It was my first high council speaking assignment at BYU, and I wanted to pick a topic I was passionate about-let there be no accusations, please, that Ron Simpson ever put anyone to sleep on high council Sunday.
So I spoke about the gospel concept of light-how scientists and theologians seem to agree that light is at the center of the universe. And how the descriptions of the Savior in the beginning of the Book of John, using life and light to describe him, seem to set apart light as one of the most exciting of the gospel concepts.
I had wide-ranging notes, including Christ identifying himself as the Light of the World in connection with the Festival of Lights in the New Testament, and then a favorite story not too many have heard: how the Lamanite Generation of BYU literally prayed the lights on for a show at a hilltop outdoor theater in Santiago, Dominican Republic, in the middle of a city-wide power outage in May 1986.
“And there was even a band called Light,” I heard myself saying. Whoops. This was a digression. “Four missionaries who had served together in South Africa in the 70’s gathered in Utah with music dreams centered around the concept and the name Light. When they brought some of their early projects to our studio, I thought two things about them: first I shared their enthusiasm for the name Light-after all, light was a scriptural symbol of power-‘the power by which all things were made.’ And second, I thought their talent, particularly their writing talent, was awesome, and ‘awesome’ wasn’t even in the vernacular then.
“The band included Roger Hoffman, a beautiful tenor singer who had a background in East Coast boys’ choirs and who went on to be a songwriter and a choral composer (‘Consider the Lilies,’ etc.) and arranger/producer for much of the Janice Kapp Perry CD catalog. Roger Hoffman is a music business survivor, and operates out of a well-equipped home studio in the Provo area.
“And there was Bill Evans, who studied at the U, played bass and oboe, and learned how to write for and to conduct big orchestras. Bill would become one of the leading musical resources behind Bonneville’s award-winning Home Front radio-ad series, which was one of the Church’s first and very successful attempts to communicate LDS values to domestic and world audiences using scripts and music that paid attention to contemporary culture. Today Bill Evans is an attorney specializing in entertainment issues and still takes occasional freelance production projects.
“Another of the returned South African missionaries,” I continued, “was Paul Nicholls, owner of a throaty, authentic pop voice not unlike Peter Cetera. Paul became a sought-after studio singer, and I later signed him to sing lead on a Century 21 ad campaign which I composed and produced, and one which took Century 21 Real Estate from a regional to a national presence.
“And then,” I concluded, “there was Michael McLean, who went on to become Michael McLean.” (Laughter.) I wove the story line back to my notes and finished my talk about light. But on the way home, my mind returned to the band Light, a long-forgotten and welcome memory.
While Mike McLean claims to have been the least secure performer in that original group, his outgoing, promotion-savvy personality and incisive talent as a song crafter and yarn spinner has made him one of the all-time top contemporary commentators on Mormon life. Over time, Michael McLean’s name has become the biggest of the four in terms of marquee value and audience recognition.
When a band this strong walks into your studio, you can’t help but be a bit intimidated. They were playing clubs as we had done, and they were good at promoting themselves, even opening for legendary funk band, Tower of Power, at a Utah concert. And so, while we were understandably concerned about the level of competition these new guys were bringing to the game, which we-The Sound Column-felt we had dominated up to that point, we admitted to ourselves that we not only loved the symbolism of their name, but we also thought they were genuinely good guys. And so we made it our business to help them all we could.
We brokered a couple of entry-level jingle deals for them. Mike McLean says today, “Somebody offered us $600 to do a jingle, and we realized that was the equivalent of two weeks of dues paying in the clubs. It was a revelation.”
I think it may also have been through our connections with Sunn Classic Pictures that Light got the chance to work on the film “Grizzly Adams.” The way the company told it, they had someone who had the music all written and they just needed a band to play the stuff. We suggested the project to Light, and they grabbed it. “But it turned out their guy just had one song roughed out, so for the talent fee agreed upon, we basically had to come up with the entire score of Grizzly Adams,” Mike comments.
But even though the money didn’t come close to equaling the time spent, the PR value was immense, as Grizzly Adams went on to become a syndicated TV show and the guys in Light suddenly had a well-known national show in their resums.
Next they brought to our studio an ambitious ad campaign for 7-Up based on their name Light, and for which we helped them with the studio costs. Mike McLean recalls his idea was, “Cola darkness covered me…I saw the light…the uncola forever more.” He continues, “But we couldn’t get in the door at J. Walter Thompson, so we rewrote it for Evans Advertising, the local agency, and it became a big milk commercial: ‘I saw the light-the refresher forever more’.”
The rest is history, as Light, and more especially Mike McLean, became a hugely productive creator of media projects, with Evans Advertising as the initial springboard into the local and national field. From then on, other studios got the bulk of their recording business.
“Mike, it’s Ron. I’m writing about your band, Light, for a Meridian article, and I can’t remember some of the details.”
“So what’s missing?” he asks.
“I can remember most of the guys, but who was the drummer?”
“Mike Jeppsen,” he answers immediately, and it comes back to me. Jeppsen, a Salt Lake school buddy of Bill Evans, had been a very strong rock-influenced drummer, and like vocalist Paul Nicholls, had ended up taking many freelance studio calls.
“And then Tom Evans, guitarist, singer-songwriter, and Bill’s brother, finished off the personnel of the band,” Mike tells me. Another favorite of mine. Very promising songwriter.
“Okay. And four of you were missionaries together in South Africa…”
“South Africa and Rhodesia,” he interrupts.
“We were called the Family Band. Taking the idea of families all over those huge countries. And when we came back, we wanted to go all the way, to make it big, first stop was to be Chicago.”
So their goal and their preparation was to be a national touring band, but they ended up contributing to the growth of the local music community, and were at the forefront of the development of LDS pop music.
The scenario reminds me of an adage I drill into my songwriting students, some of whom set their sights on LDS pop as a shortcut to fame, if not fortune.
“First,” I beg them, “train yourself to a national or a world standard, and then turn your attention to the values you care about.”
The band Light and its individual members-especially Roger Hoffman and Michael McLean-have carved out values-based careers that have lasted for decades and enriched all of us. Light-their light-is indeed at the center of our musical universe.
