Stryper frontman Michael Sweet recently admitted that he left the band at the peak of their success to save his marriage and faith, sharing his thoughts during an appearance on The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan.
Sweet explained how the band’s rapid rise to fame affected their behavior and led to a shift in their lifestyle during rehearsals.
“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,” Sweet said. “There’s no other way to put it. They went to our heads and it brought out the old man very easily, unfortunately. 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 then described how this initial introduction of alcohol quickly escalated into a larger issue that began to impact his personal life.
“And it just kind of, unfortunately and tragically, that seed grew negatively and the next day was a 12-pack,” Sweet continued. “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 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 went on to discuss the toll this took on his family and his decision to ultimately step away from Stryper to reorder his priorities.
“My marriage certainly was,” Sweet added. “My kids, everything. And I had 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, ‘Something’s got to break. 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. 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 God, family, then maybe the band. That’s not what it was. It was the band. And then family and God were down here somewhere. And I don’t even know what was in the middle.”
The story Sweet tells is rooted in a specific chapter of Stryper’s history. The rehearsals and touring cycle he references belong to Against the Law, the album that marked a clear turning point for the band both musically and personally.
Against the Law was released on August 21, 1990, through Hollywood Records, and it reached No. 92 on the Billboard 200. The record represented a sharp break from the band’s earlier Christian metal image, a shift that Sweet himself later acknowledged. He said the band “kind of walked away from God” for a period, and that the album “became more about the music than the message.”
The aftermath of that era carried directly into the band’s lineup changes. Michael Sweet left Stryper in January 1992 to pursue a solo career, and although Robert Sweet, Oz Fox and Tim Gaines continued as a three-piece for another year, no further studio recordings followed once he departed. Sweet, then 28, left the band in January to make his own music.
Years later, Sweet has been candid about the hypocrisy he felt during that period. Speaking to Joel Gausten, he said, “We were complete morons, complete hypocrites. We were going out and telling people about Jesus and God from the stage, and then we’d be hitting the bar and getting drunk with them after the show night after night. It was just a joke – a complete joke – during that period.”
His decision to step away was also framed around his family and faith. In an interview, Sweet explained, “Well I left the band in ’92 and the reason why I left primarily was because I wanted to focus on my family. And focus on everything that I felt should be at the top of my priority list. My relationship with God, my relationship with my family. I felt like the band was consuming that.”
The split did not prove permanent. The original members began reuniting in the early 2000s, resumed recording new material in 2003, and released Reborn in 2005 as the band’s official comeback. Sweet has noted that the album was initially planned as a solo release before it became a Stryper record when the other members responded positively to it. The reunion also brought his solo career and the band’s future back into alignment with the priorities he described leaving to protect.
