Introduction and Welcome

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 793

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting mormonstories.org all contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you.

Lex de Azevedo [00:00:23] Who are these children coming down,

John Dehlin [00:00:29] coming

Lex de Azevedo [00:00:30] down like gentle rain through darkened skies with glory trailing from their feet as

John Dehlin [00:00:41] they go,

Lex de Azevedo [00:00:43] an endless promise in their eyes.

John Dehlin [00:00:50] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. The date is September 5, 2017, and we are so very excited to be here in Salt Lake City. Are we, Sandy?

Lex de Azevedo [00:01:05] We're actually downtown Midvale.

John Dehlin [00:01:07] Midvale at Azevedo Production Studios.

Lex de Azevedo [00:01:10] Azevedo Studios, yes.

John Dehlin [00:01:12] To interview the Lex de Azevedo. Lex de Azevedo needs no introduction to Mormons who have been around at least a few decades. But Lex has done so many amazing things in his career. His mom was one of the King Sisters.

Lex de Azevedo [00:01:30] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:01:32] Which was a performing group that we'll be talking about. He went on to do work with Sonny and Cher with the Osmonds. Jackson 5, Michael Jackson. He's probably most known in Mormon circles for creating Saturday's Warrior, which started out as a musical, was produced all over the world in steakhouses across the globe. Eventually, he made two different movie versions of Saturday's Warrior.

Lex de Azevedo [00:02:03] I just made the last one.

John Dehlin [00:02:04] Okay. The one before that.

Lex de Azevedo [00:02:06] I've never seen the one before that.

John Dehlin [00:02:07] Never seen it. All right, we'll have to talk about that. I didn't know that. So that'll be interesting. But he's also had a long career composing musical scores for various movies, including where the Red Fern Grows and other important works. And of course, his Azeveda Production Studios has been the home of many very relevant pieces of popular culture, including signing time, which was this, which is this lovely series that teaches sign language to children that my children actually grew up watching. And they're hearing so, so many fascinating things about Lex's life. And we're going to be digging in. This is going to be one of those longer episodes of Mormon Stories. We're live streaming this Hello. To our livestreaming audience on Facebook. One of the reasons we live stream is because we think it's really fun to have interactive live questions and comments. So for those of you who can't join us here in Azevedo Studios, we hope some of you are joining us live on Facebook and we would love to take your comments and questions, please. Just a few show notes. Please do like us on Facebook. That's an important way for us to get Mormon Stories Podcast known. Please give us a positive review on Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook page. Please give us a positive review on itunes. That makes a big difference. And of course, follow us on Instagram and on Twitter. We have lots of cool workshops and retreats coming up to support Mormons who are struggling in various stages of religious or faith transition. We really love to support mixed faith marriages, marriages in general, people's mental health and spirituality as they try and make sense of Mormonism in the modern age. So please check us out@mormonstories.org events. We have events coming up in Seattle, Australia, San Francisco, and of course we've got a cruise to the Caribbean in next fall. And we're looking for locations to do Mormon Stories workshops and retreats in 2018. So if you want to email us@mormonstoriesmail.com we would love to consider your city for an event. And without any further ado, studio audience and those of you on Facebook, would you mind joining me in a round of applause as we welcome to Mormon Stories, Lex Diazevedo.

Lex de Azevedo [00:04:31] Thank you, John.

John Dehlin [00:04:36] All right, so Lex, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Lex de Azevedo [00:04:41] Thank you, John. Thank you very much.

John Dehlin [00:04:43] I wanted to interview you when the, the second Saturday's Warrior movie came out, but I, I wanted to kind of go deep and you were sort of in publicity mode for that movie and I wasn't sure that a long, deep interview of you was maybe the perfect fit for Saturday's Warrior as it was being promoted at the time. But I'm really grateful that I connected with your daughter, Julie. We were able to do a retreat together and in that retreat we were talking about, I still want to interview your dad. And so a big thanks to Julie de Azevedo Hanks for making this possible. She's here joining us in the audience, so we're happy to have her here. So I see you're so self effacing. I don't know if that's the right term, but you're like, who's going to want to listen for more than 30 minutes to an interview with me? I think your life deserves 15 or 20 hours at a minimum. But I'm going to show restraint and mean.

Lex de Azevedo [00:05:44] Like a miniseries.

John Dehlin [00:05:45] Four or five. Yeah, miniseries. But I think you play a really important central role for many people's Mormon lives. And so I just can't tell you how much it means to me to be able to have you today, to be able to discuss what I think is a very important life.

Lex de Azevedo [00:06:03] Thank you, John. That's Very kind.

The de Azevedo Family Background

John Dehlin [00:06:06] Well, let's begin with your story. So before we jump into your mother's background, talk to us about the Diazevedo background. Is it Mormon pioneer stock? Is it not? Tell us about just a tiny bit about your dad and then we'll dig into your mom's story.

Lex de Azevedo [00:06:22] On my dad's side, they're Brazilians. My grandfather was in the consulate. I think he was consul or vice consul from Brazil to New York. My mother. I am a great grandson of Parley P. Pratt and John D. Lee through your mom. On my mom's side, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:39] Was your dad a convert to the church?

Lex de Azevedo [00:06:40] No, no, my dad was not a convert to the church. And he died when I was quite young. I was 10 when he died.

John Dehlin [00:06:49] Oh, wow. Okay.

Lex de Azevedo [00:06:50] And, yeah, so that's my background. I have this dual citizenship type of thing going on.

John Dehlin [00:06:57] Do you remember your dad?

Lex de Azevedo [00:06:58] Oh, yeah, I idolized my dad. I mean, he.

John Dehlin [00:07:01] What was his profession?

Lex de Azevedo [00:07:04] He was in World War II during the early. When I was born, actually. And he came back in California. His family lived in the east, loved California. In those days, California was the place. California was what America was in the 1700, 1800s. I mean, California was the place where you would go to have a new life, a new future. And the sun shined. Sun never shined. I don't know if anybody lives in the East Coast. Sun doesn't shine on the East Coast. You got two good weeks in the fall, two good weeks in the spring. The rest is horrible. But anyway, I mean, it was the sunshine of the west is what my family was talking about. So he went to work for Capitol Records. Capitol Records was just being started after World War II. But his dad was a very strong, very strong figure. Had this vision of Azevedo Sons, Azevedo and Sons in New York, importing and exporting from Brazil to New York. So he pressured my dad to come back East. And so my mom, who had a career at that time in LA with the King Sisters, they had a career that spanned at least 50 years. And they broke them up. They broke up the King Sisters from singing it, broke up the act, you know, and then we moved back to New Jersey.

John Dehlin [00:08:22] So were you raised in California then?

Lex de Azevedo [00:08:24] I was born in Hollywood. I was probably the only Mormon ever born in Hollywood. And I was literally born, probably the first Latter Day Saint born backstage. I mean, my earliest memories are being on stage backstage with my mother. Matter of fact, a funny thing. My mother tells a story which I vaguely remember. The King Sisters were following a comedian, a comic act and the King sisters had these beautiful strapless gowns.

John Dehlin [00:08:51] What type of music were the King sisters?

Lex de Azevedo [00:08:53] They came out of Big band. Big band. And they were very jazz oriented.

John Dehlin [00:08:59] The harmonies.

Lex de Azevedo [00:09:00] Oh, very rich harmonies. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:02] Like the Andrew Sisters.

Lex de Azevedo [00:09:03] Well, Anders sisters sang three part harmonies. They sang four part. Which was more like the Four Freshmen or the High Lows or groups like that, that it's a more sophisticated type of harmony. But one time I was. I think I was four or five, and they had. They were coming on stage and the comedian just before had spilled part of their act, water all over the stage. And my mother's dress got all water all over the bottom of the dress. And as. After they came off and I saw the comedian and I told him he was a pig. He was a pig. He said, clean up after himself. And it's like Eliza would do. My granddaughter, Eliza, you're a pig. And you should clean up after yourself and not leave your water. And mother said, please apologize to Jerry Lewis. He's not a pig. Oh.

John Dehlin [00:09:57] So you were interacting with many people that became great in our home.

Lex de Azevedo [00:10:02] I mean, I look back at my life and I think, really, seriously, I was invited. Walt Disney invited us to Mickey Mouse's. I can't remember which birthday. One of his early birthday parties at Disney Studios. My uncle produced Nat King Cole. We knew Nat King Cole. I went to Natalie Cole's birthday party. I mean, people like Dean Martin, Sinatra, Jerry Lewis were like, in our home. And my mom would have Christmas parties, and she was a Latter Day Saint, but she was a very unusual Latter Day Saint. They were not. Even though they came out of Utah. They were not. If there's such a thing as a Utah tradition for Mormons. That's not what we were. My mother had Hollywood parties, cocktail parties, and when my dad died at age 12, I was the bartender. I can make martinis. I can make every drink you can. You can imagine. And I used to be the bartender at my mother's parties. And they were cultural Latter Day Saints,

The King Sisters and Rise to National Fame

John Dehlin [00:11:09] meaning not doctrinal or theological.

Lex de Azevedo [00:11:11] Well, my mother had never read. Never read the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:11:14] Okay, but what was her name?

Lex de Azevedo [00:11:16] Alice.

John Dehlin [00:11:16] Alice.

Lex de Azevedo [00:11:17] Yeah, but.

John Dehlin [00:11:18] And she was raised in Utah.

Lex de Azevedo [00:11:20] Yes, born in Payson.

John Dehlin [00:11:22] Okay, but they. And so she wasn't raised sort of in an orthodox Mormon home.

Lex de Azevedo [00:11:28] Well, my grand. My grandad was a very interesting person. He was an artist, a painter. He was a poet. He wrote one of the first cantatas on the Book of Mormon. He was a philosopher. He could do everything but make a living. And so they Spent their early days traveling around Utah towns. And he had his kids. He had eight kids, and he taught him how to play instruments. And it was William King Driggs, the Driggs family entertainers. And so they would. During the Depression, they go to these little towns in Utah. And mother says that the admission they perform at churches was a pin. A pin was valuable back during the Depression.

John Dehlin [00:12:07] What type of pin?

Lex de Azevedo [00:12:08] A pin.

John Dehlin [00:12:09] Just a little pin.

Lex de Azevedo [00:12:09] A pin Oc.

John Dehlin [00:12:11] Tanner pinned?

Lex de Azevedo [00:12:12] No, no, a pin. A straight pin. A safety pin.

John Dehlin [00:12:14] A safety pin. Got it, got it.

Lex de Azevedo [00:12:16] And that would be the price of admission. And they were very poor, but they didn't know it. They had music, they had love. And my granddad was just a very different type. He'd say, okay, sun is shining. Nobody's going to school today. We're going to climb Timpanogos. My grandma would sit at the bottom. You're going to kill my children. You're going to kill my children.

John Dehlin [00:12:38] What were their names?

Lex de Azevedo [00:12:38] It was William King Driggs. Driggs was the last name. One summer, my mother tells a story. She says, oh, you remember? She was talking to my aunt, her older sister. She says, remember the summer we camped all summer. Wasn't that wonderful? And my aunt says, alice, we were homeless. We were homeless. We had nothing. Anyway, they came out, they had a tradition. But it was. If you ever said anything against the Mormon Church, you were in big trouble. But there was not a doctrinal understanding of the church. And like, my mom drank socially, my granddad you know, drink coffee and grandma drink coffee.

John Dehlin [00:13:20] How did the King Singers get started then?

Lex de Azevedo [00:13:23] The King Sisters. Sisters, yeah. The King Singers are actually. They got started as little kids as the Driggs family entertainers, traveling through little towns in Utah, performing to support the family. My grandpa also taught music. Probably the most money he ever made was as a music teacher. He would teach vocal and piano, and he taught me piano, too, when I was little.

John Dehlin [00:13:46] Okay, so.

Lex de Azevedo [00:13:47] But our home. Our home was a cultural. In a way, it was interesting. We were cultural Mormons. We had. Growing up, I thought that prayer was kind of a cultural tradition. I wasn't sure if it worked or how it worked, but it was a really nice thing. And we prayed at our meetings, and we lived a family centered. I've since come to think that there's family centered church life, there's church centered church life, and there's a Christ centered life. And we lived, I think, looking back now, a kind of a family centered life. The family was everything. Everything. And we were always Together every holiday. We were always together and we had the best time.

John Dehlin [00:14:32] How did your. So how did the King Sisters sort of rise from playing around Utah to sort of national prominence? How did that happen?

Lex de Azevedo [00:14:42] Well, it's a process. I don't think it just happened, you know, with like a hit record like the YouTube channel, but they just got bigger and bigger during the big band era. My uncle, my Aunt Louise married Alvino Ray, who was a well known band leader during, during World War II. And he, they. I think my. I'm trying to think if mom played with the Dorsey Brothers. I can't remember who they sang with, but they started. Oh, they got their first break at ksl, actually. KSL and Salt Lake. And from there somebody heard them and they got hired to sing here. Next thing they were touring all over the United States, largely, you know, prior to and during World War II. And after World War II, they broke up because my family moved back to New Jersey.

John Dehlin [00:15:29] What would their biggest hit be, their most notable hit?

Lex de Azevedo [00:15:32] Well, well, During World War II, they had a nighty night and it was a song called Nighty Night. And they used to play it to the soldiers.

John Dehlin [00:15:40] How does it go?

Lex de Azevedo [00:15:41] Nighty night until tomorrow Nighty night Da da. I can't remember the rest of the words, but my Aunt Vonnie would sing it and she was beautiful and the GIs would have her picture and she would sing in the radio. And that was one of their biggest big hits. They had some others, but I can't.

John Dehlin [00:16:01] But they're a pretty big band.

Lex de Azevedo [00:16:03] Yeah, they had some hits back in the early record days. At the beginning, the Bluebird Records was one that they were on and I don't remember.

How His Parents Met and Married

John Dehlin [00:16:16] So how did your mom meet your dad?

Lex de Azevedo [00:16:19] They were playing at the Rustic Cabin as a club in I think in New Jersey, off on the other side of the George Washington Bridge. And he walked in and I think he had a GI uniform on. And she says, he just swept me off my feet.

John Dehlin [00:16:39] She said, and he was lds? No, he was not lds?

Lex de Azevedo [00:16:43] No. And I've often asked. Here's an interesting thing.

John Dehlin [00:16:46] He never joined the church?

Lex de Azevedo [00:16:47] No, he died when I was 10.

John Dehlin [00:16:49] Okay, so your Brazilian family was never LDS?

Lex de Azevedo [00:16:53] No.

John Dehlin [00:16:53] Okay. I didn't register that for some reason. I asked if he was a convert. When you said no, I thought that meant that he was like a pioneer stock. But he was never Mormon?

Lex de Azevedo [00:17:02] No.

John Dehlin [00:17:02] Okay. Okay.

Lex de Azevedo [00:17:04] And so, and I always asked my mom, I said, how come there were six sisters in the King family? How come only one of them married in the church? Why did the other five marry out the church? And she says, well, it wasn't easy in those days. She says, where somebody like us, where would we find a husband? You know, they were what I mean, show business type people, you know. And she just didn't relate to the. At that time, the. Probably the church might have been wrong to say more agrarian or more. Not necessarily agrarian. You know what I mean? There just weren't many Mormons in Hollywood and in that type of world, as a matter of fact, it was considered by Manning in the church to be Sodom and Gomorrah. And even by the time I got Hollywood was Hollywood. Even by the time I was old enough to go to byu, I went to BYU and I to study music and I said, I want to score films, I want to do records. And it was like, well, why would you do that? The only respect. And this goes, this is like 1961 or two says the only respectable use of music would be to teach. You certainly wouldn't want to score motion pictures. That was the mentality at BYU back then. So I said, I'm out of here.

John Dehlin [00:18:24] So your mom was big time. And so she and her sisters just would not have found a Mormon who kind of was on their cultural socioeconomic level that they could relate to. Is that kind of what you're saying?

Lex de Azevedo [00:18:36] That's what apparently happened. But interestingly enough, even though they lived their own brand of Mormonism and they social drank, their friends were not lds. They would have friends in their ward, but their friends were vast and they were.

John Dehlin [00:18:52] They would have literally been friends with some of the stars that we.

Lex de Azevedo [00:18:55] Oh, absolutely. I mean, the parties at our house, I look back and I think really those people were the regulars in my family's life.

John Dehlin [00:19:03] Again, you're saying Sinatra, people like Martin, people like that?

Lex de Azevedo [00:19:07] Yes, and a lot of lesser known but mainstream Hollywood people, record producers, producers, directors, songwriters, people like that were their friends. And they had so much love that although they all married outside of the church, they all brought their husbands into the church.

John Dehlin [00:19:32] Did the sisters all move to Hollywood then?

Lex de Azevedo [00:19:34] Well, we all moved to California. Yeah, that was their home.

John Dehlin [00:19:37] Okay, so your mom met your dad. He is a gi and they got married. Not in the temple?

Lex de Azevedo [00:19:43] No, he wasn't lds, Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:19:45] Okay, and how many siblings do you have?

Lex de Azevedo [00:19:48] I have one from my mom and dad after my dad died.

John Dehlin [00:19:53] Were you the oldest?

Lex de Azevedo [00:19:54] I'm the oldest.

John Dehlin [00:19:55] Okay.

Lex de Azevedo [00:19:55] My, my mom remarried.

John Dehlin [00:19:57] So you were born in Hollywood, you say?

Lex de Azevedo [00:20:00] Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital.

John Dehlin [00:20:01] And they would have had some big fancy house in Hollywood.

Lex de Azevedo [00:20:04] At the time? No, at the time, the family had a farm in what is now Van Nuys, which is funny. A farm in Van Nuys, if anybody knows the San Fernando Valley, that's, like, impossible. But Van Nuys is in. The San Fernando Valley was different then. It was orchards and it was grasses and wildflowers and walnut trees, and it was a beautiful, beautiful place. So the sisters, here's an interesting thing. I've often tried to figure this out. Their goal in life, the thing that drove the King sisters was to support their parents. They could not wait to make enough money to buy their parents a home.

John Dehlin [00:20:44] Their artist dad, who never was able to.

Lex de Azevedo [00:20:46] It was like he was above working.

John Dehlin [00:20:48] Was he still in Payson or did he move out?

Lex de Azevedo [00:20:50] No, he. They. They bought this place for them in

John Dehlin [00:20:53] California and they all moved out.

Lex de Azevedo [00:20:54] Yeah, and that was the family home. That's where we all. I mean, even some of the married, you know, people lived there until they got their own homes. But.

John Dehlin [00:21:02] So it was almost like this compound. Compound, I was going to say.

Lex de Azevedo [00:21:05] Yeah. And it was amazing. I had so much love growing up because I had.

John Dehlin [00:21:10] So your aunts all lived nearby. You were playing with your cousins growing

Lex de Azevedo [00:21:13] up all the time.

John Dehlin [00:21:13] And this is in what area today?

Lex de Azevedo [00:21:15] It's now San Fernando Valley.

John Dehlin [00:21:17] Okay, and that's where you were raised?

Lex de Azevedo [00:21:20] Yes, except for when we moved to New Jersey.

John Dehlin [00:21:22] Okay. Okay. So what role is the church in your life? From 0 to 10 years old, are you attending your. Every week?

Lex de Azevedo [00:21:32] Here's the.

John Dehlin [00:21:34] Are you on the irony?

Lex de Azevedo [00:21:35] Well, here's the irony of the whole thing. I say my mother. I ended up being my mother's bishop later on. And it was a very interesting.

John Dehlin [00:21:42] We'll have to talk about it.

Lex de Azevedo [00:21:43] Situation to me, because I knew all of the. Everything, you know, and so what did you ask?

John Dehlin [00:21:53] Was there a ward that you all attended in the San Francisco Valley at the time?

Lex de Azevedo [00:21:57] I remember.

John Dehlin [00:21:57] Were you active in the church as a kid?

Lex de Azevedo [00:21:59] We were active, but they traveled. You see, they sang Las Vegas, Reno, Tahoe, New York, Chicago. They were traveling all the time.

John Dehlin [00:22:07] Your dad, during that. 0 to 10 age? 0 to 12.

Lex de Azevedo [00:22:11] Well, zero. We moved to New Jersey when I was five.

John Dehlin [00:22:15] Okay.

Lex de Azevedo [00:22:15] So 0 to 5, I attended church. The Sherman Oaks Ward, actually, is where we attended when we were in town. So we were active in the church, but when we moved to New Jersey, there was no church and the closest church was in New York.

John Dehlin [00:22:36] Why did you move to New Jersey?

Lex de Azevedo [00:22:37] Well, earlier I mentioned that my granddad wanted my dad to come back and want to get out of the. The record business, that was a new thing, and that wasn't going to go anywhere. So do something legitimate and get into business in New York. So they had an office in Manhattan and my dad worked with his dad in Azevedo and Sons, Import, export with Brazil. They imported and exported coffee, bananas and things like that.

John Dehlin [00:23:04] What about your mom's career? Moving to New Jersey.

Lex de Azevedo [00:23:06] Interesting. It was over. Interesting cultural thing.

John Dehlin [00:23:12] So she ended her career to follow your dad to New Jersey?

Lex de Azevedo [00:23:15] Yep. Whoa. Well, that was the world. That's the way the world was. And this wasn't a Mormon phenomenon. This was because my dad wasn't lds. But in her part, I mean, my mom, of course, it's very hard to. When somebody dies young, when your spouse dies young, you can never compete with that memory of the newness, the marriage. And if they'd lived 50 years together, they'd probably, oh, when's he going to die? But early on, when the love of your life dies, it leaves you in a state of. No one can ever compete with that love.

Father's Struggles and Early Family Hardships

John Dehlin [00:23:54] Your mom felt that way?

Lex de Azevedo [00:23:55] Yeah. And my stepdad could never compete with love.

John Dehlin [00:23:56] But was she resentful and angry during those five 12 years, having left her career empty, depressed, like.

Lex de Azevedo [00:24:08] She hated it back there. She hated it back there. She hated the weather, for one thing. And the people, the people in the east were different than the people in the West. In California at that time, they were open, they were doing new things. They were exciting people. And she complained about the weather. The weather's just so depressing. And all the people do right back here is drink. That's all they do, drink. And they did all the parties. The neighbors get together and they just drank.

John Dehlin [00:24:33] But she had this spectacular career, and all of a sudden it ends and she's in New Jersey. That's a recipe for drug addiction. I mean, I.

Lex de Azevedo [00:24:40] Well, isn't it?

John Dehlin [00:24:42] Nevertheless, alcoholism, like I. It would be devastating.

Lex de Azevedo [00:24:46] You would think so, but my dad died within four and a half years or five years after we moved there. So in hindsight, is it an illness or accident? My dad came home, I used to run out. He'd take the train to Manhattan. We lived in New Jersey, and he bought five acres there because he loved the country and he didn't really like the city. And I loved living on this land. We had the five acres and the owl and the barn. I remember all these wonderful things. But I would go out to the front of the. To meet him when he'd come home from the train, and I would carry his briefcase in I idolized my dad. And one day he came home, we were walking, it's a long walk up to the doorstep of this Victorian home. And he stumbled and he bent over and said, dad, what's the matter? And he says, get mom, get Mom. And he curled over and he was having a heart attack. Mom came down, it was a three story house and stairs going up to the front porch. And she came down, she said, what's the matter? And she said, sid, Sid, what's the matter? And he was gone. Right. And so she said, help me get him upstairs into bed. And I got him upstairs into bed and he died. He was gone before the doctors could get there.

John Dehlin [00:26:03] His name was Sid.

Lex de Azevedo [00:26:04] Sid.

John Dehlin [00:26:05] Sidney.

Lex de Azevedo [00:26:05] Sid. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:06] Sidney de Azevedo.

Lex de Azevedo [00:26:07] Right.

John Dehlin [00:26:07] Okay. And Alice. Yeah, Sid and Alice.

Lex de Azevedo [00:26:09] Yeah. I mean, I will never, I'll never forget that night.

John Dehlin [00:26:12] How old was he?

Lex de Azevedo [00:26:14] 35 or 30.

John Dehlin [00:26:16] That's an incredibly young age to die of a heart attack.

Lex de Azevedo [00:26:19] Well, the casualty of moving back east, interestingly enough, was my father, not my mother. My dad was so unhappy. He didn't like working with his father. He felt his father was very autocratic, very domineering. He didn't like the world of business. He wanted to be in California. And he did this. And there were some tragic things that happened within his family. Later on the coroner's report said he'd had a heart attack before.

John Dehlin [00:26:52] And you think it was stress related?

Lex de Azevedo [00:26:54] Well, my mother says yes. There was another thing that came out which was interesting. I have asked my. Years later, when my mother remarried, it was impossible for my stepfather to ever, ever fill the shoes of a dead man, you know, who had been the love of her life. And so I asked my. And she would tell me, even after she remarried, she'd say, I want you to know I will never love anyone like your father. And she'd cry, your father is the love of my life, Bob. Husband says, I love him, but no one will ever take your father. And I used to ask my aunts and I said what? My mother. My mother lived for illusions. She, I mean, she should say, oh, World War II. It was so romantic. I didn't know when he was coming home and we'd meet for a minute. I said, mother, World War II people were dying. No, it was so romantic. That was the world that she lived in. You know, it was a bigger than life, non real world. And eventually the thing that caused her the most pain in life is that she lived what I thought were kind of her illusions. The stage, the applause and beauty and, and fun and she was this amazing, glamorous, gorgeous woman and adored people. People loved her. But no one has ever accused my mom of being deep. She was a very interesting woman, but people loved her. Everyone loved her. But where I was going one time my aunt took me aside and says, lex, there's something you ought to know. And I said, what's that? Because I idolized my dad, too, and I wouldn't give my stepdad time of day. He says, your dad was an alcoholic and was on his way to becoming an alcoholic. I mean, at what point you become an alcoholic? I don't know. And then I started remembering the experiences in my childhood. And one time I got beat up, bullied at school, got beat up. And I really needed my dad. I needed somebody to comfort me. And I didn't realize that he was drunk and he couldn't be there for me. And he kept asking, saying these bizarre things. So anyway, that's probably more information than anybody really needs to know. And I haven't even. Very few people even know that. But when he died, I've often thought was that if there's such thing as blessings or cursings, how would my life have been had he not died? Because we were out of New Jersey within a week of his going to

John Dehlin [00:29:44] say, did you say we were out

Lex de Azevedo [00:29:45] of there so fast? My mother says, okay, we're out of here. We packed up, we got on the train. She didn't sell a house. She didn't sell anything. We are going to California. And all I knew is that we were going to California. And California was the land of milk and honey. Because every summer we spent in California,

John Dehlin [00:29:59] when school was out and you were 12 or 10, I guess I'm 10. You were 10 at this time. You didn't attend church at all those five years because there wasn't a.

Lex de Azevedo [00:30:07] We did. This was interesting. My mother would drive all the way into Manhattan from where we were in New Jersey, and it was about. I think it was about over an hour. And then she was concerned enough for me that she started the first primary in New Jersey in our home. So the people that lived in that northern New Jersey area had primary in our home. I was actually baptized in the Manhattan ward in New York, which used to be a Jewish synagogue. And I was talking to some people. Years later, I went back before they sold the church, sold it, moved into Lincoln Center. I was talking to some people. I said, I was baptized in Manhattan, or they said, no, you weren't. I said, there's no baptismal font. They said, oh, yes, there is. It's up on the stand. I said, no, it isn't. I said, well, we found it.

John Dehlin [00:30:58] Wow.

Lex de Azevedo [00:30:59] So she did she. I'm saying she was a Mormon. It's just that she didn't know the doctrine of the Church.

John Dehlin [00:31:08] Okay, but you wouldn't have had a traditional LDS upbringing then, attending a ward, a sacrament meeting every Sunday.

Lex de Azevedo [00:31:16] Well, I didn't. I didn't know. I never did have a traditional LDS upbringing, because when we moved back to California, now, if my dad had not died, there would be no King Sisters. After that, there would have been no King family. And I've wondered if I would be in the world of music.

John Dehlin [00:31:31] Okay. Did the King Sisters come after your dad died?

Lex de Azevedo [00:31:33] No, they started before. They started before, put it on hold. Dad died, moved back, and now they had to go. You know what? It wasn't just moving to New York. It's that their husbands came home from the war. All of their husbands, you know, came from. Jim Conklin, came from the Navy. My dad came from the army and things like that. They came home and they kind of wanted to be a family. And the husbands. In those days, the husbands careers predominated, so. But when my dad died, it forced them to get together because. To support my mother and our family. And so that was what catapulted the biggest part of their career.

Childhood Bullying and Finding Faith

John Dehlin [00:32:17] It came after your dad died.

Lex de Azevedo [00:32:18] After my dad died.

John Dehlin [00:32:19] Okay, okay. All right. And you had one other sibling.

Lex de Azevedo [00:32:23] My younger brother Rick is four and a half years younger than I am.

John Dehlin [00:32:26] Okay. So when you go back to LA, Southern California, what happens in your life as you're 10, 12, 15? Your mom's career starts skyrocketing. What are you doing?

Lex de Azevedo [00:32:38] I'm 10, and I'm very sad. I'm very sad. I am bullied at school for what? Being small? Being the newcomer. Coming from New Jersey, I was bullied when we went to. In those days, bullying was a much bigger thing. I was bullied when we moved to New Jersey. I remember kids beating kids beating you up. Well, one time my mom. A neighbor called. My mom says, look out your front window. And our house was up on a hill and it was a lot of snow, and there were, like five kids packing hard snowballs and throwing them at me. And I'm packing up the hill by myself. And my mother was about ready to lose it, you know, outside and protected. At that point, I got so angry. I got so angry. I took his hard snowball and I ran to this biggest guy and I just slammed it in his Face and his nose was bleeding and went up crying. And all the kids left. But bullying was, looking back, was a part of my life, not just mine, but the new kids got bullied very frequently.

John Dehlin [00:33:46] You didn't get special treatment because your mom was famous.

Lex de Azevedo [00:33:48] They didn't know that. Kids didn't know that in New Jersey. But going back to la, I was sad. My mother went on the road and I was alone. She had to.

John Dehlin [00:33:58] Did you have a nanny or.

Lex de Azevedo [00:33:59] Interestingly enough, I stayed with my aunt who didn't sing. Aunt of one of my mother's brothers who was not singing. And I was just. I was lonely and melancholy. I just remember being very, very melancholy.

John Dehlin [00:34:17] Because you'd lost your dad and now your mom's gone all the time.

Lex de Azevedo [00:34:19] Yeah. And then when my mom remarried, I'm trying to think how old I was. I think I might have been 13, three or four years later, 13 or 14 when she remarried my dad. So they had a maid that had actually been my stepdad's maid. She was older, a wonderful, wonderful. It was like Aunt Jemima days all over. This wonderful big black nanny. She was 6 foot 2 and weighed about 240 pounds and she ran her house. My stepdad was an actor and he was gone a lot too. So my younger brother and I were left to our own devices. No one cared if I went to church, no one cared if I went to school. No one ever looked at a report card. No one ever came to my baseball games. I played a piano solo at graduation, junior high. Nobody showed up. I mean, I look at how I treated my kids and how people today, how people are involved in their kids life. I was alone to my own devices and continued pretty much up to my mission. And so the question you asked is, why would you go on a mission?

John Dehlin [00:35:31] Well, what role did. Okay, what role did God play in your life during this time?

Lex de Azevedo [00:35:35] At that time, 13, 12, 14. I was born, John. The only thing I can say is I was born with a believing heart. I remember, and I don't remember what age, but it was in New Jersey once. Looking at a picture of the general authorities in the tabernacle. And I remember my mother was not a Nazi Mormon, far from it. And I remember looking at it and I remember being overcome by the spirit in such a way that I looked and I thought it was like something testified to me that this was good, this was really good and these were great men and there was truth in this. Now, I never really analyzed that after, but that will always stand out in my memory later. On. I was raised in a pretty fast crowd, given the late 50s and early 60s, which is not like a fast crowd today, but a very wealthy crowd. We had money in my group. We had a ski boat, we had a yacht that we take to Catalina. We had a house at Newport Beach. We all had surfboards, and we all had girlfriends with straight, long, platinum blonde hair, because that's how surfers. That's what it was in those days. And I'd go to school in my car and I'd surfboard and we'd all go to Malibu. I mean, I had the happy days childhood that everybody might look back and say, oh, wow, could I have been there? But I had no supervision. And so my youth was being unsupervised. I got involved in things. I looked back and I realized, you know, they weren't right. But I always knew they weren't right, and I never felt good about it. In other words, I always felt a tinge of, this isn't who you are.

John Dehlin [00:37:32] So you. Were you attending church weekly by that point?

Lex de Azevedo [00:37:35] Well, I was, interestingly enough, on my own. There was a neighbor that would pick me up when I was like a deacon and would take me to church and I would go. And there were a few people instrumental in my life that I remember when I was ordained a priest and no one was there. I mean, my stepdad was not a member of the church either, but there was a man came up to me and he sensed that I was alone. And I felt less than other kids in the church because they had families. I mean, when you talk about people, I empathize with single families in the church. I empathize with people because I was alone and aware that I was alone and no one to back me up. But he came up to me, put his arm around me, and this will always stand out, and this is a lesson for everybody. He took this lonely kid that had just been ordained to be a priest, put his arm around and took me and told me what that meant to be a priest, and took some time and walked with me around the church. And I always remember that I keep

John Dehlin [00:38:50] asking you about church activity because you became such a central part of so many of our Mormon experiences. I'm just trying to get a sense for what Mormonism meant to you in your childhood. And young, who was so. The. Your teen years would have been in what sort of in the 60s?

Lex de Azevedo [00:39:06] In the late late 50s, early 60s, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:08] So your prophet would have been David O'.

Lex de Azevedo [00:39:10] McKay. David O. McKay. Remember?

John Dehlin [00:39:12] Do you remember him?

Lex de Azevedo [00:39:12] Yeah, I Do.

John Dehlin [00:39:15] Would you have been raised more doctrinally? Would you have been involved in Mormon doctrine, studying those things, listening to the General Conference and the words of the prophets?

Lex de Azevedo [00:39:25] Probably not.

John Dehlin [00:39:25] Memorizing the articles of faith?

Lex de Azevedo [00:39:27] Probably not.

John Dehlin [00:39:28] Reading the Book of Mormon and all that?

Lex de Azevedo [00:39:29] Probably, probably not. It wasn't in my nature. My nature was more like my family. I mean, my nature. If I had continued, if I didn't have the church in my life, I told my daughter the other day, I said, I am a walking miracle. I am a testimony of the power of the Mormon Church, of what it can do in people's lives. I am not. I would not be who I am today if it were not for the church. Not having lived in California, being born in the United States, I mean, the greatest blessings of my life, being born American in California and being a Latter Day Saint. I'm a walking miracle. Because you know who my basic nature is? I would be sampling the finest wines in the world. I would probably have. If I had the money, I would have a beautiful Tuscan home, you know, with orchards and things like that.

John Dehlin [00:40:22] You're not making that sound bad, actually. You're actually.

Lex de Azevedo [00:40:24] No, no, I'm saying my basic nature is I will stop and look at a beautiful home architecture. I'll stop and look at flowers.

John Dehlin [00:40:36] That's good. That's all good.

Lex de Azevedo [00:40:37] Pull a car over, stop the car and look at the flowers and say, what kind of roses are those? When we had our home in the avenues up here, we had an old Victorian home. Avenues. It was just dripping with roses. I planted everything. And I planted organic vegetables, dug up the front yard. And I was raised by. Okay, here's the other thing. I was raised by women. I was raised by women. And so there is that part. I don't know if you want to call it the feminine part or not. I'm not sure what that means. But all I know is I am a lot like the women that raised me. And the harder, if you want to call the masculine side that harder, less feeling side. No, I was raised. The irony is that my dad died. I shut down emotionally. Now I can see that. I didn't know that at the time.

Teenage Years, Church, and Early Music Influences

John Dehlin [00:41:29] So you say that you owe a lot to California, the church.

Lex de Azevedo [00:41:35] And we had a great ward and we had the most amazing kids. We had so many kids in the ward. They had a jukebox, they were going to divide the mutual. Remember, this is the baby boomers coming up now, right? And so we would have dances after church. There were a hundred kids.

John Dehlin [00:41:50] You would go to church dances.

Lex de Azevedo [00:41:52] Oh, yeah, because that's where the action was.

John Dehlin [00:41:54] I mean, what type of music did they play?

Lex de Azevedo [00:41:56] Oh, the music of the rock and roll of the time, you know, But Elvis and. Yeah, all that stuff. But it was interesting. There are so many kids that it dominated. What people don't understand is the role of the baby boomers in the history of American history. There was a book called Megatrends. Megatrends. He talks about the history of the recent history of the United States. Is like a python swallowing a pig. The pig being the baby boomers. When the pig goes to the python, you can see it, this big lump. The baby boomers made Jane Fonda's workout video the number one video when they turned 40. When we were teenagers. When we were teenagers, we made rock music completely dominated. And within a few years, you couldn't find adult music in a record store because everything, our whole lives has been marketed to us.

John Dehlin [00:42:52] Do you remember your favorite musicians and bands in your teen years?

Lex de Azevedo [00:42:57] Well, I was. I love jazz, so I used to put down pop music. I love jazz. I can tell you.

John Dehlin [00:43:03] You put down pop music.

Lex de Azevedo [00:43:04] I used to put it down.

John Dehlin [00:43:05] You didn't listen to it.

Lex de Azevedo [00:43:05] Well, I did listen to it because kids danced to it. We had it at our parties. But my passion was with jazz, and I got that from my mom. You know, most people would say, guess what? Lexie has learned the arts of faith. No, Lexi can play harmony. Listen to these chords he can play. That was important to my mom. Not that I got grades in school, but that I could fake harmony. I remember at age 5, when she was so excited when she discovered that I could sing harmony. Carry my own harmony part. That was the life I lived.

John Dehlin [00:43:39] Are you a singer?

Lex de Azevedo [00:43:40] No. No. But you were asking about the church. I was carried through the youth program. I was carried through it. And I had so many friends and so many cute girls, and that's what mattered back, you know, when you're 15 and 16 and back in the happy days. And that's where I wanted to be. And so I went, although I was kicked out of seminary and asked not to come back.

John Dehlin [00:44:05] For what?

Lex de Azevedo [00:44:06] Just being stupid. Drawing attention to myself and doing crazy things like climbing out the window and jumping up and down on the roof and.

John Dehlin [00:44:17] And for you, disruptive. And for you. Was Mormonism like the one true church back then? Like, was it?

Lex de Azevedo [00:44:24] Well, I hadn't given it a. I mean, you know, when you're a teenager. I didn't bear my testimony. You should say. Interesting. You should say the one true church it was just a month ago I got up in Sunday school and somebody talking about the only true church. And I said, if I could strike any words, any words from our culture, it would be those words. I can't see how they're helpful to anybody, number one. Number two, I don't know what they mean. But anyway, that's another story.

John Dehlin [00:44:53] We'll get there.

Lex de Azevedo [00:44:54] Yeah. I was not. I hadn't given it the thought. All I knew, it was a great place. The LDS kids dominated our high school. We had the student body president. We had the. We just dominated. And I thought that that was proof that the church. If there's proof the church is true, it's that we're such amazing people.

John Dehlin [00:45:15] And what was the high school?

Lex de Azevedo [00:45:16] North Hollywood High School.

John Dehlin [00:45:17] You went to North Hollywood High?

Lex de Azevedo [00:45:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:19] Okay. All right. So you ended up serving a mission.

Lex de Azevedo [00:45:24] Yeah. So my career started in high school.

John Dehlin [00:45:30] Keep going.

Lex de Azevedo [00:45:30] Okay. My mother is recording for Capitol. My uncle had been president of Capitol Records and moved back to New York.

John Dehlin [00:45:38] Who were some of the biggest names on Capitol Records? Wasn't Frank Sinatra on Capitol?

Lex de Azevedo [00:45:41] Yeah, everybody. Nat King Cole, Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis. They had a huge country back in the Western label. Beatles came out through Capitol Records. Beach Boys were on Capitol Records. Glenn Campbell was on Capitol Records. You go on and on and on. They were huge. Because I went to work for Capitol at one point, but so one day I always played piano, and that was kind of my thing when kids were out at lunch and at the break and things like that, socializing. I would often find myself up in the music room in junior high and high school practicing the piano. It was kind of a safe place for me to go. But I became pretty good. And so one day I come home from school. I think I was in the 10th or 11th grade now. You gotta understand, my family was totally connected. I had an uncle who was the vice president of Universal Studios. My other uncle started Narus. You know what Narras is the Grammys. He started that. The Grammy Awards.

John Dehlin [00:46:43] Now, this isn't the Diazvedo line.

Lex de Azevedo [00:46:45] This would have been. This is in the King family line. They're mothers, husbands of the King family. That line.

John Dehlin [00:46:51] It kind of became this dynasty.

Lex de Azevedo [00:46:53] We were really well connected.

John Dehlin [00:46:54] Okay.

Lex de Azevedo [00:46:55] And that's why I say.

John Dehlin [00:46:56] I mean, none of these husbands were lds.

Lex de Azevedo [00:46:58] No, not at the time.

John Dehlin [00:46:59] Okay. Okay.

Lex de Azevedo [00:46:59] They all eventually came in through familial love. It was love that brought them in. It wasn't preaching, because they didn't know what to preach.

John Dehlin [00:47:08] Okay.

Lex de Azevedo [00:47:10] So they. Okay. So one day I Come home from high school, I can't remember. I could drive. I knew I could drive. So I must have been 11th grade. Mom says, I just got a call from Lee Gillette at Capitol Records, one of the famous producers. He wants you to play piano on a recording session. Me? Yeah. Get down there. He needs you right now. So I jump in the car, I run out the front door, I say, mom, who's this recording session? Who's it for? She says, oh, I forgot to ask. So anyway, I go down to Capitol, around Tower, Hollywood and Vine. And I go in there, and it turns out to be Stan Kenton, who was a really. What? People today don't know who Stan Kenton is, but Stan Kenton was like Glenn Miller back then in the early 60s. And I'm looking at all these great musicians because I knew their names. Public did not know the names of these musicians in those days. They were great musicians who went from one recording studio to another. The same guys that played for Sinatra, played for Nat King Cole. They played for Blah, blah, blah. And they made a living going from studio to studio. They were brilliant. You put the music in front of them, they'd look at it, they'd push the record button. They'd run through it once. They play it perfectly next. You know, I mean, and I knew their names. I idolized these people, like you might an NBA star today. And I'm looking around, here I am sitting at the piano, I'm looking at all these greats. And there's Stan Kenton conducting. He's a pianist. I played because he decided to conduct. So. And Lee Gillette loved me, loved my family. And he wanted to give me a chance. These people, by the way, when I went on my mission, all came to my farewell. They gave money for my mission. They wrote me through my mission. None of these people were Latter Day Saints, but it was a community that loved each other. And they loved my family, the King family.

Deciding to Serve a Mission

John Dehlin [00:49:01] What made you want to go on a mission?

Lex de Azevedo [00:49:03] Okay, so I'll tell you why I didn't want to go on a mission first.

John Dehlin [00:49:09] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lex de Azevedo [00:49:11] So in high school, I get hired as music director for the Four Preps. Now the Four Preps, once again, people don't know who they are, but we had two hit records in one year. 26 miles across the sea Santa Catalina is awaiting for me and another one, I mean, they were a big, big group. They had their own private plane. Lex, we want you to be our music director. Why? I was connected. They heard about me and knew, you know, from Capitol Records and Lee Gillette and things like that. And Glenn Larsen, who was the leader of the Four Preps, was a Mormon. Glenn Larsen went on to be one of the biggest producers at Universal Studios. Produced Battlestar Galactica and tons of series. Look up Google Glen Larsen and you'll see he's one of the biggest television producers of the 60s and 70s. He was the leader of the four preps. So I went on tour with them and I'm still. I'm just out of high school, I think, and they have their private plane, we're flying around and I am making really good money. And I've got a. I'm playing in Disneyland during a couple days during the week and just playing jazz or popular music in a band. Just a band in Tomorrowland at Disneyland. And so I've got a sports car, I got like an Austin Healey. And I have a great.

John Dehlin [00:50:26] Before your mission.

Lex de Azevedo [00:50:27] Yeah. But I have a great life, the kind of life people would kill to have. And so when I had downtime, my friends would take their parents yachts to Catalina or things like this. So I had enrolled at usc. I went to byu. I said, that's not for me, I'm not going to byu.

John Dehlin [00:50:47] What was wrong with byu?

Lex de Azevedo [00:50:49] Well, I wanted to do music for a living. I wanted to be an arranger, conductor for recording sessions and motion pictures. BYU was equipped to teach people how to teach. That was it. That was the only respectable use of a musical ability. So I lasted one semester. There's nothing wrong with byu. It's just that it wasn't for me

John Dehlin [00:51:11] for what I wanted. It was the place to become a performer.

Lex de Azevedo [00:51:14] So I started to go to usc and I had been practicing. I was practicing four or five hours a day piano. And I was going to want to be a great pianist. And I purchased a Steinway grand piano.

John Dehlin [00:51:26] Like classical piano you want to do?

Lex de Azevedo [00:51:28] Yeah, well, classical and jazz.

John Dehlin [00:51:29] And jazz. Classical and jazz. Not popular stuff.

Lex de Azevedo [00:51:32] No, no, that you don't need to be a great pianist. Popular. Billy Joel's not a pianist or what's his name? Who did the Lion King?

John Dehlin [00:51:41] Elton John.

Lex de Azevedo [00:51:41] Ellen John. Yeah. They're not great pianists. They play piano. So I purchased a Steinway grand piano, this amazing, beautiful piano. And I was practicing day and night. And my idea of a great date would be to invite a girl over and have her listen to me practice. So I mean, that was my life. And the piano had become, in a way, my God. I worshiped that piano. There was no joy, greater joy than sinking my fingers into those white ivories. And lift the lid and hear the sound come out. It was my world. I lived in a world of sound. So the bishop calls me in, says, lex, you're now in those days, it was not like today. There was not like every man, everybody serves a mission. Although in our ward, most of them did. Most of the young men did. He calls me and he talks to me and my heart sinks. I'm thinking, oh, this isn't going to end well. How am I going to keep practicing? How am I going to do that and take two years off remission? I just, this is. I can't say how this is going to work. And the bishop, he sensed my frustration and he says, why don't you go think about, why don't you pray about this? So I didn't. For one of the first times in my life, I really thought, okay, I need to know if this prayer thing works. Because I thought it was a nice cultural thing that you do, you know, like salute the flag. And so I decided I'm going to pray about this thing. And I pray about it. And the amazing thing happens. I have a dream one night and I dream it's in the hereafter. And I look up to me, I think was the celestial kingdom. And I see my Steinway piano and I'm not there. And I think. And then these thoughts start to run through my mind. Well, if this is true, if this is true, I will have the eternities to practice my Steinway piano. And there's no guarantee in this life anyway. My dad died and left many dreams unfulfilled. Mozart died with much music in him. And Karen Carpenter, a few years later was to die after writing the song We've Only Just Begun. And I started to think about life and I thought, okay, if this is true, I should serve this mission because at the core of what I believe and to give it up because I want to do something that there's no guarantee that would ever happen. I decided to serve a mission. So. But once again, my conversion, like so many young men, was not really what it would become later. So. I go into the mission field. I told the bishop I'm going to go and I'm sent to Brazil. I'm the last of the two and a half year missionaries. Do you know, have you any idea how much longer two and a half years is to a 19 year old than two years? It is an eternity. It's so much longer. There's no language training, there's no empty sea. I go downtown Salt Lake for a week And I hear some of the general authorities talk to us. Oh, but here's what changed my life. The night before I was supposed to go in to the mtc, my brother, who's bigger than I, my younger brother, we're having dinner at my aunt's house, farewell dinner. And I said to my brother Rick, I said, I can still beat the crap out of you, even though he's much bigger than I am. And I tear into him. We start wrestling. He breaks my leg. So the next day I'm supposed to go into the mission. Well, that didn't happen. So I ended up. In those days, they laid you up more than they do now. And so I ended up cast and being laid out in bed. I thought, what am I going to do with myself now? I decide to start reading. I said, I'm going to start reading what I'm going to be preaching. So I read the Old Testament. I read the New Testament. I read the Book of Mormon. I never read the Book of Mormon. From COVID to cover, I read the Pearl of Great Price. I read the Doctrine and Covenants. I read Articles of Faith, Talmage's Article of Faith. I read Jesus the Christ. I read the history of the church, and I read a number of other other things. I'm reading 10 hours a day, and suddenly I am so converted. I am filled with the spirit of God and testimony. Well, I went into Brazil ready, and you couldn't stop me. I was just on fire. And I'm not sure all my motives were good. I was determined to be the best, like Elder Kessler in Saturday's Warrior. I mean, I was going to baptize everyone else, and I pretty much did, you know?

John Dehlin [00:56:25] And this is the land of your forefathers.

Lex de Azevedo [00:56:27] The land of my forefathers. But I didn't speak Portuguese.

John Dehlin [00:56:29] I didn't speak Portuguese. Yeah.

Lex de Azevedo [00:56:30] So I get there, I get dropped off, I meet the mission president, and they put me on a bus, send me to the town of Santos. I can't speak a word of Portuguese. My companion, who's got like a week left in his mission, doesn't show up to meet me. So miraculously, I find my way to the apartment. And I'm looking at this apartment now. Remember, I just came out of Hollywood, California. You know what my life was like? I walk in the apartment. There is one light bulb dangling from a loose wire. There's two beds, straw beds, covered with a sheet with little red blood spots. You know what those are from? The fleas, the ticks. They fill up with blood. And you roll over and you squish them, and you leave a spot of your bread. I go to the bathroom. I say, where's the bathroom? I walk in the bathroom. The bathroom and shower are the same. It is a hole in the ground with water trickling over a filament that kind of warms it. And I think, I can't do this. Let me out of here. Let me out of here. I know I didn't sign up for this. And so I went into the deep depression. Just. I thought, oh, now I'm starting to learn how to pray, because I didn't know what else I could do. So I started praying. I just start praying. And I said, God, help me. I'm not going back. I am not going back. I am not a quitter. I am going to see this thing through. But I am really depressed. I'm really sad. And my melancholy that I knew of my childhood comes back on me. This is intense melancholy. Well, I had a new companion who's still my best friend today. He says, lex, get off your butt and get to work. We're going to work. We're going to change. We're going to convert Santos. We go to work and we break every record in the mission. We baptize. When everybody's baptized. We just. And I'm unstoppable. And then I'm praying feverishly. God deliver me from this melancholy, I used to call it. It was a melancholy. And then one day I come home from work and I go out on the balcony, and I could smell the hibiscus flowers. And there were some girls singing over in another yard, and they're playing guitar. And I'm sitting there, and I am suddenly filled with the most exquisite peace and joy and love. All fear of life is gone. It is this exquisite feeling. And I recognize that I am experiencing the love of God. And it was an answer to my prayers. It took three months. And from that day to this day, my testimony is based on experiences like that. It's not based on secular knowledge. It's based on personal experiences with God. And I've often wondered. My kids have said, like Carrie said, well, dad, are you the only one that gets these? Because I don't get these. But I will tell you, as we go through my life, there are markers. And I thought, why me, God? Why? Because you know who I am. My basic nature. I am wine, women and song. I mean, you know, that's who I am. That's why I say, I am a walk. To me, I'm a walking miracle.

Mission Experiences and Miracles

John Dehlin [00:59:44] What's the miracle?

Lex de Azevedo [00:59:46] Me.

John Dehlin [00:59:46] That you. That you didn't make a bunch of bad mistakes. Well, that you didn't try alcohol or that you didn't.

Lex de Azevedo [00:59:52] Well, no, no, not just try alcohol. It's that. All right, let's go a step farther. I come back from Brazil. Okay. I come back from Brazil, and I loved my mission. I have no regrets. Not that people say, oh, I did my best. Human beings never do their best. I mean, that's an expression. But I did really well. I did really well. And not that leadership and the mission is a symbol of anything, but for the last year and a half or two and a half years, I was zone leader and head assistant to the president only because I was so committed. So I come back, I'm at church. My first Sunday at church. Carl Ingeman is in the bishopric. He's now a vice president of Capital Studio City Ward. Lex, how'd you like to be a record producer? Yeah. Seriously? Yeah, yeah, I'll do that. Come down to Capitol Records next week. I come down, I'm hired. I'm still wearing my wingtip tracking shoes, you know, my coat and everything. And this is during the Vietnam War. This is in the middle of. You think we're in a crisis? Well, we are in a crisis today, I think, but this was a crisis in the world.

John Dehlin [01:01:03] About what year did you get back from your mission?

Lex de Azevedo [01:01:05] 65.

John Dehlin [01:01:07] This is right after the Beatles had swept America.

Lex de Azevedo [01:01:09] Yeah, yeah, I heard about the Beatles. In Brazil, they call them the Biatlis. So this Brazilians, we talk about this amazing new group, man, the Beatles, I think Beatleys.

John Dehlin [01:01:18] So I get home and you missed Beatlemania.

Lex de Azevedo [01:01:20] Well, I get back after, like a first record or something, or second. I don't remember the dates, but. And they're on Capital. They're distributed Capital. So I am hired as an executive. I'm 20. What am I? I'm 21 years old. I'm hired as an executive producer at Capitol Records. I have an expense account that's more than most people's annual salary. I got, you know, a car, you know, a new Cadillac.

John Dehlin [01:01:43] How did you get this from going on a mission without any experience?

Lex de Azevedo [01:01:48] Yes, I've often asked myself that.

John Dehlin [01:01:51] Because of who your mom was.

Lex de Azevedo [01:01:52] Everything in my life that I am is a result of being a Latter Day Saint, of being born in California when I was being an American, but much to the church. Carl Ingeman wasn't the vice president of Capital then. He was the head of A and R Artist and Repertoire. But he knew me from my reputation, by the way. Talk about who you know. When I come back, you know who's in the bishopric. Carl Engelman, John Huntsman Sr. They're in the bishopric. All right. Welcome me home from my mission. So I'm well connected. So I end up at Capitol Records. And so my personal journey is very much entwined with my career decisions. I lived in a period. I'm in a transition period when I grew up and went to institute and went to seminary. And the thing I absorbed from our culture was that there was no that love, romantic love didn't really matter. That's an illusion. Just look at the tabloids. Just look at Hollywood. They're in love with this person this day. They're in love with this person this day. Love doesn't matter. Love's an illusion. Go find. Go take a wife. It was like the old farmer thing, you know, Go take a wife and then go build your farm, build your family. It doesn't really matter which wife you take. Just take one. And if you're. And this was. You talk about cultural. And it wasn't just Mormon, too. It was that whole agrarian type thing, which Mormons came out of. And I remember going to institute at usc, and the institute teacher, I believe, was Paul Dunn, by the way, at the time. And him saying, well, so and so met this girl and he was impressed with her and they got married. And I say, why don't you say he was in love with her, he was impressed with her. And so the doctrine that I absorbed, and it's not doctrine, these are cultural things that come and go. But I was this pivotal generation here was that you take a wife and that if you have enough babies, have babies. And if you become like Jesus enough, like Jesus, any people that are Christlike enough, we'll learn to love each other. That is the doctrine. And I was obedient. And my mission president told me, he said, I'm going to give you six months to be married, otherwise you'll be a menace to the community. And so with those thoughts in mind, I come home and I've now got a great job. I mean, I'm living the dream life. Time to take a wife. So I meet Julie's mother, my kid's mother, and we joke, she and I, her mother, Linda.

Returning Home, Marriage, and Early Career

John Dehlin [01:04:34] That sounds so impersonal. Take a wife.

Lex de Azevedo [01:04:36] But that's what it was. So Linda lived in Phoenix and I lived in la.

John Dehlin [01:04:41] How'd you meet her?

Lex de Azevedo [01:04:43] It was a blind date. We had family members in Phoenix, and the King family was doing a Concert in Phoenix. And we had some relatives there, said, I want you to meet this girl. I want Lex to meet this girl. And we meet. My mom says, that's a girl you should marry. She's really. And there weren't that many. How can I say this?

John Dehlin [01:04:56] What was her maiden name?

Lex de Azevedo [01:04:58] Carter. Carter, yeah. And so we had a date, and I thought about it, and I thought, nice girl. But I had had one girlfriend, but I didn't really believe in love either. I mean, that worked for me, that philosophy, because I didn't really believe in it for some reason. When my dad died, I think something happened, something shut down. I knew that there was sexual attraction. I knew what that was. But beyond that, I didn't know. Like, I didn't know what prayer was, you know, when I was a little kid. So a few weeks later, it was Easter vacation, and I was kind of moping around, not knowing what to do. And my mom says, well, why don't you invite that girl from Phoenix over? I think she'd be a good wife for you. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:05:47] Did you come from a good family? Did you even know anything about a family?

Lex de Azevedo [01:05:52] I don't know. I don't want to go. I want you. Things that are. I want to keep this very helpful.

John Dehlin [01:05:56] Sure.

Lex de Azevedo [01:05:56] And positive, constructive. Okay? Okay.

John Dehlin [01:05:59] So you invite her.

Lex de Azevedo [01:06:01] Invite her to California. And first of all, Linda and I today, although we are not married, we have great respect for each other. Great respect. We've had nine children together. We are together all the time. Nine children together all the time. And we are an interesting family, as our kids can tell you. Although Linda and I are not married, I think they feel very much a family, and so there's no uncomfortableness at all. But anyway, we married after.

John Dehlin [01:06:32] Not a romance. It was just.

Lex de Azevedo [01:06:34] No, as a matter of fact, it was an arrangement. We had only had a couple of dates, and she lived in Phoenix and I lived in.

John Dehlin [01:06:43] But was she beautiful? Like, what?

Lex de Azevedo [01:06:45] She was cute.

John Dehlin [01:06:46] Yeah. And she was cute. But you didn't have a strong romantic relationship. You didn't have a. I was not.

Lex de Azevedo [01:06:52] Definitely not. Swept off. I didn't even know her that well, really, when I got married. The interesting thing is she was raised in a similar environment. And we used to joke each other.

John Dehlin [01:07:01] Did you say summer environment?

Lex de Azevedo [01:07:03] Similar.

John Dehlin [01:07:03] Similar.

Lex de Azevedo [01:07:04] Even after we got married, we were married very quickly after we met because that's the next thing you do. I got an amazing job. I'm doing well. I got to get on with my life. Next thing, you get married, you have children. That's what you do. So we used to joke, for the first year or two of our marriage, we'd say, well, I think I love you, Linda. And she'd say, well, I think I love you, too. I mean, it was like a joke because it wasn't necessary to be love with a person, you know, to marry them. So how do we get there?

John Dehlin [01:07:36] No, it's good. So, okay, so, okay, you're living in. And so you brought her to California.

Lex de Azevedo [01:07:41] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:07:41] And you were a producer.

Lex de Azevedo [01:07:43] Capital Record.

John Dehlin [01:07:44] Capital Records. Producing what records?

Lex de Azevedo [01:07:46] I was producing pop records of the. In the 60s, late 60s.

John Dehlin [01:07:51] Pop records, yeah. But you liked jazz, right?

Lex de Azevedo [01:07:53] But the money was in pop.

John Dehlin [01:07:55] So what? Okay, so there's a joke about the jazz.

Lex de Azevedo [01:07:59] The musician went into jazz for the money. There is no money in jazz. There has been, never will be.

John Dehlin [01:08:05] So, okay, this is a weird sort of technical question. Southern California, Hollywood, Are you wearing your garments this whole time?

Lex de Azevedo [01:08:12] Sure. I was a returned missionary.

John Dehlin [01:08:15] So that wasn't too hot or annoying. That's what you did. You were living the orthodox life by the time.

Lex de Azevedo [01:08:19] Oh, yes.

John Dehlin [01:08:20] By the time you're married, served your mission, you're an orthodox Mormon.

Lex de Azevedo [01:08:24] I'm a Taliban Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:08:25] What do you mean by that?

Lex de Azevedo [01:08:30] I mean, like, my kids will say, some of them. I mean, I'm drawing a broad stroke. I was very orthodox, and I would say black and white. Was I black and white? Yes. Okay, so I'm pretty black and white. Very black and white. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:08:50] Had you been introduced to Joseph Fielding smith, Bruce R. McConkie, sort of doctrinal Mormonism by that time yet?

Lex de Azevedo [01:08:58] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:59] Because you talked about Talmadge and Woodstow and the history of the church. Absolutely.

Lex de Azevedo [01:09:04] I read incessantly. I read.

John Dehlin [01:09:06] On your mission.

Lex de Azevedo [01:09:07] On my mission. After I read Fawn Brody's book in the 20th century. I mean, not during my mission, but the things that people talk about now are not lies.

John Dehlin [01:09:15] I would have read Fawn brodie. During your 20s, you're saying?

Lex de Azevedo [01:09:19] Yeah, yeah. And that let me think. I would have been 21, 22. I would have been. Her book was about 1950.

John Dehlin [01:09:27] 45. 45, 50. Yeah.

Lex de Azevedo [01:09:29] So it would have been 70 somewhere. Like, I have always. I've cons. I love to learn. I love to learn. And so I read all kinds of things. My friends say I have people upset. Why are you. Why are you doing Mormon stories? Are you leaving the church? And I said. I said no. I said, I believe in dialogue. I believe that dialogue is always good. Political dialogue is good. I believe that religious dialogue is good. There's nothing to fear. Nothing to fear. There's nothing you can do or anybody can do to me that's going to hurt me. I might learn something.

John Dehlin [01:10:04] So, Joseph Healing smith, Bruce R. McConkie, were they important intellectual influences in the 60s during your life?

Lex de Azevedo [01:10:10] I don't. I would say in this. I remember reading Mormon doctrine from COVID to cover several times. As a matter of fact, I can tell you a quote in the Early Mormon Bruce R's book that talking about the end of time, the millennium. And he said. He says we do not exactly. He says we do not know the hour of the day, but if our calendars are correct, it should be sometime around 2004. I expected the end of the. I expected the millennium or Christ to come in 2004. I was kind of. I was kind of let down when it didn't happen.

John Dehlin [01:10:40] So you were in that mindset. You were in the orthodox fundamentalist mindset?

Lex de Azevedo [01:10:43] Very. I was a bishop twice.

John Dehlin [01:10:44] Yeah.

Lex de Azevedo [01:10:45] As a young man in the 60s. In the 70s.

John Dehlin [01:10:48] Yeah.

Lex de Azevedo [01:10:49] And 80s.

John Dehlin [01:10:49] Okay. So I'm just trying to get said. So you marry Linda and you start having lots of babies.

Lex de Azevedo [01:10:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:55] And you're producing.

Lex de Azevedo [01:10:57] Producing. But. But here's what happened. Here's what happened. I. I was not comfortable at Capital now when I told you I'm a walking miracle. I heard this quote once and it sounds kind of crass, but I think there's some truth. If you can see it. It says if you swim in the cesspool every day, you're bound to swallow some of the water. In other words, there's nature in nurture, and nurture in our environment is a big part of our life. What I was exposed to at Capital, I could make people wealthy, I could make their careers. And I was good. I had a couple of hit records right off the bat.

John Dehlin [01:11:39] What were some of the artists you worked with?

Lex de Azevedo [01:11:41] Well, they. They set me discovering new artists. So I was kind of disappointed. I wanted to produce. I wanted to produce Glen Campbell. And they gave it to. I was. Remember the guys and his name? And, you know, they said, no, we want you to go to find out new people. We want you to find artists. So it was about 1969. I'm a talent scout, too. A record producer. Talent scout. I hear about this group in Cleveland, Ohio. I fly out there to listen to them and I take them in the recording studio and start recording a song became the number one record in the nation. And it was called Nobody But Me by the Human Beings. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Nobody can do the shingling like I do. It's been a commercial in recent years. So the group, I hear them in a club and they're so loud. And, you know, one thing I've learned is the volume covers a multitude of sins. And so I said, okay, guys, I know how loud you can play. Let me hear how good you can play. I take them studio, we turn it down. The sound down is really not that good. And I say, well, what songs have you written? Play me your songs. They play me all these songs. Anything else? He says, well, there's this one song written by the Isaac Brothers called Nobody But Me. We used to play. I said, oh, play that for me. I said, that's it. Let's do that. Well, drummer couldn't keep a beat was the first problem we had. So we hooked him up to a click track and then he had a hard time doing the fills. So I played the drum fills and I'm not drummer. And then I played the organ fills on the track and the lead singer had a good voice and then lead guitar was great. So we're back till we make this record. It became number one in the nation. I had another record called a comedy record called Mrs. Miller. And first hit I ever produced. It was an elderly lady that had the worst possible voice you could ever imagine. And we had her sing. Some of you. There are people still talk to me about this. We had her sing like, Petula Clark's hits like Downtown and things like that. And she would start one beat late and sing the whole, whole song one beat behind. Now, you can't. How can you do that as a musician? It's impossible. She would start a half step higher and sing the whole song a half step higher. But. But the charm is that her complete unawareness of how horrible she was. So it was really cruel. When I look back, I think we took it. It was really cruel. And she was probably 68 and very large, and we put her in the recording studio and all the musicians started cracking up. So I had to shield her because everybody was. It was laughing. It's really horrible when you think about it. But anyway, she made a lot of money and became famous. She came, became famous, and that was one of our records.

Working at Capitol Records

John Dehlin [01:14:40] How many years were you working at Capitol?

Lex de Azevedo [01:14:43] I stayed there about five or six years. And this. This is. This was a critical decision real quick.

John Dehlin [01:14:49] And the artists you would have worked with then, Would we know any of

Lex de Azevedo [01:14:51] them or Frank Sinatra Jr. Okay, I worked with. He didn't go very far.

John Dehlin [01:14:56] He's saying for.

Lex de Azevedo [01:14:58] I did a couple of artists that were. Let me think. Most of it was creating new artists. And most new artists don't go anywhere, right?

John Dehlin [01:15:08] Yep. So it's a great experience.

Lex de Azevedo [01:15:11] Oh, I mean, I remember, you know, Bobby Gentry is. You guys remember Bobby Gentry, Ode to Billy Joe? Amazing song. I remember she came in off the street and Kelly. Kelly Gordon, the producer in the next office. This is like, listen to this gal. And he brings me over there, and she's sitting there playing this little tenor guitar, and she's singing this ode to Billy Joe. And I'm looking at him, he's looking at me. I said, this is amazing. Sign her, sign her, sign her. And he signed her and he produced her and left his wife for her. So what? Which brings me to the point I was going with faith and in the career, I did not feel it was wise for me to stay there. I felt I could be very successful. I felt I would be very wealthy. I would be a record mogul, you know, as big as any. I really believed I could. But the pressures, the continual temptations and pressures, and knowing my basic nature, I mean, I was supposed to be out in clubs I used to get. They called me and say, lex, you haven't. Look at your expense account. You've only spent 20,000 this year. I was supposed to be in the clubs living that life. And it was the drug culture, too. I've never had drugs, never been tempted by drugs. But I would be in the studio with people smoking dope, and meanwhile, I was like an Elders Quorum president. And we're producing music about sex and drugs and rock and roll and revolution. I'm thinking, okay, what team are you on? You got to choose what team you're going to play on. And it was tough because I had everything, but I didn't think that spiritually I would survive it. I just didn't think it was healthy for me. It wasn't. Let me just tell you this. It wasn't healthy for me. I knew I had to get out.

John Dehlin [01:17:05] Okay, so you left Capitol Records around what year?

Lex de Azevedo [01:17:10] Early 70s.

John Dehlin [01:17:11] Early 70s, yeah, after about five, five, six years. Five, six years.

Lex de Azevedo [01:17:15] And my uncle Jim Conkling, who had been president of Capital and had been president of Columbia Records and the vice president of cbs, he sat me down and said, lex, don't do it. Don't do that. You're crazy. You're at 20, 25, 6. Wherever I was, don't do it. What are you going to do now? You got kids you got. You know, I think my first child was born then, and I just couldn't do it.

John Dehlin [01:17:40] So that was a. That was a big leap you took.

Lex de Azevedo [01:17:43] It was a huge leap.

John Dehlin [01:17:46] All right.

Lex de Azevedo [01:17:47] And that led to Saturday's Warrior.

John Dehlin [01:17:49] So this seems like a natural time to kind of take a pause. It's been fascinating hearing about some of your early years, your formative years, your mission, your career, your fundamentals. What'd you call it? Your Mormonism?

Lex de Azevedo [01:18:03] Taliban.

John Dehlin [01:18:04] Taliban.

Lex de Azevedo [01:18:04] Mormonism, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:18:08] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org thank you very much.

Leaving Capitol Records and Seeking New Direction

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 794

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting mormonstories.org all contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you.

Lex de Azevedo [00:00:23] Who are these children coming down,

John Dehlin [00:00:29] coming

Lex de Azevedo [00:00:29] down like gentle rain through darkened skies with glory trailing from their feet as

John Dehlin [00:00:41] they go

Lex de Azevedo [00:00:43] and endless promise in their eyes.

John Dehlin [00:00:50] Welcome back to Part two or part three, depending on how we cut it, of my interview with Lex Diazevedo. Lex, welcome back. It's been really exciting to hear about your early years growing up in both Hollywood and New Jersey, to hear about your mom and her career and your family growing up. What an exciting, well connected family you grew up in. And it was also exciting to hear about your early years in the church and your mission service and after coming back from the church, your early career with capital. That's all good stuff. So thanks for sharing all that with us. And we end part, you know, part one or two, however we cut it. With you making this momentous decision to end your career at Capitol Records, it sounds like you feel like it was going to eat you alive, spiritually and morally. Is that fair to say?

Lex de Azevedo [00:01:53] Yeah, yeah, very fair.

John Dehlin [00:01:56] And did you have any idea what you would do once you left?

Lex de Azevedo [00:01:59] No. That's what was interesting. It was a huge leap. I did have a little safety net, though. It was the King family. I was a member of the King family and the King family was performing and I would perform with them and I would write music. It wasn't enough to really sustain the family, but it sure helped.

John Dehlin [00:02:18] So you would write songs for your mom's?

Lex de Azevedo [00:02:20] I would arrange, do the arrangements, the orchestral arrangements. And that went on until, I think, all through the 70s, into the 80s, I believe. I don't remember when the. Do you know how old were you in those last specials? The Christmas. Still the 70s. Still the 70s. Julie was very little in the Christmas special they did. That's why I was asking her, okay, so I did have that safety net. And then it became freelancing. But there was another reason I left capital. I began most of my life. I've tried to look at things from the big picture, eternal perspective. And I remember this thought came to me that what I do is important because I'm trading a day of my life for it. And I felt, let me just. I'm not saying this literally, but take it as you want. I was in the employ of Satan and Satan pays well. In other words, I was paid to do things and produce music that would sell largely at that time was music that was opposed to the things I believed. And music had become the pulpit of the generation in the 70s, see, the baby boomers were coming through, and music was one of the most power. Didn't the Beatles, who had said they thought they could swing an election, and John Lennon said at one point, he's more popular than Christ. Something like that.

John Dehlin [00:03:57] Which was kind of accurate. Right?

Lex de Azevedo [00:03:59] Which was kind of accurate. And that the power of music for this baby boomer. Now, I was actually a little bit ahead of the baby boomer, so a year or two, but. And so music had become aware of its ability to teach, to preach, to communicate. And I realized at some point, I'm a communicator. I'm not making records here. I'm communicating messages that have an impact on people's lives.

John Dehlin [00:04:29] And this is the time the Beatles would have gotten really big and almost gone. Rolling Stones, all of that stuff. Woodstock would have been starting to emerge in the early 70s.

Lex de Azevedo [00:04:38] Yeah. Vietnam War, the whole thing.

John Dehlin [00:04:40] Okay, so that's a. I mean, that's one of the most epic periods in American history, was the cultural phenomenon that was the late 60s, early 70s.

Lex de Azevedo [00:04:49] And you have to understand that to really understand my decision. It might have been different in another time or even today, I don't know. But at that time, it was new. It was a revolution. We were in the middle of the sexual revolution. It was a, you know, a cultural revolution, a music revolution, a political revolution. The whole country, it seemed like kids were on campus, were demonstrating. There was the Kent shooting, or the police shot the students. And it was a very volatile time. And I was in the middle of media. So everything resounded very loudly for me. And I just felt, okay, I'm in a battle zone. I'm in a war. I gotta choose which side, who I'm gonna serve.

John Dehlin [00:05:39] And we shouldn't forget to mention drug culture was starting to really emerge.

Lex de Azevedo [00:05:42] Drug was huge. I mean, there were people. I was producing sessions and people. I remember killing me. And I said, what's that? They go, oh, it's marijuana. I didn't know what they were using.

John Dehlin [00:05:54] But your mom's family, your aunts, husbands, were all heavily involved in this industry that you were at the same time deciding to not only walk away from, but to sort of condemn as being possibly damaging for our country's moral fiber, right?

Lex de Azevedo [00:06:13] No, not exactly. I was not contemplating walking away from the entertainment industry. I was walking away from being a producer when my job was to sell as many records as possible.

John Dehlin [00:06:24] Okay, so you wanted to stay in the music industry.

Lex de Azevedo [00:06:26] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:26] But not be with the record label.

Lex de Azevedo [00:06:30] Yeah, yeah. I actually wanted to score films. Okay, that's what you wanted to do in the early 70s, I wanted to score films for. Yeah. Even before that, there was something about composing, creating the music. Not just arranging other people's songs, but actually creating it and scoring films. It was very appealing. That's when I did my first. After I left Capitol, I think it was after I left Capitol, I did my first film for where the Red Fern Grows. So I now went into a freelance mode. And I had young children. I think our first. Let's see, she just. Carrie would have been born in. She was born in 68. 68. Okay, 68. 67. Sorry, I was 67. So you were born when? 68. So Emily was born when. All right, So I had three kids at this point.

John Dehlin [00:07:15] Okay.

Lex de Azevedo [00:07:16] And so I'm now working home freelancing, arranging, trying to get wherever I could get work and learning the ropes of freelancing in Hollywood at the same. But interesting thing happened. I met a man by the name of Ralph Carmichael because he was doing some of the arrangements for the King Family. Ralph Carmichael was the grandfather or the father of Christian pop music today.

John Dehlin [00:07:44] He's the dude, like Amy Grant stuff.

Lex de Azevedo [00:07:47] He's the man that started it. And he started writing the music for it was Billy Graham. And who was the other big evangelist? Oh, what's his name?

John Dehlin [00:07:59] Jimmy Swigert.

Lex de Azevedo [00:08:00] Keep going.

John Dehlin [00:08:00] Oral Roberts.

Lex de Azevedo [00:08:01] Oral Roberts. So Oral Roberts and Billy Graham. And he is the first Christian guru in music, Ralph Carmichael. I meet Ralph Carmichael and we're both writing at. I can't remember. We did some things at Capitol, some things for the King family. He says, lex, I am so jammed. Can you. Would you ghostwrite for me? And I need the work. I'm leaving Capitol now. So I start ghost writing. And so here I am. I am writing music for Billy Graham revivals and Oral Roberts. And so I start ghostwriting for Ralph Carmill. And I've got these albums that are out on Light and Lexicon and Word. Word was the first big Christian label. And so I was making a living writing for whoever paying me. But I thought it was interesting lyrics

John Dehlin [00:08:53] and music, or just music.

Lex de Azevedo [00:08:54] It was mostly arrangements. Arrangements of Christian hymns and things. Big revival things and orchestra and all that. And that helped support us. So one day Ralph Carmichael says, I have written now. This is a new thing, actually Christian musical. And they didn't have. The revivalists used music and Big choirs and things like that, and orchestras. And he says, I want you to come to the premiere of it. It's at Van Nuys Baptist Church. Tell me what you think. He knew I was a Mormon and we never, certainly was not an issue at all. So I go to Van Nuys Baptist Church and I see this rock group up on the pulpit of the cathedral there. And it's filled with kids, long haired kids, and their guitars are screaming and the drums are going, the bass is going. And there's all of these Christian type songs, these early pop Christian. And at the end of it, it was called A Natural high, you know, getting high. This is a natural high. Get high with Jesus. So I'm watching this and I'm thinking, look at all these kids coming to Jesus after this. Why? How come we have nothing even close to this for our culture, the LDS culture? And I actually invited Doug Stewart to come with me. Doug Stewart had moved into our ward and I'd heard that he was a writer.

John Dehlin [00:10:32] He was your co writer for Saturday's ward, right?

Lex de Azevedo [00:10:34] Yeah, yeah. And so I said, doug, I don't know, have you ever written anything musical? He said, no. I said, well, come with me. Let's watch this. Come home. And the wheels start cranking. I thought I was consumed with the idea of starting an LDS record company. And I thought, I have learned so much in my life. At that time, there was no lds. When I say LDS culture, there was no LDS pop music. It was the Tabernacle Choir, basically, is what it was. And then the big production, what was it? Sand in my shoes. The church used to put on a big pioneer production, that kind of thing. There was no individual, private, cultural things, musical or otherwise, produced by Mormons.

John Dehlin [00:11:20] Now let me pause you for just one second. In your biography, you mentioned things like Sonny and cher, the Jackson 5, the Jackson.

Lex de Azevedo [00:11:28] Those all happened in 1974.

John Dehlin [00:11:31] So would starters Warrior had started prior to your work with those other things? I started writing in parallel.

Lex de Azevedo [00:11:37] I started. Yeah, they're kind of going up.

John Dehlin [00:11:38] Got it. Okay, so we're coming to that.

Lex de Azevedo [00:11:40] You're coming to that. I was writing Saturday. That's a. Remind me to tell you about writing Saturday's Warrior while I was doing the Sonny and Cher comedy hour.

John Dehlin [00:11:48] Okay.

Lex de Azevedo [00:11:49] And. And I'm all my energy is going to Sonny and Cheer. And I'm doing Saturday's Warrior in my left hand over this because I didn't think anybody would ever see it.

John Dehlin [00:11:56] But the genesis was in the early 70s.

Lex de Azevedo [00:11:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:58] Now why would you want to make a Mormon record company when there would have only been a few million Mormons on the planet. Like, how would you have thought there'd be money in that?

Lex de Azevedo [00:12:07] Like, I didn't know that there'd be money in it. I didn't, but it's something I wanted to do.

John Dehlin [00:12:13] Really?

Lex de Azevedo [00:12:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:14] Okay.

Lex de Azevedo [00:12:15] No, how could there be money in it? I mean, there was no visible evidence there'd be money in it. And where would you sell the records? Deseret Book wouldn't carry my first records. They said, we're a bookstore. We don't carry records. So it was a vision I had. It was not.

John Dehlin [00:12:30] But you're in LA with a bunch of young kids and you just left Capitol, so I'm sure money is on your mind, trying to. Trying to make a living.

Lex de Azevedo [00:12:39] I do not. At the risk of sounding holier than thou, I have always trusted that God would deliver. Always. Ever since my mission. I believe that the metaphors about God delivering Israel, they are metaphors for our life. God delivers. That's what he does. He's a deliverer. And I have never feared. There has always been enough. There is enough, always will be enough. And I trust, just as Moses told the Israelites as they were going to the promised land. And God says, if you will keep my statutes and my statutes and my Sabbaths, your threshing will last until the next season. I will provide for you. I'll give you rain. Because they needed rain. They were in the Hill country without rain, nothing. And so he made that promise. And it's in the Book of Mormon. And it's in the. Jesus said, seek you first the kingdom of God. I've always believed that at my core and live my life from that outward. So I. Yeah, there's times I feared, obviously, when I was young, but I always believed that God would deliver. So, anyway, I'm working in Hollywood, too. I was doing films. I started to do films, still doing record arranging for People, and I interrupted.

John Dehlin [00:13:50] So you had this idea of Saturday's Warrior coming off of this musical that you see.

Lex de Azevedo [00:13:55] Yeah. So there's a lot of things going on when you're freelancing. It's like this, because if you turn something down, you don't know if you're gonna have work tomorrow. And I had these three little mouths, chirping mouths, the feed and all this. And I've always. I. I was always responsible. Since my dad died, I told my mother, I'm going to quit school, I'm going to go to work and take care of the family. And so it's kind of been. That's what I do and take care of people and solve problems. So I got this idea. I wanted to start an LDS record company, and I had a vision of it, and then I thought, I'll start it with this musical. So Doug and I went to work and it was just on faith. I figured nobody listens to the words anyway. So I'm doing the music. Let him do what he wants.

John Dehlin [00:14:44] So he wrote the lyrics to Saturday?

Lex de Azevedo [00:14:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:47] Okay. So all that theology that comes into Saturday's Word that really heavily influences Mormonism, that didn't really come from you?

Creating Saturday's Warrior with Doug Stewart

Lex de Azevedo [00:14:56] Well, it was certainly discussed. It was certainly mutually understood. And there were some things that. Suggestions I made and changes that I made. Doug sees life and the church quite differently than I do. We are apart, but nevertheless, we came together on this collaboration.

John Dehlin [00:15:22] But he wrote the characters and the plot.

Lex de Azevedo [00:15:24] Yes, generally he did. But there was a collaboration and you wrote the music. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:30] So you're Elton John. He's Bernie Taupin, basically.

Lex de Azevedo [00:15:32] You might say that. But I rewrote. I wrote a lot of the lyrics, too. Rewrote them because Doug never. He'd never written a song. So he put ideas down, and then I would create great words. All right, so we're working on this thing, and we're working over a couple of years. And so I get. Things are not going well. I can't remember what happened, but we were having a hard time, and we had a lovely home in Northridge, California. We actually thought we might have to sell it it. And I decide that I'm going to do everything in my power to reach out to everybody I know and everybody they know to get work before I end up teaching or something. I didn't know what it was going to be because we just weren't making enough at that time. And there had been a strike in Hollywood. That was another thing. There was a strike, and so work was shut down. So I call a friend, and he's an inactive Latter Day Saint. Lovely man, Earl Brown. Turns out Earl is writing original material for Allen Bly, these Jewish producers from Canada. And they're now. They've been produced. I think they produced Laugh In. They produced all these shows, and they're now producing this Sonny and Cher show. Taking Cher and turning her into this gorgeous, classic, you know, 1940s woman and getting her out of her fur. Remember the early signing chair?

John Dehlin [00:17:07] Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Lex de Azevedo [00:17:08] And create her, just completely repackage her.

John Dehlin [00:17:10] They started as just like a pop duo. Right. But it became. It sort of swept into American consciousness as this variety show phenomenon that started with Lawrence Welk and whoever. Right. Like talk.

Lex de Azevedo [00:17:24] You're not following. I'm not following you.

John Dehlin [00:17:25] So for. For. There's a whole new generation that has no idea what the Sonny and Cher show was.

Lex de Azevedo [00:17:31] Right, Right.

John Dehlin [00:17:31] Or the Donny Marie show, frankly. But I grew up watching that. You. You grew up producing that. So maybe give it set the stage for kind of what. What that era was and how it kind of came to be.

Lex de Azevedo [00:17:43] Yeah, it's kind of hard. I'm trying to think out of context. People have. Have no context for that.

John Dehlin [00:17:47] Right.

Lex de Azevedo [00:17:49] When you say set the stage, I'm not sure what you mean.

John Dehlin [00:17:52] So variety shows.

Lex de Azevedo [00:17:53] Variety shows tended to be different than the record business. The record business was like rap music today is different than the music business. You know, what I was doing in the rock and roll business was cutting edge. It was gritty stuff. Think of Doors. I remember Jim Morrison. I remember meeting Jim Norrison. Walks off the elevator in Capitol records in our 11th floor. We were in his leathers and look, you know, I can't remember. I'm trying to think what year it was looking for a record deal. But there was that element in the music and that's what I wanted to get out of. Meanwhile, you had the King family, you had Lawrence Welk in eventually, you had the Osmonds, and you had what we call live tv. Variety shows were for middle class America. It was a different whole different thing. And then you had this new religious pop thing springing up, which eventually became huge. So where were we? Where were we going?

John Dehlin [00:18:52] So Sunny and Cher.

Lex de Azevedo [00:18:53] Oh, Sonny and Cher. So I called, I said, earl, you don't know me, but my name is Lex Diazevedo and I'm looking for a job. I'm a real good arranger and I'm a good conductor. I can do anything. And he says, oh, you're the son of Alice King, one of the King sisters, aren't you? He says, oh, I love your mother's music. Let me talk to the producers and see if there's an opening. So he calls me back, he says, come on down. I've set up an interview with Alan Bly, producer of these shows. And he'd done. I'm trying to think of the other shows he had done. I don't know if he did Laugh In. He was actually, I think, a writer on Laugh in, which was a hugely politically. Do you remember they were attacking Nixon? This is. You didn't attack the President of the United States in those days, Was it smothers Brothers. It was the Smothers Brothers. That's right. Yeah. There were writers on that show, and actually, I think they got kicked off the air, didn't they? So anyway, these guys are real tough, tough businessmen, but very creative producers. And they had this idea to take Cher and make her this gorgeous, classic 1940s singer. All right? So they test me out with some arrangements. I say, oh, I like that. It was good, and you're fast, blah, blah, blah. So I ended up on the show, writing for the show and working in the rehearsal hall because I play piano. A lot of the arrangers don't play piano. And so I'd work with Cher, and I'd work with Sonny and pick keys with him, help come up with arrangements and things like this. And the guy by the name of Jimmy Dale was the actual music director. He was a Canadian, too. And so that's how I got. That's how I got in there.

John Dehlin [00:20:38] And that seems a lot more creative than trying to find, you know, record stars. You're actually. I was loving arranging, performing, collaborating, but

Lex de Azevedo [00:20:46] it's still hard because now I'm in a different type of environment. I am in the rehearsal hall with people that, you know. Everybody knew I was a Mormon. I don't know. They just knew. I mean, I don't know why, but everybody knew, and I was different. And it was interesting one by one. I've never felt persecuted or set apart, and I've worked in some pretty sophisticated things. When I was doing the Sonny and Cher we had, everybody was on that show. Everybody, you name it. Anybody who was in Hollywood came on that show, was a guest, and I worked with them and did arrangements for them and got to know them and talk to them and. But I felt different. I was different. My values were so different than. And it was hard for me to engage in the conversations because the conversations were based in a culture that was so different than where I was coming from. But anyway, I was able to do it successfully because I was working with music and all they cared about was doing music. So I did that. And then Sonny and Cher got divorced and they ended the show. An interesting thing happened after that. I was going to move to. All right, I'm trying to get this straight. Saturday. Oh, Saturday's Warrior premiered while I'm doing this Honey and Cher show. And I would stay up sometimes without sleep for several days every week to write the music, to get it ready for the pre recording. Like, on Thursday, I would start writing. On Tuesday, I'd write all Tuesday. Tuesday night. I'd go take a nap and I'd write Wednesday and on Wednesday night just to get the music ready. And I wrote volumes of music. I learned to write so fast. What originally took me, you know, like two weeks to write, I could write in two hours. Just fly, fly through it. So while I'm doing the Sonny and Cher show and it's completely dominating my life along with other things, I'm still doing a picture here and there. I'm doing commercials. One year I did 2,000 jingles. 2,000, 2,000 jingles. 93K, HJ, that kind of stuff. Cranking them out day and night. And I turned down nothing. I became a workaholic. So where was I going? Oh, yes. Sonny and Cher gets canceled because they divorce and. No, the spring of the. Before they got canceled, Saturday's Warrior gets premiered at byu. Now, I thought we'd be lucky if Rick's college put it on once because there was no. There was no history of anything like this.

John Dehlin [00:23:31] Okay. And did the album come out first?

Lex de Azevedo [00:23:33] No.

John Dehlin [00:23:34] Okay, so you. You and this gentleman you co collaborated with. Doug. Doug, you guys wrote the script, right? The dialogue, the characters?

Lex de Azevedo [00:23:43] Yeah, he did most of that part of it.

John Dehlin [00:23:45] You wrote the music, right? You guys collaborated and you come up with, I guess, sheet music for the songs?

Lex de Azevedo [00:23:51] Well, not yet. So let me tell you how this happened. While I'm writing Saturday's Warrior, Doug moves to Orem. I'm still in la. I'm writing Sonny and Cher show, but Saturday's. And I'm writing Saturday's Warrior over here. Like on my left hand, I'm writing Saturday's Warrior and I'm doing the Sonny and Chair over here. And I'm thinking. I don't know, my thinking was confused. I was making so much money as Sunny and Chair, I thought, well, a bird in the hand. I'm not going to give that up for something that I don't know if we'll be lucky if Rick's college puts it on once. So I've often thought, if I had spent more, paid more attention to the music of Saturday's Warrior, would it be better or worse? It was pretty simplistic, pretty flat.

John Dehlin [00:24:39] I'm surprised you did it at all once you're working with one of the top TV shows in the world.

Lex de Azevedo [00:24:44] But you have to understand what drives me. I've never been driven by. I have been. I love money, okay? I appreciate money and what I can buy, but it is not actually money that drives me. I found it easy to make money, but I've always been driven by something better than money. And various times I've walked away from things because of a cause. I am driven by a cause.

John Dehlin [00:25:09] What was the cause of Saturday's Warrior? Why did they need a musical?

Lex de Azevedo [00:25:14] Right. Why did they need. Because I saw the impact that music had on the young people of the country. And at that time, I used to say the click of Latter Day Saints turning off radio and television and condemning the music. The clique was deafening. The dialogue which eventually led me to write the book, you know, but that it was subversive in the minds of the Latter Day Saints. It was anti. Anti what we believe is Latter Day Saints. I thought, well, if it's so powerful, let me try my hand at doing something that can be supportive of the culture. And what Saturday's Warrior was, it was something that was supportive.

John Dehlin [00:25:59] So let me restate. So you. Your involvement with Capitol Records and was sending share in the entertainment industry. You. You loved it, but you felt like maybe it was having a toxic impact on our culture. And then it ran counter to the mores and the values of Mormon that

Lex de Azevedo [00:26:15] I believed that you believed in. Right.

John Dehlin [00:26:17] And you're watching Vietnam protests and Woodstock and the late 60s, early 70s, Beatles, Rolling Stones, drug culture, immorality. Are you like panicking that either our American culture or our church in specific is sort of careening in the wrong direction?

Lex de Azevedo [00:26:34] No, not at all. But I was protective. I was a young father. And if you think back when you start on that road and you have little children and you're very concerned, you're concerned about your culture, you're concerned about where you live and their future. And I have always. I don't know, I just. I felt that I am more a missionary than a musician. I'm a communicator. I use music. And I wanted to give something that spoke to the LDS culture that had never happened. That's all it was. I didn't see any monetary benefit from that at all. So it turns out BYU in 1974, Thor, I think it is, heard about the Saturday's Warrior. Doug was actually by this time a writer at the BYU TV studio or film studios up there. And he had mentioned to somebody and they think, hey, this could be cool.

John Dehlin [00:27:32] Now you had put it on.

Lex de Azevedo [00:27:33] Never put it on. This is the. We're talking about a premiere now. It's just on paper at this point. It even finished. The music isn't even finished.

John Dehlin [00:27:40] Okay. It had never been performed. 70 something.

Lex de Azevedo [00:27:44] 74. Yeah. It was the year that Sonny and Cher finished.

John Dehlin [00:27:48] Okay. So word Gets around.

Lex de Azevedo [00:27:50] Word gets around, and the Festival of Mormon Arts decides to produce Saturday's Warrior. Now, Doug and I had had lengthy conversations about what this show was to look like, and I assumed it was going to look like what I thought it was going to look like, but I was too busy writing. And I think that might have been the summer I started with the Jacksons, because the producers of Sonny and on to produce some shows with the Jacksons five. And so in all of this, this is taking all my attention because, like, deadline and deadline and deadline and deadline, but my heart's really, you know, over here.

John Dehlin [00:28:28] Would you have met Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5?

Lex de Azevedo [00:28:30] Oh, yeah. I used to sit at the rehearsal piano with Michael and he'd say, okay, Mormon, play. We used to kid each other. He was a Jehovah's Witness, I was a Mormon, and I used to do gospel things for him. I'd sit down and I'd play a song. I said, hey, you think you ought to do it this way? And I'd take a song they'd do. I'd do a real gospel piano with it. And he'd say, whoa, you got soul, Mormon. You got soul.

John Dehlin [00:28:51] I called you Mormon. Do you have any memories of him or his brothers that would stick out?

Lex de Azevedo [00:28:57] The memories I have of a really, really sweet boy and a very cruel father. It breaks my heart when I think about. I found out, I didn't personally witness it, but the people there that the dad was giving him hormones, female hormones, to keep his voice from changing. He was the money of the Jackson five. His history proved he was the money, and the money was in that voice. And the fear was that if the voice changed, the money would go away.

John Dehlin [00:29:31] So, I mean, Jack was giving him hormones.

Lex de Azevedo [00:29:34] Yeah. And that's what the word was. And I believe it. I mean, it came from sources really, really, really close to him and to the family and things like that. Yeah, I spent a lot of time in the rehearsal hall with him.

John Dehlin [00:29:50] Super talented, I think.

Lex de Azevedo [00:29:52] Michael Jackson. There's only one Michael Jackson. He's beyond nobody. Nobody compares to Michael Jackson. There's only one. And a tragic life. Tragic life. But he was so sweet, and he was very sweet to me. And, yeah, it was a great experience.

John Dehlin [00:30:14] We didn't mention Sonny and share any reflections on.

Lex de Azevedo [00:30:17] That's a different story. I've never been treated so rudely in my life by Cher. Yes. I mean, it was just.

John Dehlin [00:30:26] And Sonny.

Lex de Azevedo [00:30:27] Yes, yes. I mean, it was like. I mean, I learned a great lesson, I remember. And it wasn't that it was the director, too. The director. I was in the recording studio. We were in the recording, prerecording the show. I got an orchestra. I'm conducting the orchestra, and the director's in the booth. And Sonny was there. And we had worked out this arrangement. And I had written the arrangement the way it was supposed to be. But Sonny was a musical greeting. I mean, he just didn't have any musical ability. And so he's in the booth trying to record the voice, and he's saying, that's not what we did. That's totally wrong. That's in the wrong key. And I wanted to say. I say, sonny, you're singing it in the wrong key. Sing it in the right key. It'll be fun. And then the director comes in front of all the musicians and everything. The director pushes the button, the talk back buck. And he says, that is the worst, worst arrangement I have ever heard in my life. That's a piece of crap. And everybody's listening to this, and everybody's kind of embarrassed, mostly for him, because the musicians knew that the arrangement was okay, but it was just the. Sonny and Cher was. It was abusive to a lot of the people.

John Dehlin [00:31:42] Very different.

Lex de Azevedo [00:31:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:43] Okay. Okay. So word gets around about Saturday's Warrior.

Saturday's Warrior Debuts and Becomes a Phenomenon

Lex de Azevedo [00:31:47] All right, so BYU's going to put it on. I am too busy to go to any of the rehearsals, and I'm really excited because Doug's telling me this is. They love it. This is going to be great. And I think, okay, good. I want to see it. So I fly up to this premiere. It was a couple days into it, and he's telling me it is a hit. It gets standing ovation. I'm thinking, doug, you can stand up and burp on stage or worse and get a standing ovation at byu. I mean, standing ovation doesn't mean anything.

John Dehlin [00:32:18] So somebody put on the full musical for the first time. And you weren't involved.

Lex de Azevedo [00:32:21] I was too busy working. So I go up halfway through there, and the show starts, and I am appalled. I start to get sick. I have a violent reaction to my creative things. Not that I think they're very good, because I don't really think they're that good. But just. I have a vision. And when it doesn't reach that vision, I have a very strong physical reaction because I put a lot of energy into this thing for, like, three, you know, three years. I guess I'm just. I can't believe what I'm saying. It's so bad. I had this idea of since we couldn't afford an orchestra, a choir. This massive sound coming from a choir, a big choir instead of a choir, I see six dancers flitting around on stage barefoot in tank tops and jeans, singing, who are these children? Oh, no, no. Get out of here. And so when the show was. And Doug was saying, aren't you. Isn't that great? You know, I said, doug, this show's dead. I never want to see this again, ever. It's dead.

John Dehlin [00:33:26] Wow.

Lex de Azevedo [00:33:27] And he said, what? What's the matter with you? We have a hit on our head, Doug. This show is dead. This is an embarrassment. And so I go home and just

John Dehlin [00:33:37] thinking, it's very dramatic.

Lex de Azevedo [00:33:38] Yeah. I mean, no, that's what I said. And that's how I felt. You know, it was such a disappointment. And seeing that completely clouded my vision. I hoped it was going to be something else, but I didn't for sure that it could be something else. We go home. That summer, Sunny shares canceled. We decided to move to Utah. We'd been through a meat shortage, a gasoline crisis. We had to evacuate our home because of earthquake and the van Norman Dan all. I said, okay, California's going to hell. We're out of here. We're going to go to Utah. I didn't know what I was going to do in Utah, but we were going to go. Sold our house at this time before we were going to leave in August. The Chatsworth stake we were in says, we want to put on a summer musical. And we heard you've written this, that Saturday's Warrior was a huge hit. I said, no, no. Saturday's Warrior is dead. It's horrible. We're not going to do that. And they said, well, why? What's wrong? I said, it just doesn't work. I thought it was going to work. And they said, well, why doesn't it work? I said, well, it was supposed to be this. It was supposed to be this. It was supposed to be this. And so what if we do it that way? I said, you're a steak. How can you do it that way? You don't have the resources to do it. No, we'll do it. We'll do it. So the young woman's president was a woman by the name of Ruth Louderburn. They prevail upon me to put this on.

John Dehlin [00:34:49] So rehearsals start in California.

Lex de Azevedo [00:34:51] In California. And they said, will you cast it? I said, yeah, I'll cast it. I call my brother to play Jimmy, my younger half brother. I call my other brother to play Todd. I call my aunt to play the matron. I call Carl Engelman, who had hired me at Capital, he and his wife to play the parents, their daughter, Sean Engelman, married to Shaun King. Now to play the role of pam, she's like, 13. And Mac and his gang is Paul Ingelman. I just cast it from the members of our ward, basically, you know, from. And. Because I. So anyway, rehearsals start, and I'm just working with them, and we have a nice big choir, a native voice choir. Marianne Mendenhall is going to conduct it, and she's really good. I know she'd do a good job with it. So we were going to. We're out of our home now, and we're going to move to Utah. But I'm staying at my mother's for a few days because we wanted to see the opening of Saturday's Wire. We have a dress rehearsal at Sherman Oaks Ward. The first time it all come together, and the choir is there, and the choir starts singing, who are these children coming down? And it's like, it's electric, this massive choir. And everybody in the cultural hall is like. And I'm watching the first time, and I'm thinking, oh, my gosh, there's something happening here. Well, the rest was history. The Chachewa State put it on, and they couldn't stop it.

John Dehlin [00:36:15] What year Was this event?

Lex de Azevedo [00:36:15] 70. Summer of 74, I believe. So in the midst of moving, so they couldn't stop it. And finally the stake president calls me and says, lex, we're not in. We're not in the. We're not in show business. I'm running a stake here. We got to stop this. But people are saying, oh, we want to bring people from Bakersfield. We're bringing people from San Diego, mission presidents, we're bringing the whole mission. And people are coming in. And I'm watching this thing, and I'm thinking, I had no idea. I had a vision, I had a dream, but I had no idea. And so, all right, what's converging now? We're ready to move. We buy a house in Linden, Utah, an A frame on Locust Avenue. It's still there. We're going to move to Locust. We move up there. Alan Bly, the producer of Sonny and Cher and of Jackson and things like that, he calls me, says, look, we're doing a new show with Sonny Bono. I said, you're kidding. You're kidding me. We're doing a show with Lenny Bono, and we want you to come back and meet music director. And I said, alan, I moved to Utah. And he calls me Back a few days later and offers me more money. I said, wait, Alan, I moved. I'm living in Utah. I'm not going to work. He says, why do you want me anyway? Because you can get so and so. You can get so and so. I'm still young and new in the business. And then I learned a great lesson. He said, I want you because I can trust you. I said, what does that mean? Does it mean not my music? He said, we counted all of the bills, the arrangers bills, which you were working on and what we would do. We get paid by page. We'd write a score page of music has all the instruments on it. One big page, write the trumpet, trombone, saxophone, strings, blah, blah, on one page, then the next, that's four bars and another four bars on that page and hand it to the copyist and the copyist copies it. We get paid per page of music. I never wanted to do an interning my own bill because I didn't ever want to be in a situation of making a mistake. So I used to let the copyist turn in my bill. Well, he decides to go through the bills of all the arrangers and he said, you were the only one that was honest. I was just dumbfounded. I had no idea. So anyway, he called me. So instead of moving to Utah, we moved back into our rented home in California for me to finish the show, which was short lived. Sonny Bono, seriously. So we were there for one season and then Saturday's warrior has to come. Stake president calls us. I can't do this. It's got to stop. And people are calling me, they're calling me from all over the country. We ought to see the show. So we decide. We had sold our home and we had some money. One of the toughest decisions I ever had to make in my life was to charge admission for Saturday. As a lawyer, I felt this isn't right. I cannot do this. This was a work of love. This was a. To build the kingdom of God. I cannot charge admission, but I was between a rock and a hard place. We had to build sets. We needed a truck to travel those sets. We needed to do advertising, we needed to pay the cast, we needed a sound system. We needed about $100,000 in order. Not that the stake was going to stop it. So the young men, young women's president, Ruth Latimer, came to work. We started embryo music, the very beginning of it. And she was with me for 25 years, my right arm for 25 years, as we built embryo music. It's History. Saturday's warriors, now history. You know, what happened with it? We never did get to Utah, Stayed in Los Angeles. I was called to be bishop shortly after this. And there's a very interesting story on that, too. I don't know if you want to go there now or want to keep on Saturday's Warrior. Do you want. So everybody has some doctrinal questions on Saturdays. Warrior. And I love these questions. I love these questions. Go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:40:13] No, we'll get that. We'll get to those later. Embryo Music. So the first album of Embryo Music was the Saturday's Warrior album.

Lex de Azevedo [00:40:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:20] And it sold what?

Lex de Azevedo [00:40:21] Saturday's Warrior is a gold record that has never been in a record store.

John Dehlin [00:40:25] So, I mean, it's sold over 100,000 copies.

Lex de Azevedo [00:40:27] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, a million dollars.

John Dehlin [00:40:29] What's cool? What's cool?

Lex de Azevedo [00:40:30] Well, I think a million dollars, I think. Okay, now, so Saturday's Warrior grossed over

John Dehlin [00:40:37] a million dollars in revenue in the album.

Lex de Azevedo [00:40:41] Many times over. A million dollars. The whole thing. It was hard. I don't know for sure, because we kind of packaged it together with the shows and we used the album to help fund traveling of the shows and things like that. But Saturday's Warrior was. I had no idea. I couldn't possibly have known.

John Dehlin [00:41:02] Do you have a sense for how many albums sold? Hundred thousand.

Lex de Azevedo [00:41:06] Hundreds of thousands.

John Dehlin [00:41:07] Hundreds of thousands.

Lex de Azevedo [00:41:08] Yeah. It's been on cd, it's been on eight track, it's been on cassette. It's been on. And my biggest problem was that Deseret book wouldn't carry it. No, we sell books.

John Dehlin [00:41:17] Eventually they did.

Lex de Azevedo [00:41:18] Oh, yeah, they did.

John Dehlin [00:41:20] But at first you're saying they wouldn't carry it. They wouldn't carry it for how long?

Lex de Azevedo [00:41:24] Until people screamed at them and yelled at them. How come? We want Saturday's Warrior and we want Saturday's Warrior.

John Dehlin [00:41:29] So you generated millions of dollars of revenue from the Saturday's Warrior album?

Lex de Azevedo [00:41:35] I don't know. I wouldn't say. I don't know if it's millions from the album, but with the music, the printed music and the album and the show. Millions.

John Dehlin [00:41:43] Oh, wow. Okay, great. Millions with a Mormon audience.

Lex de Azevedo [00:41:47] Yeah. Are you saying charging $4 and $6

John Dehlin [00:41:52] for what?

Lex de Azevedo [00:41:53] Admission sometimes to the music to the show? Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:41:57] So did you have a licensing arrangement? So it was put on in my stake in Houston growing up. Houston, Texas Steak. Keith. Keith and Lisa Brown, who became the parents of the five Browns.

Lex de Azevedo [00:42:11] Oh.

John Dehlin [00:42:12] They performed in the Houston production of Saturday's Warrior. I was Ernie. Okay. Lisa was Julie, I believe. Keith. What's the paper dream. Yeah. What's the character? Todd.

Lex de Azevedo [00:42:28] Todd? Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:28] I believe Keith played Todd. So would we have paid some fee or would you have gotten some percentage of receipts?

Lex de Azevedo [00:42:37] I didn't do that. Doug eventually handled that. Doug has kind of managed for his whole life. Managed. Saturday's lawyer. I'm the kind of person. Once I saw it.

John Dehlin [00:42:47] Great.

Lex de Azevedo [00:42:48] I want to move on.

John Dehlin [00:42:49] Okay.

Lex de Azevedo [00:42:49] I don't want to see it again.

John Dehlin [00:42:50] But you set up the business for it.

Lex de Azevedo [00:42:52] I set up the business. And Ruth, the touring business that I can show now, just so you understand when I say millions of dollars, there's also huge costs. Huge cost. We're talking about gross. Gross. And I took that money and built Embryo Music with it. Because Embryo wasn't. We then did. We were the first ones. I did the London Symphony Orchestra. We did hymn albums. We did all kinds of things. And I.

John Dehlin [00:43:17] All Mormon themed.

Lex de Azevedo [00:43:18] All. Embryo was entirely an lds. The first LDS music company.

Embryo Music and the LDS Music Industry

John Dehlin [00:43:22] Okay. And who are some of the talent? Were the Osmonds on Embryo?

Lex de Azevedo [00:43:27] No, Osmonds. You wouldn't call the Osmonds LDS artists. They are like. I don't call the King family LDS artists. They're artists, but they don't focus on the LDS community. These were people like Kenneth Cope, eventually. There were some earlier ones. We had a lot of instrumental stuff. At first. I did My Turn on Earth. It was very successful. Which was her mother, Carolyn Pearson. Yeah, we wrote that.

John Dehlin [00:43:51] He did the music, she did the lyrics. Is that kind of how it was when you say touring company? Really quick. So you would send out a cast, the original cast, to perform all throughout the country in local steakhouses?

Lex de Azevedo [00:44:04] No, we did not perform steakhouses because we charged admission.

John Dehlin [00:44:07] So you. So you performed where?

Lex de Azevedo [00:44:09] In the biggest halls in Phoenix, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles. I have to tell you a funny story.

John Dehlin [00:44:17] Would you fill them?

Lex de Azevedo [00:44:18] Oh, are you kidding?

John Dehlin [00:44:19] With Mormons?

Lex de Azevedo [00:44:20] Yes. No. I mean, I was surprised. No one was more surprised than me. So we booked the Phoenix. I think it was called the Phoenix Plaza. It's like a 3,000 seat theater. And we booked it for a Friday night, I think Thursday night. Friday night. No, Friday night. Saturday matinee. Saturday night and a Monday night performance. Three, six nights, 12,000 people.

John Dehlin [00:44:43] Wow.

Lex de Azevedo [00:44:44] So we're booking the Ruth Latimer, who was. Who was the young women's president stake first did. She was looking at. And she's telling me this. She says, lex, they don't want to give it to us. They said, it'll be a disaster. We won't make any Money and we won't be able to pay the hall. And what should I do? I said, well, you guarantee them the money. How are we going to guarantee him? Just guarantee them the money. Give them the money. Guarantee them the money. Whatever they need, pay half of it. Whatever they want. They call us back. Tickets go on sale, and they call us back and they say, okay, what's going on here? We've sold more tickets in three days to Saturday's A Warrior than we have done in three weeks for Elton John.

John Dehlin [00:45:26] Wow.

Lex de Azevedo [00:45:27] And that's the way it was every. We must have done. And then there's two casts. There's one going in Utah. And it was the original cast.

John Dehlin [00:45:36] The same people who sang on the album?

Lex de Azevedo [00:45:38] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:45:38] So they became the original touring cast as well, and they toured.

Lex de Azevedo [00:45:42] The album was a demo. See, I didn't ever think it would go anywhere. So as a cast memento, we got the cast together and I played organ. All it is, if you listen to the original soundtrack, it is just a drum, a bass and an organ and a piano. And I played the piano and the choir and the cast. We went and did this thing for the cast. Well, it ended up being this huge, huge hit, right?

John Dehlin [00:46:10] Yeah, huge.

Lex de Azevedo [00:46:11] And it changed. What it did is it launched an interest, for better or for worse, in LDS cultural events. I mean, put on by individuals, not just by the church, not just by stakes and things like that.

John Dehlin [00:46:27] Like what?

Lex de Azevedo [00:46:28] Oh, there was a number of musicals came out. Janice Cap Parry wrote a musical. Several other people wrote musicals. People started writing pop songs. There were no pop songs. The very first pop songs were Saturday's Warrior.

John Dehlin [00:46:41] So it sort of spawned an industry

Lex de Azevedo [00:46:44] of Mormon pop entertainment and the doctrinal questions. I love this. I love these discussions about the doctrinal questions. Saturday's Warrior. Okay, dude, Saturday's Warrior is fiction, okay? It is not a sacrament meeting talk. It is a theatrical piece. We never intended to preach the gospel of Saturday's Warrior. So the first thing that comes up is, well, did we choose our spouses in heaven? You know, that comes up all the time. And people have sent me letters that. Did you know that Elder McConkie spoke to the COEDs of BYU and told them not to wait around for their preordained spouses? And did you know that President Kimball said this? And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, you're right. I got a file cabinet with hundreds of letters whose patriarchal blessings said that they chose their mate in the pre existence. So I think I like to. I have three categories there's things that are doctrinal, there's things that are not doctrinal, and there's things that are just undoctrinal. You know what I mean? There's just a lot of stuff. This is undoctrinal. Doesn't matter.

John Dehlin [00:47:53] But in some sense, that shaped generations of Mormon thought.

Lex de Azevedo [00:47:57] Do you know, to this day, to this day, people will come up and give me gifts when they find out who I am. And they say, my name is Emily. My name is Julie. We sang Circle of Our Love at our wedding, and they give me presents. And they said, if I ever thought, if I'd ever meet you, it was very embarrassing. Last night we were in Church in St. George and this lovely lady, probably 40, got three little kids and she's from Vegas. We're coming out of gospel doctrine class and she throws her arm around and she says, I love you, I love you. And my wife's standing right there. I think, oh, my gosh, please. And she said, you saved my life. You saved my life. And I said, I'm really, I'm honored. Thank you very much. I mean, I always acknowledge. But I just. I wonder. I don't get it. I don't understand it. A lot of it.

John Dehlin [00:48:56] You don't understand it.

Lex de Azevedo [00:48:58] Yeah, a lot of it.

John Dehlin [00:48:59] So, like my mom. Sorry, Margi. I was talking to Margi, my wife, before I came over here. Margi's parents joined the church in 1978 as converts. Her dad went to Yale medical school. He was an atheist. Her mom was a Catholic, elapsed Catholic from Vermont. They joined the church in 78, having been zero population people. So they had had two kids. Margi's older brother and Margi, they were done because they weren't going to have more than two kids. Because zero population.

Lex de Azevedo [00:49:29] Right.

John Dehlin [00:49:30] And they're, you know, people.

Lex de Azevedo [00:49:32] That was bigger than. People don't know. It's not big now, but it was big then.

John Dehlin [00:49:36] It was. Yeah, yeah. And so once they joined the church, however, Margi's dad is immediately cast in the production of Saturday's warrior in Washington D.C. potomac. He plays Mac. Right. They become so inspired by the musical that they decide to have four more children.

Lex de Azevedo [00:49:59] I've heard your story hundreds of times.

John Dehlin [00:50:02] After they had stopped at two. Margi's mom's in her 30s, she has four. Four more children. Catherine, my wife's younger sister, the poem that she was given sort of to celebrate the birth was, who are these children coming down? Right. That was. And these four children would not exist if they hadn't Joined the church. And if they hadn't have been involved in Saturday's Warrior. And, I mean, I am sure there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of stories like that.

Lex de Azevedo [00:50:33] This I've had last year. What was it, last year or the year before? I'm over at Deseret Book and I'm checking out, and they mention. Some mention my name. I get a discount Deseret Book. And this guy follows me out of the store and he says, excuse me, can I talk to you? He said, I have invented this snorkel that is an amazing snorkel. And I have on the back of my car and can I give it to you? And I'm thinking, sure, I snorkel. And he's still. I mean, it's so sweet. I mean, it's such a genuine outpouring of love and gratitude. And when I say I don't. I don't mean rude. I don't get it. I mean, in a way, I do get it. But I can't say that to anybody in my life that you have affected your music or your. I've read great books that I love, but I'm just humbled. And the only thing I can is something much bigger than me. It's not me. I tried to do it again. I couldn't do it. I wrote four musicals that failed miserably.

John Dehlin [00:51:44] Really?

Lex de Azevedo [00:51:45] Since then, yeah. So I think, to me, it was. I believe it was the hand of God. I made up my mind that where I was going to go. I'm leaving this site. I'm no longer One Foot in Babylon because it pays well and One Foot in the Kingdom on Sundays. I made a choice and I felt inspired to do it. And John, the desires of my heart, in spite of the torched landscape, the scorched landscape of my life, much as it was torched by myself, in spite of that. The desires of my heart have always been good to do good. And I think the only way I can make sense of it is that the hand of God working while I was doing Sonny and Cher over here. But there was something I was doing. I remember playing for Julie. I played Julia. I remember which song it was. You were a little girl and you were just sitting under the piano. Which song was it? I don't know if it was Sailing on or something like that. And you're sitting, and I think it was Sailing On. I started doing those cascading chords. And I remember feeling that there was something there more than just a C major cascading triad. And I remember when the first time I heard those chords came to me, bing, bing of Saturday's Warrior. I thought, where did those come from? I've never written those before. Where did that come from? And I believe in the power of revelation. I believe in the power of inspiration. I believe in the power of God in our lives. I absolutely do. And I have other experiences stronger than this. I mean, that I'll tell you about in my life that has shaped my life. In spite of my own sins, weaknesses and inadequacies, I've come to learn that God grants us more according to the desires of our hearts. And when we desire things like this, that great, great things can happen.

John Dehlin [00:53:58] What was the hunger that you felt? Do you even have a sense for it within Mormonism? Why did people want and need Saturday's words?

Lex de Azevedo [00:54:06] You had to be there. You said it. You said it. There was zero population. There was the record industry blaring at you, this garbage. And you felt like the world was against you. And since your kids now, or baby boomers, the people were growing up and bombarded with this. It was like, help me. Somebody help me. Give me some scaffolding for the kingdom. Give me some scaffolding for my family. And what I think we did with Saturday's Warrior and my turn on Earth and Embryo music at large, what I tried to do was to give people scaffolding. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [00:54:47] Sure.

Lex de Azevedo [00:54:48] I have never considered. I do not think I am a good, great composer. I'm a good tune Smith composer. And I'm not a fan of what I've done, but I know that when I have sought the power of God in my life, that I have been able to do things that I can't do on my own.

The Characters and Songs of Saturday's Warrior

John Dehlin [00:55:07] Can you talk just briefly about the characters in Saturday's Warrior and what they represent for you?

Lex de Azevedo [00:55:13] Okay, give me one.

John Dehlin [00:55:17] Todd.

Lex de Azevedo [00:55:18] Right, Todd.

John Dehlin [00:55:19] What does Todd represent?

Lex de Azevedo [00:55:20] Well, first of all, the film today, to me, is the best representation of Saturday's Lawyer, the film that you released a year ago. The film is in the stage play. You are all right. What is the weakness, dramatic weakness of Saturday's Warrior? It is a melodrama giant, huge. You got this big cast, all these characters. You don't have time to develop anybody. You don't really know who Jimmy Flinders is. You don't even know why he's doing what he's doing. You don't even know Todd is. He's an artist in a park. You don't know his story. You don't know Mr. And Mrs. Flinders because was written As a concert. There was no sets. There was nothing. It's a concert. You walk out on stage and you sing and the choir goes in. It was a concert with a storyline like what we saw at Van Nuys Baptist Church. It was an overgrown concert with characters and a storyline. In the film, I was able to create, to me, Saturday's Warrior. And who is Jimmy Flinders? And it's autobiographical, too. Jimmy Flinders is Jim Morrison from a Mormon family. You see the film, you'll see that. Who's the family? The family is like the King family. It's like the Osmonds. It's a musical, LDS family. Let your light so shine. Develop your talents, all of that. But this kid's really got it, and he becomes a star in his own right. And so the characters are developed, and mom and dad Flinders, they're just like your average Mormon. The Browns, they're like. You know what I mean? There's so many in the church today like that. And what is the lesson of Saturday's Warrior? To me, the most powerful lesson is towards the end of the show when Jimmy's sister Pam dies and he's now a rock star. He's estranged from his family. You get that he's using drugs, he's involved in, you name it, you know, a rock star life. His twin sister dies, and he comes home and he looks like hell.

John Dehlin [00:57:27] He's Pam, right?

Lex de Azevedo [00:57:28] Pam. She dies, and he comes back home, and his dad thinks he's back home. And the temptation was to wrap it up. He's home, and he's going to go on his mission. And he. You know what I mean? It's all. Everything's wonderful. But he says, dad thinks he's there to stay. He says, no, Dad, I got a gig tonight. He's got to go back to San Francisco where he's going. And to me, the most wonderful thing is that, dad, it was all about, we got to go on a mission. You got to go on a mission. You mean you're going to go out for this band instead of going on a mission? And this conflict within the family, the pain that so many LDS families feel when a child chooses something other than A, you know, here's A. Choose A. Why do I want to choose B? No, no, no, don't choose B. Choose A. And so he comes back home. The dad thinks he's home, and he says, no, Dad, I got to go. And the dad starts thinking. He says, jimmy, I want you to know something. No matter where you go, whatever you do, I will always love you. To me, that is the most important message in the show.

John Dehlin [00:58:40] Did that come through in the first version? No, that's developed since then.

Lex de Azevedo [00:58:44] Yeah. In this film. In the film, I was able to flesh out the characters as I have always seen them.

John Dehlin [00:58:54] I'm gonna admit that I haven't seen it yet.

Lex de Azevedo [00:58:56] That's okay.

John Dehlin [00:58:56] I didn't want to spoil my original. Is it worth seeing? Are you proud of the movie?

Lex de Azevedo [00:59:04] I wish I'd had another million dollars. There's nothing wrong with the film that another million dollars would not fix, but I think it works. To take Saturday's Warrior and make a film is a difficult thing because it's a concert. And I have resisted it for 40 years. People have thrown money, say, I'll fund it. Please make the film. I'll pay for it. I have resisted it because Saturday's a way, to me, was something sacred. I know where it came from.

John Dehlin [00:59:34] How did the VCR tape get created that you've never seen? How did that happen?

Lex de Azevedo [00:59:38] That is a story which would be very unkind for me to go into in great detail. I will just tell you the bottom line. The bottom line was I was forced and coerced into doing it. And that or a lawsuit. And I resolved. I will never, never be involved in a lawsuit where everybody loses except the lawyers, right? Never. So I let it go. I watched. And I don't want to hurt anybody's feeling because I'm not saying the people in it.

John Dehlin [01:00:07] People you weren't. But it's okay to say you weren't involved.

Lex de Azevedo [01:00:10] Yeah, I wasn't. But I mean, I don't want to hurt feelings of people who are in it because people love that. And today, people that. That's Saturday's Lawyer for most people. Is that the 1989 video? But you can't take a stage play and put a camera in front of it and call it a movie. You can't do that. Well, you can. They did, but it doesn't translate. If you want to make a play out of a book, you don't stand on the stage and read the book. No, you make a play out of it. And that didn't happen. So I watched five minutes of it, and I was as disappointed as the first time I saw Saturday's Warrior. I turned it off, went through up. Never watch it again. I didn't throw up.

John Dehlin [01:00:52] But later with the movie, you were able to implement more of your creative

Lex de Azevedo [01:00:55] vision once it became. And that was interesting because I resist. I didn't know how to make a movie. And may I Just say it came to me. How to make it. One day after I had decided never to make it. My daughters, Rachel and Emily are my partners here in the studio. Said, dad, come on, let's make it. Let's make it. No, no, I don't know how to make it.

John Dehlin [01:01:15] So they were your partners in it?

Lex de Azevedo [01:01:16] Uh huh.

John Dehlin [01:01:17] Okay.

Lex de Azevedo [01:01:18] And so they're the ones that actually pushed me to make it nice. But I think it works. I mean, you know, LDS films, because of the budget, are really more like TV movies of the week. You know what I mean? You just don't have the money. You don't have the resources.

John Dehlin [01:01:33] Right, Right.

Lex de Azevedo [01:01:34] So we did the best we could. And I thought that the crew was amazing. The cast is stellar. There's everybody in that cast is amazing.

John Dehlin [01:01:46] I want to talk about the songs. Just a few of the songs. If I mention some of the songs, can you just talk about.

Lex de Azevedo [01:01:51] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:01:51] All right. Circle of our Love.

Lex de Azevedo [01:01:54] Okay, what would you like to know?

John Dehlin [01:01:55] What comes to your mind? I'm going to just say something.

Lex de Azevedo [01:01:57] What comes to my mind. Comes to my mind is a tedious rhythm of the lyrics.

John Dehlin [01:02:09] That's not how it sung.

Lex de Azevedo [01:02:12] What I'm saying is when you write music, what you like to do is have. I love you, I love you, I love you. You know what I mean? It's all eighth notes. That's what bothers me when I listen to it. I'm not a huge fan of the song.

John Dehlin [01:02:31] You're not allowed to say that.

Lex de Azevedo [01:02:34] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:02:35] The circle of our love is more than.

Lex de Azevedo [01:02:39] No. All right, but does it work in the context? Yes. From a professional standpoint. There's so much. There's so much. It could be so much better.

John Dehlin [01:02:48] You're. You're. This is sacred. You're violating my sense of sacredness right now.

Lex de Azevedo [01:02:52] I am. No, I just.

John Dehlin [01:02:55] Circle of our Love.

Lex de Azevedo [01:02:56] It goes well, but listen, however, in the film, you will hear it sung better. The film, we opened it up a little bit more. We explained, expanded, we took more liberties. The film is. Is. Is. Is. Is better.

John Dehlin [01:03:10] I feel violated.

Lex de Azevedo [01:03:12] I know I shouldn't say this because I. People gonna hate me.

John Dehlin [01:03:14] Pulling together.

Lex de Azevedo [01:03:15] Pulling together. Oh, pulling together. Probably my least favorite.

John Dehlin [01:03:19] What do they do? If. Right.

Lex de Azevedo [01:03:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:21] We're.

Lex de Azevedo [01:03:21] My least favorite song on the show.

John Dehlin [01:03:24] What do I do?

Lex de Azevedo [01:03:25] Courage.

John Dehlin [01:03:26] Take forgiveness.

Lex de Azevedo [01:03:27] You know the song

John Dehlin [01:03:30] we got Father and mother, sister and brother.

Lex de Azevedo [01:03:33] You're not convincing.

John Dehlin [01:03:34] Together. I'm not doing it for you.

Lex de Azevedo [01:03:36] No. No.

John Dehlin [01:03:36] What?

Lex de Azevedo [01:03:38] No, it's not my favorite.

John Dehlin [01:03:39] Families. It's like Families.

Lex de Azevedo [01:03:40] I know. It's not my Favorite song in the show.

John Dehlin [01:03:43] What is wrong with you? Humble Way.

Lex de Azevedo [01:03:48] Humble Way in the film is cool. Humble Way works really cool.

John Dehlin [01:03:52] Who are the missionaries?

Lex de Azevedo [01:03:54] Can't remember their names. Alex boy, he's in it, but he's not one of the missionaries. He's the heavenly matron.

John Dehlin [01:03:59] Okay, that's a twist.

Lex de Azevedo [01:04:01] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:02] Okay. We are not the ordinary in the film.

Lex de Azevedo [01:04:06] It works really good. We've got a great gospel choir. I brought in the. It's called the. What's this? In Salt Lake. It's a great black choir. They came in and did it and we turned it into a real kind of R B, like a Motown. And it really kicks. It works well in the film.

John Dehlin [01:04:26] Sailing On.

Lex de Azevedo [01:04:27] Sailing On, I think is one of the better songs. I actually love Sailing On. When we started recording it, remember, I did it with just piano and organ and drums and a bass, but on the film we did it with strings and it was soared. It was beautiful. We were sitting there, Emily and Rachel and I were listening to the first track and we all teared up. We got really emotional.

John Dehlin [01:04:53] What does this song mean to you?

Lex de Azevedo [01:04:56] Oh, I think it's one of the beautiful, most beautiful lyrics. As you're being born, I mean, what is it? What's going to be? What's it like? What's down there? For me, you know, it's. I imagine there's a certain amount of trepidation, I can imagine, to come to this place. There's certainly. I think we had to know there was huge risks here. Huge risks.

John Dehlin [01:05:18] Do you believe in that literal narrative that we were all spirit children?

Lex de Azevedo [01:05:22] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:05:22] In the pre existence, looking down on Earth.

Lex de Azevedo [01:05:25] Well, I don't know if we're looking down on earth, but I'll tell you something. I absolutely know that we are indestructible. Eternal spirits. I absolutely know that we are indestructible. There's nothing can hurt us. There is nothing for you or any of us to fear. Nothing. We're all going to die. That's the good news. So nobody's getting out of here alive. But we were born to die. And this is the school of the gods. I know that my whole life is fashioned after that. That's why my whole understanding of the gospel. We are in the school of the gods. As man is, God once was, and as God is, man may become. That is one of the most beautiful teachings of the Restoration. We get caught in all these other things. That's amazing. The impact of that. If that is true, do you know what that means? And the other One, this is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. Do you get the impact of that? No other church teaches that. It's not anywhere else. If that is true, that is the greatest thing, one of the greatest things that have come out of the Restoration. So one day I was pondering this. I was walking along. The older I get, the more I talk with God. And I wave my. I don't feel like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. People stop me and say, are you okay? You know, I'm walking and I'm talking God. And so I was pondering that one day, this is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. Okay, I get it. God's not a dentist during the week and a God on the weekends. This is a full time gig. He's a creator. Then the next thought came to me is, well, God, if this is your work in glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man, how's that going for you? Because according to what I believe, it's not going that well. You must be really unhappy. I see a lot of people in my ward, kids have left, supposedly left the church and they're miserable. Their families and they won't talk to them. And there's animosity within families. I said, but you of all these children, and this is your work and your glory. And I look what's going on in the world. How many people have even known of Jesus Christ since the beginning of time? How many people have ever heard of the Restoration? So how's it going for you? And I came to the following. He's either the most miserable of all creatures or there is much that we do not know, that we do not understand, and that our lives have a purpose. And the courses we take during our life, I think are important. Life is not a pass test, fail every day, pass, fail. I think it is this wonderful, marvelous learning experience on the road to godhood. And while we're on the subject, I'll get to the end game. The purpose of the School of the Gods is the school of love. God is love. You can get 100% in attendance 101. You can get 100% in home teaching 102, you can get 100% in genealogy 103. But it's graduate studies in love. That's why we're here. It's how we treat other people. That's the end game. And that's the purpose of life. And that's why our enemies are our friends. Isn't that what Jesus said? Bless those that curse you and despitefully use you and love your because without enemies, how could we learn to love as God loves? It's easy to love those that, that think we're talented, laugh at our jokes that are politically aligned with you. But it is those that disagree with us that teach us how to love as God loves. And I believe that he loves unconditionally. And that's what we're here to learn. That's the end game for me.

The Theology Behind Saturday's Warrior

John Dehlin [01:09:15] So for you, the theology behind Saturday's Warrior, you still kind of believe the core theology, that man that God was once a man, that God became an exalted man.

Lex de Azevedo [01:09:26] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:09:27] That we are gods in embryo.

Lex de Azevedo [01:09:28] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:09:29] And that we have the option or the potential of becoming God someday?

Lex de Azevedo [01:09:33] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:09:34] And that we existed as spirits before we came to this earth conscious that he organized them into matter with personalities.

Lex de Azevedo [01:09:42] There's so much we don't know.

John Dehlin [01:09:44] But that foundational thing you do believe, absolutely.

Lex de Azevedo [01:09:47] To me, that's the core. That's the most beautiful thing of all. As man is God once was, and as God as man may become. I know that through every part of my body.

John Dehlin [01:10:03] Do you remember this is a total sidetrack, but do you remember when the God Makers book and movie came out and we and Gordon Behink who was interviewed on national television and asked about that couplet and he sort of distanced himself from it.

Lex de Azevedo [01:10:23] Which couplet?

John Dehlin [01:10:24] That as men, as God once was, and as God and man may become. And he basically said, you know, I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it.

Lex de Azevedo [01:10:32] Right. Well, here's the interesting thing about is not official church doctrine in terms of. Has the First Presidency at some point said this is official church doctrine? No, it was Wilford Woodruff had this revelation and he was, I think he was in England when he had it. And he wrote down, he says, the thought and he knew it was from God. He went and told Brigham Young. Brigham Young says Brother Woodruff, that is true. He went and told Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith said that is true. And Joseph Smith taught that in the King Follett like a day later taught it. Now there are doctrines in the church which we teach and they're doctrines which change too, that are not necessarily official doctrines. But so what? To me, that is the foundation of my belief. And as I pray and I ponder at my age, I now have what I never had before. I have time. So I spend sometimes hours I'll spend in a day walking and talking with God and asking questions and searching and our faith. How do I put this? We drink downstream. That's our problem. If my faith was dependent on only what I learned in Sunday school and in sacramentian talks, I would be quite a different person. I have always believed that we drink upstream. Drinking upstream is the source.

John Dehlin [01:12:08] What does that mean?

Lex de Azevedo [01:12:08] It means God. And the closest we get to God is the Scriptures. And I look at the Scriptures and I read them. I read the Book of Mormon every year, just from COVID to cover. And then I study it, you know, subjects, but I read it. The desire of my heart is to know God. When I'm praying, God, who are you? Show yourself to me and I'll say, heavenly Mother, who are you? I want to know you. And I believe that the spirits are right here with us. I believe the spirit world is here. That's been taught. I don't know if that's official doctrine, but it's certainly been taught by the brethren. And when my dad died or my mother died, sometimes don't say, here's where we get out. We get hung up on terms. Oh, you're praying, Heavenly Mother. No, I'm not praying to Heavenly Mother. But I said, heavenly Mother, I want to know you. I want to know you.

John Dehlin [01:12:58] You're speaking to her.

Lex de Azevedo [01:12:59] I'm speaking to her and my mother. Say, I pray to my mother. No, but mom, one time I was walking and I said, mom, I want to apologize. You gave me so much in your later years. All you wanted me to do was accompany you so you could sing, and I was too busy for you. Mom, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And so I have these conversations and my knowledge, my testimony of the gospel comes. I call it drinking upstream. Because I hear a lot of things. I just. It's cultural and it is a viewpoint, people looking at the gospel from the cultural standpoint. And for me, it's not helpful. And every Sunday I pray. I pray, God help me not to be judgmental at what's said, you know, and what I hear open my heart so that I can be supportive of other people in their journey. Because there's people there in the church who've been in it a year. There's people who have been out of it their whole life that are in it. You have this huge. The gospel net brings all these people in. And my journey is my journey. And God has lengthened the days of my probation so that I'm 74 and I'm still Have energy and I'm still going. And so I am now learning. I'm figuring things out that I didn't know before.

John Dehlin [01:14:20] Where are the brethren in the stream? Are they upstream or downstream? Joseph Fielding smith, Chris R. McConkie.

Lex de Azevedo [01:14:27] You mean the current brethren or general authorities in general? What do you ask?

John Dehlin [01:14:31] I mean, so you talked about when you broke your leg. You read all those books, Talmadge and Wood Stowe, and you went on to read Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McCon. You can't even buy a copy of Mormon doctrine anymore because that's been mothballed.

Lex de Azevedo [01:14:44] Well, it's been. No, it's been changed. There's been stuff that's changed.

John Dehlin [01:14:46] It's complete, it's out of print. Joseph Felix Smith stuff's out of print, out of fashion. My point with Gordon McHenckley was, you know, we got so much backlash from evangelical Christianity that we backed off of that doctrine that man can become gods. You won't read much of that in the curriculum. And you know, I'm not trying to change or even mess with beliefs other than to note that a lot of the theology and doctrine that informed Saturday's Warrior and that seems to be solidified in your beautiful religious worldview. The church seems to be sort of distancing itself from or sort of downplaying.

Lex de Azevedo [01:15:26] I don't think that I'll tell you. When I went on mission, we were there to proselyte. Dang. I wiped my feet off.

John Dehlin [01:15:32] You dusted your feet? Yeah.

Lex de Azevedo [01:15:34] But that was my view at the time. And when I was a child, I spoke as a child and as a man. I speak as a man and as an older man. I'm really excited what I can learn. Because when I learn something, I'll put it down. I'll put down, put it away. I got something better now. And Joseph Smith did that once he learned something. This 14 year old boy, he had no idea what he was getting into. Lehi had no idea what he was getting into. If Lehi knew what he was getting into, he would have gotten the gold plates from the get go. He would have gotten Ishmael's daughters from the get go. Got a couple of them with steel bows so they had to break and had a course in shipbuilding. He didn't know where he was going. I don't think that Nephi, when he starts out in the Book of Mormon, he understands the fullness of the gospel. He may not have even stood the Godhead. And so I see the church as this living, growing thing. And sometimes we get in the way of it. We want orthodoxy. We want to codify it and to prove that it's perfect because it doesn't change. Well, it does change. It does change. Our doctrine changes, and it grows, and it should. And there's many great and beautiful things pertaining to the kingdom of God that will yet be revealed. I want to know those. I want to know this now. Do I have any issues? I have had personal issues. I've had some discussions that would really surprise you with members of the 12 over not religious things, but what I thought were very, very serious issues. And I'll just bring up one. When I was involved in LDS marketing through embryo music, I continually did battle with Deseret Books, which I felt was a monopoly. And so one time, some friends of mine that owned a bookstore in Idaho, they came to me and they knew that I was outspoken and I would not afraid to whatever. And they said, we don't know what to do. Deseret Book is moving into our town, opening up a bookstore across the street. We'll be out of business. We can't sell it. I got two kids on a mission, and that was in a. That had come as an end of a lot of problems of the church being in business. And I had actually worked for Bonneville. I was acquainted with the problems that arise when the church gets in business. And so I, after complaining, I was led to a general authority who was head of the whole thing. He's now passed away. And we had this conversation. And I was telling. Complaining, I said, you know, it's a monopoly. It's not fair to other members of the church to put them out of business. It's a game of telestial pursuit where one wins and another loses. And you shouldn't be playing that game. Your game is celestial pursuit, where everybody wins, everybody goes to heaven. That's the game. And he says, and we're talking. He says, oh, you mean the competition is too much for. And he's talking to the bookstore, and I was complaining about why are my records mark and spying out and Deseret Books are face out, you know. And he says, well, if the fire is too heat, get out of the fire. And I said, elder, oh. And he says, are you saying that we don't need church? You mean. Well, we don't need the Deseret News, and we don't, you know. I said, elder, blah, blah, blah. This may come surprise to you, but I have raised nine children in Los Angeles without the. The Deseret News. How could I possibly do that. And then he said, well, he was talking about competition. He says, the competition is too hot. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the fire. And I said, right now, you are not Elder Jones to me. You are Mr. Jones. You are not speaking your role as a general authority. You are speaking in your role as a man. And I said, in my experience in the church, I've served as a bishop twice, and I've served in high council. I've taught early morning seminary, and I've had many of the colleagues of the church. I said, I have never had anything but beautiful experiences through the priesthood correlation program. But these experiences are wrong and hurtful. So I called Elder Oaks, and I love Elder Oaks. I know people. He's strong. You know, he's obviously a lawyer, and his daughter's a very good friend. And I said, elder Oaks, I just got to vent. I said, this is just wrong, this competitive thing with church businesses against. Remember, you know, really. Does Bonneville really need to build a recording studio? You know, there's more recording studios in Salt Lake than any other city in the world, and you're putting others out of business. And so he said. I remember his words. And he says, lex, we are not. We do not think the same. Talking of 12. We think differently.

John Dehlin [01:20:24] Meaning the quorum of the 12.

Lex de Azevedo [01:20:25] Yeah. We have different opinions. And the older guard comes going back from Brigham Young, where Brigham Young was a monopolist. You know, he started businesses and he controlled them and he profited from them. And he says, my heart is with you, and I agree with you. He says, but like the iceberg, sometimes our movements seem imperceptible. I said, thank you, Elder Oaks. That means so much to me because I didn't hear it from the other person. Now we're talking about general authorities. I have never. Maybe it's because of my father died. I never worshiped, looked up to any man in my life. Closest was President Kimball. I love President Kimball. I was a bishop, and I loved his suffering, I loved his kindness. But I am not the kind where general authority walks in the room and says, you know, we're human beings. We're all just human beings. There's only one, and that's Christ. All others fall short. But do I sustain them in our calling? Yes. Do I sustain them? I love the conference talks. Do I agree with everything? Is everything there for me? No. There's some things I hear at times that I say, hmm, interesting. But I go on, because my faith isn't rooted in that. My faith is rooted in a personal testimony, revelation. Does that make sense? So it doesn't matter? Six members of the Quorum of the twelve Abbasites, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. If this church, people leave the church in mass and we're down to a small group band of Christians, 300 people, it doesn't matter to me. I shouldn't say it doesn't matter, but you know what I mean. That's not where my faith, that the church has to grow. It has to be bigger. No, that's not where it's at. When I was called, interesting thing, shortly after Saturday's Warrior, I was called to be bishop, no one was more shocked than I had it not been for one experience. Here I am working in Hollywood, you know, in rock, still working in Hollywood and still doing a lot of stuff, arranging for other people. I did not. Bishops were accountants, insurance, some dentists, a few doctors, but, you know, that's what bishops were.

John Dehlin [01:22:42] Lawyers.

Lex de Azevedo [01:22:43] Yeah, lawyers. And so we have a new bishop, we move into the Studio City ward, we have a new bishop and we're sitting in the church with a family. Bishop is sustained and as clear as can be. The thought comes to me, bishop Wood is going to die and you're going to be the next bishop. And I go, okay, where did that come from? Was that Satan or what? Where did that come from? Is that some deep down sense of vanity and pride that I want to be bishop? What was that? But it was so startling. Six months later, Bishop Wood died and the sick president called me in and I was weeping because I knew, I knew what was going on. And he said, the Lord has released Bishop Wood and has called you to be bishop. And I couldn't say anything. He says, you know, don't you? I said, yeah, I do. Those are the kind of things, John, that I've had in my life and more that are stronger than secular knowledge. Secular knowledge. I've also learned that enough facts can be assembled to present any side of any opinion. That's why we have liberals and conservatives. I listened to seven hours of Senate testimony on climate change and I can't. How can so many people see the same facts so differently? Facts prove everything and nothing. Not that they're not valuable. Did I stop this conversation?

John Dehlin [01:24:23] No, this is great. I'm gonna. You know, there's some listeners who are saying they want me to challenge your pushback. That's not what I do on Mormon stories, but I do have. I will have some follow ups to the things you're talking about.

Lex de Azevedo [01:24:34] Challenge my pushback on what?

John Dehlin [01:24:36] I mean, they're just like, you know, people just always want to see kind of a.

Lex de Azevedo [01:24:41] What am I pushing back on?

John Dehlin [01:24:42] No, no, no. They're asking me to push back on you. Oh, and that's not.

Lex de Azevedo [01:24:45] Go ahead, go ahead.

John Dehlin [01:24:46] Well, we're about to break for lunch, and I love. I love listening to the. To the way you've responded. We were going through some of the song titles, and it was really fun to see that come From Sailing on because that was a kind of a launching pad into your core theology and your views on the church. And I'm just going to say we're going to circle back to that, but it was magical for me, so thank you for that. I'm just going to list a couple more songs really quick. So, Zero Population. What comes to your mind when I mention that song?

Lex de Azevedo [01:25:24] Well, it's not a great song. Okay. It's a little complex, the rhythms.

John Dehlin [01:25:28] It's about abortion. It's about birth control.

Lex de Azevedo [01:25:30] Do you know the book? Did you ever see the book? The book called the Population Bomb was written by a Stanford professor.

John Dehlin [01:25:37] Malthus. Was it Malthus?

Lex de Azevedo [01:25:38] No, no. And he's still spewing off, too. I mean, the book says by 1985, there'll be mass starvation in San Francisco. It goes on all of these things. And I'm kind of reminded, you know, I think social scientists in 1990 would have said the biggest problem is that by year 2000, you'll be up to your knees and horse manure in the streets. You know what I mean? Technology marches forward and create. Does amazing, amazing things. So the book, though, was pretty widely viewed, widely read, and very influential in proving to the world that it's overpopulated. And so that came to. Now, here's a doctrine. It wasn't a doctrine. Large families. Okay, what is that? There was a time I remember being taught that we had a responsibility to bring people into our families or they'd be sent to another. So I don't know where that is today, because people are having smaller and smaller families for economic reasons. So it was the powerful number in the show. I can look at it dramatically. It was the. What's the word? It was the threat, you know, to the family and to the believers.

John Dehlin [01:27:01] But it also became. And maybe it was already such, but it became sort of the threat that Mormons perceived coming from the world that they wanted to set themselves apart from.

Lex de Azevedo [01:27:13] Yes, right.

John Dehlin [01:27:14] Drugs, sex, you know, underpopulation, having too few kids, science, skepticism of modernity.

Lex de Azevedo [01:27:23] I felt that strongly in the 70s. I felt that we were at war with the world. I felt that very strongly. And I needed to protect my family and my children. I need to make sure that they got it straight, figure it out and. Yeah, I felt that very strongly.

John Dehlin [01:27:38] Okay.

Lex de Azevedo [01:27:39] The world was not a safe place. I don't feel. By the way, I don't feel that.

John Dehlin [01:27:43] Yeah, we're gonna. That's what we'll talk to after lunch. Line upon line. Anything come to your mind with that song?

Lex de Azevedo [01:27:49] I think it is a. I love the concept. The concept, you know, from the scriptures. It's line upon line, precept on precept. That's how he teaches us. That's how he lifts his children. And that, to me, is a truism. We all grow grace for grace. We learn here a little, there a little. And our life is a process of learning. If we'll allow that to happen and seek it.

John Dehlin [01:28:12] What's Paper Dreams about?

Lex de Azevedo [01:28:15] Paper Dream is about. It's so funny. I'm so critical of. I wanted everything.

John Dehlin [01:28:22] You don't like Paper Dream?

Lex de Azevedo [01:28:23] No, I'm not saying I don't like it. I'm just saying when we talk about these songs, the first things come to my mind is, oh, it's not good enough. It's this that, you know, Is that

John Dehlin [01:28:32] the artist in you?

Lex de Azevedo [01:28:33] Then I don't know what it is, but it's just. I can always do better. I can always do better, and that's what keeps me going. So Paper Dream. I really liked it in the new one. Much better than the old one. At least the musical arrangement of it. And now you know who Todd is in this one. You get an idea who this character is.

John Dehlin [01:28:57] What's the song about?

Lex de Azevedo [01:28:58] It's a song about searching. It's a song about searching for who you are and searching for life. And Guy thinks he's a failure and he wants to be somebody important and he's not. And I think it's kind of universal. I think there's a lot of people in the world today that feel that they are insignificant and want to be important or significance.

John Dehlin [01:29:19] All right, last one. Brace me up.

Lex de Azevedo [01:29:22] That one worked well for me in the show. Worked really well. It was born out of the part of the original theme. Part of the music in there comes out of the original theme of Saturday's Warrior. I thought I didn't like the word brace me up so much. I didn't think that was. I would like to had a phrase that was more normal language, everyday language. Seemed a little poetic at that moment. For a guy that's sinking, you know. But I thought the song worked really well. And to me is one of those powerful moments in the show.

John Dehlin [01:30:00] Are any of these characters biographical? You've touched on this, but.

Lex de Azevedo [01:30:05] Well, in the film, I kind of draw on my family's experience, the King family. And it could be the Osmonds. It could be any of these families. And Jimmy is slightly biographical.

John Dehlin [01:30:17] You're Jimmy A little bit.

Lex de Azevedo [01:30:18] Mm. I feel that I would have liked to be. In a way, I'd like to be Jimmy. I'd like to have been a rockstar, but. But the price is too high. I wasn't willing to pay that.

John Dehlin [01:30:28] Okay, so when the. When the. When Max crowd are singing, Jim, you know.

Lex de Azevedo [01:30:33] Yeah. There is no Max Flinders.

John Dehlin [01:30:35] No Flinders. That's. That's Columbia.

Lex de Azevedo [01:30:37] Mac is in the. Jimmy's band now, right. In the movie.

John Dehlin [01:30:41] Oh, okay.

Lex de Azevedo [01:30:42] Jimmy's band.

John Dehlin [01:30:43] But when all the girls and Mac are singing. Hey, Flinders. No Flinders. That's. That's Capitol Records basically tempting you to kind of live that worldly life a little bit.

Lex de Azevedo [01:30:54] Well, I hadn't thought of it that way. I hadn't thought of that. I mean, it just represented the pull from our culture. There's a Latter Day Saint, and here's a culture in a war. They're trying to pull us away, trying to pull us down.

John Dehlin [01:31:08] All right, so Jimmy is a little bit autobiographical.

Lex de Azevedo [01:31:12] Yeah, mostly the culture. He came out by. Putting him in the record business. I put him in the record business in the movie. Yeah. So that. That's autobiographical.

John Dehlin [01:31:22] Is Pam in any way biographical?

Lex de Azevedo [01:31:24] Pam is kind of a Christ figure. You know, I don't. Nobody that I know, you know, she is a. She's kind of a Christ figure.

John Dehlin [01:31:33] And I think she dies so that Jimmy can.

Lex de Azevedo [01:31:36] Brings him back. Yeah. And I think she's a hero. You know, I have a granddaughter that has spina bifida and cerebral palsy. And she is kind of a hero for me. And every time if somebody or my kids start thinking that their life is hard, you know, she's in a wheelchair. She'll be in a wheelchair her whole life. And she's had over a dozen serious surgeries. And I think Pam brings. Makes us present. How blessed, how good we've got it.

John Dehlin [01:32:19] She calls us to goodness too, though, right?

Lex de Azevedo [01:32:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:32:24] That's probably my favorite moment in the musicals. Line upon line, when Jimmy and Pam are looking up at the stars.

Lex de Azevedo [01:32:32] I'm surprised that you like Saturday's Warrior. I would think that you didn't like. You wouldn't like Saturday's.

John Dehlin [01:32:36] You can sing every single song. I'm surprised you don't like Saturdays of

Lex de Azevedo [01:32:40] words

John Dehlin [01:32:43] line up online. Well, when you think, what does she say? Consider the stars. Jimmy, what does she say?

Lex de Azevedo [01:32:52] Consider the stars. Talking about how they come out one at a time. And just because you can't see them all, you know, it's like, don't throw it away. And I think that about faith. And our faith is that way sometimes because we can't get it. We can't see the whole picture. We can't understand something. There's a tendency to throw it away. But faith is believing that it will reveal itself in time. That's the essence of faith. So many things we don't know. The more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. But I've adopted the never let what what I don't know destroy that which I do know.

John Dehlin [01:33:36] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org thank you very much.

Lex de Azevedo [01:33:56] Sa.

Saturday's Warrior and the Church's Response

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 795

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting mormonstories.org all contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you.

Lex de Azevedo [00:00:23] Who are these children coming down,

John Dehlin [00:00:29] coming

Lex de Azevedo [00:00:29] down like gentle rain through darkened skies with glory trailing from their feet as

John Dehlin [00:00:41] they go

Lex de Azevedo [00:00:43] and endless promise in their eyes?

John Dehlin [00:00:50] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to part three or four or five, depending on how the editors cut it up, of my interview with Lex de Azevedo. My name is John Dehlin. Again, it is September 5, 2017, and we have had several wonderful hours with someone who's really special to me, a hero or a legend in at least my mind and in my world and in many of those people that I know. We've talked about Alex de Azevedo growing up. We've talked about his family, his career in the recording industry, and then we talked for a considerable amount of time about Saturday's Warrior and how it means much more to me than it does to him. No, I'm just kidding. But the role that it's kind of played in Mormonism, and it was just a delightful journey down memory lane for me, and hopefully it was for you guys as well. This is going to be sort of the last section or two of this interview. We're really grateful for those who have joined us live on Facebook. Hope you guys are enjoying getting this live streamed. We're also grateful for our studio audience, for those who are still here listening. But, Lex, now I would like to turn to kind of, you know, back to your personal story a little bit and before we dive into the story about your family. And that's going to lead to sort of where your life's gone since then. And then we're going to end by talking maybe about the church a little bit and where it is today in terms of the reaction to Saturday's Warrior. You know, were you ever, like, to what extent did you become involved in the operations of the church? Did the general authorities reach out to you? Did they want a piece of Saturday's Warrior? Did they appreciate it? Did they like it? Did they value it? Did they not value it? And then you start Embryo Records, this entire, you know, label, and you're starting to create all this music. You know, you became a central piece of Mormon popular culture and art. And did you ever have communications with the church or with church leaders about your role in the broader culture?

Lex de Azevedo [00:03:09] I have, but I have never sought approval or I have never sought endorsement or support in any way from the church for anything I've ever done. I just never felt that that was the role of the church. And I didn't. And I didn't think it would be proper for them to do that. I do what I do. I do it as an individual. I do it because I love to do it. And we're an agent unto ourself and the powers in us to do much good. And that's, I think, what we're supposed to be doing.

John Dehlin [00:03:37] Did you get a sense for that? They were glad, you know, did any. The Prophet or First Presidency or Quorum of the twelve. Thank you for Saturday's Warrior.

Lex de Azevedo [00:03:45] I've had many individually, I've had. Many of the brethren have been very gracious with me and their appreciation of some of the things that I've done. President Tanner quoted from my Turn on Earth in General Conference, which I did a couple years after Saturday's Warrior quoted it. I thought, okay, yeah, now I'm official church doctrine.

John Dehlin [00:04:16] Yeah, but you've never really had a formal relationship with the church then, in terms of your business endeavors, your art?

Lex de Azevedo [00:04:23] I did a few things for the church in my early days. Some films. I did some music for some of the early films church was doing. I just always felt, first of all, Saturday's Warrior would never have passed correlation, you know, that that wasn't going to happen.

John Dehlin [00:04:40] Right.

Lex de Azevedo [00:04:42] And so why go there? The problem or the challenge in working with the church, if something is done through the church, then the church is responsible for what you do. If there's false doctrine or there's problems, or if my life goes astray, if I do it myself, it doesn't implicate anyone else in the church. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [00:05:05] It does.

Lex de Azevedo [00:05:06] I take full responsibility for everything I've said, everything I've done, everything I write for my life. It is nobody's. It's my responsibility.

John Dehlin [00:05:15] Okay? Okay.

Lex de Azevedo [00:05:17] So, by the way, now I thought something. I had a couple of interesting conversations shortly after Saturday's Warrior. There was one Paraturgian leader who came up to me and said, was rather indignantly says, well, who called you to write this? And I said, the Lord called me to write this. They said, but I mean, who in the church actually called you? I mean, aren't you kind of setting yourself up as some kind of,

John Dehlin [00:05:46] what,

Lex de Azevedo [00:05:47] a guru, a leader? Leading my own parade in the church? I said, no, I'm not responsible for the success of Saturday's Warrior. Okay? I wrote it. I didn't expect it to go anywhere? No, I had no intention or desire for grandeur or self aggrandizement. Often I just stand, you know, amazed at how it has been received. But generally I have had so many letters. I have a file cabinet of letters of gratitude from people from mission presidents and missionaries and people whose lives have been changed. And I just, I feel very humble. I just, I'm in awe of really what happened.

Marriage, Divorce, and Family Life

John Dehlin [00:06:27] So let's go back. The last we touched in with your family, you had three children and you had married very quickly to Linda. Right. And you said you sort of weren't taught to marry for love and that maybe provided us with some foreshadowing. So you ended up having, if I count right, nine children with Linda. Is that right? And you were married how many years?

Lex de Azevedo [00:06:54] 28 years, I think.

John Dehlin [00:06:55] 28 years. So that's, you know, you think about the central message of Saturday's Warrior. It's just this idea that Jimmy might leave the church, that Jimmy might start drinking or might take some drugs or might have premarital sex and that the family might get split up. Right. So it sort of goes along with what, you know, what Mormonism taught me about eternal families. And it's about the cohesive family unit, the traditional family with one husband and one wife and all these kids and everybody's, you know, serving missions and married in the temple and everybody's active. And that's kind of the ideal that Saturday's warriors sort of helps convey and propagate. So talk to us about what happened with your own family.

Lex de Azevedo [00:07:47] Well, Linda and I did really well. We, you know, the counsel was marry good person, keep the commandments. This is in our time. It's not the council today have a lot of babies, and any two people that are the closer you draw to Christ are capable of loving each other. And there's certainly a lot of good counsel in that. And Linda and I worked very hard and I served as a bishop twice during our marriage. As I look at the demise of the marriage, first of all, let me say I do not want to be a poster child for divorce. I do not believe in divorce. I was taught never to divorce, and I thought I would never divorce. And I've often wondered, could it have gone a different way? And I will go to my grave asking that question. I think if I knew then what I know now, it could have been different. And if divorce, you know, I don't know that Divorce, I think, can be a sin in some cases. In other cases, I don't think it is. A sin. But whether it is a sin or not, for me and Belinda, we were punished as if it were a sin. In other words, the pain, The impact of that decision, and I take most of the responsibility. I don't fault Linda. I don't blame Linda. The only thing I could say is that if I had been able to love her with enough to heal her from the wounds of her childhood, she needed to be adored. And I will always consider that a failing. I consider divorce a failure, a huge failure. So I don't know that there's anything to be gained by going into any more detail. Sometimes people say, well, why? Why? We tell stories to make our lives look sane, right? People say, why did you move here? Why did you change that job? Why'd you. We tell stories that make. Yeah, I'm coming off relatively sane here. We divorced and then what? Once we were divorced, when the impact of that upon the family. I was a very, very involved father emotionally with my children, and I never intended to divorce my children. And Linda and I went through a great deal of pain. I mean, I know what it's like to lay on the floor of an empty house devoid of furniture and wail like a wounded animal. And I'm sure she too. Now we can learn. One of the great challenges in divorce is it creates such pain that you seek a mood altering experience. Just the pain doesn't end. And if people knew the pain, sometimes they would think again. Not that there aren't times when divorce is the answer, but the. Let's see, I'm going to say this. The danger in divorce is the pain is so great. People seek a mood altering experience. It's alcohol, spend vast amounts of money, sex, you know, whatever it is, just to make the pain go away. But for me, there was a certain irony to this divorce. And this is not to excuse it. Because nothing I will do, I will never try and excuse it. I'll say that's what happened. That is the choice that was made, period. The irony was, up to the time of the divorce, we were the perfect family. We had everything. We had the most beautiful home. I had served as bishop twice.

John Dehlin [00:12:21] Where was the home at the time?

Lex de Azevedo [00:12:23] We were living in the cottonwoods in Salt Lake. Beautiful home, the dream home. And. I had. I also, looking back, see a great deal of pride. I had begun to believe what people were saying about me. And I was raised in a.

John Dehlin [00:12:44] Which is what?

Lex de Azevedo [00:12:45] Oh, that I'm special. And I was raised in the entertainment industry, which is all about pride. We were talking about that. It's the applause. How do I look? You know, it's all about me. And pride sneaks up on you. And it's very hard to see in yourself. It's easier to see it in others, but it's very hard to see in yourself.

John Dehlin [00:13:11] You define pride as three things.

Lex de Azevedo [00:13:13] The need to look good, to be right, to win. And even though we were living good lives, The divorce happened. Now, in the aftermath of that, my children have said, all of them, dad, you became a different person after the divorce. You became accessible. You became easier to love. We could talk to you. It was like before the divorce. You thought you were God. You thought you were always right. And which is being right, pride being right. Need to be right, win and look good. And so the question you ask is, can something good come from something bad? And it's one of the interesting questions in theology. Can something good come from sin? Absolutely. Now, does that mean we encourage people to go out in sin or encourage people to go out in divorce? No. But can good come from bad? Absolutely. I know people whose lives have been changed because they fell from grace and committed sin serious enough that for the first time, they realized they needed Jesus Christ in their lives. They needed a savior. They never knew that intellectually, they heard that. But what happened for me is I realized that I am nobody. I used to think I was somebody. And after the divorce, I realized that I was the most ordinary person in the world, more ordinary than anybody I knew. And I was nobody to stand up, hold myself up as a model for anybody, that I was nothing. And I say that real. I mean that when I say nothing. Nobody's nothing. We're all, you know, children of God. But I saw myself and I saw life differently. And I opened up and learned to love. And so out of that has come some very interesting growth. Then the other question you asked, was it necessary to put your family through that? I could say, wow, that's great. I grew from that. But what about the other people? Where does that leave them?

John Dehlin [00:15:45] It must be very hard to carry the name de Azevedo in Utah, in Salt Lake City, all the fame, all the notoriety, all the success multiple times as a bishop, in many ways, people joining the church or staying strong in the church because of that de Azevedo name. And then all of a sudden, the family. And again, the musical representing the core messages of family about the church. And then to have that family break up. What was that like for your kids and to be in Utah when that happened?

Lex de Azevedo [00:16:22] Being in Utah is particularly hard because people tend to choose sides. People feel they have to make somebody right and somebody wrong. My experience is that there's always two parts, there's two sides to it. And I don't say that to excuse myself in any way. I say I take full responsibility and I will always see it as a failing, as failure. But you go on. And it was important to me that my children know that they knew that I loved them, that I was not divorcing them. And so I moved pretty closely and spent a great deal and some of the children actually lived with me. And I spent a great deal of time with the children and today work with my children. We're together all the time. And the thing that's interesting is that we are a family. We are very much a family, including Linda. We are together all the time now. I'm remarried. Linda is very fond of my wife and my wife is very fond of Linda. I mean, they actually really like each other and they respect each other. So what's the ending? The other thing you always ask is what's the impact? Particularly as a latter day, if we were talking about this at lunch, if one of your kids leaves the church, it's surrounded with guilt and shame and failure. And what if I didn't? You know, what if I had done it differently?

John Dehlin [00:18:00] Didn't we love him?

Lex de Azevedo [00:18:02] Yeah. And so those are the things, those are the questions we always ask ourselves. And I don't have any answer except one thing. I know that each man will not be punished for Adam's transgression. We're not punished for our parents sins. Are we blessed and are we affected by our parents? Absolutely. But ultimately I believe that we stand before God, who we are. You know, I could blame the death of my life on the death of my father. There's all kinds of things. A mother was never there. You know, there's all kinds of things. But no, ultimately it's my life, I'm responsible. Otherwise the whole concept of humanity and responsibility breaks down. We just blame it on those that went before us. Right. So I found peace in knowing that we're all responsible and my children are responsible for their lives. Now, as you brought up that of the nine children we have, there's. Let me think, I gotta think. Who's that who's active today?

Children and Their Relationship with the Church

John Dehlin [00:19:04] I heard three. Three of the nine. So six of the nine have left the church.

Lex de Azevedo [00:19:10] I don't use the word left the church. I don't like that. I don't know what that really means. And I've lived long enough to see that Our journeys are fluid, John. You do not know your future, nor do any of us here. And you may not even know God's plan for you. All I know is that my job is to love. You know a new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another as I have loved you. And. And then we forget the last part. What's the last part? By this shall all men know that you are my disciples. That's the key part. How do people know that we believe? How do people know that we believe in Christ? By our ability to love. That's it. I have no empirical knowledge, secular knowledge. I can give you what I believe is true. The best I can give you is love. And so I believe in loving my children. And you met Aaron, who was here. And the thing I wrote in the last scene of Saturday's Warrior came from my experience with Aaron. Aaron. I had heard wind from other kids that he was kind of taking another path, he and his wife. And he hadn't come to me and talked to me about it. And Aaron had served a mission. So one Sunday, and I was the ward mission leader at the time. This was just a few years ago, really. I felt really impressed to go talk to Aaron and danieli and so I prayed. I said, God, tell me what I can. I want to make a difference in our lives. And I was dressed, and I had my suit and my tie on. And so I show up at the front door like the bishop, you know, And I had prayed earnestly, put the words in my heart. And it was interesting. The minute I got there, they started explaining they knew who Tad was and they knew why I was there. I didn't need to say anything. And they started explaining their journey and where they were and why they were doing what they're doing. And I listened. And I kept thinking, okay, I got to find my opportunity to say something. I got to change this. After all, I'm the dad. I got to change the direction here. There's something wrong here. And I kept waiting, and the words didn't come. And when they were through, I said, I want you to know that wherever you go, whatever you do, I will always love you. And I mean that with all my heart. And it was like there was this really, really. You're not judging me. I'm okay. Okay. That's the power. That's the only power we have, is the power to love other people. So what have I learned from my journey, from my own mistakes and my own sins? And I say, I look at the scorched Landscape of my life, much of which I've torched myself. But we can learn from our mistakes. And for one, my successes don't teach me very much. They teach me that I'm invincible and that I'm really somebody special. But I have learned far more from my failures, and I thank God for those failures. I am so grateful for them. So, anyway, that's my story about it.

John Dehlin [00:22:22] Do you have a sense for the kids? You don't like the phrase leaving the church, so stopped attending church. We'll say, do you have a sense for why the six stopped attending? Do you see any trends? Do you see any.

Lex de Azevedo [00:22:38] My children are. Okay, I'll just say it. They're extremely intelligent, and they're extremely creative. They all are entrepreneurs. They all own their own businesses. They all. I mean, from one end to the other. My daughter Sarah, three years in a row, was voted the finest tattoo artist in Salt Lake at that end. But Sarah came to me at age, you know, 16, says, dad, I'm gonna be a tattoo artist. And I was totally against it. I said, that's. No, no, you don't want to do that. You're a great artist. I'll send you to art center. You know, you can do this. No, I want to do tattoo. And she's a tattoo artist. She's all tatted up. That was hard because it's such a visible. It's just such a visible thing. You know, it's like marking your tribe. You know, the markings of the tribe. So that was hard, but it was the. All of these have been learning experiences for me.

John Dehlin [00:23:28] Did she tell you why she stopped going?

Lex de Azevedo [00:23:30] Going to church?

John Dehlin [00:23:31] Yeah.

Lex de Azevedo [00:23:31] Oh, she told me. She told me when she was young that she didn't believe and that she. That should stop. When I stopped making it go to church, it never took.

John Dehlin [00:23:42] Got it.

Lex de Azevedo [00:23:45] So, yeah, where were we on that?

John Dehlin [00:23:48] Any other trends, you know, with the other kids?

Lex de Azevedo [00:23:51] Generally, patterns. The patterns are this. And I understand it because I have the same kind of mind. I am always asking why. I'm always penetrating. But I served a mission, and I've had certain experiences in my life that I cannot get past that. I know that God lives. I can't get past that. And there's been times I wanted to get past it, but I can't. And so I've had a certain foundation, which they may not have had. And my wife is quite different than I am in her views about church and life and things like that. And that has an impact on it, too. But by and large, my kids keep Asking, asking questions. I've had people in our family, when we're younger, we'd sit around and we'd ask all these questions. We'd talk about our family and why people did this and why people did that and our uncles and aunts and my granddad and why, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, why do you guys analyze that? Why don't you just be still? Why are you always analyzing everything? Well, Julie's a PhD psychologist. My son in law, Bruce is the, is a psychiatrist. So much of our family life has been spent just sitting around analyzing how dad screwed up so much. We just, you know, we analyze these things. But I am at peace. I believe there's so much we don't know. And at the end God has a plan for us. Like were we talking earlier? I was thinking of the scripture. This is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. Well, God, if that's your full time work, how's it going for you? Because it doesn't look like it's going too well from where I sit.

John Dehlin [00:25:34] Yeah, less than 1/2 of 1% of the world's population

Lex de Azevedo [00:25:39] over a short period of time. Yeah, go back to the beginning of time. It doesn't fit. God must be terribly frustrated. Unless the next question you ask, at least I ask, is, there's nothing I'm not getting here. Maybe God's plan is much bigger than we know. And I have had reason to believe that it is.

John Dehlin [00:26:05] Do you, have you ever wondered why God hasn't given the same witness to your children that he's given to you?

Lex de Azevedo [00:26:11] Well, you could ask God about all of humanity. How many people used to read the Book of Mormon and, and pray about it. And you know it's true. And there's amazing experiences that people have had and many people don't. My daughter Carrie asked me that. She said, dad, why are you the only person that gets revelations? I mean, you tell about these experiences you've had and I can tell you about one in the middle of the divorce, something that happened to me. I will share it because I think it's really valuable for people who find them in a situation of divorce. But I said, I don't know. I only know what I know and I do not know what I don't know. So in the midst of this process of divorce, we had been separated sometime. I had a condo real close by. I was so filled with guilt. I said, I can't do this pain if I go back, guilt if I leave I'm locked between pain and guilt. What do I do? I'm paralyzed. One day I decided to. I said, first of all, I need to know if God still loves me, because I feel like I'm the worst person in the world. I'm a horrible person. And I decided. I went to the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon, and I had the strongest feeling that I would have an answer to my question. And my question was one. Did God still love me? And were we justified in this divorce? And after several hours and I was meditating and praying and pondering, I had the most amazing experience. And I share it with you humbly, only just to testify of what happened to me. And what happened was this. I was suddenly filled with light and love. A kind of exquisite love that I had never known from the tip of my toes to the top of my head. And I knew it was the love of God. And I knew at that moment that he still loved me. And then the answer to the second question came like a fax to my heart. It was like pure knowledge. And the words came, and it wasn't even in English. I have to translate into English. The words were, make a choice, my son, and be willing to live with the consequences. This was huge for me because I looked at every day as a pass fail. And now what the Lord was saying is, wait a minute. It's also an experience, and you need to make a choice to experience life. So I decided that I would go back. And I went back to Linda and I told the kids there'd be no more divorce. And we went back. One day we were in church about two, three months later, and I was just. I was crying because I was so unhappy. And in the middle of the sacrament, I had a similar thing happen. I was suddenly filled with this light and this love and a voice that to me, it is enough. You are free to go if you choose. Those are critical words, if you choose. So I went back to my ward where I was actually teaching Gospel doctrine. This ward, since we've been separated. I told the bishop what had happened. And he said, what are you going to do? I said, I'm going. I'm leaving. It's over. I go back to my condo. Linda was there, and she had a key to my condo. And she was on the bed crying. And I said, linda, what are you doing here? And she says, it's over, isn't it? I said, yeah, it is. How do you know? She says, I knew. And I am so frightened because I've always defined my life. By you. And now I don't know where I'm going. And we had kids over. We had ice cream and chocolate, and we told them and said, I always love you. Mom and I aren't going to be married, but I'm your dad, she's your mom. That's never going to change. And it hasn't.

John Dehlin [00:30:13] Super briefly, when I was living in Seattle, I met Michelle Wolfenberger, who I think was the daughter of a second wife. Is that right? So you had a second marriage in between. Right. Is that right? Okay. Is that a brief.

Lex de Azevedo [00:30:28] Yeah, well, I married pretty quickly. I thought that it would be wise to model a healthy marriage. And without saying too much, I'll say that the children were the issue. I was not willing to divorce my children.

John Dehlin [00:30:47] Yeah, that happens. Yeah. Just.

Lex de Azevedo [00:30:48] And, yeah. And we started a company together and they didn't want her working the company and they didn't ever really accept her. And that ended.

John Dehlin [00:30:56] Okay. How long was that marriage?

Lex de Azevedo [00:30:58] That was 10 years.

John Dehlin [00:30:59] Okay. And you've been married 10 years with your current wife. What's your wife's name?

Lex de Azevedo [00:31:04] Rose.

John Dehlin [00:31:04] Rose. Okay. Okay. So that's a beautiful message of adversity and life not going the way you wanted, but learning and growing. And it's. I'm kind of jealous that you keep getting these revelations and a lot of us don't. Right. Do you have any way to explain that? I mean, how else can you explain that? But you're favored by God, right?

Lex de Azevedo [00:31:34] No. No, I don't believe that.

John Dehlin [00:31:37] I believe because we'd like that.

Lex de Azevedo [00:31:40] I believe that we're granted the desires of our heart and those that know me. I've had people come up and say, we don't get it, Lex. You're divorced twice. We know this doesn't make sense. We know who you are. This doesn't happen to people like you. And I've had that on many occasions. And the desires of my heart, in spite of my failings, have always been good. I desire deeply to please God and do the right thing. I also have a deep faith that all things are possible with God. That He. I believe he answers prayers. I believe in miracles. I absolutely do. And so I seek them. And I've made horrible mistakes in my life. I'm not an example. Don't ever hold me up as an example. I'm nobody, but I'm still going. And I believe in God and I believe the answer. And if I knew now what I knew then, John, I could have been different.

John Dehlin [00:32:48] Sure.

Lex de Azevedo [00:32:49] But I didn't.

John Dehlin [00:32:49] So you learn as you Go.

Lex de Azevedo [00:32:51] Yeah.

Wrestling with Church History and Difficult Issues

John Dehlin [00:32:53] So you mentioned reading Fawn Brody's book early on in your life. And I'm imagining that sort of the Mormon Internet over the past 10, 15 years, the church essays that have come out, all the different matters of historical evidence and questions about the church of truth claims. I'm guessing none of that stuff is really new to you or that stuff you've been grappling with or have worked through for decades? Is that fair to say?

Lex de Azevedo [00:33:29] Well, yeah, I was kind of surprised that it seemed new to a lot of people.

John Dehlin [00:33:33] Yeah.

Lex de Azevedo [00:33:34] I knew about John G. Lee. Was my great grandfather mountain as well. Yeah. I studied Juanita. I read Juanita Brooks books, and I read Fawn Brody's books, and I've looked at other things. So what has happened, I think, is that the huge growth of the church that occurred during what, the late 20th century and really recently and in missionary work. I don't mean to make light of it, but it's kind of an elevator pitch. You don't have much time. You meet a prospective investigator, and we have a condensed elevator pitch. And in church, the lessons are geared to a huge, you know, diversity of experience and people in church. And they're kind of like condensed to a certain. Certain level. You can go. I think you can attend church. And if all. If what you learn, what you know about the church is just what you learned in Sunday school, in priesthood and relief society, you're. It's drinking. I call it drinking downstream. I'm sorry, I don't mean to offend anybody.

John Dehlin [00:34:43] Even Sunday school.

Lex de Azevedo [00:34:45] Well, yeah, because you're getting it second, third hand. You're getting it from eyes of a teacher who. You know what I mean? It's coming through that lens.

John Dehlin [00:34:53] And the correlated curriculum.

Lex de Azevedo [00:34:55] The correlated curriculum is to be for everybody. Right.

John Dehlin [00:35:00] So it's dumbed down or.

Lex de Azevedo [00:35:01] Well, it's just. It's kind of like, shh. This much. It's not this.

John Dehlin [00:35:07] It's not the fullness.

Lex de Azevedo [00:35:08] Yeah. And so. But I early on picked up somewhere the importance of drinking upstream. Go to the source. And to me, the source is the revelations, the scriptures. I still consider a huge lexicon, is general conference talks. And so I periodically go back, I'm listening to year 2013 now. I consider that very valuable. But the more I studied it and the more I read it and asked questions and took things to the Lord and read other books, a picture emerged for me that I thought that was healthy. I mean, the big picture of what the church is. And we talked about that earlier today.

Personal Pillars of Faith Today

John Dehlin [00:35:55] So can I would you be willing to share with the listeners of mine that maybe haven't been able to piece it all together, just sort of the main pillars of your faith, and I'll ask you questions. So for you, I'm guessing from what you've already said that God is a physical being with a body, just like kind of the church is taught.

Lex de Azevedo [00:36:18] Right.

John Dehlin [00:36:18] An exalted former man. And is for you, is God married?

Lex de Azevedo [00:36:23] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:36:25] One wife, Multiple wives?

Lex de Azevedo [00:36:26] I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:36:26] You don't know. But for you, there's a mother in heaven.

Lex de Azevedo [00:36:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:36:30] Okay. And for you, Jesus Christ was a person that lived and was resurrected and suffered. So the atonement for you is a very literal belief. And Jesus is life. So do you believe in a little resurrection that we all will be literally?

Lex de Azevedo [00:36:51] Yes, I do.

John Dehlin [00:36:52] Corporeally resurrected. Okay. And then as we get to. So the Bible is the word of God, as far as it's translated correctly for you?

Lex de Azevedo [00:37:05] Yes. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:06] Okay. So.

Lex de Azevedo [00:37:09] But. There's what that means too, which I don't know if we want to go to that.

John Dehlin [00:37:17] Go ahead.

Lex de Azevedo [00:37:17] Not everything's literal. Not if it's literal.

John Dehlin [00:37:20] I mean, so 6,000 year Earth and global flood.

Lex de Azevedo [00:37:25] I'm not interested in how literal it is. I'm interested in what I can learn from it. I'm interested in the wisdom that can be gleaned. I also believe there is power in studying it. In other words, the knowledge that comes from studying the scriptures. The spiritual knowledge is not just the words on the page. There is an understanding that comes from seeking. And then Jesus said, seek and ask and knock again and again and again. Seek, ask and knock. Seek, ask and knock. And I believe that there's great power in seeking, asking and knocking at the source. So much of my life I have never trusted completely in human beings. We're all fallible. I mean, I look at my life, do you know there's enough good in the worst of us to exalt us to heaven? And there's enough bad in the best of us to damn us to hell. We're human beings and we struggle in this existence here. We all suffer with vanity. We all suffer with pride. We don't get it. You know, we're down here just thrashing around trying to do our best. And so I've always found it's best to try and drink upstream. And to me that means going to God. It means the scriptures. Other inspired books. I've learned many things from non LDS books. I love Timothy. Emily, who's the Timothy Keller? I love his books. The reason it's my daughter just walked in. The reason for God loved his books. One thing in his book so powerful, he says, A friend of his says, I cannot believe in a God who allows such suffering. How can you believe in a God that allows suffering? And he says, okay, let's see what you're saying. Because your puny little brain cannot penetrate the depths of infinity and find a reason for suffering, you assume there is none. What arrogance. How arrogant is man? So, I mean, things like that, which I think are. That's huge for me. But the idea that as man as God once was, and as God as man may become, and this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. Those teachings are unique. Am I wrong? Is there anywhere else in the world?

John Dehlin [00:39:51] It's definitely our core.

Lex de Azevedo [00:39:52] Yeah. To me, that is huge. That's the pillar upon which I build my life. That we're in this school of the gods. And the school of the gods may be different than what we believe. We don't know it all. And that doesn't mean that I don't believe the church teaches. But I'm saying in the detail of it, what is it really like? We may all be surprised.

John Dehlin [00:40:18] What does the teaching of eternal families mean? Now that your family has kind of been subdivided?

Lex de Azevedo [00:40:25] That's a really good question.

John Dehlin [00:40:27] What does the ceiling mean?

Lex de Azevedo [00:40:28] I have labored over and over, and here is the. I don't have the answer. I can give you a thought. What happens if a man is worthy of higher glory than a woman and they stay married? What happens?

John Dehlin [00:40:52] Don't know.

Lex de Azevedo [00:40:53] Yeah, so what happens if somebody in a family. The idea. Families can be together forever, but the idea that they always will be. I don't know what that means. Because we're also saved as individuals. I don't believe we're saved as families. I believe we're saved as individuals, ultimately. Now there is only one family, and that's the family of man. That's the big family. It's not like I'm going to live with all my kids in the family room in heaven.

John Dehlin [00:41:19] Right? Because if you're with your kids and they're with their kids and you're with your parents and they're with their parents. Think it through.

Lex de Azevedo [00:41:24] Think it through.

John Dehlin [00:41:24] It's a big table.

Lex de Azevedo [00:41:25] Yeah, it's a big table. It's one big family. And according to our doctrine, there may be some may not be at the table and they may be sealed in the temple. But there is a fairly recent doctrine that has emerged that was not there in my early days. Is that is if I think it is, that your children will be returned. They will come back if they are sealed in the temple. Whether that's official doctrine or not, I don't know. But it's been taught and that's a fairly new change. I don't know if that's to comfort people because of the number of children and stuff.

John Dehlin [00:41:59] We have the same divorce rate as non Mormons.

Lex de Azevedo [00:42:01] Yeah. So I don't. But. But it may be different than we think, John. But I believe it is there. I believe there's a purpose to our life. And I see this as a school of the gods. And the school of the gods is a school of love. That's what we're here to learn. It's all about how we treat other people.

John Dehlin [00:42:19] You mentioned at the very beginning that you, you know when I said this is the true church or this is the one true church, you would like to see that expunged from our vocabulary or did you say something to that effect?

Lex de Azevedo [00:42:31] Well, I said a couple of months ago in the gospel doctrine class, they were talking about the only true church. And I raised my hand and I said, I don't know if anybody else feels this way, but if I could strike any words from our current vocabulary, it would be those.

John Dehlin [00:42:45] But isn't that our core? Isn't that core that the priesthood was restored, that we are the only ones with the keys, that our ordinances are the only ones that count? And that's our church is led by God.

Lex de Azevedo [00:42:57] That's different than the words the only true church in the way I see

John Dehlin [00:43:01] them, tease those apart. So is this God's one and only true church?

Lex de Azevedo [00:43:05] To say it is the only true church is not. It's divisive. It's not helpful. I can see in a 19th century legalistic mind if you read the writings of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and it was kind of a legalistic religious thing, it was almost like legal briefs, like they could prove things, you know, like that. And. But to our mind today, language changes. I don't know how the only true church is helpful. I don't know how it's helpful to the members. And I'm not sure what it means. 2 and 2 equals 4, that's true. I can hang my hat on that. But in an institution filled with human beings, that's evolving, that's growing, and we believe new doctrine will be added and some will be discarded. We know there have been doctrines that have been discarded. So the, the only true doesn't work for me as a phrase. Now, do I believe in the keys? Yes. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:44:05] Do I believe so a Catholic baptism doesn't count or a Baptist baptism or Methodist baptism in your mind?

Lex de Azevedo [00:44:13] I believe. Rather say it doesn't count. All these things will be worked out. All these things will be worked out with God and what we do on Earth. I think things are different than we think they are. That's all I can say. I don't have answers to that. There's infinite questions that we can ask. Question like that. And things that have been taught in the past and things that people. People believe differently regardless of now. We live differently. We live in a different way.

John Dehlin [00:44:37] You could probably find different apostles that would interpret things.

Lex de Azevedo [00:44:39] Absolutely. And I've had conversations, many people. That's not what's important.

John Dehlin [00:44:43] Actually.

Lex de Azevedo [00:44:45] I'll make a statement. We all belong to our own church. Everybody does. Everybody perceives God in their own way. Even if you're full on Mormon, if you're to really get down to the details of what is God like, what's his personality like, is he harsh, is he loving? Do you know what I mean? We all see the church differently and so what's it really like at the end? I don't know. But I do believe that this is a marvelous experience we have in the school of the gods.

John Dehlin [00:45:20] How have you made peace with what you know about Joseph Smith's life? I mean, obviously we all heard about the good stuff, but if you've read there's a lot of troubling stuff in there.

Lex de Azevedo [00:45:31] Yes. Well, first of all, some of it. The jury is out for me, okay? Just out. I'm willing to let. I don't want to get into details, but the jury's just out for me. I hear what's supposed. Certain things have been written and test people have testified and blah, blah, blah,

John Dehlin [00:45:50] like whether he was a polygamist or no.

Lex de Azevedo [00:45:52] And of course he was a polygamist, okay? But I'm talking about some of the detail, some of the nitty gritty little

John Dehlin [00:45:58] details like whether it was sex or not, whether it was underage girls or not, that type of thing.

Lex de Azevedo [00:46:02] But here's what I believe, John. A lot of things we do not know. Here's what we know. It's very, very risky to pass judgment on history. It's extremely risky. We weren't there. We don't think like they think. We don't know what we don't feel like they felt. We don't feel the fears, the threats that they thought were not there. And I've watched a complete discreditation. Is that the word discreditation?

John Dehlin [00:46:28] Discrediting.

Lex de Azevedo [00:46:29] Discrediting of Founding Fathers. Racist, sexist boss. Throw it all out. Throw out the Constitution. How can you get anything good from a bunch of sexist racists? You know what I mean? And so they throw the whole thing out and cease to look at the miracle that was produced. And I feel that way. What I've heard people say, well, maybe Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet. When I read the works of Joseph Smith and I see the impact of him in the later part of his life and the things he said, things he did, and the things that people wrote about him when I read them, I find it hard to believe that those things which, as I see them, that are beautiful, I find it hard to put it all together. I love the Book of Mormon. I have learned more about life than about government and about history and mankind from the Book of Mormon. So I don't care if he translated from the next room. I mean, if Jesus put spittle and dirt on somebody's eyes so they could see, well, what's that about? Did he see or not? Is the question. Not how did he do it? But my testimony is in the power of the Book of Mormon in my life, what I see, the wisdom I have learned such that I read it every year at least once. I love the book. I believe in the book. I felt the spirit of the book. When I feel distance from God, I find that by reading the Book of Mormon, I feel closer to God. Now, I'm not going to throw that out for something that somebody has said or things that people have said, because I know this. I've seen what's been written about me, good and bad. I've seen news reports. I have never had a news report that was accurate. I don't know if you've ever had a news report about you, anything you know, personally, I've never had one that was accurate. The facts were flawed.

John Dehlin [00:48:28] Does it matter to you if the Book of Mormon actually happened versus a big myth, is that important to you?

Lex de Azevedo [00:48:36] It's not important to me because to me it's not a myth. You're asking me a question like saying

John Dehlin [00:48:40] if the historical foundation of the book, would it be important to you if the. Just like Saturday's Warrior, you said, it's not doctrine, it's just a story and it means a lot to people. Can the Book of Mormon still be true for you? Or powerful? If there really never was an Alma or a Mosiah or a Moroni

Lex de Azevedo [00:49:06] That's a good question, John. I hadn't thought of that. I believe there was an Alma and I believe.

John Dehlin [00:49:13] So if you knew the Book of Mormon was historical.

Lex de Azevedo [00:49:15] Well, it depends what you mean by historical. Do I believe the Book of Mormon is the history of the ancient inhabitants of the American continent? No. No, I think we were mistaken for a long time that we believed that. But that's easy to understand why you'd believe that, right? I think we don't. It doesn't now. I mean, I read the Book of Mormon now and say, wait, where all these people come from, there's just way, way too many people here. You know, it doesn't add up that this is the history of the. No, it's not. It could have been, actually. Could have been a very small history.

John Dehlin [00:49:43] So you're more of a limited geography kind of guy.

Lex de Azevedo [00:49:46] Geography is not to me what the Book of Mormon is about.

John Dehlin [00:49:49] No, I'm just saying you believe the Book of Mormon happened in a very small, restricted.

Lex de Azevedo [00:49:54] I think. I don't know how it happened, but I want to meet Moroni. Captain Moroni. I want to meet him.

John Dehlin [00:50:02] I love.

Lex de Azevedo [00:50:03] I love his story and I love what I've learned from that. I love. When I think about Mormon and Moroni and witnessing the end of a great civilization, I weep. I feel it. And how it has changed my life, I cannot deny. I think I said to you, there have been times I wish I could get past. Would be a lot easier to get past it. Then I could do what I want, right? We can get past it. Then we can do what we want in life. There's great reason to want to get past it. There's great motivation in pointing out the flaws. And yet I come back face to face with this daily. In my later years, I have learned to go to God and find peace. And I don't. When I say peace, I mean to feel his love. I've learned that if we want it bad enough, we can find the peace of God, the peace that passeth all. Understanding that in the midst of chaos of your life, in the midst of fears, that you can find this peace and this love of God that I found to be the most valuable thing in life. Peace trumps everything. It trumps knowledge. It trumps excitement. Nothing, nothing measures up to being at peace and having no fear. And that is what I get from God, is I can go to him and I can find his love to the point where I can go, oh, man, I'm so grateful for everything I have and I've had that experience with the Book of Mormon. I am converted to the Book of Mormon not how it came about or didn't come about. I am converted to what I have learned that it has borne fruit in my life. And I said earlier, I am a walking miracle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I would not be who I am today if it weren't for that. I wouldn't be close to it. That sound like I bore my testimony powerful.

John Dehlin [00:52:13] Real quick. The horses and the steel, the anachronisms, you know, that would show that the book was an act of fiction. How do you make that there were no horses? Yeah, because the horses, the Spaniards brought them over long after.

Lex de Azevedo [00:52:27] Yeah, I heard that.

John Dehlin [00:52:28] And the steel.

Lex de Azevedo [00:52:30] I've heard that too. Okay, so I don't know if Joseph Smith. I don't know if it's real steel or not. I mean, it doesn't matter to me whether it was actually steel or. You know what I mean, we interpret it literally. You asked me in the scriptures, I don't know to what extent the scriptures are literal, any of them. What I am interested in the scriptures is feeling the spirit of God in my life and learning. That's what they are there for me. I will let people much smarter than me figure out those kind of details. All I know is the power that I've received in my life from those sources and from the general authorities too. Do I agree with everything? Not necessarily. But it doesn't matter because those things are. They're small things. They'll be worked out. They're. Difference in style, difference of way you say things. It's not required that general authorities be perfect. It's not required that we agree with every little thing. I think we ought to cut them the same slack that I want you to cut me. I want you to forgive me for my mistakes. And I want to be remembered for the good I've done, not the bad. And if you'll do that with me, I'll do that with you.

Faith, Evidence, and Religious Experience

John Dehlin [00:53:44] Let's talk about. I interviewed someone the other day. They quoted this philosopher named Alain Deboutin. And Alain de Boutin said, and he's an atheist. He said. The least interesting question I've ever heard about religion, and I'm paraphrasing is whether or not it's true. You know, his point is all about what good comes from it is the interesting question. And I'm sensing that you, for you, it's about the fruits, right? It's about the fruits of what it's done. In your life.

Lex de Azevedo [00:54:13] To me, that seems like. Yeah, obviously from where I'm coming from is a very, very shallow question, right?

John Dehlin [00:54:20] Whether it's true.

Lex de Azevedo [00:54:21] No, his statement is shallow. If that's the least interesting question to him. That seems so shallow to me.

John Dehlin [00:54:30] Isn't that what you're saying though? Whether.

Lex de Azevedo [00:54:32] Well, maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying. Say that again. He's saying it's the least. Oh, I see. What you're saying is how to prove that it's true. Oh, I thought you were saying the least interesting question is whether religion is true or not. No, I think the most important question is whether there's a God or not. Whether religion is true. I think that's an important question.

John Dehlin [00:54:51] But aren't you kind of saying the Book of Mormon is true because of. Not because there's any evidence to back it up, but because it has borne positive fruit in your life and steals or DNA or horses, ancient civilizations, who knows? The spirit's born witness to you. And so that's the power of the book in your life.

Lex de Azevedo [00:55:12] That's the evidence.

John Dehlin [00:55:13] That's the evidence?

Lex de Azevedo [00:55:14] Yeah, it's the evidence. Let me put it this way. The greatest evidence, you know, if it says Jesus was born at Jerusalem, please, come on, don't bring that up as an excuse to discredit the Book of Mormon. Are we in Salt Lake or are we in Midvale? We're in downtown Midvale. So what? We could say we're in Salt Lake. I mean, those aren't valid things, but the DNA and the DNA just. And I've heard some interesting rebuttals on that too. And I don't know the answer because I have learned that enough facts can be assembled to prove any side of any issue.

John Dehlin [00:55:45] Right. And so for you, it's not really about the facts, it's about the.

Lex de Azevedo [00:55:48] It is about the facts of influence

John Dehlin [00:55:50] that it's born in your life.

Lex de Azevedo [00:55:51] Yeah, well, the power of it is that that's where it might. You see, what people have to understand is that we throw words around like testimony. We throw words around like faith and things like that. We live in a secular world today and people do not value that experience. Just saying that makes you, in the eyes of many less than somebody who values secular scientific knowledge. Okay, and how do we know you're not completely wrong? How do you know you're not completely wrong?

John Dehlin [00:56:27] A scientist. Yeah, right.

Lex de Azevedo [00:56:29] How do you know that the only thing that really matters is this non secular knowledge? How do you know that we are not surrounded by spiritual Beings here, the unborn. I mean, the good spirits and bad spirits. How do you know that? How do you know that this could be so much different than what we think and that. Here's what I believe. We're on earth here. There is no concrete evidence that I can find of anything. When you talk about religion, spiritual things, and you say, well, God, why would you leave? I remember on my mission, I'd say, I talk about the Book of Mormon and say, oh, I want to go to Salt Lake. See the plates? Yeah. Well, unfortunately, the angel took the plates back. God help us. Give us some evidence here. I forgot. What's going with that? Oh, I believe that one of the purpose of this school of the gods here is to allow men and women to choose, to give us complete freedom of choice. And we have complete freedom of choice when the cards are not stacked. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [00:57:44] But then that's God sort of like setting up this game in this test to have us come back with him. And as a parent, would you ever do that to your own child? To sort of set up some obstacles and say, all right, we're going to time you, and do you make it past the finish line until time? And if you don't, you're in trouble?

Lex de Azevedo [00:58:00] I don't believe that. That's what I'm saying. Okay, that's what I'm saying. Ultimately, you try and set it up for your kids and you can't, you know, it doesn't work. All I'm saying is that I'm beginning and my. My faith evolves, you know. Sure. Just like everybody, we were talking earlier, Lehi know where he's going. He didn't know where he was going. He would. Otherwise he would have brought the plates with him and the. And the whole thing. And he. So as we go through life and we grow and we learn, I'm beginning to see, because I seek it all the time, that what you might call spiritual knowledge for me is becoming more and more the most valid form of information. I read the newspapers, I try and study both sides of all the issues. I've never seen such confused crap in my life. All by said, I listen to seven hours of Senate testimony, hearings on global climate change. How many can so many experts disagree so much based on science, I find the kind of knowledge that I've learned to rely on my life works really well for me.

John Dehlin [00:59:18] When a devout Muslim says they've had whatever the equivalent of the spirit, bear witness that the Quran is God's word and that Muhammad is God's Prophet or you know, a Scientologist or Jehovah's Witness or you know, take your pick, Evangelical Christian. You'll find people bearing who have had a very strong, deep emotional, you could call them spiritual experiences but they're bearing solemn testimony to things that are the opposite of what you're bearing testimony to now. And so yes, science will be the first to admit that it has incomplete data and that it can be wrong and is always wrong and is always changing. But feelings as evidence for truth, isn't that even more fraught? There are billions of people on this earth that have had the opposite sorts of witnesses that you have about their non conforming truth. So how can we rely on that?

Lex de Azevedo [01:00:24] You know, you're right. My best friend in the whole world was the minister of music for Hollywood Presbyterian Church. I loved that man. He was my best friend. We met in college. That's where I went on my mission. And he loved me. And he wrote to me every week on my mission. Inspired me to be a better missionary. He was married in my parents home when I was on my mission. I came back even though we were out of touch. He would write me every now and then. And he was the best friend I ever had. And he died prematurely at age 50. He was the minister of music at Hollywood Presbyterian Church. One of the kindest, most loving men I have ever met. We had numerous discussions about religion and he had a very strong belief in his religion. And I honor that. I absolutely honor that. And I think part of this has to do with the way we have framed our belief system. In the LDS Church. I think there is room for all goodness, there is room for all faith. The key is love. Now does that discount the idea of that the church has the keys of a priesthood or in the church, John, it's just different than we think. We talk about priesthood and blessings. When I want a blessing, I go to my wife. Nobody has the faith my wife has. I want my wife to bless me. When I was diagnosed with cancer 10 years ago in marriage, she says no, no, not on my watch. And I went to bed every night with her kneeling by the side of the bed. I was asleep. Putting her hands on my back or my stomach praying that cancer's gone. I can't answer all these questions, but I believe.

John Dehlin [01:02:10] Oh, you are answering them.

Lex de Azevedo [01:02:11] I believe in the power of love. I think we're looking at the wrong stuff. The problem is we're these mortals down here trapped in this thing. And what really matters is what are our choices? Our choices? I believe That a good. By the way, I read the Quran twice last year. I don't know if anybody here's read the Quran. I read it twice because I got to know what this is coming from. All right, call me Islamophobe. There is a world of difference.

John Dehlin [01:02:46] But the Old Testament's got some pretty awful stuff.

Lex de Azevedo [01:02:48] It does, if you understand. But here's the thing. The more you read the scriptures, the thing you always ask yourself, yourself is who is speaking? To whom are they speaking, when are they speaking and why are they speaking? That makes huge difference. Put it in context. Is it all literal? No. What's literal and what's not? I don't know. All I know as I read it and I study it and I pray and I say God. All right, what's here? I gotta liken this to me. What do I take home from this? And I spend a lot of time doing that, John. There's people do it more than I do. That's not really relevant. But I respect science, but I respect it for what it is and I value it. But I am not going to throw out the truths that I have learned through this. You call it feeling. And yes, feeling is definitely a part of the revelatory process. Absolutely. It is more than just a feeling though. I have had experiences that, yes, are related to feeling. This is a whole subject in and of itself. But I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints. I don't think it's perfect. I don't think leaders are perfect. The doctrine can change and evolve. I hope it. I think that'd be a great thing. And I think in the way I envision God and this plan, there is room for everybody. Without saying, you see, a lot of people say, well, if I say that, then I have to say the church isn't, quote, true. No, that's not. My church has keys.

John Dehlin [01:04:34] But God's working everywhere.

Lex de Azevedo [01:04:36] Absolutely. Otherwise we'd say God is the most. Like we said, if this is my working with glory to bring to people past immortality and eternal life of man, and if that means everybody has to be a Mormon, you'd say, well, how's that going for you? God, Right?

John Dehlin [01:04:47] So it's a much bigger expansive plan than any of us could understand. Anyone who's like, you know, it's all about being Mormon and checking off the Mormon boxes, you're saying it's a much

Lex de Azevedo [01:04:57] bigger thing and I absolutely validate your right and your right and your right to believe because it's a God given right. Agency is us to believe as you or not believe you are not less in God's instrumentation or mine or anyone else, because you don't see it the way I see it.

John Dehlin [01:05:18] So just a couple quick detailed questions and then we'll kind of summarize a bit. So the church denying, well, you know, Joseph Smith granting the priesthood to blacks and then sort of Brigham Young taking that away and the church not granting priesthood to blacks or temple access for over a century and then all of a sudden giving it back. That plus the message in the Book of Mormon that God curses people with dark skin as a way to make them distasteful to the lighter skinned people. What do you do with all that in your belief?

Lex de Azevedo [01:05:56] I say it's historical viewpoints. A lot of it's historical viewpoints.

John Dehlin [01:06:01] So the denial of the priesthood was a mistake or.

Lex de Azevedo [01:06:05] Well, all right, so I was in the thick of that. I was in Brazil. You know what the biggest problem was? Brazil?

John Dehlin [01:06:10] Yeah. The temple access.

Lex de Azevedo [01:06:11] Yeah. It was a huge, huge problem if somebody answered the door that was black. My first question I asked my. Which happened every other house. I asked my companion, what am I going to do? And he says, well, you tell them the gospel has been restored and you're here to give them the good news. Thank you very much. And so I thought, and I really wrestled with this, particularly when I did my genealogy and I found out that in my family tree there's a very, very good possibility that my great, great, great grandmother on my father's side. If you can't get your genealogy out of Brazil, you assume you have African lineage. I went to the mission president. I told him, I said, president, I think you need to send me home. And he says, why is that? So I've just done my genealogy and I think I have the lineage of Cain. He says, azeveda, get back to work. So here's another way. I don't know, John. I don't know the answer to that. I don't have a strong testimony that was right or that was wrong. It could be a mistake. But I put it in context and here's what I see. It's 10:30 in the morning. God says, it's your turn to go to earth, John. I'll see you back at 2:15. Don't mess up. How big is that pain? How big is that pain? In other words, we look at our lives as if we don't see the big picture. We're only here for a blink of an eye. You're just here for a flash. These things that are so important to Us, we talk today about sexism and racism and this and this and this. And we go on and on and on. People, come on, get on with your lives. We're here for a blink of an eye. Learn how to love. Learn how to love. Get on with it. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples. What else did he say? By this you will all men know that you are my disciples.

John Dehlin [01:08:02] So some people need to either know that the racist teachings were either true or false. If they're true, they're going to believe them. If they're false, they're going to leave the teacher church. What I hear you saying is you're missing the point. The point is love. And that stuff is not important.

Lex de Azevedo [01:08:19] I'm saying look at the big picture. Always look at the big picture. I was talking to my grandson yesterday, he says, grandpa, what do I do about this or that? I said, alex, always look at the big picture. In business we say, look at your problem from a 20,000 foot view. Okay? Look at life from the view from Kolob. And the things that you're thrashing around about, the perspective changes. John. I don't know. It could have been a complete mistake. I'm willing to admit that I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:08:47] Right.

Lex de Azevedo [01:08:47] But the end. In the end, if his life is a blink of an eye and God is going to right all wrongs and dry every tear, and that is forever. And this is the dream here, this is just the dream, the blink of an eye dream. This isn't even real. You don't know that. This is what this life is. We don't think about it. But be willing to acknowledge the big picture and stop thrashing around with the little details. Excuse me. If I sound strong, it's because it's the way I am. Doesn't mean I think.

John Dehlin [01:09:16] No, no, no. I mean, it's a. And this takes us to another question that we talked about a bit at lunch. What? You know, when the church came out with its policy in November of 2015 saying that if two gay Mormons decided that they wanted to consummate their love in marriage, that that all of a sudden became an act of apostasy from the perspective of the church, and that if they were to have children who wanted to be members of the church, they were not wanted or welcomed to be members, and they shouldn't even, you know, bother trying to advance through the ranks of Mormonism. How do you deal with that? Is that just. Yeah, that's.

Thoughts on Marriage, Sexuality, and Church Discipline

Lex de Azevedo [01:09:54] There's two. No, no, I think those are Good questions. I do. And I think there's. I see two questions there. The problem with marriage and one of the things I do not understand. What went behind, Brother, you know, I do not pretend to know the brethren's thinking on the proposition. What was it in California?

John Dehlin [01:10:10] Prop 8.

Lex de Azevedo [01:10:11] Prop 8. I don't. But I wouldn't have put up the sign, am I a believing latterly saint? Yes, but I wouldn't because I see it differently. The problem with marriage is get the government out of marriage and you eliminate half the problem. I don't care who you marry. You have a right to marry who or whatever you want. In Islam they have four. In China, they used to be able to still have multiple wives. And in the United States, people have serial marriages or they have serial affairs. I mean, it is. I think it should be a contract, but the government should be out of the business of deciding who gets married. Remember when the church went into the wilderness, so to speak, we kind of lived our own law. It was a church thing. I think it should. Most people, many people have chosen not to get married. They go to Hawaii and get on top of a volcano and they marry each other. The problem for me is government's involvement in it because there was the fear that the government's going to come back against the church for certain. Because they don't espouse homosexual certain practices. So that's one thing. Get the government out of it. And I think you can solve a lot of our problems today. The other thing on apostasy and children. That's a tough one. That is a tough one. And it could go two ways.

John Dehlin [01:11:41] What you have is prophets saying that God views two men getting married as evil.

Lex de Azevedo [01:11:48] Well, I guess according to the scriptures, you could find evidence for that thinking. What has happened is the world has changed and God hasn't changed with the world the way the world would like. God would like the world to be on casters like a sofa and change for the world. And that's the big crisis we face today. The faith crisis. At the core of much of the faith crisis is that the world is changing. We have become a secular. In my lifetime, the United States has become a secular country, a country. The only nation that says in God we trust on the coin. The only nation that says, you know, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Now Christianity is on the defense. So what's changed here? And so this has created crises, huge crises, faith crises, family crises. Yes. Our society is in crisis. And in some ways we're like in a Free fall. We don't know black from white. We don't know white from black. We know right from wrong. If you're concerned about controlling immigration, you're Islamophobe. We refuse to call evil evil. I'm sorry. Cutting off people's heads is evil. Training little children.

John Dehlin [01:12:59] But Nephi did it, right?

Lex de Azevedo [01:13:01] Right. He did it. In that case, he was commanded by God. And what if that's true? Is that different than wanton cutting off of heads? Nephi said he didn't want to do it, and in his situation, he was placed in a role where he felt he had to do that. They tried to get the plate some other way, and they wouldn't get him.

John Dehlin [01:13:22] But I know that we won't resolve this, but I know, you know that those devout Muslims, we can assume at least a number of them do so because they claim to have had the same type of burden in the bosom that you claim to have. And that's their motivation. And that's where it gets tricky. So much of what you're saying is so appealing to my Mormon brain, and you're relying so much on the epistemology of sort of spiritual experience, which is emotion and feeling at its core. And that's how all religions justify good and bad, including us, including you. And that's the trick.

Lex de Azevedo [01:13:57] I don't justify. When you say bad Mountain Meadows Massacre, I don't justify that it's bad. You don't do that. You don't kill people. Can we call bad, bad Nephi? I think Nephi says, according to the scripture, if it happened the way it has, I understand that, and I'm not going to sit in judgment, but I do sit in judgment of people that systematically murder people one after another. The London bar, I mean, it's all over the world now. I cannot say, oh, that's okay. I don't compare that to Nephi.

John Dehlin [01:14:32] But same with the GIs in World War II. Fighting the war. I mean,

Lex de Azevedo [01:14:38] war is horrible. I hate war. I hate war. And I think it's horrible. We send young people off to die for governments, for people in power. War is horrible. And murder is horrible. And it's horrible to take little children and teach them to become murderers. But we have to call evil evil. And Mountain Meadows Massacre, I call it horrible.

John Dehlin [01:15:05] This came off a conversation about LGBT stuff.

Lex de Azevedo [01:15:09] I am not an expert on LGBT issues. I have been studying up to know more about it. There are many things which I just don't understand. I don't know if anybody really understand, you know, understand them. But this I believe. I believe that we set. We should have patterns and ideals that we strive for. And we should acknowledge that the patterns don't always work. And we should have great love and understanding for those that don't fit the pattern. Now go back to homosexuality. My brother's gay, and so this has been a huge issue in our family. And he went through even the BYU shock therapy and all kinds of things. So we have a history in this part, but not in the transgender. I could go back to the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal. Well, they're not created equal in the United States. We had slavery, okay? It was an ideal, not a reality. And we have ideals. If you take. What if everybody did it? Let's take that as an example. What if everybody did it? What if everybody was gay? There would be no society. You wouldn't be here. So the pattern is a man and a woman. That's a pattern. Now if that doesn't work for some people, either genetic reason or whatever the reasons are, I don't know. But we have an admonition to love everybody. And I say, here's what's hard for people to understand. You can believe in the pattern. You say, well, if you believe in the pattern, it's hate for everyone else. No, you can believe in a pattern that God has given us and still love people that don't fall in the pattern. And I don't have to throw out the pattern to accept a gay brother.

John Dehlin [01:17:00] But how do we know if God accepts, you know, same sex love or rejects it? How do we know? Are you comfortable saying God condemns same sex love or views it as sinful?

Lex de Azevedo [01:17:12] John? I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:17:13] You don't know?

Lex de Azevedo [01:17:15] No. But I know that God loves us.

John Dehlin [01:17:17] Is it possible the brethren have this wrong,

Lex de Azevedo [01:17:21] specifically? What wrong?

John Dehlin [01:17:23] It's opposition to same sex marriage, but also it's condemnation of same sex marriage love as being evil or sinful or perversion.

Lex de Azevedo [01:17:32] I haven't read. When you say same sex love, you

John Dehlin [01:17:35] talking about sex, you would call it homosexuality. I'll call it same sex love just because.

Lex de Azevedo [01:17:40] Well, there's no sin in being in same sex attraction. I don't think that's a sin.

John Dehlin [01:17:46] I'm saying two committed gay men loving each other and having sexual.

Lex de Azevedo [01:17:51] I'll leave that up to God. I just. I believe I know what the scriptures say. They talk about sodomy, okay? And so I know what the scriptures say. I don't have the answer to that, but I know that God loves all of us and he Loves them. And we're under a admonition to love everybody, even those that oppose us. That's what Jesus said. Love your enemies and not saying they're enemies. But it is possible to hold up a standard, a pattern and love those that don't follow the pattern.

John Dehlin [01:18:29] What about the Church excommunicating people? Who. So for example, a gay man excommunicating him for engaging in same sex sexual behavior or.

Lex de Azevedo [01:18:43] Alright. I have been in numerous disciplinary councils. Councils. Unfortunately, as a young bishop in a city ward with two prior bishops that did not believe in having any council, the stake president called me and I was called to be bishop. And he says, I need you to handle this. And he gave me a list of 18, 18 issues. And I didn't want to handle it. No, no. I didn't want to go there. One by one I handled was the hardest thing I've ever done and the most inspirational thing I have ever done. Everyone is unique and you do not know what's going on in that situation. You do not know. But when they talk about courts of love, there's two things in this world. There's love and there's fear for you. If you have fear, there's no love. Because fear and love are opposites. Imperfect love casts out all fear, fear, they're opposites. Somebody comes in really fearful, they're not going to feel any love at all. Just like when you're in a fearful state in your life, you don't feel love, you feel abandoned, you feel alone and you feel vulnerable when you're in a state of fear. Human beings vacillate between fear and love. I have found them in my situation to have been loving. Situations where we drew near to the people and that they understood only two, three situations where I felt really bad and I understood why I felt bad because the person was not in a position to want to even hear be in this situation and might have been better if they had not come in. I am very familiar with disciplinary courts and my experience is that they have been a blessing in people's lives. Now, if you don't believe in the Church, let it go. It doesn't matter whether you withdraw your name. See whether you withdraw your name, you're excommunicated. My personal belief is certain behavior. You withdraw yourself. See what is sin to me? Sin is that behavior and thoughts that isolate us from the eternal within us. They isolate us within from the eternal within. Our brothers and sisters. They isolate us from God. So in a way we excommunicate ourselves and excommunication generally is simply acknowledging what has taken place. And I don't like people see people. The church leaders are required to be protective. They don't say that generally. I don't. You know, they protect the person who's in there that's in the court. They're not supposed to say. But the person can go out and say whatever they want. But that hasn't been my experience. Could it happen? Could it be unkind? Yeah, because we're all humans.

John Dehlin [01:21:37] But for you, you've experienced disciplinary councils, for the most part, to be loving, constructive experience.

Lex de Azevedo [01:21:44] Unequivocally, John. And I can understand totally how people think. They're not. It makes complete sense.

John Dehlin [01:21:56] Right? Yeah.

Lex de Azevedo [01:21:59] Well, on that high note, this is heavy stuff.

John Dehlin [01:22:05] Yeah. So when you think about. When you think about when Saturday's Warrior was created, we haven't even talked.

Lex de Azevedo [01:22:15] All roads lead to savage. Doesn't matter where I do, where I go. All roads lead to satire.

John Dehlin [01:22:20] We haven't even talked about pop music and morality yet. But we need.

Lex de Azevedo [01:22:22] Oh, please don't.

John Dehlin [01:22:24] When you look at both Saturday's Warrior and pop music and morality and kind of what Mormonism was doing in the 70s and 80s, it was sort of growing. It was kind of skyrocketing. It almost seemed to be exponential growth. And the mission numbers. I served a mission in the 80s and. And the numbers were crazy, right?

Lex de Azevedo [01:22:44] Oh, Brazil just went ballistic. They went from two missions to like 18 missions in a few years.

John Dehlin [01:22:51] And there were even predictions that the church's growth would be exponential. But something has happened in the past 10 or 15 years. The church's growth has slowed. We're probably down to less than 1% growth a year. Year. And we're definitely declining as a church, as a percentage of the world's population. We're actually decreasing as a percentage of the world's population. The world is growing faster than Mormons, active Mormons. The inactivity rates are super high. There's probably 5 million active Mormons in

Lex de Azevedo [01:23:30] the world

John Dehlin [01:23:32] and over two thirds of the churches, people who've been baptized in the church have left it or no longer attend. So it's a. Things are different. I don't know if it's Google, if it's podcasts, if it's the Internet, if it's church history, if it's, as you say, the secularization of culture. There are all sorts of factors, but things in the church aren't quite as strong as they used to be. And I don't know if you would see the world as sort of all the evils that you feared in Saturday's Warrior and you feared in pop music, of morality coming to fruition and. Richard, how many minutes do we have left? Okay, okay, okay. We'll start wrapping it up. What are your views on. Do you see the church is not growing like maybe once you thought it would. And if so, how do you explain it?

Reflections on the State of the Church

Lex de Azevedo [01:24:33] So you said the church is not growing. A high percent of inactivity. What else did you say? I wanted to make sure.

John Dehlin [01:24:39] Yeah, just.

Lex de Azevedo [01:24:40] Well, let me ask you a question.

John Dehlin [01:24:41] Slowing growth within 20 years, it'll be likely the church will actually decline in membership as grow.

Lex de Azevedo [01:24:47] Let me ask you a question.

John Dehlin [01:24:48] Yeah.

Lex de Azevedo [01:24:49] Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

John Dehlin [01:24:51] I don't know.

Lex de Azevedo [01:24:53] I'm not so sure. It's. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing. It could be a good thing.

John Dehlin [01:24:58] How?

Lex de Azevedo [01:24:59] Well, I mean. Or it could not mean anything at all. It simply. I can explain it in several ways, not that I even feel I need to explain it, because it is what it is. The truth of the church is not measured by the members, how many members of the church or even activity in the church. I mean, if the church of Jesus Christ that he established was true and that disappeared. So what does that mean? What does it mean in the big picture? What does this mean?

John Dehlin [01:25:28] But Joseph didn't start this church to kind of fizzle out. He started it to sort of consume all nations.

Lex de Azevedo [01:25:33] Well, I don't think it'll fizzle out, but it. Okay, we're making an assumption that the truthful. Maybe I don't want to put words in your mouth. The truthfulness of the gospel is somehow related to the membership, the size of the church. I don't know that that's true. I remember reading, I wish I could quote in the Book of Mormon towards the end. As long as there is a band, a small band of Christians, and those words stuck out to me. The power of the church has nothing to do with the size of the church. That might have been a misunderstanding that we live through in this huge growth, that we think it would just grow and grow and grow and fill the whole earth. Like, whose prophecy was it?

John Dehlin [01:26:11] Daniel.

Lex de Azevedo [01:26:12] Daniel's prophecy. It was going to fill the earth. As far as we know, it's already filled the earth. You've got the Internet. You're doing it. I mean, prophecy is best only understood in hindsight. It's never understood in foresight. Why? The question I have is, why do I not care? Okay, That's My question, why do I not care? When I say I don't, I mean I care. But why is this not important to me? Why is this important to some and not important to me? The size of the church has no bearing on my knowledge whether it was three members in the beginning. As far as we know, it's going to blossom again and get huge. Or maybe it'll be snuffed down to a small point when the Christ will come. I don't know. But it's for some reason, for me, that's not a question that I need to lay awake at night.

John Dehlin [01:27:04] So you're not. You are not concerned about the state of the church today?

Lex de Azevedo [01:27:09] No, no. As a matter of fact, the growth of the church concerned me more. The growth of the church. Because here's what I saw in Brazil. I saw people. And this has happened around the world. And generally people join the church because they see it as a way up and talk about masses. There are many powerful spiritual experiences. But the welfare is just like in America. They want to come to America, open our doors. There'd be a billion people who would come to America. And in a similar thing, we notice anyone who's done missionary work that those who perceive the church as an upward opportunity were more likely to gravitate to it. Those who sought the wealthy, I mean, how many rich people did you baptize in your mission?

John Dehlin [01:27:52] None.

Lex de Azevedo [01:27:52] None. Okay. They see the church as. Why would I want to go that way? I'm already got it handled. I've got life. I've got everything I want. These people come in now. These people. It's the parable of the sower and the seed. They fall out. Brazil, the inactivity rate is horrible. It's horrible. It had one of the biggest growths in the church. It's horrible.

John Dehlin [01:28:12] 10%, 15%.

Lex de Azevedo [01:28:14] I don't know what the numbers are, but is that a good thing or a bad thing? And maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. I'm okay with it. I'll let you know if it gets crushed from the earth. I feel about that, but we got time yet.

John Dehlin [01:28:28] All right. Well, this has been fascinating, John.

Lex de Azevedo [01:28:34] I love talking to you. I love your questions, and I think you're doing a great job. I think it's good to ask questions and discuss these things.

John Dehlin [01:28:43] Well, thank you. And you've given me so much to think about. So as we sort of bring this interview to a close, talk really briefly about some of the business ventures you've been involved in lately. What you're working on these days.

Lex de Azevedo [01:29:00] Well, I have the wonderful privilege to work with my daughters, Emily and Rachel and Azevedo, our studios. And also we have three of our sons that consult with us independent contractors. And it's just to me, it's so wonderful to be able to work with six, with five of my kids. And we do good things. And that's what's wonderful. It started with we had the blessing, I say, a blessing of Rachel's first granddaughter being born deaf and the second one being born of spina bifid and cerebral palsy. And that turned out to be a great blessing to millions, to many, many people. It's what spawned the Signing Time series. And to be able to be involved in that, I thought I'd never want to really run a business. I just wanted to write music. But it has been so rewarding and I've fallen in love with the business. And so we do education for little children. We call it Edutainment. And it's just, I don't know, every day is wonderful.

John Dehlin [01:30:01] So, signing time, what are some of the other products?

Lex de Azevedo [01:30:03] We tried a series called. We're going to series called Rachel and Schoolers. We have baby signing Time. We got a grant to do an ASL program for adults parents of deaf children called Sign It. And it's wonderful. What we're doing is revolutionizing the world of learning sign language. And we've just begun. We got other projects. We have these YouTube channels.

John Dehlin [01:30:26] What are the channels?

Lex de Azevedo [01:30:27] Oh, there's so many. We've got 18 of them. My son Aaron just feels he wants to build as many channels as he can all the time and see which ones hit. So I don't know. We may have over 20, 30, I don't know how many.

John Dehlin [01:30:35] Some of the biggest brand names.

Lex de Azevedo [01:30:36] Oh, fantastic. Fantastic tv. Fantastic Playhouse. Baby Joy. Joy. It's a younger demographic channel. And are these like Sesame Street?

John Dehlin [01:30:47] What are they like?

Lex de Azevedo [01:30:47] Well, they're YouTube. It's what I was saying to you on the web. You don't want to go over three minutes, John, or you're going to start losing your.

John Dehlin [01:30:53] Did we go over three minutes today?

Lex de Azevedo [01:30:56] Are we over. Sorry that they're little videos. They're music. We're learning how to teach concepts in music, use music to teach in these little music videos. And it's really a fun thing to do that figure out how to. So our goal is at every.

John Dehlin [01:31:12] That's kind of how Sesame street and Electric Company started, right? The little commercials. Right. I mean, that's what Jim Henson and that's what it was about. Learning the Alphabet, learning the count, learning numbers, little songs. Right. You're kind of doing that, aren't you?

Lex de Azevedo [01:31:25] We're just going deeper into it and into the science of it. We talk about layered learning that kids don't have. You know, today is brought to you by the letter N. Seriously. We'll bring you three minutes. That'll teach you four or five concepts.

John Dehlin [01:31:39] So you're trying to pack more in.

Lex de Azevedo [01:31:41] We think kids are smarter than television gives them credit for.

John Dehlin [01:31:44] Okay, how's that going?

Lex de Azevedo [01:31:49] It is going well, and it's going hard. And what we learned is that education doesn't pay as well as entertainment. That's why Disney stopped doing education. They go where the money is. But our passion, what gets us up in the morning, is to help little kids and do good.

John Dehlin [01:32:06] So you're fighting the good fight. You're not. Again, as you said, with Saturday's worry and other things, you're not led by the dollar signs. You're led by the mission, by the passion.

Lex de Azevedo [01:32:17] You have to balance it. You can't stay in business unless you understand how money works. Otherwise, you're gonna be out of business. You're not going to be able to help anybody. But that's not what gets us up in the morning. What gets us up in the morning is to have a cause.

Closing Thoughts and Farewell

John Dehlin [01:32:33] All right, well, so we've shared so much of your wonderful life, so much of your perspectives and experience. The way that we usually end is just by sharing sort of a final testimony, so to speak. You've been sharing your testimony of kind of your. What your values are, what you believe in, what you've tried to stand for. If you were to leave our audience with some closing beliefs, sort of Lex de azevedo's testimony in 2017, not necessarily even an LDS testimony per se, but of if your grandkids or great grandkids were gonna listen to a minute or two of kind of what the main lessons you've learned from life and what life is about for you. Will you give us those comments as kind of a closing, as a closing statement?

Lex de Azevedo [01:33:22] I think I'll restate them. I think I already stated them. That I come to realize that it all boils down to how we treat other people. If we fail, that we fail. And I look at this life as a school of love. That's what we're here for. And that as believers and we are living in a secular worse. And I think it's going to get more secular. I think it's going to be Harder. It's going to be harder to believe, John. It's going to get really hard to believe because everything's going to be stacked against you. And part of the falling out I see is just that, that the only thing we can offer is by the new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples. If you have love one for another. I feel today I've been engaged in discussions with many friends who are secularists, don't believe in God, left the church, this, that, and I say they're not on trial. I'm on trial. All I have to offer of the evidence of what I believe is my ability to love those that disagree with me. I think that's it.

John Dehlin [01:34:35] It's so simple and yet so hard.

Lex de Azevedo [01:34:40] I don't think life is that hard at this point. It was really hard getting through. I'm almost through it. I don't know how many years are ahead of me, but I know there's a lot fewer than what's behind me. But I love being older. I love getting to the age where I mean to find peace. To find peace. Peace trumps everything. Nothing is worth giving up your peace for. And follow peace. Follow those things that lead you to peace. I don't care if your intellect is screaming, no, no, no, your brain go by what gives you go towards the peace. Ultimately, ultimately you'll be in good shape. God loves us all and his plan is bigger than we can possibly imagine.

John Dehlin [01:35:25] And your main sources of peace are what God?

Lex de Azevedo [01:35:29] I find I've been trying to learn how to actually capture that the love of God. And I found that you. I told you experience I had in Cottonwood Canyon. Remember I shared that with a gospel doctrine class and I found that 15% of the people had had the same experience. 15% of them. Question is, why did not the other

John Dehlin [01:35:50] 85%, receiving a witness of the love

Lex de Azevedo [01:35:52] of God, receiving the love of God, actually receiving it.

John Dehlin [01:35:56] That's Lehi's fruit, right?

Lex de Azevedo [01:35:57] Lehi? Yeah. And Lehi says, I've been carried upon the wings of angels. And there's various people have referred to it in various ways. But we seek the wrong things in life. We don't need to seek these things. If we as human beings could seek Christ, put it this way first, the kingdom of God, which is what we're talking about, it's learning to love. If we were to seek that, everything else would be added. And that sounds mystical, but it works. It actually works. It works like this 100 minus 10 equals 100 to the infinity. 7 minus 6 equals 7 to the infinity. God's economy is not the same as man's. If you have eyes to see that and ears to hear it, you'll know what I'm talking about.

John Dehlin [01:36:54] Other sources of peace besides God.

Lex de Azevedo [01:36:58] Well, I find that's the source. And then it's to our community. We're not an island to ourselves. We need other people. We cannot progress with other people. So we take what we learn. And we have to learn a lot of people. And it's so hard sometimes I really don't like other people. They really bug me. But that's the challenge. That's the game. And when you find that, you know, they talk about the peace that passes all understanding, you can be under great stress. You can all kinds of things. And then sometime. Have you ever had that where you, like, suddenly you find peace? Nothing's changed in the world, but everything has changed. Have you ever had that experience? No. Really, John, you are missing something. You are missing a huge part of life. There is a peace that passeth all understanding that suddenly the world, nothing has changed. But the world is beautiful. And you love people and you forgive people. It doesn't last with us humans. It comes and it goes, and then you have to seek it. So every day there's the greatest thing we can do, I find, is to seek God. And you have to learn how to do that. It's hard. It's taken me many, many years, and I'm still working on it. And I'm a failure in so many ways. But it's so worth it when you can find it.

John Dehlin [01:38:16] You're saying those moments come more and more frequently for you.

Lex de Azevedo [01:38:19] I call it on demand. What I'm trying to develop is God's love on demand. Now, he doesn't respond very well to on demand. But there are certain principles upon which you can draw upon the powers of heaven. We don't spend enough time trying to understand the principles upon which we draw upon the powers of heaven. We're totally focused on muscling our way through life. And there's an easier way to do it. I've done it the hard way all my life. I'm talking from a guy who's learned from experience. But it's worth mastering. It is worth mastering the intuitive knowledge, the knowledge of the spirit. It is the most wonderful thing there is. I don't know any other way to say it, but the only way I could show it is just that we can show it is to love people. And John, actually being here today, I have gained a renewed appreciation for what you're doing, the way you think, the way you draw out of people and you hear their stories. And I had some before I knew who you were, what you did. I had only what I'd heard, which was kind of some negative things, but I acknowledge what you're doing. Keep it up.

John Dehlin [01:39:34] Thank you. Lex Diazevedo, everybody.

Lex de Azevedo [01:39:41] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:39:41] Thank you. I want to thank everyone for joining us today on Mormon Stories. It's been a real honor to meet a lifetime childhood hero. Lex, it's been great. You're giving us so much to chew on. I want to thank those of us who have tuned in over the live Facebook stream. Thanks so much for joining us. We loved having you. Those of you who support us and keep Mormon Stories alive, we can't thank you enough. Your contributions to the Open Stories foundation make all this possible. Please continue to support us. If you don't support us, 10, $20 a month can really make a world of difference. So Please go to mormorestories.org and support us if you can. And we'll do this for as long as you're willing to help us keep going. Again, we want to thank Amy Grubbs and Cody Layton. They are my right and left hands as we try and keep the Open Stories foundation going. A big thanks to them because we couldn't do it without them and to our board of directors and to our listeners. So much love to you all. Please email us@mormonstoriesmail.com if you have feedback or questions. If you have other topics or people you'd like to see us interview. If you want to attend our events, go to mormorestories.org events and most importantly, please feel free to make comments on the blog page mormustories.org Please be kind and respectful in your comments. You may love and agree with things that Lex said. You may disagree, but please communicate with with kindness and with the sort of charity and composure that Lex has shared with us today because we love having the conversation continue. Thanks again for everything. Please stay tuned and tune in again soon for another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care everybody. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org thank you very much. SA.

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