“I’ve seen the rod of His wrath, and have been beaten with it”: Glenn Schwartz was set to be one of the great guitar heroes of the 70s – but then he was lost to a horrific religious cult
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Glenn Schwartz stands before 80,000 people and he knows what’s coming next. It’s Saturday December 28, 1968, and the first day of the Miami Pop Festival is in full swing. The ads promise three days of “Beautiful Music”, and for the next 72 hours the Gulfstream Park Racetrack in Hallandale, Florida will host the likes of Iron Butterfly, Steppenwolf, Canned Heat and Fleetwood Mac, as well as Glenn’s own band, Pacific Gas & Electric.
The glorious weather makes for the perfect environment for this music, and PG&E’s blistering blues rock chimes with the mood of the festival, Schwartz’s Riviera semi-hollow guitar reflects the sun and flashes like a bolt of lightning, and as he finishes his final solo, the crowd roar their adoration. It happens wherever and whenever they play. The place always goes crazy, screaming and cheering.
Glenn eyes the crowd. It’s as if the whole world, a true sea of humanity, is before him. From his vantage point, he sees what many of them are doing, can smell what many of them are smoking, and knows what he and his fellow bandmates and the other artists at the festival have available to them. The world and all of its pleasures have truly been laid at his feet.”
The glorious weather makes for the perfect environment for this music, and PG&E’s blistering blues rock chimes with the mood of the festival, Schwartz’s Riviera semi-hollow guitar reflects the sun and flashes like a bolt of lightning, and as he finishes his final solo, the crowd roar their adoration. It happens wherever and whenever they play. The place always goes crazy, screaming and cheering.
Glenn eyes the crowd. It’s as if the whole world, a true sea of humanity, is before him. From his vantage point, he sees what many of them are doing, can smell what many of them are smoking, and knows what he and his fellow bandmates and the other artists at the festival have available to them. The world and all of its pleasures have truly been laid at his feet.
“The revolution that took place in me, it happened when I was saved through Jesus Christ,” he shouts into the microphone. “I accepted Jesus through a real need. I want you to know I’ve kicked drugs! No more drugs, man! And I’ll tell you something else. Christ is my saviour now. Yeah, Jesus has saved me. He can save you, too! Turn to Jesus, man – He’s the only way to heaven. Ask Him into your heart!”
Within two years, Glenn Schwartz had vanished from the spotlight, his head scrambled by fame, drugs or perhaps something deeper-rooted, to a religious commune in rural Ohio. He would spend the next decade there as a member of a Christian cult, the Church Of The Risen Christ, spreading the gospel of its leader, the Reverend Larry Hill, as part of the All Saved Freak Band.
I first came across the All Saved Freak Band in 1976, when I saw an advertisement for their first album, My Poor Generation. The album had been released three years earlier, and it was billed to Glenn Schwartz And The All Saved Freak Band. I wondered how Schwartz – a guitar god-in-waiting who had been dubbed “the White Hendrix” – had ended up in this group whose album cover featured a bearded preacher wearing an Amish hat and pointing menacingly into the distance.
I ordered the LP, and it was pretty good. There was some intense blues rock on two songs Glenn wrote, Daughter Of Zion and Great Victory, but the rest of the music and lyrics were so unconventional that I wanted to hear the two other albums mentioned in the enclosed note – Brainwashed and the oddly titled For Christians, Elves And Lovers.
Over subsequent years, I began to hear and read rumours of the dark history of the All Saved Freak Band, the Church Of The Risen Christ, and especially Larry Hill. There were horrific allegations about what went on at their base, a farm on Fortney Road in Windsor, Ohio. They may have preached peace, love and rock’n’roll for Jesus, but for Glenn Schwartz, the All Saved Freak Band turned into a form of hell on earth.
“On the day you hear Reverend Larry Hill has died, remember to wear thick-soled shoes because hell will be stoked up extra hot,” one reporter told me. “He’s a psychopath. Larry Hill is the Devil incarnate.”
Glenn Schwartz was born on March 20, 1940 and raised in Euclid, Ohio. A musical prodigy, he started taking guitar lessons at the age of 11. By 14, he had won an international guitar-playing prize. He married young, at 21, to a woman named Marlene. They had two sons: the first, also called Glenn, was born in 1961; the second, Bob, followed two years later.
“Growing up, he was a great dad,” says Bob Schwartz today. “He was real friendly and kind of goofy. He’d do pratfalls to make everyone laugh. He acted like a big kid himself.”
Glenn spent most of his time picking up gigs with local bands, and he toured to earn money to send home to his wife and sons. But he wasn’t a domestic type, and he and Marlene would eventually divorce, remarry and divorce again (the second, and final split, came in 1972).
Schwartz passed through several local groups, including Frank Samson And The Wailers, The Pilgrims and Mr Stress Blues Band. But his break came in 1966, when Cleveland drummer Jim Fox was searching for a guitarist for his new band,
Content retrieved from: https://www.loudersound.com/bands-artists/glenn-schwartz.
