Keith Green Vs. the Music Industry
In the first proper chapter of God Rock, Inc., I introduce Keith Green as an example of a Christian artist whose ethics came to contradict the commercial necessities of the Christian music industry. I glossed over this contradiction and its conflict in my earlier primer to Green’s career and discography, but here I want to go into a bit more detail and provide some primary sources that I have found to be very enlightening.
Keith Green leaves Sparrow Records
The short story is that, following the success of Green’s first two albums, For Him Who Has Ears to Hear (1977) and No Compromise (1978), he started hearing from other labels who wanted to woo him away from Sparrow. He ultimately ended up re-signing with Billy Ray Hearn and Sparrow, partly because (according to Melody Green in No Compromise) he wanted to remove the temptation of commercial success from his work as a Christian artist, songwriter, musician, and minister. Nonetheless, as he continued to pray and seek counsel from trusted friends and advisors, Green became convicted that God was calling him to leave the commercial industry altogether. Here’s how Billy Ray Hearn explained the situation to me when I interviewed him in 2010:
He wanted to give his records away, he thought it was terrible to charge to come to his concerts. All his records were stacked in the lobbies, you’d just take one, and in the bucket put whatever money you had. He made more money that way than we could have selling them for $10. He didn’t do it for that his reason — that was his real reason, he knew that God would bless him, and he did. Then he came to me and said, “I want to give my records away.” I said, “I can’t do that, I couldn’t stay in business.” So he came back later and said, “God’s told me I should leave L.A., move to Texas, start my own thing, I want a release from my contract.” And I’d just signed him, again, for another two years. You know what the signing bonus was? A grand piano I bought out of Arkansas! Well, I didn’t get the piano back.
He started publishing this little paper called Last Days Ministry. He started sending that out to everybody that was writing in to his records for free. He built up a mailing list of a 150,000 people. And then, to send all his records out, he came to me and wanted to use the warehouse at night to ship his records! I just let him go, and he was selling records in competition with me, and he wanted to use my warehouse and all my shipping supplies! He didn’t pay me for that either. He was a character. Of course, I did it, because when God’s telling somebody to do something, I’m not going to stand in the way.
Melody Green’s recollection of this meeting with Hearn is similar, as she recounts in No Compromise:
Following his convictions, Keith was really in a bind. He was legally and spiritually bound to fulfill the contract he signed with Sparrow. He’d been beside himself wondering how he could stay faithful to what God was asking him to do. Finally he phoned Billy Ray and asked if we could go over to see him. … Keith had a sense that his destiny was somehow going to be affected by this man’s response. It would be crazy for Billy Ray to release his biggest artist from a legally signed contract. We had no way of knowing what would happen.
Green: “I blew it. God just told me to start my own label and give my records away. I’m really sorry. I don’t know what to do. I know I signed a contract and I’ll honor it if I need to, but I’m asking you to release me from it. I’m not going to another company. I’m starting my own. I won’t even be selling my records in the bookstores.”
Hearn: “If God doesn’t want you at Sparrow and I try to keep you, then I’d be fighting against God. That means God will be standing against me and the whole company. … Keith, if you want to be released from your contract, I won’t hold you to it. I’ll let you go.”
CCM Magazine and fans react
After Hearn released Keith Green from his recording contract, he and Melody, together with around two dozen members of Last Days Ministries, moved to Lindale in East Texas where they started an intentional community supported, in part, by Keith’s musical career. CCM magazine reported this move, noting Green’s intent to make his records available for free, self-releasing and -distributing them via mail-order. In January, 1980, CCM’s founding editor/publisher John Styll wrote about Green’s news:
I was intrigued by the news story in last month’s CCM about Keith Green’s decision not to make his next album available to the Christian retail trade. He said, among other things, that he wanted to make sure that even those people [who] couldn’t afford the regular price of an album could obtain one of his. “My main desire is really not to price the gospel — so the poor can hear it,” he said. My question is, if a person can’t afford a record, where is he going to get the equipment to play Keith’s album? Is Keith going to start giving away stereo systems too?
Cover of CCM magazine, March, 1980
Readers wrote in to CCM magazine about Green’s choice and Styll’s commentary. In the March, 1980 issue, Jeff from Arcata, CA pushed back against Styll’s earlier comment making light of Keith Green’s attempt to make records available to people who can’t afford them (about “free stereo systems”):
It seemed to me to be sort of snide and making light of a conviction that Keith really believes in. Beyond all the “flash and glory” of the music world, there are people who are, (I hope) sincerely seeking God’s specific direction for their lives and ministries. Keith has made a lot of bold statements and has a very powerful ministry. Prophets have never been popular; yet God’s prophets are always right. Please don’t get so involved in the “forest” of Christian music that you lose sight of the “trees”; people that follow the Lord Jesus in obedience.
Three other readers’ letters followed with similar criticism. One suggested that Styll and Green should work together to give away stereo systems to inner-city churches and youth centers; another wrote that Green deserved even more coverage in CCM following this news; the third argued that Styll and Green must have distinct objectives (“philosophy of ministry”) in mind for their work in Christian music. That much was made clear in that issue’s cover feature, an interview between Styll and Green, the “non-profit prophet.”
CCM magazine interview, March 1980
In the interview, Green addressed his plans to self-release and -distribute his next album. He made a point that he wasn’t giving away his album but rather “offering his next album for whatever people can afford, or want, to give” via mail-order. (Comparison-minded readers might note the similarity between this plan and Radiohead’s release of In Rainbows in 2007, the first high-profile pay-what-you-want release strategy in the modern era.) He told Styll that the benefits of this strategy outweighs the risks that some might take advantage of him:
Our only reason for doing this is this: Say there are 100 people out there that just never would hear the album because they couldn’t afford it. It’s for those 100 people that I’m doing it. My philosophical base on this is that I think it’s wrong to put a price on an item that contains a spiritual message that came free from God. If I was doing a disco album or an instrumental album, or even if I was an entertainer who happened to be a Christian, who just happened to do entertaining music, then it would be a product. It would be my skill, my trade. But since I’m foremost a minister, my music is just a tool to present the ministry. God has given me His word in the Gospel free. He’s given me my talents free. He’s given me the opportunities free. I feel that it’s wrong for me to put any price that would exclude somebody that couldn’t afford it.
The key word in this whole thing is “exclusion.” The thing I think is wrong with charging for a Bible, or charging for a book or record that has prasies to God or messages from the Holy Spirit, is that it excludes people that either will be turned off by having to pay for something that’s Truth, or who just couldn’t afford it.
I’m not saying that the industry is evil. In fact, I want to make a statement that the majority of the people I’ve dealt with—Christian artists, Christian retailers, people that own bookstores, people that work at record companies and publications—have all been sweet brothers and sisters serving God in the capacity that God has called them to. I’m not saying anyone else is wrong. I’m saying that this is what God’s calling me to do, and that in my life, I believe it would be wrong for me to continue selling.
John Styll pushed Green, asking him if he’s “biting that hand that feeds” or maybe getting in a bit over his head by doing work that record labels usually handle on behalf of artists. Green did his best to explain why his ministry-first approach suited him more than working with a label:
The central reason that there are record companies is for corporations to make money. That’s the reason. … I’m not leaving the gospel music industry because they’re making money. I’m leaving it because God has called me out to do this in obedience to Him first. … I think the basic system’s wrong. I wouldn’t [choose to] do this on my own. I’d be scared out of my wits! It’s much easier for me to go in and have Sparrow pay all the bills, put out all of my records, and collect the checks. … But I know in my heart that I’ve heard from the Lord on this.
When I interviewed John Styll in 2009, he contextualized Keith Green as one of many Jesus Music-era artists for whom ministry-focused music was merely part of a youthful phase that was later superseded by the need to make a living, support yourself and your family, and fulfill your professional and personal obligations:
When you’re 18 and living out of a van, you can be very altruistic and very mission-focused and sing on street corners for nothing, but inevitably, you get married. You have a mortgage and then you have to sustain it. And singing on street corners doesn’t get it. It was fascinating to watch some change of philosophy of people as they got older and the reality of life hit them. “Oh well, I guess my parents did have a clue. You do have to have a job.” If you have a house, all that stuff.
Ad and mail-order form for So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt, published in CCM magazine May, 1980
You may want to go out and sing for Jesus, but okay. You got to still put the bread on the table. So some people who were very adamant about, “This is the way you do it. This is the way God wants it,” found their theology changing. I mean you know one of the guys who did that the most is Keith Green. Keith Green was a very fiery kind of dude, but he had to change his point-of-view on some stuff over time. He and I fought like crazy because I represented everything he thought was wrong. And he represented to me idealistic John the Baptist type, which is fine, do what you do, but don’t criticize me. Well, criticize me all you want. He had a new way of doing, so I said, “Did God change His mind?” “Well no. God didn’t. I just finally realized.”
This back-and-forth passed for controversy in the Christian music world partly because there was still a debate over whether or not Christian music should be a ministry or a commercial product. CCM spilled plenty of ink throughout the 1980s exploring this debate, articulated in several of John Styll’s editorials, many (many!) letters from readers, and even a series of articles about copyright that garnered some (perhaps unexpected) criticism over the idea that copyright, as a government-legitimized tool of commerce, “takes precedence over spiritually motivated sharing of the music.” (For context, the articles on copyright and “sharing” appeared around the same time as the 1980s’ “home taping” scandal, itself a precedent for the early 2000s’ debate over digital music piracy and file sharing. Reader Jeff from Sioux Falls, SD, wrote, “Can you imagine Jesus, or the Apostles, copyrighting their Gospels or letters?”) Somewhat lost in all of this was an honest assessment of Green’s music, which seems to have taken a backseat to his self-defined position outside the Christian music industry. CCM magazine’s review of So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt in the May, 1980 issue — unsigned, which is odd for such a highly-anticipated album) commended — was a rave:
In that this is Keith Green’s controversial “free” album, the immediate question is, “Is it as good as his previous two albums?” The answer is, no — it’s better … smoother, slicker and more sophisticated. It sounds like a lot of work went into it. Musically, Green is more creative than ever here. Lyrically, he’s more honest; his ability to communicate his feelings vocally is amazing.