Rock shocker and the Newsboys

Pho­to cour­tesy of the News­boys
Mar­i­lyn Man­son and the News­boys? On the same stage? Well, not exact­ly. But News­boys’ gui­tarist Paul Col­man quick­ly answered Mar­i­lyn Man­son when asked which main­stream artist he would like to tour with. Not exact­ly who I would have thought.

“I’d like to get inside his head; find out what he’s think­ing,” Col­man said. “It would be an inter­est­ing back­stage, that’s for sure. You know, I like a good fight, being Aus­tralian and all. No real­ly, I would like to see the dif­fer­ent spir­its in the room. It would be dif­fer­ent con­trasts for sure. You know you don’t need a lot of light to shine in a dark room.

“He sounds like a very intel­li­gent guy,” Col­man con­tin­ued, “but a lot of anger. Anger can be good if it leads to some­thing, but by itself it can be self-destruc­tive.”

Self-destruc­tion was a major theme when talk­ing to Paul, who has over­come the same demons many rock stars wres­tle with day in and day out.

“As a musi­cian peo­ple wor­ship you, put you on a pedestal, and it becomes very destruc­tive. We were not made to be wor­shipped. Look at Elvis, Hen­drix, Janis, Hutchins. You can’t oper­ate that way. It’s just bru­tal. You end up in a cri­sis if you keep going…. Recre­ation­al drugs, sex, alco­hol. Music is not sat­is­fy­ing. You are emp­ty.”

It was that empti­ness that led Col­man to God and the Chris­t­ian rock genre.

“I real­ized there was some­thing big­ger, thank­ful­ly,” Col­man said. “God’s hand is over all you are cre­at­ing. It’s very real for me. It makes me real­ize the most impor­tant thing is your char­ac­ter. God and his peo­ple. You may have a gift, a tal­ent, but God is there.”

Col­man began his musi­cal career bang­ing on the drums, turn­ing to bass, and then hit­ting notes on a key­board before set­tling on the gui­tar when he was 15. And it appears the gui­tar was best suit­ed for his young ego.

“I moved to gui­tar because you could move around stage – can’t do that with a piano,” he said chuck­ling. “Bass didn’t fit my ego, but back then at 15, gui­tar suit­ed me just fine.”

But now Colman’s focus is not just on the music. It turns out that peo­ple are his real moti­va­tion.

“I don’t think about the music as much as I think about the peo­ple,” he explained. “I find the peo­ple more inter­est­ing than the music. Music is a great way to get to peo­ple. The best thing for me is I get to chat with peo­ple after a show. That’s what gives me ener­gy. That’s what I love most in the end.”

You won’t find Mar­i­lyn Man­son at the News­boys show Sun­day, March 2 at the Bud­weis­er Events Cen­ter, but you will find what Col­man calls the best show out there. And that res­onates with the band being known for its live shows that have fea­tured drums on a rotat­ing plat­form that tilt down­ward 90 degrees.

“There is noth­ing out there bet­ter than this show, we have all the bells and whis­tles,” Col­man said.