The Door Interview with Andràe Crouch

by Bob Gersztyn
Issue #192, March/April 2004

      Andràe Crouch and contemporary gospel music go together like Elvis Presley and rock & roll. Elvis even recorded some of Crouch's songs – along with Elton John, Barbara Mandrell, Little Richard, and Paul Simon – to name a few. He served as the gospel music historian for Steven Speilberg's film The Color Purple, where he won his first Oscar. He's also won nine Grammy awards, five Dove awards and was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1998.
      Along the way, he's worked with Michael Jackson, as a vocal arranger, on four of his albums. And Tribute: The Songs Of Andràe Crouch, as performed by The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, Michael W. Smith, Take 6, and the Winans, among others, won a Grammy in 1997.
      Today, Andra'e is the Senior Pastor of "The New Christ Memorial Church of God in Christ," which his father started. At the same time he continues to record, tour, perform, and even started his own record label in 2002, called "Slave." Somehow out of his busy schedule, after returning from a tour in Sweden, he found time to talk to Door contributing editor Bob Gersztyn in an hour long telephone interview.

THEDOORMAGAZINE: Who were some of your musical influences, Christian and secular?
ANDRÀE CROUCH: I always liked the writing of Paul Simon and Carole King. I liked the writing and presentation of James Taylor. Of course the gospel influence would be James Cleveland, he's actually the guru of gospel. Then there was a group that my dad would always listen to,Nmade up of five women and a piano player. When I was growing up they were probably one of my biggest influences, because their background vocals sounded like horns to me. These women were called the Davis Sisters, and they were out of Philadelphia. Then there's the group that Shirley Caesar came out of called the Caravans. The Caravans were Albertina Walker's group and she's out of Chicago, and she's a great singer. That's the group that discovered Shirley Caesar, who was probably the youngest in that group. They influenced me a lot. I liked the clarity of their background vocals, and I like to call their style response type music.
      My father was a music enthusiast, and as long as the message didn't say anything that conflicted with the kingdom of God, it was okay for us to listen to it. Many different people, if you talk to them, say that their parents wouldn't let them listen to something if it wasn't Christian music. But if the music was good music, and the people were skilled at what they did, my father would let us listen to it. We heard the blues records that he'd have, and some of the jazz guys like Duke Ellington, and people like that. I would hear them playing, but at that time I didn't know that I would even be in music.
DOOR: When was it that you first got into music?
CROUCH: I wrote my first song when I was about fourteen, and that was "The Blood Will Never Lose its Power." A lot of people just called the song "The Blood." It was recorded by this group I told you about, the Caravans, and it got very popular right away. Then Manna Music picked up the copyright, and people started recording it all over the country. White groups picked it up, as well as the black groups. Then it became a song that everybody was singing, and it's still that way. As of last year it was probably one of the highest royalty songs I've ever had.
DOOR: So the first song that you ever wrote, began your claim to fame, and helped carry you through your entire ministry and career.
CROUCH: Yes, and that song has never stopped. When I hear it, it's almost like I didn't write it, because it seems like it's been around all my life. When I wrote it I didn't know that I was a good songwriter, and I had written some of the words on a piece of paper that I threw away. Then my sister picked it up and said, this is a good song. She was on the piano with me, and when we started to sing, there were people at the house at the time who came around and started crying. Then we made a 45 of it. Of course back then there were no Grammy awards, but we won the number one song of the year for L.A., in church contests, and all that.
DOOR: How did you form the Disciples?
CROUCH: Billy and Perry were the first Disciples. We formed during Campus Crusade for Christ at school. In High school I never let people know that I played the piano, or anything like that. The only people who knew were the people who were with me after school, in the black Campus Life programs. Sonny Salisbury was another songwriter who was over our Campus Crusade For Christ group. They were getting ready to have an event at a Nazarene Church in Pasadena. Sonny was a part of that church and very active in it and was involved in Campus Life clubs around California. He asked me if I would come and sing for that, because Nazarene kids were going to be there from different parts of California. I was in the youth group at church and I told him that I would do it. I had just led two of the disciples, Billy Thedford and Perry Morgan, to the Lord. We would harmonize before we had our own Bible study. So I said, why don't you guys come with me, as if we're a group. Then I said, "Let's think of a name," so they would feel less nervous and more organized. I thought that it would be best if we thought of a name that people would have already heard a few times, and it would relax them. First we thought of Apostles, then I said how about the Disciples, and they said "yeah that sounds good." When we got to Pasadena I told Sonny Salisbury that I brought the Disciples with me and when he told the people, they said, "Yeah, we heard of them before." We only knew about four songs, and we got up there and rocked the house. That was the beginning of the long legacy of the Disciples. About a week latter the Nazarenes had a big event at Disneyland. This was where they closed the park down to the public, and the Nazarene church organization had use of it for the night.
DOOR: Like the "Night of Joy"?
CROUCH: Yeah, sort of like that. In fact we did the first "Night of Joy," because the father of one of the guy's in the group was in charge, at Disneyland, and he tried us out there. This was the first Gospel event, and that's how it all got started at Disneyland, Disney World, and Magic Mountain. We were the first ones to go to any of them. That was the first place that we formally played at.
DOOR: So then music and ministry were tied together for you from the very beginning?
CROUCH: Yes. This is because my parents were real soul winners. My father & mother had a cleaners when we were growing up. Every time someone would come in, if we didn't know them, and they were new customers, my father would always ask them, "By the way, have you ever met the Lord Jesus Christ?" We would always hear that. So anytime new people would come in and we'd be in the back, we'd know that in a moment dad would strike up a conversation, and let the people know when there clothes would be ready, but before they would leave he would always ask, "By the way, have you ever met Jesus Christ?" We would always see him praying for somebody and leading them to the Lord. So the important thing of our relationship with God, and with people was to tell them what Jesus meant to us. So everything we did, my father would make sure we knew that it was always for the glory of the Lord.
DOOR: Where was the cleaners located?
CROUCH: It was right in the heart of L.A.. My mother had a cleaners called Katherine's cleaners, and my father had one called Crouch cleaners. My mother would come over about once a week – hers was a couple of blocks away – and she would come over once a week to do alterations.
DOOR: When was it that you took over your father's church, the "New Christ Memorial Church of God in Christ?"
CROUCH: It's been seven years now. I knew that one day I would be pastor, but I didn't know how it was going to happen, and neither did I want it. I knew that it would change a lot of things in my life, and I was just hoping that when the time came, which I felt it in my spirit, that one day I would know what was going to have to transpire, I didn't know what I was going to have to go through. God's divine plan was that one day I would become pastor, but I wasn't looking forward to that day. Sort of like Jesus, he knew he was going to give his life. When the time came, and when he knew that he would no longer be in fellowship with his Father, when his Father would have to turn his back on him, when he saw the weight of sin on him, he said, "Father I pray that this cup would pass from me, but then he said, nevertheless, thy will be done." I didn't know that it was going to be the death of my mother, father and brother, but I knew it was going to be something heavy for me to get in this spot, because I was so far away from that type of lifestyle. I definitely would have been praying for this cup to pass, or if you're going to put me here, then just put me here, but it has to be done in the order in which God has planned things to move. God just doesn't go bam, bam, but there's a string attached to everything, and if we looked at everything we could see the embroidery, how he has tied things together for us to get to a certain point.
DOOR: How do you handle juggling the different hats of being a gospel music star one day and being the pastor of a church the next?
CROUCH: I think you hit it right when you use the word juggle. When you juggle you throw one up in the air, and you catch another one. You anticipate the other one getting ready to hit your hand again, and so it's a matter of actually juggling. That is the key word, with the intention of not dropping any of them. Being able to handle all of them, and keep them all moving without dropping them, I think that with the help of the Holy Ghost, and the wisdom of the Holy Ghost, like the Bible says, when Jesus left, that he said I will send the Holy Spirit to guide you through all things. So I think that the things that the Holy Ghost is teaching us is how to serve God, how to worship him, how to live holy, and how to listen, and experience everything that God has for us. You shouldn't beg God, and look across the fence, at other people, and other ministries, and speak of everything that you wish you had. You should remain faithful in the place where God wants you to be, and put all your efforts into it, because I don't think that God separates, but multiplies. But you must put something new on the table for Him to multiply, to enlarge, as Jabez did.
DOOR: Um, explain this whole Jabez thingee for us. We're a little foggy on the middle bit.
CROUCH: When Jabaz prayed, he said, "Enlarge my territory, not give me what my brothers have, or I wish I had what my brothers have, or I wish I was as smart, or I wish I had as much property as him, because I love you more." The Word says, in I Chronicles 4:9, that Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, meaning basically that he loved God with a special love that made him closer to God. He looked around, and I'm sure that he saw the blessings of God with his brothers, but he didn't complain about that, he said, "If you will bless me, and bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory." In other words, it's not saying that I want what my brothers have, or I wish I had what they have down the street, but enlarge something that You've already started in me. Just make it bigger. Enlarge my faith, enlarge my trust, enlarge my desire to want to know you, enlarge my giving to you, enlarge my joy, something that you've already put in me. I want you to stretch it. In doing so, the Lord is not taking anything away from me, but he's enlarged everything, and he's given me a desire to increase my ability or adaptability to receive what he has enlarged. In other words if he's given me a bitter pill he's teaching me how to exercise my faith, to enlarge it, so that my faith will fit the bill.
DOOR: You chose an interesting name for your new record label, "Slave." How did you decide on it?
CROUCH: That comes from Romans chapter 6, which says, 'We're slaves of Jesus Christ by choice." I have decided to be a slave for Jesus Christ. The custom of a man was to wear an earring, in the Old Testament, i,f when their period of servitude was over, they voluntarily stayed with their slave master. That earring let people know that they were there by choice. I am a slave and I say "yes, my Lord." When a person gets saved, the Lord says "I am the savior." Salvation is the side that the Lord did for us when we were redeemed from the penalty of sin. We're saved every day from the power of sin, and later on we'll be saved from the very presence of sin. He was the same yesterday and today. He's the Alpha and the Omega, and so now we have by choice said that we want to be His. His part is being our savior, our response to that is letting Him be our Lord. We call Him and He saves us. He calls us and we make Him Lord of our lives, and we become a slave for Him. When we make Him our Lord we have faith in what He is doing. Calling our Lord is our response to Him for being our savior. Do you understand that?
DOOR: Yes.
CROUCH: So that means that I'm a willing slave, and He's my Lord. So when He says, "Do this," I say, "Yes, my Lord." On the commercial side of it, I didn't want to have a record label named Agape, Maranatha, or Yahweh. I wanted something that would make people ask me to explain the name, just like you did. People ask, "Why did you choose slave?" I say, "Because then you'll remember it." The name has issues in it, and I'll explain it to them. When I say "slave," they go, "slave?" Then it becomes a conscious conversation, and that's the best advertisement I could get.
DOOR: When I interviewed Clarence Fountain we discussed the commonality of the musical roots of gospel, blues and jazz. What are your feelings about it?
CROUCH: I think that the everyday experiences of a person are similar, as far as what we go through, politically and personally, but a person's response to it is where the difference comes in. My father used to always tell me that we can take a form of the style of music and it will advance, it will grow, it will be the instrumentation of a certain sound that happened because that's what was produced by the types of instruments that were affordable.
      This is also true with a lot of black sports figures. We were skilled in basketball one-to-one and it didn't cost much money to have a basketball. So sports like basketball, or football, didn't cost much to play, but when it came for us to be as good in golfing it cost more money. We were good in running and all the sports that were affordable.
      The reason why a lot of the styles of music are the same is because a lot of the same instruments were accessible to us, and were used in our churches. They were all affordable instruments. So a lot of the styles were the same, because we would pattern our music after different musicians that played those particular instruments. So that the art forms became similar, and the ways different people felt about what they were going through, because of the system, was similar. But after people met the Lord, they expressed themselves differently. Some people went to church, but they never had a relationship with the Lord, so a lot of their experiences were still almost like a blues center.
      My father would say if you don't tell who, what, when, where, how and why, and if you don't express why God gave you that idea or who you're talking about in this song, you have nothing but soul music. And soul music is my expression. For a person to just hear my story is OK for history, but along with that there needs to be something else in there if it's going to change a life. Music has to have a concept of the Word in it, because the Word changes a situation. So I ask, "Who is the song about? What is the song talking about? Why are you talking about it? When did it happen and what went on? And why? What is God trying to tell you through this?" That's what I have always tried to pattern myself after – who, what, when, where, how and why. So the similarity of music comes from the art form, but the story-telling is what the strength is.
DOOR: What do you think of the current state of contemporary Christian music?
CROUCH: Some of it's okay. I'm more concerned with the artist than I am the music. Because I think that some of the music is very good, but sometimes the artist doesn't know what he's talking about. Sometimes I wonder whether they'll be around next year. I wonder what happens to these guys. I think that there's a lot of good stuff happening, but I think also that some of the artists that I have seen have been influenced by their managers. There is so much money that can be made from music that some music has been diluted from what it probably started out to be. They may have been influenced by a manager who is money-hungry. We have seen such dynamic success in the secular market. We see these kids that are fifteen or sixteen, that have sold double or triple platinum. The average person in the church, who loves God, will have a manager who twists his arm, and says, "Hey, leave Jesus out of this and you might get a hit." I think because of that we've lost a lot of strong writers. There are a lot of songwriters, but not too many of the songs that have been put out remain in the church for worship and praise.
      I'm concerned with the trendiness of the music. A lot of music is like buffet music, and buffet food is okay, it will hold you for a minute, but you have to have food that is designed to give you strength to the bones, so a person matures.
      I just wrote a song called "I Don't Want to be a Spoon Fed Christian." It says, "Everybody's has to treat me nice, there's a spoon fed Christian coming around you got to walk on ice. Don't want to be a spoon fed Christian, I get so easily hurt. Don't want to be a spoon fed Christian, so I jump around from church to church, but I got to grow up, I got to grow up, I got to grow up. It's going to be rough, it's going to be tough, but I got to grow up. The milk of the word was good, but that was then, but this is now, but with God's supernatural power I'll grow up if he shows me how, because I don't want to be a spoon fed Christian." In other words, we have to give people music they can eat from and grow up on.
DOOR: Has racism ever affected your music or ministry?
CROUCH: I've tried not to react to it. I've responded to it, but I haven't reacted to it. There were times when we would go to different places, and when they found out that a couple of the members in the Disciples were married to white girls, they totally banned us. We could never play at those churches again. There was an Assembly of God church in Memphis, I think the Pastor was named Hammel, or Hammond, or something. When they heard that a couple of the group members had white wives we were totally banned from the Assembly of God in Pomona. We were in Miami, Florida, and when we came back to our hotel room and there were bumper stickers on our doors from the KKK. They said "Knights of the Ku Klux Klan." We never worried about that stuff, we just kept on going.
      Then we've gone to Christian radio shows. There I've would see songs on CDs that would say NP, which means no play, no play, no play, no play. Then a white group in the same town would be played that sounded more funky than mine. But because of the way a black voice sounded, the programmers and the people that worked under them would write on the back of the CD NP, NP. Then they would have the most conservative tune that I would have on the CD and it was okay for them to play that. But then you could pick up another group, a white group, and they would be funking out. The radio station could play their music, but not mine because of the picture.
DOOR: So you were censored for sounding black, along with the album cover photo proving that you were. How did the MTV video revolution change things for you?
CROUCH: Videos have really helped put people visually in another spot. I could play something a white person would visualize me playing in a sweatbox church. But because of videos now, we could take that same song, and play it in a big white castle house, around a white piano, and a fireplace, and everyone dressed in white. It would turn everything around, because then we would look rich (laughs), and its okay then. So videos have helped an awful lot, to change the stereotype of what people imagine.
DOOR: The 1960s were a turning point in the acceptance of new music, because of the social, political and cultural revolution that took place during that time. How did it effect you and your music?
CROUCH: A lot of my music never addressed those issues. My music was very inspirational and dealt with a person's one-to-one relationship with God and people that felt that relationship. I wrote, and I still write about me or we, rather than saying "you should do this Mr. White man," or "you need to feel this way." I say "we are going to do this," or "take me back." I'd either say, "Join with me, people of God," or "Friend, you should know the Lord," or I would address myself. A lot of times politically I wouldn't get involved, because I felt like there were enough people doing that, and I felt that if a person had a really strong relationship with God things would change in his surroundings, because the way he would react to things would make a difference.
      Now I did address a lot of different issues, but I never realized I was doing that. I even talked about abortion and things like that. I did a song called "I'll Be Your Dream Baby" and it's got God talking to an aborted child. I didn't even realize at the time that I was making a political statement, like I was, because I was just expressing where I was living.
      As I walk through real life every day a song will come up. I'm always in the studio. One day I had to drive down Santa Monica Blvd., and I saw some guys hustling another guy, and I didn't understand that. I had written some music, but I didn't know what lyrics to put with it. But I ended up stalling out after going down this street. There were people waiting for me at the studio, and we were going to do that song, but I had no clue about what lyrics to use. I just happened to take that exit off the 405 freeway coming from the valley and stalling for a little bit. When I saw guys trying to pick up another guy, I wrote a song called the "Hollywood Scene." It really worked well, and it went right with the music that I was writing. So there were times when I hit on different issues like racial issues, or things that became larger than life later on, like abortion, and different lifestyles that people were involved in.
      People go back and they'll tell me, "You were ahead of your time, you were talking about it before it even came out." Before AIDs even became an issue I was talking about it in this particular song. People would always say "you were ahead of your time when you began to talk about AIDS in one song, saying 'if you're going to play with fire, you're going to get burned, something will happen if you keep that lifestyle up.'" Sometimes when I talked about different issues I would hit on an area that would become a political issue later.
DOOR: What do you consider the high point in your life as a Christian?
CROUCH: As a Christian, to experience God in such a way that He is not just someone up there who says "do this" and "do that," He's actually proven to me that He is my friend, and to have Him in my life, and to have him charting out my days is an incredible relationship. I just wrote a song: "Just receive what God has for you, just receive what He has for you, let him do what He wants to do, receive what God has for you. So stop the struggle, stop the fight, and receive what God has for you." In other words, there are so many times when we say, "I want more of God, I wish that I could have more of God," and we forget about what He's already done in our lives. I'm not happy because I want to do this and I haven't done it yet, I wish I could have more of God, I wish He would talk to me more, I wish He would convict me more. But God says, "Just receive who I am, because when you receive me as your savior I don't come in spurts, I don't come in an ounce, and then a quarter pound, and then a pound. I don't come that way, I come in My fullness. So it's not about you receiving and wanting more and more of me. It's when I get all of you, that's when we can go from there." When He gets all of me, when I let go and just receive, and realize who He is in my life, then all of a sudden things start happening. It's like I say, "You would have multiplied that already if I had just given it to You?" And God says "Yeah, but you never asked me, and I won't force anything on you." He says "I'm around here, and I want you to fall in love with Me so much that you won't be afraid to ask me anything. I've got big plans for you, but you have to seek Me, because I'm God. If you want our relationship to grow you protect it and you honor it."
      When I started looking at my relationship with God that way, things started happening. I would say, "Wow, You've been here all the time, while I've been struggling to try and do this, and wanting that." Then He would say, "It's always been here, but you never asked," and He said, "I can't force it on you, but you have to seek me. I'm God, but I don't just throw my stuff around." So when I started looking at my relationship with Him in that way, it just took the pressure off. I stopped thinking things like, "I've got to be good Sunday morning. What am I going to talk about? Oh God, I sure hope you give me something." He says, "You know what? If you love me and read my word every day I'll have something for you to say, I know who's going to be there. I know who's going to need what you say, so just trust me, and be so in love with me that you trust me. Trust everything I say. You learn that trust by reading My word and finding out what my personality is like. I said that I would never leave you or forsake you, and without faith it is impossible to please me. It is impossible for us to walk together if you don't believe what I say."
      So how do you believe what he says? Faith cometh by hearing, so He says, "Read my word, and when you read it I will cause it to come alive in you, and then we can get places. Then when I give you directions, how to get from step A to D. I might just go to D, but I want you to trust me that you're going to get to C when you get to D. If you don't believe me you'll never move from A to D. It's impossible to get anywhere, Andràe, if you don't trust me." So that's the beautiful part of knowing the Lord today, and passing that on to other people, saying "You know what you guys? I know you guys are fifteen or twenty years younger, but do you know how to skip over this area right here, the struggling part? Let me tell you something, if you would do this, or do that, you would get to this point much quicker. You can push up your blessing if you stay in Kindergarten another year. He didn't graduate"(chuckles).
DOOR: What was the high point of your career as a gospel artist?
CROUCH: When I finished a good song. When I wrote a good song. When I won my first Grammy, that was a kicker. That was sometime in the 1970's. I think it was "Take Me Back." When I won my first Grammy, that blew me out, and I've got nine now.
DOOR: How many Dove awards do you have now?
CROUCH: Good question. You know I've given some of them away. Probably about five. I don't know.
DOOR: The only other thing that I had was, what do you think of the current state of the church in America and the rest of the world. Other than that I'm done, unless you have anything else that you would like to add, after that.
CROUCH: I think that there's a hunger for a real move of God, whether the people know it or not. I think that God is putting His church together, and I think that worship music is a music that has long been anticipated. Praise and worship has always been important to God, and the church has been deprived of that. Not deprived because it wasn't there, but deprived because of the people's own desires to become something else. Because of their return to the Lord, and their preparation for the way of the Lord, people now have a passion for Him. I think people are now getting rid of a lot of stuff that they stored in there. They're emptying them themselves, and that's what worship and praise does. I think that when I bless myself with a song, that God is speaking not only to me, but to the people that they have chosen to be psalmists.
      There is a parallel to what we're saying, because there's this one in the throne room, but there's a psalm that says: "Like a rushing of a mighty wind, like the rushing of a mighty wind, come and fill our hearts again, like the rushing of a mighty wind." It says: "Like a river that is overflowed, like a river that is overflowed, come and fill our hearts once more. Like a river that is overflowed, oh Lord let us overflow, let us overflow, let it overflow. Let the people come from miles around, as you send your spirit down to revive your church again. A coming like the rushing of a mighty wind." So then I asked God, "Why wind, why did you use that on the day of Pentecost, why would you use the sound of the rushing of a mighty wind?"
      So I thought about when I was a kid and I would open the window. Even if it just was a breeze blowing sometimes, the wind was blowing. When you hear anybody say that if you're not looking outside the window you don't know whether the wind is heavy, or you don't know whether the wind's gonna pick up to blow a breeze that causes the leaves to fall in your driveway. You don't know whether the wind is going to let you hear a melody through the trees, but you know the sound of the wind blowing. You don't know whether it's going to be the kind of wind that blows the roof off of a house. You don't know if it's going to be a tornado wind that can blow a tractor trailer over, but it's still wind. I think that God is putting the state of the church in a way of hunger that we are just wanting his wind to blow. But He's saying, "If you want My wind to blow don't forget what it's going to do. Just know that I'm going to be there, but I might come in like something that will uproot trees, or I might be something that will blow the top of the wheat flower, or the mustard flower. Mustard greens have a yellow flower. I might blow that way, but I will be there."
      So I think that when we expect God to do a new thing, we're saying "let Your wind blow. We don't know if it's going to take the roof off, or if it's just going to take the sweat off of our hot bodies and cool us down with a gentle breeze, but, God, we want you in our presence." I think that's what's going on in the church right now.

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