Heavy Metal Spoof Sinks Pat Boone’s Show

Singer Pat Boone, one of America’s best-known Christian entertainers, has been taken off the air by a national religious television network after showing up at the American Music Awards dressed like a heavy metal rock singer.

Boone’s weekly half-hour show was dropped by the Tustin-based Trinity Broadcasting Network on Tuesday after the network received thousands of phone calls and letters from contributors who were shocked by Boone’s chest-baring leather costume--augmented by faux tattoos and a studded dog collar--at the awards show, broadcast Jan. 27 by ABC.

“A lot of our [prayer] ‘partners’ had a real problem with that, more than a lot,” said an employee of Trinity, whose programming is carried by nearly 400 cable systems and television stations worldwide.

Even before the emergence of the black-leathered Boone, a lawyer for the network said, its viewers had been dismayed by the shifting musical genre on the entertainer’s weekly show, “Gospel America,” which has been carried by Trinity for four years. Boone had moved away from traditional and pop gospel to more emphasis on lyrics from heavy metal rock hits--versions of which he has released on a new recording.

When they were besieged with the new complaints, Trinity President Paul Crouch and other network executives moved to strike Boone’s show from its broadcast schedule, at least until he “explains” his actions to their satisfaction. In the meantime, viewers who called the network were being urged to pray for Boone.

Founded in 1974, Trinity Broadcasting Network provides 24-hour-a-day Christian programming and is the world’s largest religious television programming service.

Last year, the organization, which is tax-exempt and nonprofit, announced plans to eventually move to Costa Mesa.

The organization is no stranger to controversy. Trinity once again boycotted the National Religious Broadcasters’ convention, which drew about 5,000 evangelical broadcasters, programmers and vendors to Anaheim last month.

Trinity withdrew from the annual convention in 1990 after an inconclusive yearlong inquiry into complaints of its business practices and treatment of employees.

Boone said Wednesday that Trinity’s move was “real unexpected,” and that he told Crouch ahead of time not to be “stampeded” by “people who would jump to the wrong conclusions” by his appearance on the network show--which most observers construed as a spoof on the fresh-scrubbed image that made him a singing idol in the 1950s at the age of 20.

“They see garish-looking pictures [of me] and say, ‘Oh no! Pat Boone has totally sold out, lost his salvation and has gone over to the devil,’ ” Boone said Wednesday. “So they bombard Trinity with hundreds of calls and say if he’s on the air you’ve seen our last nickel.”

Boone also disclosed that the Bethel School and Orphanage in Chattanooga, Tenn., which he has aided for 20 years by sponsoring a golf tournament, may also sever ties with him.

“It’s not the administrators’ objections. It’s all the donors, their support base, that are threatening them with never sending them another check if they continue to associate with that degenerate metal-head Pat Boone,” Boone said.

Known for decades for his boy-next-door appearance, Boone, 62, stepped onto the stage at the American Music Awards in leather pants, open vest, applique tattoos--and the studded dog collar and bracelets. It was all part of Boone’s promotion of his album “In a Metal Mood/No More Mr. Nice Guy,” in which he combines heavy metal lyrics with what he calls “a big-band, Pat Boone vocal version of some terrific songs.” The album was 125 on Billboard magazine’s top 200 sales rankings Feb. 8, but has since dropped off the chart.

Boone said his goal was to introduce inoffensive heavy metal lyrics to his fans--people not likely to embrace or understand music which many see as evidence of America’s moral decay.

As it turned out, what some of Boone’s fans didn’t understand was him. They couldn’t reconcile the heavy metal attire and lyrics with the entertainer they admired. By the thousands, they began flooding the network with complaints.

“They didn’t get the joke,” Boone said.

Paul Shefrin, spokesman for American Music Awards, called Trinity’s decision unfortunate. Boone’s attire was just promotional, he said.

“He dressed to fit that mode, and also just to get an audience reaction, whether a cheer or a laugh,” Shefrin said. At another point in the awards show, Shefrin noted, Boone wore a tuxedo.

“Pat has done those songs in his style. He isn’t singing in a way or using expletives that might be a turnoff to the middle-of-the-road, easy-listening-type audience he’s had his appeal to,” Shefrin said.

Trinity officials said Boone still could redeem himself. He has been invited to appear on the network’s flagship show, “Praise,” formerly known as “Praise the Lord,” hosted by the silver-haired Crouch and his wife, Jan, whose trademarks are an enormous bouffant hairdo and heavy eye makeup.

“Until that takes place, the overwhelming number of respondents and people who have called in to the [network] have complained about the change and have otherwise requested that his program be discontinued,” Trinity attorney Colby May said Wednesday from Washington. “Trinity has assented to that request.”

If Boone’s explanation satisfies viewers, May said, the network could restore his program--but if viewers are unconvinced, he could be permanently dropped.

Boone, meanwhile, said he remains convinced that he is following Jesus’ example in trying to bring the Gospel message to those outside traditional Christian churches through hard rock music.

“I’ve been praying for 20 years that God would show me Jesus’ formula. . . . He was not only willing to go into the homes of those the Bible described as publicans, sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, the riffraff and outcast of his days,” Boone said.

“He was not ashamed for even the religious leaders . . . to lump him in with the tax collectors and the real lower echelon of society of his day. What I am learning now that I’ve put on some leather jeans and some choker and tattoos is I’m being welcomed into the society of the metal heads, the bikers, the hard rockers--folks that were just as judgmental of me in my appearance as, I confess, I was of them. A rapport has sprung up. I’m humbled by it. I’m delighted by it. I realize it does not come without a cost. . . . The ‘righteous folks’ don’t want to have anything to do with these kind of people today.”