PAT BOONE

Thanks Billy Graham

www.patsgold.com

The Canadian offices of Modern Disciple received a copy of Pat Boone's new CD, and we were honored to be asked to speak with the man himself. Pat has a long history of pop hits and a public persona, but most importantly, he has been consistently recognized as a follower of Jesus in Hollywood. And that's no small accomplishment:

Modern Disciple: Good morning. Thanks for clearing your schedule for us, especially since it is 7 in the morning where you are.

Pat Boone: I am glad to do it. Modern Disciple? Tell me a bit about the magazine?

MD: MD is a magazine for guys that are operating as disciples of Jesus in the modern day. What we like to highlight are guys that are risk takers, stepping out in faith, whether they are church leaders, musicians or otherwise making waves.

PB: Good! You're talking to a risk-taker, for sure.

MD: That's what I understand!

PB: I'm always daring to do things that no one has thought of, usually what most people think to be completely insane, as far as music goes. I'm an entertainer out here in Sodom, refusing to succumb to the prevailing politically correct ideas, hopefully in love. I don't try to force my views on anybody, but I am sure not shrinking if I am asked to say what I believe that God says.

MD: When I look at your history and career, I see that you have been always yourself, no matter where you are.

PB: It's funny that you say that. I've been on the cover of Rolling Stone once, in the early 70's. The name of the lead article was "The Great White Buck". Jann Wenner, the editor and publisher, said in his editorial "What is Pat Boone doing on the cover or Rolling Stone?" He then said that he had sent a writer down from San Francisco to "turn over the rocks and see what crawled out." They wanted to find the underbelly and the less known areas of Pat Boone's life. He came back and said, "like it or not, what you see is what you get. He invite d me to Bible studies, took me to dinner with his family and into the studio. I turned the rocks over, and there's nothing under there!" Wenner said, "we're tipping our hat to somebody consistent for the last 25 years, when nothing else has been. Whether you like his music or not, he's not trying to present a fake image." I was on the cover because I had a country single, Texas Woman. Skip ahead to 1997 and I am in the hard rock, metal and college alternative charts with my covers of heavy metal classics…

MD: "In A Metal Mood." I've got a copy.

PB: Big band jazz arrangements of those songs. That startled people for sure. Now with 50 years as a recording artist, instead of fading away, I am going to have a big finale. I am releasing five albums, each with a different kind of music.

First was the patriotic album, "American Glory". Nobody had recorded America's great patriotic and military songs in 50 years. I added a song, Under God, in response to the atheist doggedly determined to remove God from the Pledge of Allegiance. And that went up the Billboard music charts with a bullet.

The second is a country album, called "Ready To Rock", that has a NASCAR theme on it, It's NASCAR Time is doing well now.

The third is the Gospel album, called "Glory Train". Thank You Billy Graham has received widespread attention, and the DVD is included with it. He is admired so much and it is reaching people all over the country.

The fourth is a love song album called "Hopeless Romantic". The first single is a remake of the Four Tops' Still Waters Run Deep. It just hit #34 on the Adult Contemporary charts.

The fifth is "Pure R&B", featuring a dozen all time R&B classics, with the original performers. For example we have Tears Of A Clown with Smokey Robinson, A Woman Needs Love with Ray Parker, Jr., Soul Man with Sam Moore, Celebration with Kool & The Gang. I went to Detroit to record Can't Help Myself with the Four Tops and Augusta, Georgia to record Papa's Got A Brand New Bag with James Brown. These are all new recordings and it releases at the beginning of 2006. People always joked "when are you gonna do some rap?" I wrote a song called Backbone that features Kool Moe Dee, which presents the answer to the three plaques killing America's kids - drugs, violence and disease-producing promiscuity. The answer, as we say is, backbone - doing what is right, regardless of what other people do.

MD: Wow, you've had a busy year.

PB: And then we have a Latin/Italian love song record releasing after that. It's a crazy merry-go-round - if that's not risk-taking, I don't know what is. I hold two distinctions in the music industry - being in the singles chart for 200 consecutive weeks and also the longest interval between chart appearances - 30 years. As a sign-off, to hit 5 or 6 charts in one year, it hasn't been done before.

MD: Wow. My first Pat Boone experience was watching you play Rev. David Wilkerson in The Cross and The Switchblade at my church. That had an amazing impact on my walk. I bought it on DVD three weeks ago, and I am amazed that it still holds up, almost thirty years later.

PB: I'm glad it affected you that way. You know, we shot that movie on the streets where that story actually happened. It was directed by the actor, Don Murray, and at the time, became the most successful independently produced and distributed film ever. The American Baptists put up most of the money for it. The biggest independent distributor was a sharp guy named Joe Levine, who had just distributed The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman. Somebody showed him the film, and while the film was showing, his associates were squirming, saying it was "too religious". When the film ended, he said "let's do this", t everybody's surprise. The American Baptists turned him down and decided to distribute it through churches and independent theaters, not in a grand movie release way. But it still reached people and was translated into 20 languages. I got reports from Persia (now Iran) that it was shown all over the country with the blessing of the government, even though it was so strongly Christian, it was anti-drug.

We were deep in Harlem, in a basement filming the scene where David Wilkerson confronts Nicky Cruz, played by Erik Estrada (CHiPS). This was the first day that Rev. Wilkerson was on the set. When we finished the scene where I was slapped silly, Rev. Wilkerson said to the director, "who told you about this place?" We said, "what do you mean?" He answered. "Don't you know that this was the very room that this took place?" We all got goosebumps, because out of all of Harlem, Don Murray had simply looked for a place that would look authentic, but God had led us to the very room where the events took place.

And talk about risk-taking - the police refused to protect us in certain areas of Harlem. We had permits, but they said we were nuts to shoot a low-budget film in those areas. We were shooting at great risks.

MD: That film had an impact on me and several friends that lasts to this day.

PB: Good. I am so glad about that. I have made many movies, but when I am asked about the ones I've done, The Cross and The Switchblade and Journey To The Center Of The Earth are my two favorites. The second was a big-budget, high-grossing film and the first was lower budget, but real, and it helped change lives.

MD: Speaking of changing lives, can you tell us about Thank You, Billy Graham?

PB: That has been a seven-year project, out of love and admiration for Billy and the desire to, as the Bible says, honor those to whom honor is due, while he is still with us. When Princess Diana died in that awful crash, every media outlet focused on that, and in the midst of that, Mother Teresa died and attention to that was scant. I started to think "what would happen when Billy Graham passed on, would some rock star do some scandalous thing, would there be a big murder or natural calamity that would take away from Billy" and I thought we need to celebrate his life and commemorate that while he is still alive, right across the board. So when he graduates to his mansion that has been prepared for him, the media will use this song, which will already be known and out there, and it won't feel like an opportunistic scrambled-together thing It started out as a country song that many years ago , but the record company I was talking to didn't follow up on it.

Years later, I was talking to David Pack, the lead singer of Ambrosia, who is also a believer, in an airport and mentioned the Billy Graham tribute idea. He loved it and got a hold of Billy Deane and they worked on a new melody which became the song that you hear now. It's got some great people on it like Leann Rimes, Michael McDonald, the members of dc talk and an introduction by Bono.

MD: I saw a photo recently that said, "Boone-O meets Bono". How did that happen and how did he get involved with Thank You, Billy Graham?

PB: I ran into U2 at an industry event and mentioned that I was glad to meet them. Bono said I had met him when I was in Ireland and "everybody knew Pat Boone and nobody knew us yet." He said that I was very nice to them - I'm glad I didn't just dismiss them! I asked Bono if he would be interested in doing something with the song. He immediately gave me his number in Dublin and said, "of course I will."

I am disappointed that some Christian stations don't want to play the record, because they don't respect Bono at this point, but we're gonna get past that. It's developing into a juggernaut. It's off and running - Billy loves it. He's uncomfortable being part of a tribute this way, and he now knows how people around the world feel - how we admire his courage and consistency. He preaches the simple Gospel message so powerfully, with no apologies.

I want to note that the proceeds from the song are earmarked for Samaritan's Purse, Mercy Corps to feed the hungry, in Billy's name.

Ray Ruff, who produced the Glory Train album, died of a massive heart attack yesterday. There are two songs on that album, Night Train - the ominous one headed to hell, and Glory Train - which is about the train to heaven, the ticket's been paid for by the engineer, Jesus, but don't miss it. Ray is a Spirit-filled Christian and yesterday, the Glory Train took him to his destination. He won't be here to see the results of what we had worked on, both this and the country album, but he mentioned the other day that it was all happening just like we saw it. As I said to his widow yesterday, if we could see him in the presence of Jesus, and ask him "do you want to come back?", he'd say "no, are you kidding?". The loss is on this end, but the gain is where he is. And he'll be there to welcome Billy when the time comes - I hadn't thought of that.

MD: Pat, especially considering all that is going on with you, thank you for taking the time to speak with me and our readers.

PB: And I hope I get to see the results online. Since we're taking about the internet, if people want to hear and see the stuff that I was talking about, they can go to www.patsgold.com

You can read Pat's commentary articles on World Net Daily, too!