Russell Hobbs is on a mission from God

By Russell Smith / Pop Music Critic

Published 07-27-1988

"Russell Hobbs is dead."

That, at any rate, is what Hobbs called the garage sale he held earlier this year to cast off the trappings of his checkered past. Hobbs began his reign as the pied piper of Deep Ellum four years ago; he helped to pioneer the forgotten downtown neighborhood with an, at first, legally unsanctioned performance space called Theatre Gallery. A year later, just across Commerce Street, Hobbs opened a smaller "artistic saloon' he dubbed the Prophet Bar. Today, Hobbs savors the irony of the name. "God gave me that,' he says. "Even though I didn't know God, he knew me.'

Russell Hobbs is a changed man. But still somehow the same. With the heart and haircut of a hippie and, some say, the business instincts of a Great White, he has usually managed to generate controversy. Hobbs once had the big idea to manufacture "Jesus boots,' platform shoes made of Styrofoam that would enable wearers to walk on water. Then there was the topless bar he wanted to open across the street from the family-oriented Hard Rock Cafe. Say what you will: Hobbs has avoided being dull.

"God works through preachers, musicians, janitors, weirdoes. God works through everybody,' he says. "But music is a very important thing right now; the biggest idol today is music. And if you can get people to find Jesus through music, man, that's great.'

Hobbs lost his lease for Theatre Gallery a few months ago, but the Prophet Bar remains open. The place, though, has undergone some changes of its own. For one thing, the cover charge has been permanently suspended. Employees work for free, and so do local bands. The club serves juice, no alcohol and, consequently, pays no liquor taxes. It went from being a hole-in-the-wall to, as Hobbs describes it, "holy ground.'

Paintings by local artists -- and one by rocker Gary Myrick -- got pulled down when Hobbs got the spirit and decorated the outside of the building with Christian-oriented graffiti. A large representation of a dove bringing an olive branch to planet Earth dominates the venue's front room. Another room boasts a "prayer wall' that contains dozens upon dozens of names (local musicians, media types, club owners and the like), followed either by the word "salvation' or by "repent,' depending on how urgent Hobbs feels the person's spiritual need to be.

Rather than the usual assortment of fashionable kids and Deep Ellum night crawlers, the Prophet Bar now attracts people such as those who live and study at the Christ For the Nations Bible school in Oak Cliff. The bands --from local outfits such as Network 7 to touring acts such as Barren Cross --evangelize through music that ranges from mild to metal. Between songs, it can be as quiet as a chapel. Hobbs tells stories, however, about late nights at the Prophet in which souls are saved right there on the spot after singing and dancing and the laying on of hands.

Some have suggested that the Prophet is being propped up financially by the ever-expanding Christ For the Nations. Hobbs only says that "a lot of 'em come down here and pray; they witness on the streets. They've really been a support to us.'

"It's stayed open because God wants it here,' says Hobbs. "It's stayed open because we'll make $300 on a weekend, and we'll owe $300 on rent. Then, the next day, the phone's getting ready to be turned off and some Christian will come in and go, "I read about you in the newspaper; here's a check.' And it's just the amount we need for the phone bill. Another day, another month, another year -- I don't know. But today, it's here.

"Man, I'm the most blessed person that's ever lived,' says the ever-enthusiastic Hobbs. "I had the greatest life for 29 years in the world of drugs and women and fame and rock 'n' roll. And now, by God's grace and mercy, he's given me a whole new life.'

The rock started rolling, so to speak, last fall, when, Hobbs says, he began to grow disillusioned of wrangling with bands and other participants in the Change Your Life Festival, to which he says he owes $6,000 today. "I was getting so bored with this whole thing: underage girls, same old pot, same old bands and their stupid attitudes, too much reality, too much cynicism,' Hobbs says. "I was getting tired of it all, so I started doing other stuff, cleaning up my act a little bit. God was starting to work on me.'

Last December, Hobbs agreed to go to church with a Prophet Bar janitor who had been advising his boss on the state of his soul. The church, Hobbs says, was little more than a room in Oak Cliff, a small apartment with drawings, depicting spiritual warfare, tacked on the wall.

"I got there with a hangover,' Hobbs says. "I had everything, man. I could drink all the beer I wanted; I ate every day, anything I wanted; I had five girls wanting to spend the night with me, every night; people came up every week wanting to get me stoned and do coke and all this stuff. And I was sick of it, OK? Because it's a dead-end road; it's a detour to make you die. So, anyway, I went to church. . . .

"I felt, for the first time in 29 years, peace,' he says. "I'll never forget driving back from Oak Cliff to Deep Ellum. It looked like stormy darkness, old-death buildings. I could see the difference in life and death.' That was when Hobbs locked up the liquor and told his bartender that the Prophet wouldn't be serving it anymore. "He came back every day for a week,' Hobbs recalls with a gentle laugh. "Finally it hit him that I was serious.'

Shortly thereafter, Hobbs says, his father, who originally had lent him the money to open the Prophet Bar, had "hit bottom.' Personal, financial and marital problems led him to seek help from his son.

"He's started his walk with God,' says Hobbs, who adds that the Prophet's landlord is a born-again Christian as well.

Hobbs' fiancé, an Italian-born model named Anna, also has joined the Prophet Bar covenant. "We grew together, farther and farther from the truth,' says Hobbs, chronicling the couple's odyssey through the likes of ancient philosophy, Buddhism and high yoga.

But his next anecdote is vintage Russ Hobbs. It begins right around the time of Hobbs' spiritual conversion, and it's set at a virtually empty Dallas hotel, where the two have decided to spend the night following Anna's return from a modeling excursion in Tokyo.

"When you're born again, that doesn't mean you know anything,' says Hobbs. "It just means you've changed and you've accepted Christ. But I didn't know all the things to do wrong, you see. They told me in church, "Drinking and marijuana and heroin and coke, all of this is bad.'

"They didn't say anything about (psilocybin) mushrooms, right? "I didn't know that Satan created mushrooms to ruin us,' continues Hobbs. "So here I am, a baby Christian. . . . When you get saved, God assigns angels to protect you; I had angels on me now. I'm not just some regular guy that got saved; I was a guy that had a bar, that talked to newspapers, that controlled 50 or 60 bands: I mean, Satan was using me big down here in Deep Ellum. The day I got born again, he wanted me dead. . . .

"I was holding Anna in my arms and thinking about Jesus and just praying that she would be saved,' says Hobbs. "I was talking, and she looked at me and just started screaming. She said that she saw my face as the devil and that all around me were demons and blackness. Then she turned around and looked out the window and saw creatures.

"Now you can say that tripping on mushrooms makes you see things. But it doesn't. It makes you see things differently. . . .

"Now I know that mushrooms take you into the spirit realm, just like acid. But they take you into the spirit realm of Satan; they don't take you into the spirit realm of God like fasting does. You can see angels. I've seen an angel. But you only get that by fasting and believing and praying.' It was in March, Hobbs says, that the Prophet Bar became "a Christian ministry, a house of the Lord where we lift up the name of Jesus with live music.'

"Christian bands are so different,' he says. "They come with their own sound systems, and they bring a bunch of people. They don't demand anything. You just feed them and pray with them. And then they head to the next town, man, fightin' the war. It is a war. When you become a Christian, you enlist in the army of God to fight evil and to defeat Satan.'

And to the skeptics out there who doubt that Russell Hobbs will spend the rest of his life doing battle in the trenches of the spirit, Hobbs responds: "They're waiting for me to change, and I'm waiting for them to change. But there's a lot of people that know I'm not going to. I've been looking for a way out of the world for 29 years, and I've found it.'

1.The Prophet Bar, once an "artistic saloon," now serves no alcohol and features only Christian bands. (Credit:DMN-William Snyder) 2.