The Quantitative Roland Stephen Taylor Ubiquitous Volume
Rev. Roland Samuel Taylor's wife Gayle Yvonne Taylor gave birth to their first child on Monday December 9, 1957 in Brawley, California. They named their son Roland Stephen Taylor but he came to be known as Steve.
Shortly after his birth, the Taylors moved to Denver, Colorado where Steve grew up. He has two younger siblings, a brother named Jim and a sister named Dawn.
In 1976, Steve graduated from high school and moved to southern California to attend Biola University. After his freshman year he moved back to Colorado to attend the University of Colorado at Boulder. Enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts program in music, it became apparent quite soon that a vocal emphasis was required as he couldn't do anything else, not even play the piano to save his life. It has also been said that the university only let Steve graduate so they wouldn't have to listen to him sing again.
After his third year in college in 1979, Steve auditioned for John Davidson's Summer Camp. Steve was one of 100 chosen from 20,000 hopefuls to spend a month learning the showroom trades from the likes of Tony Orlando, Florence Henderson and John Davidson.
Steve wanted to do something with his Christian faith but he had a stumbling block for music that meant anything to him. During the fall of 1979, he was enrolled in a film making course at Colorado U. Someone in the class used Lost In The Supermarket by The Clash as the soundtrack for a film. Steve picked up the whole album London Calling.
Musically it saved my life. It had raw passion, it has lyrics that were slap across the face, it had everything but hope. The Clash saw the problems of the world with startling clarity. They just weren't offering much in the way of solutions. To sum it up, I'd found my mission. - Steve Taylor
The demos for I Want to be a Clone and Whatcha Gonna Do When Your Number's Up? were recorded during his last year of college. After college, Steve had various meetings with California labels and publishers about getting a recording deal which were unsuccessful.
Steve met Jim Chaffee in California, who was impressed with the demo. Before he helped Steve get a deal, he enlisted Taylor to be assistant director of The Continentals, an evangelistic singing group that was about to head for Poland. Not long after, Chaffee helped get Steve a gig as director of Chuck Bolte's Jeremiah People, a Christian musical comedy troupe whose satire strongly influence Steve as a child.
In the summer of 1982, Steve got a small slot at Cam Floria's Annual Christian Artists Conference in Estes Park, Colorado with the help of Chaffee and his wife Janice. It was Steve's first live set. The crowd's reaction impressed Billy Ray Hearn, president of Sparrow Records at the time, so much that he was literally waiting for Steve when he got off the stage. The deal quickly followed with an EP.
The EP, titled I Want To Be A Clone, was recorded in August. An EP format was chosen as a low cost test of the market for Steve's unique music. The project had a budget of only $7000.
In August and September of 1983, Steve was in the studio to record his first full length album, Meltdown. Jonathan David Brown returned as producer and engineer for this album as well. Meltdown was released in March 1984.
In 1984, the song Meltdown (At Madame Tussaud's) was used to make Steve's first concept video. Lisa Whelchel was one of the actors in the video. The video was released as a Sparrow Double Play, Steve Taylor & Sheila Walsh: Meltdown/Mystery.
Lisa did an album in 1984 for Nissi Records. On the record was a song that Steve had recorded for one of his demo tapes called Good Girl. Steve never recorded the song for any of his albums, however, a portion of the demo appeared as part of Shark Sandwich on his boxed set Now The Truth Can Be Told in 1994.
The June 1984 issue of CCM Magazine had Steve Taylor as cover story. Steve was interviewed by roving CCM reporter Steve Taylor. In the interview Steve was asked about his marital status.
CCM: One last question, Steve. Are you single?
ST: Getting a little personal, aren't you?
CCM: The public has a right to know.
ST: Yes, I'm single.
CCM: Any plans on marrying in the future?
ST: I'm waiting for a girl who's warm, loving, and owns a Greyhound tour bus.
A few months after the interview, a month after that issue of CCM came out, Steve played at Cornerstone Music Festival for the first time. Early in his performance, he jumped off the stage and broke his ankle. Steve limped through the rest of the concert. Afterwards, he went to the local hospital and went into surgery the following morning. This accident caused Steve to cancel his trip to Ireland where he planned on devoting a few months to his next project.
On a side note, at Cornerstone 95, Steve was encouraged to jump off the stage again by the audience. Even after pointing at his ankle, they continued so he jumped. His ankle survived.
While back home in L.A. he met Debbie. Nine months later they were married. No exact date seems to be available but as Cornerstone is usually either the last week in June or the first week in July, nine months later puts the earliest date for the wedding at the end of March 1985. This is when recording for On The Fritz was completed. At concerts in May 1985, he mentioned that he was married so it was at the end of March or sometime in April that Steve and Debbie got married.
Debbie Taylor, professionally known as D.L. Taylor, is a successful painter. Her works include cover art to a number of albums such as Steve's The Best We Could Find and I Predict 1990, Sixpence None The Richer's self-titled release on Squint Entertainment and Rob Frazier's Retrospect.
Now, rumour has it that Debbie actually did own a Greyhound tour bus. But we all know the factual reliability of rumours.
August 26, 1985, Steve performed at Greenbelt Festival at Castle Ashby in England. This performance was recorded and released as live EP and video in early 1986 titled Limelight.
In late 1986, work began on a new album. There were countless delays on the album, pushing it's release back. It got to the point where Sparrow Records gave up on it and allowed Steve, through his friend Lynn Nichols (V.P. of A&R in charge of Myrrh), to negotiate a new deal with Myrrh Records to take over the production of the album. The album was finally released in late 1987 with the title I Predict 1990.
I Predict 1990 quickly became the most controversial album in Steve's often misunderstood career. This misunderstanding came mainly as a result of the satirical nature of his songs.
I Blew Up The Clinic Real Good is a prime example of how Steve has been misunderstood. People on both sides of the abortion debate were against bombing abortion clinics. So was (and is) Steve. The unfortunate thing about this whole situation was that they missed "the flashing neon lyric in the middle of the song that says, 'The end don't justify the means anytime.' What better example to use than a clinic bomber." - Steve
The controversy didn't seem to bother Steve until he found himself defending the songs in interviews rather than sharing insight into them and his faith. That combined with the fact that the record didn't succeed to his expectations brought Steve to the decision to move on. This resulted in Steve Taylor retiring from Christian music.
Then came Chagall Guevara. Chagall Guevara was a band comprising of Steve Taylor, Dave Perkins (co-producer of I Predict 1990), Lynn Nichols (VP of Myrrh, label I Predict 1990 released on), Mike Mead and Wade Jaynes. They recorded on MCA Records.
The self-titled Chagall Guevara release got strong reviews. Rolling Stone compared Chagall Guevara to The Clash. In a 1994 interview, Steve said that Rolling Stone's comparison was "one of my life's highlights."
The band did little touring and the album failed to live up to commercial expectations. Also, at this time MCA went through a restructuring and many of the people that Chagall Guevara worked with were no longer with MCA. About recording on MCA, Steve said, "seemed like a good idea at the time, til we found out that it stood for Musician's Cemetery of America." These basically brought the band to an end. They did however record some stuff that hasn't been released. "We were thinking of doing a box set shaped like a coffin but I dunno if we'll do that or not." - Steve
Steve then turned to production, co-producing the Newsboys' Not Ashamed album as well as a number of other albums. He eventually started to consider a return to make a solo record. He had friends who convinced him to record another solo album. Squint was the result being released in the fall of 1993 with 3/5 of Chagall Guevara playing prominent roles and another 1/5 showing up in a single song. With the release of Squint, a number of people became Steve Taylor fans and started looking into his older library.
At this same time, a Steve Taylor tribute album was released on R.E.X. Titled, I Predict A Clone, Steve has said that he prefers most of the cover versions to his own. In fact, he incorporated the arrangement of Dighayzoose's cover of I Want To Be A Clone into the Squinternational Tour in the fall of 1994.
October 22, 1994, as part of the Squinternational Tour, Steve performed in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This performance was recorded and released as live album in the Spring 1995 titled Liver. Some merchandise in support of the album depicted some liver (the meat) with the album title superimposed. This seemed to indicate how the album title was to be pronounced, however, in a letter to the lucky purchaser of the album, Steve says that it is "so much liver than any live record you've ever heard....". How is it pronounced??
Therein lies the beauty of the title, don't you agree? - Steve
In 1996, work began on a new album. At Creation Music Festival in 1996, Steve indicated that 1/3 of the album was completed, 1/3 was written and 1/3 hadn't even been started. He indicated that the fall release date was being pushed back.
This album has still not been released. Work has been interrupted on it while Steve has produced numerous albums for bands such as The Newsboys, Guardian, and Sixpence None The Richer. The latest information is that the release of this album will be shortly after the release of Squint Entertainment's feature length film.
In the April 1996 issue of CCM Magazine, it was announced that Steve Taylor had started his own record label. They also indicated that Steve himself was going to be signed to the label and it would release his next album which was scheduled for late Summer at the time.
In the Creation 96 press conference, Steve down played things. The full negotiations in setting up the label hadn't been completed. In response to any questions about specifics, Steve seemed to have a difficult time answering. He wanted to give as much information as he could but as negotiations were still in progress, he couldn't really say much at all.
It turns out some over zealous person had said something that got misinterpreted and the whole time line was mistakenly pushed way ahead of what it actually was. In the Summer of 1997, Word Records started a new label called Squint Entertainment. Steve Taylor became a VP of Word, specifically VP in charge of Squint Entertainment. Squint's first release was the Taylor produced self-titled album from Sixpence None The Richer.
Currently Steve is working on Squint Entertainment's first feature length theatrical release film. The latest working title for the film is St. Gimp. Steve's much delayed next album is reported to be tied to the film in some way. Perhaps as a soundtrack.
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Current page last modified: 18 July 2001