Stryper drummer Robert Sweet in featured in a career-spanning interview at Off Beat with Michael Aubrecht. Following is an excerpt from the discussion.

MA: Speaking about the physicality of your play that drives your showmanship…is that why you set your drums up sideways on the stage?

RS: "Yes. I want to connect with the audience. I started doing that back in 1978. I wanted to be different and I had the mindset not to look like anyone else. At the time I noticed that guys were being completely covered by their drum sets. You couldn’t even see them back there. I was influenced by guys like John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, Leonard Hays from Y&T and Alex Van Halen. A lot of the guys from back in the day that were incredible players influenced me. That said, and you may have a hard time believing it, I was influenced more by singers and guitarists than drummers. I think that the drums happened to be my instrument but from a Rock and Roll standpoint, I was impressed with the guys that were up front. I’ve had a lot of people come up and ask me if I am a singer or a guitar player. Growing up I thought a lot of drummers didn’t look good and they were lacking in showmanship. I’ve always believed that everybody in the band contributes and should be recognized for it. We are all showman in our own ways. By turning my drum set it opened up a lot of doors for creativity. That’s when I started mounting chains to hold things together and putting mirrors all over so I could see the audience and they could see me. That affected my playing too. I started jumping up on my drums and kicking the cymbals."

MA: You just mentioned that you were influenced by singers and guitarists. Who are some of the ones that come to mind?

RS: "I was a huge Eddie Van Halen guy. I saw his band at the Forum in 1979. I was nineteen and I almost fell over. They were so fantastic and the impression that he made on me was phenomenal. One of the big bands to really grab my attention was Y&T. I saw them when they were called Yesterday And Today. I was seventeen. We recently did a Rock and Roll cruise with Y&T and I was talking to their guitar player about what an influence he was. In all I’d say most of the bigger bands of the 70’s and 80’s probably had some kind of impact on me. I’m not saying that I wasn’t into drummers but as far as the more visual aspects it was the guys up front."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Ms. Mishap of The Vinyl Mishappenings recently sat down with Stryper guitarist Oz Fox to discuss 30+ years of battling the devil, and whether or not the original Stryper lineup will continue; an excerpt follows:

Stryper is going on a little bit of a break. Michael Sweet had hinted at some trouble within the band in his last interview, is this a reason for the time off?

Oz Fox: “Well it’s a number of things. A lot of it is Michael has a lot projects coming up that he wants to take time off to do, which is fine by me because I’ve got a lot of stuff going on here in town. As I get older in age, I kind of want to set myself up so that I’ll have more opportunities here in Vegas so that someday if I ever stop touring with Stryper, I can maybe stay here and work as a musician. He (Michael) definitely is going to be doing a second album with George Lynch. He also just released a solo album and wants to go out and tour that a little bit, and we (Stryper) are going to be playing on the Monsters of Rock Cruise the first week of February.”

Does that mean it will be the original lineup playing the Monsters of Rock Cruise come February?

Oz Fox: “As far as I know yes, but Tim (Gaines) our bass player is going through some personal issues and we're trying to let him work all of that stuff out. It’s no secret anymore, but he’s going through a divorce so we’re giving him time to work those things out. As far as I know, he’s looking like he’s on his way to making all of that stuff in his life correct and fixed, and then we’ll see where he stands after he’s all done with that; I know he wants to keep touring. It’s a very difficult thing to go through a divorce, it’s difficult for everybody. We’re very close to him and his wife, so it hurts us as much as it hurts them... as far as I know he’s going to be on the cruise with us. Then the only other thing I can say after that is there are plans to do another Stryper album, so we'll see how that goes later on.”

Do you think any of this will delay that new album?

Oz Fox: “I think there were plans to possibly get on it in January, it hadn’t been booked or anything. But once this whole thing started happening with Tim, we thought it was a better idea to just postpone everything. We decided to maybe wait until later on in the year. I think it’s good for us to just give him time to do his thing and deal with his issues, and then later on we can come back together after everything is already healed over.”

To read the complete interview, visit this location.