That was four years ago, Miss Grant recalls during an interview, and at the time she was 'really bugged by the stereotypes' applied to Christian singers. Worried that she had lost the youthful audience at the festival, she decided to do something about it onstage.
'I looked at those kids,' says the singer, who's appearing at Six Flags Over Georgia at 7 p.m. Saturday, 'and all the girls were hot, they're wearing halter tops or tube tops, and here are these young, budding figures and all these horny guys. And I'm thinking how they're all camping out there and none of them are married and they are feeling it in abig way. A lot of times, especially when a spiritual atmosphere is making everyone feel 'one,' it can be very arousing for young Christians because you're having this intimacy with all these people and your hormones go berserk. That's why I've found so many young Christian kids getting pregnant. They get in youth groups and their defenses go down.'
So Miss Grant, who once described her music as 'pop, rock and ballads that happen to have Christian lyrics,' told the crowd just what she was thinking: 'I'm not married and I'm dying to have sex, too. Sometimes I think if the line starts here, let me be first. But we're making a commitment here.' During all this, she says, the memory making her smile, her brother-in-law Dan Harrell (who doubles as her manager) was standing out in the crowd, stunned. 'He was like, 'I don't believe you're saying that.' But I think it was right for the time.'
Amy Grant is unusually frank for a performer of religious songs. But that's not all that sets her apart from her compatriots in contemporary Christian music. Dubbed 'the Michael Jackson of gospel' by the New York Times because she has topped the charts for months at a time, the dark-haired 23-year-old has sold about 2 million records since she first began recording in 1976.
Her 'Age to Age' LP went gold (signifying sales of at least 500,000) late last year, making her the first white gospel solo artist ever to earn a gold record. A gold album is a mark of distinction in any kind of music, but Miss Grant's is even more impressive because gospel music accounts for only about 5 percent of total record and tape sales. And Miss Grant's current LP, 'Straight Ahead,' is in its ninth consecutive week atop Billboard's inspirational chart, while 'Age to Age' is No. 4 in its 98th week.
You won't find Miss Grant appearing constantly on religious TV shows or performing in churches, either. But she's been on 'Good Morning America' twice and just finished a mostly sold-out three-month national tour with her band which includes her husband of two years, singer-songwriter Gary Chapman playing halls seating 3,000 to 6,000. She sold out the 6,200-seat Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles for two shows and last year drew 15,000 to Six Flags.
Why is Miss Grant so much more successful than any other contemporary Christian performer? 'I don't know,' she says after several false starts at coming up with an explanation. 'I don't think that God has favored me above everybody else, so I shy away from giving a spiritually oriented answer. 'When I go in to do a record, I think, 'What do I want to hear? What are my musical tastes?' And I guess my musical tastes are just similar to a lot of people's. As much as I admire a lot of Christian artists, musically they don't do anything for me. What I do is musically very mainstream.'
Kenny Loggins is one of the musical influences she cites, so it's not surprising that Miss Grant draws a lot of high school and college kids to her shows. But, she says, 'maybe it doesn't have anything to do with music. Long before I started singing, I always really enjoyed people, and somehow communicating came pretty easily. I have thanked the Lord more times than I can count for kids who have come up to me after a concert and said, 'I feel like you know me all the way through.' 'Cause what greater compliment can a songwriter have? That's really important to me. Being able to understand the kids I sing to and have them relate to me is more important than (career) longevity.'
Perhaps one reason teenagers relate so well to Miss Grant is that she's not that far removed from the days when 'I was a rebellious teenager not grotesquely, but rebellious, nonetheless.' The youngest of four daughters born to physician Burton Grant and his wife Gloria and a native of Augusta, she grew up in Nashville, where she attended an exclusive all-girls high school.
How did she rebel? 'Oh, I was defiant,' she says. 'I stayed out too late, got drunk some. I cussed. You know, we thought we were really cool taking a bunch of No-Doz. Nothing I'm proud of now. It's not really a very pleasant time in life. But you're trying so desperately to be somebody. Like everybody else, I was testing the limits. You're trying to figure out who you are and what life is all about.'
What kept her from going too far, she says, was her close relationship with her parents. 'The one element my parents really instilled in me was honesty. I had a real problem lying when I was younger, but somehow my parents always made me feel the situation was never so grave you couldn't be honest about it.' An example, she says, happened 'when I was going through a wilder time growing up, my late teens. For all practical purposes, it was very mysterious that I hadn't had a period in some time. And finally my mother, just very relaxed, said, 'Amy, is there a possibility that you might be pregnant?'
'Well, I'd never had sex. I was a virgin when I got married. And my first instinct was to get mad at my mother. How could you think that? But then I thought, in parent-child relationships they're always saying be open with your kids. Well, who's supposed to open the first door? Do you expect a 17-year-old child to go running in and say, 'I had sex with my boyfriend'? You know, bridges are not built from the younger side over. They're built from the adult side to the child. And even though it made me a little bit angry at first, I went away thinking, 'What if that had been my problem?' I could have just nodded my head and it would have all been OK.'
Another important factor in her development while a teenager was her faith. 'I was a Christian and really working at it hard. I wasn't trying to be perfect, but I wanted to know who Jesus was and if this thing was for real.'
She started playing guitar in her early teens singing the songs of such favorites as James Taylor, Carole King and Elton John and then, after being invited to drop by a Bible study group, she started writing her own songs at age 14 with a Christian slant to the lyrics. 'I grew up in a Christian home (attending the Church of Christ), but I never really thought about it. But when I went to the Bible study group I was completely swept away by the sincerity of the experience. And because it was such an intense and very real experience for me, I wanted to sing about it.' Still, the songs she wrote were for her own pleasure. 'I never sang for anybody,' she says. 'In fact, the first time I ever sang for a stranger was on a tape, and I got a record deal.'
It happened just about that fast. Her Bible study group leader, Brown Bannister (then a recording engineer and now her record producer), made a tape of her songs and an executive of Word Records, the nation's largest gospel label, signed her up after hearing it over the phone. Miss Grant thought it was a joke when Bannister first called with the offer and didn't even tell her father at first because she was mad at him for reprimanding her for being on the phone after 10 p.m.
'I was 15. I didn't think anything about it. I was still playing neighborhood football and doing all my tomboy stuff and going out on Friday and Saturday night. And it continued to be that way all through high school. The record wasn't released until just a few weeks before graduation, and I gave my first public concert when I was 17.'
She didn't even tell her friends about her career during freshman orientation at Furman University, which she attended for two years before transferring to Vanderbilt (where she was about a semester shy of an English degree when she dropped out to sing full time). 'I didn't want to be classified immediately as . . . different. I wasn't ashamed of it, but I wanted to be judged for myself. 'A lot of times when you're good at something and people tell you you're good, it encourages insecurity in other areas. Growing up in Nashville, I'd met quite a few people who their whole life was being famous, and I thought it was so sad, and I hope I'm never like that.'
Eight albums later and despite all those record sales, two Grammy Awards and four Dove awards (including 1983 Gospel Artist of the Year) Miss Grant still isn't that well-known outside Christian music circles. But, the brown-eyed singer notes in a husky drawl, on tour 'it felt like we had a lot of new people because the audiences, for the most part, were consistently larger.'
That pleases her, although she says it doesn't bother her that she's not better known. 'I think that'll happen just as a natural progression,' she says. Her management and record company have been giving natural progression a little help with sexy publicity photos, music videos and outside promotion help aimed at getting some of her tunes with no specific Christian message (such as the very catchy 'It's Not a Song') played on secular radio stations. 'A song is played because there's a demand for it, and I would love for there to be that demand,' she says about her crosnetgate potential. She'd also like to do some acting, if the part were right, but a secular career in pop music isn't what she's after.
'I have made a choice to do Christian music. There are quite a few songs on my albums that are either-or. Like 'It's Not a Song.' Nobody's ever going to hear that and say that's a Christian song. But I'm not out to slip one over on anybody. I want to do what I do and do it the best that I can do it, and I want people to want to hear it. But I'm not gonna change what I do to get people to listen to me.'
She loves listening to Billy Joel, Boz Scaggs, The Doobie Brothers and other secular pop-rock acts. 'I'm in no way denying the value of music just because it doesn't have a Christian lyric. But I feel like the most honest artists are the artists that do what comes from inside and not because of a marketing strategy.'
Granted, she says, she's working in a field that might be considered abit restricting lyrically. 'But it doesn't have to be. In the same way that Dan Fogelberg can write about missing you and then write a song about a race horse or a boat or his father, I feel as my artistry grows, I can put a Christian perspective on all those things, too. You know, a Christian perspective on a race horse might not be any different.' She does, however, have to keep in mind her hardcore Christian audience, some elements of which don't take kindly to her efforts to break the gospel singer stereotype. Some don't like her sexy poses. Others are upset by her outspokenness. And when she sang the Doobie Brothers tune 'Listen to the Music' on a syndicated television special, she says, 'I got more negative feedback.'
She doesn't like being pigeon-holed that way, but doesn't get as upset about it as she used to. 'There's a point where stereotypes are naturally broken if you're just yourself. I think sometimes I have crossed the line maybe into being bitter against a stereotype, and that's bad. I'm just trying to prove the point that just because you're a Christian doesn't mean you're boring. 'Nobody,' she says, 'is ever going to agree on everything, doctrinally or lifestyle. There are wine drinkers and non-wine drinkers. There are dancers and non-dancers.
'In the end, you really just have to be true to the conviction in your own heart.'
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