BILL BAFFORD 67
INDUSTRY PROFILE AFFORD | ROXX RECORDS BY SCOTT WATERS
ROXX RECORDS HAS BEEN A FORCE IN KEEPING CHRISTIAN HEAVY METAL ALIVE FOR THE PAST DECADE. WE CATCH UP WITH ROXX RECORDS FOUNDER BILL BAFFORD FOR A BIT OF HISTORY ON THE MAN AND THE LABEL. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got in to the Christian metal scene to begin with. I need to go way back for that one. It started with my introduction to metal music, period. In 1983, at the age of 15, a neighborhood kid introduced me to Ozzy and Def Leppard and I immediately went out and bought my first 2 albums, Def Leppard’s On through the Night and Ozzy Osbourne’s Blizzard of Oz, and I would wear those vinyl records out and my love of Metal had begun! I grew up in a household where my mother was a devout Christian woman, so obviously she hated it profusely and would throw it away every chance she got! On the other hand my father was a beer drinking, Harley riding, long-haired but hard-working man. How those two ended up together I still can’t figure out sometimes. It has taken many years for me to realize that, despite some of the heartache and problems through the years, they were both doing the best they could and truly wanted the best for me and my brother. I love them both for all of their efforts, support and direction through the years. Well, my mother would send me off to a Christian high school where I would become even more rebellious than ever and couldn’t wait to get out of there. But I met a girl and our lives would become forever intertwined. We would become teenage statistics or poster children for teenage pregnancy – as we were expecting our first child, Breanna Marie, at the ripe old age of just 16 and 17. Life had suddenly changed, drastically. I would finish up high school and work simultaneously, knowing that I had to get working fast and hard, because now I had financial responsibilities and I began to resent God and hate the church and everything it and my mother stood for and tried to instill in me. I would begin to toy with drugs and alcohol, but I kept working really hard, holding down two jobs at times and still not be able to make ends meet. Had it not been for my grandfather (Pa) in those early days, I may not have been able to provide for all of their needs. I had hit an all-time low in my life at only 18 years old. Most of my friends were partying and living it up or going to college and all I could
do was work and try to find ways to support a child. I would visit a church here and there and think maybe God was still what I needed, but it never filled the void in my life! My experience with churches was the Southern Baptist churches and schools I had attended all those years at my mother’s direction. I saw them as filled with selfrighteous, stuffed shirts that would tell you things like “cut your hair,” “clean up your act” and “you can’t listen to that heavy metal garbage and be a Christian! God does not approve!” Like many others, I felt like an outcast – like something was wrong with me. I did not blame the establishment or the church. It had to be me, right? One day I visited a church in West Covina called Calvary Chapel and that all changed. Calvary would be the first church that I felt understood me. Pastor Raul Ries understood – more than most pastors – what I had been experiencing. On one of my first visits there I would get a flyer for a concert – a bright yellow and black flyer that I still have today inviting me to see this band called Stryper perform – for free at a local church! I was amazed, intrigued and excited at the prospect of, “Hey, this looks like cool metal music and I’m going to church at the same time, what’s wrong with this picture?” And my first experience of Christian Metal would be seeing Stryper playing to a packed church in West Covina and it felt like this was where I belonged. I could have my long hair, listen to metal music and still love and praise God! I wasn’t a freak and an outcast after all, or maybe I was? I would keep going to Calvary Chapel and see and support Stryper every chance I got, but it still just wasn’t quite what I was looking for. Then life would throw us a curveball yet again. We were now expecting our second child. It was bad enough telling your family and loved ones the first time, but at the age of 18 and 19 to be having another one? We decided to keep it a secret while we tried to figure out what we were going to do! Despite both of us being from Christian households, we had