92 year old Pat Boone is still making waves. Part 2
Updated: Sep 21
As we conclude our two part series with entertainment legend Pat Boone, you'll hear how he took a chance on the pro Basketball team "Oakland Oaks" in the American Basketball league and helped establish the 3 point shot, that changed the game. Then he'll tell the story about shocking the entertainment world with his wild adventure into the world of Heavy Metal. Pat will share his contribution to gospel music and then he'll sing a clip from the "pop song" that shared the gospel back in 1958. You'll get a sneak peak at Pat's soon to be released new book, called "IF" set to be published in September. At 88 years old he is making waves and helping change lives. Enjoy his story, as only he can tell it.
Please take a moment to share this episode with a friend and hit like. As a subscriber you'll be automatically notified when another great testimony is available from a well known actor, author, athlete or musician. For our complete podcast library, and several other Christian resources visit our website at www.amazinggreats.net
Thanks to Dan O'Neil for connecting us with Pat Boone.
Thanks to Klem Daniels for producing the show each week.
Listen to Pat Boone's spin on "Stairway toe Heaven" https://youtu.be/c-qHJ-Y0JXA
Hear his "Pop" single from 1958 that may be a forerunner to Contemporary Christian music before it was a thing..... https://youtu.be/T8K3ZEVoLb0
The Mulligan (Movie) Trailer https://youtu.be/IxxbjZ3PTvQ
PAT BOONE AT A GLANCE — PART 2
Actor • Recording Artist • Television Host • Author • Former ABA Basketball Owner • Christian Broadcaster
Topics
Pat Boone • Heavy Metal • Alice Cooper • Metallica • American Music Awards • Gospel Music • Christian Music • Jesus Music • ABA Basketball • Faith • Calling • Purpose • Twixt 12 and 20 • If
His Faith & Calling Journey
Teen idol → Teacher-preacher → Recording and television career → God-given platform → Gospel music → Christian broadcasting → Books and ministry → Using influence to point people toward Jesus
This Episode Explores
Pat Boone's ownership of the Oakland Oaks
The ABA and introduction of the three-point shot
His famous American Music Awards heavy-metal appearance
Alice Cooper and the "No More Mr. Nice Guy" stunt
Pat Boone's version of "Enter Sandman"
Metallica's reaction to his performance
His role in the early Jesus Music movement
Gospel and contemporary Christian music
Why Pat Boone sees his career as a God-given platform
Twixt 12 and 20 and its impact on a Christian college
Pat Boone's commitment to using his influence for God
His upcoming book If
Faith, obedience and eternal choices
Questions Answered
Why did Pat Boone record heavy metal?
What happened at the American Music Awards?
What was Pat Boone's relationship with Alice Cooper?
How did Metallica react to Pat Boone's music?
What was Pat Boone's role in Jesus Music?
What does Pat Boone think about Christian music today?
How did Pat Boone become a Christian entertainer?
Why did Pat Boone believe God gave him a platform?
What happened with Twixt 12 and 20?
Why did Pat Boone donate the book's proceeds?
What is Pat Boone's book If about?
What does Pat Boone say about faith and obedience?
Core Story
Pat Boone sees his extraordinary entertainment career not simply as success, but as a platform God gave him to reach people he might never have reached from a traditional ministry setting.
Pat Boone Part 2: Heavy Metal, Faith & Using a God-Given Platform
Amazing Greats with Ric Hansen
Podcast Transcript
Ric Hansen: Hi there, Ric Hansen here on the Amazing Greats Podcast with part two of our conversation with Pat Boone—actor, recording artist, television host, and yes, he even dabbled in professional sports.
Pat Boone: I helped start the ABA basketball league and wound up being the sole owner of the Oakland Oaks, which won the championship the second year.
We introduced the three-point shot.
I want to get with Steph Curry eventually and say, "Look, you owe me. That shot didn't exist!"
Julius Erving and other great basketball players were introduced in the ABA.
However, I was nearly bankrupted because I couldn't get the folks in Oakland to come to their own championship games.
We won the championship against the Indiana Pacers, who later went into the NBA, and we had 8,000 people in a 17,000-seat arena when we won the championship.
They were still San Francisco Warriors fans, even though it was the Oakland Oaks.
One reason was that I had "stolen" Rick Barry from the Warriors to be our star for the Oakland Oaks.
The San Francisco fans were mad at me.
A couple of years later, I went out to sing the national anthem at Candlestick Park.
I was introduced: "Now let's welcome Pat Boone, entertainer Pat Boone, to sing our national anthem."
I'm in a cart wearing a big San Francisco 49ers helmet, and I'm coming out and hearing booing.
I'm waiting for the end of the booing—and it never came.
Boo, boo, boo.
I sang the national anthem to a chorus of boos and then came off.
I thought, "What was that?"
It hadn't occurred to me that the Warriors fans were still holding a grudge against me for taking Rick Barry from them.
So I got booed singing the national anthem.
Ric Hansen: There's one story I want to hear because it's one of those moments on television that spread around the world.
That was the time you went metal.
At the American Music Awards, you showed up in leather and tattoos.
Tell us how all that happened.
Pat Boone: My musician friends and I were in England somewhere on tour.
They said, "Why don't we go into the studio and do something new? We love playing all your hit songs and the fans love them. Why don't we do some more pop records and get them on the charts again?"
I said, "Guys, what can I do that I haven't done ten times already?"
I ran through the list of the types of songs I'd already recorded.
They said, "Well, you've never done any heavy metal."
We laughed at the idea of me doing heavy metal.
I had no regard for it. I didn't know much about it except that it was loud, noisy, probably profane and pretty scurrilous.
We laughed at the idea.
But then a few days later they said, "Look, there are some good songs under all that noise that we could do in a different way."
I said, "How?"
My conductor said, "Big-band swing. Big-band versions."
I said, "Well, I like that. I've been aching to do some more big-band stuff."
They made me aware of a bunch of the songs, and I started going to record stores and looking through the racks.
The record-store people recognized me, but here I was looking through the heavy-metal section for Poison, Scorpions, Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath and all these others.
We found songs that were really good songs: Guns N' Roses' "Paradise City," Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water," and others.
We picked out a dozen songs that we could do with great big-band arrangements, and we did them.
It was shortly before the American Music Awards, and our record was going to be released on MCA.
They went for it in a big way, thinking it could be a hit record because of all the songs done in an exciting new way.
Ric Hansen: Yeah.
Pat Boone: When Dick Clark heard it, he wanted Alice Cooper and me to swap images.
He didn't take into account that Alice Cooper was already my Christian brother. I knew that. He's the son of a minister.
Alice was supposed to come out wearing a V-neck sweater, white buck shoes, his black hair behind a golf cap—he's an excellent golfer—and carrying a glass of milk.
I was supposed to come out in leather.
He had the leather outfit designed by Bill Ballou, who did all of Elvis's stage costumes.
He made me a leather vest with no sleeves and open down to the navel, tight-fitting leather pants, boots, a choker, shades and earrings.
I got some decal tattoos—one on each pec and on my shoulders.
I really looked like a heavy-metal freak.
Alice was supposed to introduce me as the future of heavy metal because my record was coming out the next day.
I was backstage at the Shrine Auditorium visiting with Alice Cooper.
He wasn't dressed in his outfit, and I was still in my tux.
I said, "Aren't you going to get ready?"
He said, "No. I'm not going to do it. I can't do it. I can't go out carrying a glass of milk and wearing white buck shoes."
I said, "That's the point."
He said, "But I just can't do it. I'm not comfortable."
So he figured that killed it for him.
I went to my room because Dick Clark had already arranged everything and the teleprompter was written for us.
I got into the outfit, did a few push-ups to make sure the tattoos were showing, and went upstage.
While I was waiting to be introduced, Alice was already on and the smoke was filling the stage.
The stage manager said, "Pat, Dick just let me know we're running a little short. If you want to take a minute and play with it, you can."
I didn't know how to play with it.
When I heard Cooper introduce me, he said:
"I know the history of rock and roll and heavy metal. I want to introduce you to the future of heavy metal—Pat Boone."
I started stalking through the fog—not walking, but kind of stomping through the fog like a heavy-metal guy.
I heard all this crazy noise in the auditorium.
I didn't understand it quite then, but I knew there was this reaction:
"What do you mean, Pat Boone? That can't be Pat Boone. Who is that? What's happening?"
Young people were saying, "Who is that?"
Older people were saying, "Well, they said it's Pat Boone."
I walked to the edge of the stage and just stood there looking at the audience.
Then I walked back over to Cooper, and his mouth was still hanging open.
I said, "Alice, you know you're my role model."
That wasn't on the teleprompter.
"Tomorrow my album of heavy metal is coming out, and the subtitle is No More Mr. Nice Guy."
He looked at the camera like, "I don't know anything about this. What is this about?"
Then he went back to the teleprompter:
"Does this mean I have to sing 'Love Letters in the Sand'?"
I knew what was coming, because I'd prompted the sound man.
When he said, "Does this mean I have to sing 'Love Letters in the Sand'?" I said, "That would be nice."
And it echoed.
Cooper backed away like he was stunned.
The night before, I had gone to rehearsal.
Metallica was rehearsing, and they didn't know I was in the auditorium. I didn't introduce myself. I was just out there in the dark.
They had already recorded "Enter Sandman," which was a huge hit.
They finished their rehearsal and started putting the guitars away.
I had the sound man start playing my version of "Enter Sandman."
It starts with the same intro.
They stopped and looked up.
"We're not going to do that tomorrow night. What's that?"
Then suddenly they heard the big band kick in and me singing the song.
Lars Ulrich hears that big-band sound and goes, "Yes!"
James Hetfield was standing there listening and said, "Not bad. I like it."
They all liked it.
I didn't meet them until the next night.
Alice and I opened the envelope for the award for hard rock/heavy metal.
It was for Metallica.
They came onstage and were bowing to me and saying I was their new lead singer.
It looked so real, and there was no explanation that I had recorded their song.
A lot of people took it very seriously.
They thought I was now going to be recording heavy metal.
Of course, Christian television was stunned.
The next day, TBN announced that my show was temporarily taken off the air.
They were getting cards, letters, telegrams and phone calls:
"We've lost Pat Boone! First Jimmy Swaggart, now Jim Bakker, now Pat Boone. He's going over to heavy metal!"
Of course, I wasn't.
It took two months to get it straightened out because it hit the news.
The first headlines were everywhere—Pat Boone going on the American Music Awards and singing heavy metal.
I didn't sing it, but there were cartoons and stories all over the world.
It was the lead item on TV news.
And the album went halfway up the chart the next week.
Actually, it went all the way to the top.
It's a gorgeous album—a great big-band sound.
The performers loved it because their music was being treated as real music, not just heavy metal, but as good songs.
I was approached by artists like Scorpions, Poison and others whose songs I hadn't done:
"Hey, do some of our songs."
I did "Stairway to Heaven," and it just went wild.
Ric Hansen: Pat Boone shares his story with us on Amazing Greats.
Pat Boone: All those songs had heavy-metal arrangements, and they were good songs.
Including "Enter Sandman."
It sounds ominous and dark, but it's about a guy putting his kid to bed and trying to scare him into staying in bed—that some bad thing is going to happen underneath your bed.
That's what it is.
It's a lullaby.
In their original record, there's a part where Hetfield says, "Now I lay me down to sleep," and a little child says it too.
I asked them afterward, "Who was the child doing that on your record?"
They said, "One of our roadies."
They didn't have kids yet, maybe they do now.
But on my record, it was my four-year-old grandson answering me when I said, "Now I lay me down to sleep."
Ric Hansen: Oh, perfect.
Pat Boone: That's what "Enter Sandman" is.
It's a lullaby.
Eventually it went on TBN with about 70 Christian bikers, with all their Harleys parked outside.
They made up more than half the audience that night.
We had entertainers who understood what I was doing.
I was doing good music from an unexpected source and letting people know we're not all hopelessly square.
One of the earliest supporters of what we called Jesus music—Jesus songs sounding like pop music—was me.
Groups like Stryper were doing gospel music with real gospel lyrics, but with the music the kids were listening to.
Ric Hansen: Yeah.
Pat Boone: I used the analogy of the Day of Pentecost.
Every person heard in his own language—17 different languages—while the apostles were speaking in tongues and praising the Lord.
There were two miracles: the language of speech and the language of hearing.
They were hearing in their own language.
That's what I conveyed when I later hosted the Dove Awards.
I tried to explain Stryper to the Happy Goodmans and some of the old-fashioned traditional gospel singers.
I told them these guys are singing the same message; they're just doing it in a different language.
Today's music.
Ric Hansen: Before we started talking, I had a couple of things that came to mind regarding music.
You've done it all—love ballads, rhythm and blues, gospel and now heavy metal.
What's your input on contemporary Christian music today?
Pat Boone: The Gospel is preached.
We should be thankful the Gospel is preached anywhere, anytime, as long as it's the real Gospel.
There aren't any successful gospel singers who aren't Christians.
Somehow or other, it just never works.
You can want to try to make a Christian song, but you don't know how because you don't know what you're talking about.
You can't write meaningful lyrics.
Lauren Daigle and all these others—I actually gave her an award when she received the Gospel Music Song of the Year.
My own granddaughter had made me aware of Lauren Daigle's song.
These are gospel songs.
There are some songs that have been written sort of as gospel and later adopted as gospel songs.
"Light Up My Life" was a gospel song in the sense that my daughter Debbie sang it to the Lord.
When the writer heard Debbie was singing it to the Lord, he was surprised. He didn't mean it as a gospel song. It was a love song to a woman he was living with at the time.
But God inspired the song and inspired the singer, Debbie, and it became, in its own way, a gospel song.
You know, "Amazing Grace" was written by a slave trader and alcoholic after he met the Lord.
And the melody was an English pub song—the kind of melody he knew from his pub days.
Ric Hansen: So what's the chance of you doing a contemporary Christian song these days? Is that something you're going to do?
Pat Boone: I'm in the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. You didn't know that.
Ric Hansen: No, I didn't know that.
Pat Boone: I've written 20 or 25 gospel songs.
I've written more gospel songs than anybody knows.
I'm in the Gospel Music Hall of Fame because I've done somewhere between 20 and 25 gospel albums—more than almost any other gospel performer.
I just kept recording gospel just like I did country and everything else.
They were all gospel songs.
I wrote the words to "Exodus," the theme song from the movie Exodus, which is now considered a second Jewish national anthem.
It's a gospel-inspired song.
I've written a number of successful gospel songs, and I'm still recording them.
Ric Hansen: Pat Boone shares his life and Christian story with us on Amazing Greats.
Pat Boone: I'm well known in the Christian community for a lot of my gospel songs.
I'm still doing my Pat Boone Show every week on Christian stations.
I play all kinds of gospel music, including contemporary Christian gospel music, but I always conclude each show with one of my own recordings.
Sometimes it's something I wrote; sometimes it isn't.
I'm also doing a podcast. We've just done 12 podcasts, and we're launched on XOTV and my Facebook page.
I haven't been doing any gospel tunes yet.
I'm also on 50s on 5 on SiriusXM, which I do every week.
I just did two shows today.
I play my record "A Wonderful Time Up There," which is an outright gospel song, and it was number one.
I had gospel records that were actual hits.
I was always recording gospel music—pop, contemporary songs from the new Jesus people, songs by Jesus-music performers like Larry Norman and Keith Green.
I did their songs, and they loved them.
Many of my albums were songs I'd written myself.
Ric Hansen: Very cool.
Tell me, along the way, with everything you've done over your lifetime, have you felt that there was a specific purpose God put you here to fulfill?
Pat Boone: Yes.
It came to me very quickly because I was on my way to being a teacher-preacher.
I was already preaching in a little country church in Slidell—a little one-room church that needed a paint job and was kind of tilted to the side.
There were only about 40 members, and they couldn't pay anybody to come preach.
I was going to be a teacher-preacher.
When they gave me the opportunity, I began to preach for them.
After about the third Sunday, they took up a collection and gave it to me.
It was about $22.
I didn't ask for it.
At the time I was making $44.50 a week doing two TV shows in Fort Worth while working my way through school.
I was also hosting the Bewley Barn Dance on Friday nights and a teenage show called Foremost Teen Times.
I'd won some national talent shows, but nothing had come from it yet.
Then I got jobs at a local station in Fort Worth hosting two one-hour TV shows.
They asked what they were going to have to pay me.
I was afraid to ask for too much because we were expecting our first child.
I said, "I'd have to make at least $50 a week."
They paid me $50.
So when the church gave me the $22 collection, I was happy to take it.
That went on for months.
One Sunday I had really spent time on my sermon.
I said, "Honey, this is more than a $22 sermon."
I knew that because I had put $5 into the offering.
I was tithing on my $44.50, putting five dollars into the collection before I knew they were eventually going to hand me the collection.
It was always about $22.
So I said, "This is more than a $22 sermon."
I didn't ask for more.
I just put $10 in the collection.
I preached the sermon and got about $27 back.
We laugh about it, but I know the Bible says you can't outgive God.
"Give to Me and see if I don't pour back to you."
Within about six months after I preached my last sermon there and put my $10 in the collection plate, I was in New York making records.
I was very quickly making more money than I ever dreamed I would make.
I was tithing on that.
I've always tithed.
Knowing how unlikely it was that I would suddenly become a teen idol out of nowhere, I knew it was God.
He was giving me a platform from which I could do more than I could as a preacher located somewhere—or as a doctor, which I had also considered.
I realized I was going to have more opportunity as a singer than I would have in either of those occupations.
So I set about to make that happen as God made it possible.
Not just through tithing, but through the music I did and the movies I turned down.
I wouldn't do immoral stories. I never did a film that wasn't G-rated.
I felt a responsibility to my millions of teenage fans.
The first book I wrote was Twixt 12 and 20, while I was still in college.
I'd just made the film April Love.
A secular publisher approached me to write a book of moral advice for teenagers, and I took it very seriously.
I had a ghostwriter helping me organize the book because I was already so busy.
I told her the stories and things I wanted to say, and she organized them from a tape recorder.
But she made it sound too literary.
I was always taking what she'd written, putting in contractions, breaking up paragraphs and making it more readable for teenagers.
The publisher didn't want the title Twixt 12 and 20.
They wanted to call it Pat Talks to Teens.
I knew that sounded so pompous and presumptuous.
I wanted to call it Twixt.
"What does it mean, Twixt?"
I said, "What's between 12 and 20? Please tell me. I'm an English major."
So we called it Twixt 12 and 20.
It became a runaway bestseller.
It sold well over a million copies and was the number-one nonfiction book that year.
Ric Hansen: Wow.
Pat Boone: All the proceeds were donated to a startup Christian college in Villanova, Pennsylvania.
A wealthy family had given their estate to a Christian group that wanted to start a Christian college outside Philadelphia.
I said, "You can have any money, if there is any, from this book."
It turned out to be about a million and a half dollars.
In 1957 and 1958 dollars, that's like $10 million today, at least.
It helped them start the college.
I'd never seen it.
When Shirley and I moved to California, we stopped in Philadelphia to visit the campus where the proceeds from my book had gone.
On the main building, which had been the mansion of the original owners, carved in stone was "Boone Hall."
I'm just leaving college myself, and I had helped build another college with the proceeds from my book.
That authenticated what I already knew was true:
God gave me a platform, and it's for His purposes.
I had other things in mind.
I didn't think I could be a pop singer.
That's too risky for a guy who got married at 19 and had four kids by the time he was 23.
I better have a job.
I thought when I graduated I would apply for a job as an English teacher.
But when I graduated in early June of 1958, I lay down in Central Park.
I was going to be late to my TV show with Gina Lollobrigida.
I lay down in the grass and said, "Wait a minute. I was going to apply for a teaching job. I've got this TV contract, movie contract and recording contract."
I thought, "Sounds like I'm going to have to see where this goes before I apply for the teaching job."
The teaching job never happened.
Ric Hansen: God had different plans for you.
Pat Boone: Yes, He did.
I've served on the boards of two Christian colleges and still do.
Two of them are building Boone Performing Arts Centers—one in Nashville and one in Abilene.
We started the Boone Center for the Family at Pepperdine University, where I've been chairman of the Board of Advisors for about 40 years.
God gave me the platform to serve Him by coming at kids and other people from different directions than they would from a preacher.
Less than half of Americans go to any church or place of worship.
Some aren't sure there is a God. They pray sometimes. Maybe they don't know whether there's a heaven or hell.
We're not a nation under God now.
We are a nation that has many Christians in it, but we haven't been nearly vocal or stood up enough to protect our liberties and our faith.
We've allowed ourselves to be cowed down.
And so this book of mine that's coming out in September is called If.
Ric Hansen: Another book?
Pat Boone: Another book, yes.
I've written 15 or 20 books. Two of them were bestsellers.
One was A New Song, about my baptism in the Holy Spirit and our family. That was another million-seller and went into other languages and paperback.
I hope this book will do the same.
The cover I designed is white, but the four corners look singed, as if it had been pulled out of a book burning.
Somebody took a heavy marking pen and scrawled the word IF across it in bold letters.
There's a warning on it that looks like it has been stuck on with a pen.
It says:
Not Religious. Life or Death.
And at the bottom:
The Everlasting Choice We All Must Make.
You can't ignore the cover.
It's not like any cover on any bookshelf.
I'm hoping it gets the attention of people who aren't interested in religious books.
The publisher wanted endorsements from Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, David Jeremiah, Max Lucado and others.
They would have been happy to do it, and they've given me endorsements for the inside flap.
But as far as the cover and the message of the book, it's the story of a guy who's had an incredible life and experienced some supernatural things.
But it is life or death.
The "if" is heaven or hell.
"What are you going to choose?"
God's choice is evident. He wants us to come to heaven.
That's what I'll tell book reviewers who say, "You're telling me, Pat Boone, that if I don't do what you say in this book, I'm going to hell?"
I'll say, "Forget Pat Boone. It's not me saying anything. All I'm doing is trying to get you to read what God says."
He's the one.
He's not making the choice. You are.
But His choice is heaven for you, and He loves you.
If you're not willing to come to heaven, you don't have to.
You don't have to read His book. You don't have to believe what I'm telling you.
It's all there for you to read.
If you're not interested, forget it.
Ric Hansen: That's the whole idea.
I love it.
You're not preaching to the choir here. You're bringing someone in who may not already be part of the choir.
Pat Boone: I'm preaching to those who may think they're Christian and aren't.
I hope they'll get interested too.
I quote Jesus saying, "Many will say to me in that last day, Lord, Lord, didn't we do mighty things in your name?"
We're saying we were on board. We cast out demons.
And He says, "Depart from me, I never knew you."
Doing nice things while still disobeying Him won't get you there.
There are too many Christians going along with the tide.
They may do good things as well, but they're forfeiting their eternal existence because He says, "If you love me, keep my commandments."
And on the last day, He says, "My words will judge you."
The words are there for us to read.
That's why I'm saying, "Please."
The book starts with the failure of God's first race of people.
He created a whole race of people in His image, starting with two people.
Then, in the time of Noah, He wiped them all out.
The Bible says it repented Him that He'd made them because every thought in man's heart was evil continually.
You can call yourself a believer, but if the thoughts in your heart are evil, you're disqualified.
You may not know it, but you need to know it.
He wiped out everybody but eight people and started over again.
This is the God we're dealing with.
Preachers don't want to talk like that.
But I am a preacher—not from the platform.
At this last stage in my life, I'm going to say things other preachers may not want to say.
Maybe they'll get kicked out of their own churches.
Ric Hansen: This has just been an important conversation.
Pat Boone: I got kicked out of my church when my first book, A New Song, was printed.
I was declared no longer a member of the church I grew up in because they didn't believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
They felt it was heretical.
Ric Hansen: Wow.
Pat Boone: I accepted it, but kept going anyway.
Now they're welcoming me because more and more of those faithful, good Christian people realize the reason we weren't experiencing the baptism was that we didn't know it was available.
We didn't know it was good today.
Ric Hansen: Well, thank you so much for your time.
This has been a joy—to hear your story and hear the words coming from you.
There's no better way to say it than you're a national treasure.
It's been a pleasure to get to know you and spend some time with you.
God bless you, Pat Boone, for all that you've done and are continuing to do.
Thank you.
What an absolute joy to spend some quality time with this legend, Pat Boone.
Please share this story with a friend.
And if you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did, hit like.
For more inspiring stories from well-known Christians like this, hit subscribe and/or go to our website at amazinggreats.net.
Thanks to Klem Daniels for producing this show.
Thanks to Dan O'Neill for connecting us with Pat Boone.
And especially thank you for making this a part of your day.
Comments