For Waukegan native Scott Wenzel, the memory of that day not long ago in Nicaragua is unshakable.
As the lead singer of Christian rock’s premier heavy-metal band, Whitecross, Wenzel knows his life is filled with opportunities and privileges unavailable to many. But never was that fact hammered home with the clarity of a bus ride through a small Central American village.
It wasn’t a musical journey. Wenzel and his Whitecross cohorts were accompanying a group of American teenagers on a short-term missionary trip. The sightseeing that day brought tears to his eyes.
“I was looking out the bus window while we were stopped at a red light,” Wenzel remembers. “I heard a commotion. I saw this boy screaming and fighting and scratching and clawing. It looked like this lady was tying him up to a lightpost.”
Wenzel asked the missionary leader what was going on.
“She’s trying to abandon her child because she can’t support him anymore,” Wenzel was told. “He’s afraid.”
“It opened my eyes,” Wenzel says, “to appreciate what I have. It was like a slap in the face.”
The problems of Third World countries were not a personal issue when Wenzel, one of six children, was growing up in Waukegan. And the lofty concept of traveling the world never entered the picture. He was content right where he was.
“I loved it,” he says of his years growing up in the lakefront town. “I thought I was going to be born there, live there and die there. It was home.”
Time has altered the geography of the band-Wenzel moved to Nashville, the hub of the Christian music business, about a month ago. But Rex Carroll, Whitecross’ guitarist and Wenzel’s musical partner since 1985, still lives in Lake County. Whitecross gets its state-of-the-art computerized sound and lighting system from a McHenry firm.
“We still consider ourselves a Waukegan band,” says Carroll, 34, stretching out at the kitchen table of his middle-class home, his daughter’s back-yard toys visible through the sliding glass door on the deck.
Given Whitecross’ success, its dedication to Lake County says a lot about the band’s values. For while Christian rock may be a mystery to many music listeners-with the exception of Top 10 singers such as Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith-Whitecross is near the head of the pack of a burgeoning genre. All of the band’s first four albums have sold more than 100,000 each, and its new disc, “High Gear” (Star Song), is expected to reach those heights as well. And while many nationally distributed Christian bands have to maintain regular jobs on the side to make ends meet, Whitecross’ hard-earned success has enabled them to be full-time metal missionaries since 1988. But they view it as a calling, not a glamorous good time.
That’s because Carroll, Wenzel, bass player Scott Harper of Dallas and drummer Mike Feighan of San Diego know they have the musical chops to make it in the secular music industry, but they refuse to tone down their lyrics, which other Christian artists have done in a bid for mainstream acceptance. And though Carroll, 34, is a gifted musician whose endorsement is sought by guitar companies, that will carry them only so far. Yet it’s that very boldness that endears Whitecross to its evangelical fans-and to musicians who have had their day in the rock ‘n’ roll sun and have transferred their talents to the Christian arena.
Rick Cua, former bass player for the popular ’70s Southern rock band The Outlaws, is a regular guest on Whitecross albums and a successful Christian rock solo artist in his own right.
“I can remember the first time I heard Whitecross,” Cua says. “I was blown away by the melodies. Rex’s guitar (work is) better than most of the pop-metal bands out there, and Scott does such a great job with the vocals and lyrics. That’s what makes them such a great team.
“If I didn’t have my own musical ministry, I’d probably be calling Rex, saying, `Hey, let me join the band.’ It’s a kick to play that stuff live.”
As far as Cua’s concerned, Carroll stands tall as one of top guitar players around, regardless of category.
“You get to a point where you rise above the norm, whatever your style is,” says Cua, comparing Carroll’s talents to Eddie Van Halen and even Eric Clapton. “Rex Carroll’s style may be different, but he’s crossed that boundary from good to great.”
Carroll and Wenzel first met at the Rigoni Music store in Waukegan in 1984. Carroll was nursing his wounds after a one-album failure with a secular rock band, Fierce Heart, on the Mirage/Atlantic label.
Lead singer David Coverdale of the group Whitesnake had been looking for a guitar player, and Carroll had sent an audition tape. Someone else got the job, and Whitesnake’s next album went on to sell 8 million, but the record company decided to build a band, Fierce Heart, around Carroll. The record died without a marketing push, though Carroll remains proud of it. But the record’s commercial failure forced him to return to Rigoni Music as a guitar instructor in 1985. Wenzel was one of his pupils.
“I had started the band Whitecross in my basement, and we were looking for a guitar player,” Wenzel says. “I was the guitar player, but I went to Rex for lessons. He kept asking me about the band and what we were doing, and I’d say, `Oh, we got a concert this weekend; we’re playing for 20 kids.’ He was really curious.”
In Wenzel, Carroll found the singer he had been looking for, one who shared his musical and philosophic vision. Carroll’s drive spurred the band to record a demo tape that earned them their first record deal in 1986.
Whitecross’ executive producer, Dez Dickerson, who has worked with the group on its last three albums, was an integral part of Prince’s sound for years as a guitarist and vocalist.
Dickerson, now a vice president at Whitecross’ label, Star Song Records, says he was impressed with Carroll and Wenzel even before their professional association began. After he left Prince and the Revolution in 1984, Dickerson and his wife became involved in youth ministry at a St. Paul church.
“In the summer of ’89, we brought them in for a concert,” he says. “I was impressed with the heart they had for ministry and their level of musical ability and proficiency. It was obvious they’d spent years nurturing and developing it.”
Despite impressive album sales, Christian rock isn’t always an easy road, especially life on the road, which can be expensive and lonely for bands not fortunate enough to fill the Rosemont Horizon.
“We’ve toured smart and cheaply for years,” Carroll says. Bearing silent testimony to that is the aging and dented trailer for the band’s equipment that sits in Carroll’s driveway, ready to be filled and hauled to one of the band’s 100 concerts per year.
Though Whitecross recently graduated to a 27-foot motor home for cruising the country-sorry, no tour bus; they’re too expensive-for years, an equally bruised and battered Chevy van was their home on the road, thanks to Carroll’s sister, who worked for an auto dealership.
Without the payday of a Metallica or Guns N’ Roses, “sacrifice” remains the touchstone of the band members and their families. Carroll’s wife chooses to work; Wenzel’s wife, Lisa, says she and their sons, Josh, 9, and Bryan, 6, wish Scott were home more, but “we couldn’t survive financially if he wasn’t gone for long stretches at a time.”
At home in Lake County, Carroll has more to worry about than his next guitar solo as he discusses the direction he’s chosen for his life. He fields several phone calls taking care of arrangements for the tail end of the band’s tour and makes sure that there are still a few T-shirts and tapes that can be rounded up for a table outside the concert hall. Such attention to detail, Carroll says, is crucial to making their ministry possible.
“With most of our concerts,” he explains, “whatever fee we receive to play usually doesn’t cover our expenses to walk in the door. We rely on whatever money we earn from merchandising to keep the whole thing afloat.”
In Whitecross’ early days, the band members’ churches often lent a hand to get the band going.
“We gave them a little financial assistance when they first started out,” says Rev. Robert Abbott, longtime pastor of Calvary Temple, an Assembly of God congregation in Zion, which was Scott Wenzel’s spiritual home until his move to Nashville. “One of the band members returned the amount once they got rolling.”
The band practiced occasionally at the church’s youth center and met with Abbott a couple of times a year so the pastor could keep tabs on their spiritual and financial direction, making sure they were sticking to their original goals of reaching out to youths and that they were being fiscally responsible.
More recently, Rev. Johnnie Jenkins, pastor of Cornerstone Community Church, a non-denominational Waukegan church that Carroll and his family attend, has been a sounding board for the band. And just as important, Jenkins says, is that he and the Cornerstone community try to be an anchor for the family when Carroll’s on the road.
“We try to be as much of a family as we can,” says Jenkins. “We tell (Carroll’s wife), `If you have a water leak, or hear a knock at the window, day or night, you give us a call and we’ll be right over.’ We feel that’s an important part of being a spiritual family, and we know it brings comfort to Rex and his wife.”
Their families remain the core of Carroll and Wenzel’s lives, and the way they exhibit that care reflects just how different two like-minded musical ministers can be.
Carroll chooses his words carefully, guards his privacy fiercely-“We’ve had trouble in the past with fans camping out on our front lawn,” he explains-and won’t allow his wife and daughter’s names in print, or even the name of the town in which he resides.
Wenzel is more gregarious, showing off pictures of the modestly priced home he and his wife purchased in Nashville, eagerly posing for photos with his family outside the Wheaton College apartment where they moved for one year so his wife could finish her schooling. He speaks openly about his own shortcomings-a failed marriage in his early 20s and the daughter from that marriage whom he longs to spend more time with. And he speaks just as candidly about the God he believes has compassion for flawed humans like himself during those dark hours. Wenzel says he came out of his trials with a much firmer commitment to Jesus.
“But more than that,” he says, “it showed me that God has his hand on us, but he gives us a free will. We’re not robots. He allows us to make mistakes. I’m a dad and I have my children. And sometimes I don’t run after them as they’re riding their bike down the street. They’re going to fall down once in a while. And they’re going to get hurt. And they’re gonna have an owie as a result.
“God’s like that too,” he adds. “He doesn’t keep us from bad things all the time; he’s just with us in them. I thank God that he has grace. Grace is unmerited favor. It’s forgiveness. When anyone makes mistakes, they can can go to God and God will forgive them. If that wasn’t true, hang it up. Hang up religion, man. But God gives us a new start when we truly want to follow him.”
Despite their long hair and rock ‘n’ roll appearance, the Whitecross duo aren’t newcomers to Christianity. There’s no “I was addicted to heroin and now I’m saved” soap opera to tell. Both were raised as evangelicals and are thankful for that upbringing. Like Wenzel, Carroll lays no claim to holier-than-thou attitudes.
“When Whitecross stands on stage,” he says, “I’m not there to tell you that my life is perfect and that I’ve got it all together. No way.”
For those who give an honest effort but still miss the mark, he has compassion. Me too, he says. “You see hypocrites in church,” he says, “but it’s not a museum for saints, it’s a hospital for sinners. Darn right, the church is full of hypocrites and there’s room for one more. Come on in.”
