't return phone calls.
"Initially, there was resistance. We were told it was taken care of, but to my knowledge, K-LOVE never actively supported this event," Huie says. "Without Christian radio, it's kind of hard to promote a Christian festival."
"K-LOVE was so supportive on DC Talk and Jars of Clay. I know they made a big difference," Marshall says of concerts held earlier this year. "They were both very close to sellouts."
This time, though, "the radio station had not been playing Amy," he says. "Originally, they refused to accept our advertising, because Amy was supposed to go on the satellite - they have a ton of stations - and they wanted her to tell her story to listeners, just to clear things up."
Grant actually did it - she actually went on the air two weeks ago to explain herself with morning host Jon Rivers and his wife, Sherry, two of the most influential broadcasters in the K-LOVE chain.
Rivers' first remark to Grant was that it was ironic to have her sitting there in this situation, given that both Rivers and his wife, Sherry, had been divorced before themselves. That fact isn't mentioned in Rivers' bio on the K-LOVE Web site; it was pretty courageous of him to bring it up himself on air, considering what the same situation has done to Grant's career.
"Afterward, K-LOVE turned things around and were going to be supporting the date," Marshall says. "They were going to be providing spots at no charge. But it was too little too late."
Indeed, promoters had hoped for sales of at least 3,000 to 4,000 for the show. When the plug was pulled, 309 tickets had been sold.
Mind you, Grant sold out the Pepsi Center in 1999.
House of Blues' Barry Fey, who co-sponsored the date, e-mailed CAA, feeling blindsided by a show for which he'd been unable to use Christian radio to sell tickets. Road Home and House of Blues then got e-mails that labeled Grant an adulteress and quoted Scripture to back them up. Curiously, no one quoted the one about "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
House of Blues had come up with the guarantee money to add Grant to the show, figuring it would boost sales enormously.
"It seemed like a logical idea to me. Previously, Amy had played the Pepsi Center and did very well," says head booker Jason Miller.
"The main Christian radio station won't play her and won't take our spots. It was a disaster," Fey says.
Grant couldn't be reached for comment, but in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News after her divorce, she talked about what a struggle it was.
"We're living in a dichotomy of what people presume your life is like and what the reality is," she said at the time.
She knew divorce would hurt her career, "but it certainly wasn't my first concern - 'Gee, what does this look like publicly?' " she said. "For me, the hardest time was the last year and a half (of her marriage) before anybody knew that the wheels had come off.
"On one level, I think anybody who has been through a divorce - in your worst moments what you feel like you deserve is the big rubber stamp FAILURE upon your forehead every morning when you wake up. Right behind that is a whole lot of really valuable life lessons that are worth learning. I wish I could have learned them in a different context."
So when is enough enough? What's the statute of limitations on divorce?
Mark Brown is the popular music critic. Brownm@RockyMountainNews.com or (303) 892-2674
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