Pat Boone is probably the second-biggest-selling rock artist of the Fifties after Elvis Presley. This may come as a surprise to those fans who might have given Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard or Jerry Lee Lewis that rating. However, a summary of Pat Boone’s musical accomplishments tells the tale: Pat Boone holds Billboard Magazine‘s all-time record of 200 consecutive weeks on the charts with more than one song. Sixty of Pat’s songs have been on the charts, 18 of them hitting the Top 10. His recording “Love Letters in the Sand” remained on the charts for 34 consecutive weeks. Boone has sold more than 45 million records, has 13 gold discs, two gold albums, and a platinum record denoting three million sales (eventually exceeding 4.5 million sales). But Charles Eugene “Pat” Boone, with an image from his youthful days of stardom including white buck shoes, pearly white teeth, neatly trimmed hair, dimples and a charming smile, has extended the dimensions of his career far beyond all-American crooner.
Prior to his graduation from Columbia University in 1958, he had signed a contract with 20th Century Fox, where he starred in 14 films over the next several years. Pat Boone’s talents have been displayed well outside the limits of film and the stage. He has shown considerable skill as a composer/lyricist, with the lyrics to “The Theme from Exodus” perhaps his best-known work. He had a weekly variety series, The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom on ABC-TV when he was only 21 years old, has since done family specials and guest appearances without number, and has been hosting the Gospel America series on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. The Pat Boone Show, broadcast over radio from his Beverly Hills home, goes out to 165 stations around the world in a “Contemporary Christian” format. Boone has written eleven books several of which have reached or approached the million-volume sales mark.
A strong Christian commitment is a way of life for Pat Boone. He has been the spokesman, national chairman and host of the annual Easterseal Society Telethon. He is an empathetic supporter of the Israeli cause, and has been honored by that country’s government with the Israel Cultural Award, in recognition of his artistry and humanitarianism; more recently, the Israeli Tourism Department in the U.S. named him Christian Ambassador to Israel.
Pat Boone was born in Jacksonville, Florida, June 1, 1934, and is a descendant of Daniel Boone. Pat Boone and Shirley Foley were high school sweethearts: the class president, newspaper editor and captain of the baseball team was captivated over the class secretary and homecoming queen.
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They shared music, both singing in the school chorus; Pat was already winning local talent contests and hosting a Nashville radio talent show, and Shirley’s father was country music legend Red Foley. Shortly after graduation, both at age 19, they eloped.
Life moved rapidly thereafter. Pat enrolled at North Texas State College, and Shirley gave birth to Cherry, their first daughter. Meanwhile, he had been a winner on the nationally televised Ted Mack Amateur Hour and had taken a job singing at WBAP-TV in Fort Worth.
He was also a guest on Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts. After one of the appearances, Godfrey told Boone to come back anytime: “You don’t have to call or check with anybody- just show up. Any time!” With that, the Pat Boone family moved to New York, where he enrolled in Columbia University and took Godfrey at his word by becoming a regular on the show. “Ain’t That a Shame” his second recording and first number one hit. followed, as did the network TV show, the movies and more hit songs. We joined Pat on the golf course in Phoenix, Arizona, playing in the Alice Cooper’s 1st Annual Celebrity AM Golf Tournament.
ABILITY Magazine‘s Chet Cooper went to Arizona to be part of the Alice Cooper’s golf event and interview Pat Boone on the green.
Chet Cooper: My first question is in response to and what the press is calling the most outrageous act of your life, and people that had supported you all of these years are surprised, upset, shocked, and even disgusted and I have to add I can’t understand your behavior–well you know what I’m going ask–why did you tee off with a three iron instead of a wood on a par five?
Pat Boone: (laughs) Yes, it was a shocking choice. When I get into this metal mood, I think I am invincible. I think I am all powerful. I think I can do anything.
Cooper: So you went with the heavy metal three iron rather than a wood?
Boone: (laughter) Yes, that is exactly right. The metal let me down. Or I let the metal down. I don’t know which.
Cooper: (laughter) We’ll go more into the heavy metal later. First let’s talk about your relationship with the Easterseal Society–what has it been, seventeen years?
Boone: Yes, seventeen years. The president of Easterseals walked into my office and I knew they were coming to ask me to host a telethon and they’d had a different host every year up until then. Jack Klugman, Mike Landon, Jack Lemmon, Suzanne Summers, had all hosted one year each. I frankly didn’t know that much about Easterseals though I had a favorable impression. I was going to turn them down and I had all my excuses ready. I was already involved with the National Association of the Blind, the March of Dimes, an orphanage in Chattanooga, and I thought they would say that I was too involved with other things. It turns out that was one of the reasons they came to me: because people know that I am a man of compassion and concern and am involved with other things. Plus, they wanted me to think about being a full-time spokes-man for Easterseals, this might enable me to not spread myself so thin, because they take care of and offer services to all the people I am trying to help separately.
When I checked into what Easterseals does addressing every disability–I realized they were right. I had to learn more about what the Easterseals program covered, that became my task for the next seventeen years: to help other people understand that this is a full service kind of program. We help the muscular dystrophy kids, we help people with cerebral palsy, we help the blind, we help elderly stroke victims. Whatever the ailment or disability, we try to help. They hooked me the first year, I had originally stated that I could not possibly take it on for more than one year. While I was hosting the telethon I was traveling to some Easterseals facilities where we shot some tape and I got to learn about the program and I became sold on it. I met this little girl, Colleen Finn, who was our poster child for the year. She has spina bifida, and is a brave can-do kind of girl and seemed to never get tired. She went through the whole twenty hours with me.
At the last hour I started to get really emotional. because I realized that in about an hour this telethon was going to be over and I was going to say, ‘folks, if you still want me as host next year, I’ll do it’, and I started to think about Colleen and how in an hour she was no longer to be the Easterseal’s poster child anymore, she would not be going to meet the President in the White House. She was going to go back to being Colleen in Massachusetts, an eight year old child with spina bifida. She was going to go back to living in anonymity with her disability and this bothered me. But then I realized that because of Easterseals she would not have to go back to this, she would continue to get the same kind of care that Easterseals is famous for and she will achieve her dreams, she will grow to be a fine young woman and maybe be married and have kids of her own and Easterseal will help all that happen. I told the Easterseals people that they would have to beat me with a club to get me off the show. I was hooked. It has been seventeen quick years, and in the time that I have hosted I have helped to raise over one-half billion dollars. My goal is to stay with Easterseals until we have raised one billion dollars.
I would consider this the greatest achievement in my lifetime. Bigger than all the records and movies I have done. If I can look back and say if my life has not meant anything else, I worked with Easterseals to raise one billion dollars to help people with disabilities, mild or severe, to help them achieve a better quality of life, to help them realize dreams, hopes and ambitions.
This would fulfill a boyhood dream, a dream so often repeated that it was like a prayer. That was I had wanted to be a teacher, I thought about being a preacher, I thought about being an insurance salesman. I thought about being a doctor. I have never been a doctor, even though my mother is a registered nurse, as well as my oldest sister and my brothers oldest daughter, all registered nurses, I turned away from being a doctor because the sight of blood made me feel nauseous and faint. I didn’t realize that you could get over that. If you are exposed to it enough you can get past it. So I decided I would be a teacher-preacher. In the back of my mind and in my heart, I really wanted to be an entertainer–I thought at that time, as I was milking Rosemary, our family cow–if I were ever an entertainer like Julius La Rosa on the Arthur Godfrey show, I could go to an Ivy league college like Columbia. I could make records and have a career and a family. And as an entertainer I could raise money for charities. And by doing that I could do more for education than if I was a teacher. I could do more for medicine than if I were to become a doctor. I could do more for spirituality than if I were to become a teacher-preacher. But I thought being an entertainer was very unlikely, so I enrolled in college to be a teacher-preacher.
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During this time, I won a talent contest. They sent me to New York to be on the Amateur Hour, then the Arthur Godfrey Professional Talent Show. I got a record contract. Within two to three years after I prayed I could be an entertainer like Julius La Rosa, I was in New York, I had replaced Julius La Rosa on the Arthur Godfrey show, I was enrolled in Columbia University, having hit record after hit record, eventually movies and all this before I graduated from college in 1958. By the time I graduated from college we had four daughters. Always trying to cram so much into life. Gradually over the years the early dream came true. I established a Christian School with the proceeds from my first book. It was called the Northeastern Institute for Christian education, it then became Northeastern Christian College, fully accredited college in Philadelphia. They were able to open their doors from the proceeds of my first book. They named their main building Boone Hall. I am also now Chairman of the Board at Pepperdine University and have been for five years. So I feel the impact I have had on education has been greater than if I had become a teacher. I have contributed to medicine through Easterseals, over $600 million in contributions towards research, rehabilitation, and mainly therapy. The books I have written have been of spiritual themes and have probably influenced more than if I had been a located preacher. So it is really incredible the way God worked it all out. I could never have really imagined that all this could have happened. I tell the kids to dream big and pray even bigger. God can do much bigger things than you can even imagine. He did it for me. Easterseals have been vital chapters in my life. I feel that when it’s all said and done this will have been my crowning achievement and a major accomplishment of my whole existence.
Cooper: Have you had any criticism from Easterseals on your heavy metal music?
Boone: No. In fact, I had warned Jim Williams, the president of Easterseals, that I was doing this big band album of heavy metal classics. We all knew that the idea of Pat Boone singing songs by Guns ‘N Roses. Metallica, Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, just didn’t compute. I alerted them that there would be some misunderstanding for a while but to wait until people heard the music and it would be okay. Jim Williams said it sounded great to him and that I should plan on doing a song or two on the telethon. We have a big band on the telethon and Ralph Carmichael, our conductor and arranger, wrote one of the best arrangements on this album. It is Holy Diver. I have had several encouraging telegrams from Jim representing the Easterseals group. I am sure they are disappointed like I am that the Christian Network, temporarily, has taken my gospel music show off the air. But I do consider this temporary until we have had a chance to have a meeting and talk about it. Perhaps before this meeting takes place they will have a chance to hear the music and realize that these are just good, clean and extremely commercial songs.
Some of them make quite valid social commentary like Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train. It is a song about people living in this complex, confusing, contradictory society. He says, he feels he is going off like a crazy train, mental wounds not healing driving me insane. We are heirs of a cold war; that is what we have become, inheriting trouble I am mentally numb. That is what a lot of young people are feeling today. They have inherited a world that has gone askew. All of the songs are valid or I wouldn’t have done them, I didn’t have to change but a few words just for me. I did insert into Holy Diver part of the 23rd Psalm because of the many allusions to Christ diving to earth. But this is not so much a message album as just a fun album. Big Band jazz is fun. Once people realize that this is just solid, roaring, entertaining, good music, then it is not going to matter. We are not doing them in a heavy way. Trumpets, trombones, saxophones are all metal, and in the right hands they are heavy. (laughs) We had the heaviest musicians in the world on this album. The best arrangers, the best producers, the best background singers, the best engineers, the only question mark was me. (laughs) Could I sing the songs that would maintain the people?
Cooper: I heard you on the radio, reflecting on your own life and the judging of others. And how you are learning from this experience of people judging you on your new heavy metal image.
Boone: Yes, when the owners of the Christian network said they have to take me off the air until we can get this straightened out; until people realize that I am not abandoning my life orientation and my goals nor my faith and that I’m not plunging into the abyss of heavy metal darkness. Some people say if I am not really doing it then I am endorsing it. The irony is that for many years I had this same opinion of the heavy metal music. I had voiced the same opinion publicly that I saw no good whatsoever in heavy metal music, certainly not the lifestyle, certainly not the anger, the raucousness, the distortion, the fabled drinking and groupies and all the debauchery that seems to go with hard rock and heavy metal. My youngest daughter Laurie said to me, “Daddy, you realize that you are getting a taste of your own medicine?” I chuckled and said what do you mean and she said “Well the Bible says ‘Judge not that you be not judged; for with the judgment you judge, you will be judged.” You have been critical of all these people and their music and said it had no value. You have said these people were bad influences.” I have actually named publicly, Madonna, Prince, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, The Rolling Stones as really bad influences on young people. Now, by a lot of people, I am being lumped in with those very people. Because I now appear to have endorsed their lifestyle, their music, I am doing their songs, I am dressing and looking like them. I am being judged in the very same way, though I am not guilty of the hedonism or excesses of heavy metal, a lot of people think I might be or that is where I may be headed. I have to honestly say I recorded the music because I like it. I found value. Now that I am meeting some of these people, I realize they are nice guys. Not only are they seemingly normal people out here playing golf with their family and kids, some of them are telling me that they are Christians too. Some of the things they have done in the past they no longer do, or they had coded and gospel messages in their songs. Take for example Bob Dillon, he wrote for the Birds the song “Turn, Turn” which is right out of the book of Ecclesiastes and other distinct Bible themes in his folk music, in country music, in rock. There are references to God, references to very spiritual Bible themes and sometimes warnings.
On one of the Megadeath songs “Countdown to Extinction”, he sounds like Jeremiah the prophet in the Old Testament, warning society that you cannot go on forever ignoring God and doing things your way. Eventually the bill comes due and in the songs that is the definite theme. That eventually the Piper is going to have to be paid. There is that recurring theme in a lot of the heavy metal music, not so much endorsing wild hedonism but acknowledging that it exists and that there is a price to pay. Like Alice Cooper and “He’s Back, (The Man Behind the Mask).” It’s about a man and a woman in the back of a car by the lake. He is saying you are being watched and that you may do these things but you will not get away with it because you are being watched. All of these songs are filled with messages that I had missed because I had written them off. I thought there was nothing of value in them so I never even bothered to listen. This is the case with millions of people and though I am not pretending to endorse everything about the heavy metal lifestyle, I had to eat a lot of crow because I threw the baby out with the bath water. I figured that all these people were just depraved human beings who didn’t care about anything except how to make the next million bucks. I found out I was wrong. It is an eye opening, humbling experience for me. I am hoping that of my experience will come something positive for a lot of other people, who will do some of their own investigation, if they like my songs and my music.
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I have actually heard some of the radio and television stations talk about what I am going through and about what I have been saying now. We must somehow mature beyond this tendency we have to judge by appearance. I know that this is something that people with disabilities have to deal with all the time and I was just as guilty everybody. People think that because a person has a severe muscular disorder that impairs their speech, they are not intelligent. Often we think that when we talk to someone in a wheelchair that we are talking to an infant or maybe we have to speak very distinctly or very sympathetically. People with disabilities just want to be treated like anyone else. I have learned that if you work through a disability, you are capable of more in many cases than a person without a disability. They never had to develop certain things. Certainly, Ray Charles has a better awareness of all the things going on around him than a lot of us with full sight. He has developed these other senses. It is definitely true that people with one type of disability develop compensating strengths. We have to get past sizing people up visibly.
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What’s in the future for Pat when he removes the fake tattoos? Rumor (Humor) has it that Pat is going to try rap. His first release will be a holiday Christmas Wrapping single. Titled Santa’s in the Hood, You better watch out (CD and video). Pat will be changing his name to Snoopy Doggie Dog Boone. The singer formally known as Pat will self-produce the release under his new label company DOG Records. Remember when you play DOG backwards it says GOD.
ALICE COOPER’S FIRST ANNUAL CELEBRITY AM GOLF TOURNAMENT
The tournament raised money for a new teen center to be built by the Phoenix-based Solid Rock Foundation. It will provide multiple activities in a safe atmosphere, according to rock-star and founding member Alice Cooper. “When it comes to going out, there aren’t any teenage clubs where kids can talk and drink soda pop with their friends. Kids don’t realize they have an option of going to hang out with their friends somewhere clean, safe and fun.”
For Cooper, teen needs hit close to home. “I’ve worked with youth all my life, from rock ‘n roll to coaching soccer and other activities for my three kids, ages 15, 11 and 4.” he said. “I’m in touch with what their options are and there just isn’t much out there except the mall, friend’s houses or parties they arrange for themselves. Our community needs a risk-free place where kids don’t have to fear gangs, guns or drugs to hang out–a place parents can drop their kids off and not have to worry about them. That’s what we are designing this center to be Cooper estimates the first center, planned for the Tempe area, will be a 20,000 square foot building and cost approximately 1.5 million dollars to build. “We want the center to create itself. We’re making it a big, wide open space so there will be freedom to do a lot of different things in the facility,” he said. When not being used during regular hours, Cooper says the center will be used as an auxiliary building for things such as GED testing, runaway hotlines and holiday meals for the homeless. “We want to make it a work building,” he explained, “not a monument to Solid Rock.” Cooper said plans for the center include:
• Rock climbing walls
• Multi-use concert hall and rehearsal /practice stage
• Roller blade / hockey court
• Indoor half-court basketball
• Game room
• Coffee house / snack bar
• Study / reading rooms
