Inside Interview: John Cooper Lead Singer for Skillet

I have this legendary story and I didn’t know until later that it was weird. When I went to college, I was in the marching band and we went on this trip to another school for a football game. I had some friends at that school, so we met up. They asked me to go out raving, and I asked “what’s that?” They told me it was dancing, so I was like “cool, that will be fun!” So I go to this club and I don’t drink at all (and I don’t do anything else) but I am getting absolutely crazy! The next morning people said to me, “I thought you were a Christian, but you were so hammered at that party last night!” I thought, “no I wasn’t” and I didn’t know what they meant. I think I was going so balistic that people thought “there’s no way someone would actually do that without something helping.” But if you come to a Skillet show you know there’s a lot of energy on that stage and it’s all self-induced without anything helping… no chemicals.

Party.0 – What advice would you give to sober students?

John Cooper – For those who want to stay true to themselves and still want to make friends and have fun without getting into drinking or drug use… I think there’s something so wonderful about standing up for who you are but not preaching or judging others for living differently. I have friends today that are starkly different than me and would never want to live like I do. But you can be friends and hang out. Be strong, be yourself, love other people, and don’t judge. No one probably even cares about you not drinking, it might just be pressure you’re putting on yourself. So again, just go and have fun, be yourself and have a good time.