Stryper frontman Michael Sweet opened up about the time he decided to quit the band. He explained the circumstances that led to his departure during an appearance on The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan.
Sweet explained that the band’s growing success in the mid-1980s began to take a toll on the group, leading to changes in behavior that eventually spiraled out of control.
“Well, I think for the four or five year period where we were climbing and climbing and breaking as a band, breaking out, it kind of went to our heads. There’s no other way to put it,” Sweet said. “They went to our heads and and it it brought out the old man very easily unfortunately and the way that started if you talk to the other three guys, you’re going to get a little bit of a different story from each guy. But from my recollection, it started with we went into rehearsals for Against the Law and we never brought beer or alcohol into rehearsals. All of a sudden, one guy brings in a six-pack, and we all looked at it like, ‘What the hell?’ You know, ‘Yeah, what is this six-pack doing here?’ You know, ‘I don’t know. You want one?’ ‘Yeah, sure. Give me. We’ll have a beer.’ That’s how it started.”
He went on to describe how the situation escalated quickly, affecting both the band and his personal life.
“And it just kind of unfortunately and tragically, that seed grew negatively and the next day was a 12-pack. Next day we went to the local bar. Next day we did this. Next week my brother had a big party at his house and we had kegs and you know alcohol all over the kitchen counter. Complete shame. Absolutely. I couldn’t live with myself. I mean, I wasn’t suicidal, but I felt like everything was crumbling,” Sweet continued. “My marriage certainly was. My kids, everything. And I had, you know,, two little kids at the time. It was awful. And I was going to bed with that every night, struggling with that because we were kind of comfortable in our sin, yet at the same time miserable. And I’d go to bed thinking, I got something’s got to break. I I can’t do it. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. So, I finally made the decision to leave the band. I felt like that was the only way out.”
Sweet also reflected on how his priorities had shifted during that period, and what ultimately drove him to step away.
“My priority list was out of whack and I wanted to put it in order. And I knew that my priorities should not have been at the top of the list, the band. It should have been, you know, God, family, then maybe the band. That’s not what it was. It was the band, you know. Yeah. And then family and God were down here somewhere. And I don’t even know what was in the middle,” he said.
The unraveling Sweet describes did not happen overnight. Its aftermath played out over the following years, shaping both the band’s trajectory and his own path forward.
Stryper’s decline in discipline coincided with the release of Against the Law in 1990, an album that marked a deliberate departure from the group’s earlier, more overtly Christian image. Sales fell short of the band’s previous releases. By 1992, following a greatest hits compilation, Sweet made his departure official to pursue a solo career.
The hypocrisy of the band’s lifestyle at the time weighed heavily on Sweet in the years that followed. He has since admitted that during that stretch, the group would preach about God and clean living from the stage, only to head to the bar and get drunk with fans afterward. He called the contradiction “a complete joke” during that period of the band’s history.
Sweet’s exit was not permanent. He spent roughly a decade away from Stryper before rejoining Robert Sweet, Oz Fox and Tim Gaines for the band’s 2003 reunion. The reunion produced the album Reborn and set the stage for the group’s continued run into the following decades.
Sweet has been candid about how far the band had strayed from its original mission when reflecting on that turbulent chapter. He once said the moment things started going wrong was tied directly to the choices the band made during that era. He added that if he had to list every reason he ultimately left, it would be a long one.
Sweet’s remarks offer a personal look at the struggles behind Stryper’s rise and his decision to step back from the band during that time.
