Joe English Made it Big as a Drummer With Paul McCartney and Wings. Now He's in an Insular Religious Group.

esquire.com
Joe English Made it Big as a Drummer With Paul McCartney and Wings. Now He's in an Insular Religious Group.
Writers Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr on their book Broken Faith, which goes inside the Word of Faith Fellowship.
BY KATE STOREY
MAR 2, 2020

In 1975, Joe English was staying at the Allman Brothers ranch in Macon, Georgia, after his band Jam Factory split up. He was out of cash, “driving a 1964 Dodge Dart with bald tires,” he told Modern Drummer in a piece that ran in 1986. “My drums were in it and it had no backseat. I could play good, but I sure was broke.” Then he got a call from a friend of a friend offering him a gig that would change his life.

He joined Wings, the band Paul McCartney formed with his wife Linda after leaving the Beatles. English was the only American in the band for four years, and he traveled around the world, met rock royalty, had 200 acres of land, two Porsches.

Then he disappeared from public life.

Since 1990, English has been living in rural North Carolina as a member of the Word of Faith Fellowship, the subject of a new book by Associated Press reporters Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr who have been reporting on the group for years. The book details disturbing allegations about the group, including physical abuse against adult and underage members during sessions called “blasting,” the practice of screaming the devil out of members, who would “get so worked up they’d wail, scream, convulse, or vomit into buckets,” according to the book. The church was founded in 1979 by a preacher named Jane Whaley who teaches that blasting drives the evil sent from Satan to manipulate humans into addiction and wrongdoing back to hell, Weiss and Mohr write.

Broken Faith: Inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, One of America's Most Dangerous Cults

“[Members would] often push you down to the floor, beat your back with their fists, it’s just kind of a violent group exorcism,” former member Ben Cooper told Today last week. Cooper said he was “blasted” as young as age 12.

The reporters describe one incident relayed to them from former members in which a church member “grabbed Joe and tossed him across the room to expel his demons. That was what it took for Joe to get a breakthrough.” (Esquire has not independently verified this account, and the book does not contain any accounts of English participating in any blasting sessions.)

When asked about allegations of abuse in the church, Joshua Farmer, a lawyer representing Word of Faith, said via email, “Mitch Weiss’s book Broken Faith is a continuation of the campaign of vitriol and lies by Weiss and certain members of the Cooper family against our church … We have repeatedly reached out to Weiss and the publisher of this book. They have continually rejected our attempts to address their inaccuracies.”

Farmer did, however, confirm that English remains a member of the church. When asked for an interview with English, Farmer directed me to call the church, which didn’t respond to a voicemail I left inquiring about English.

Weiss and Mohr attempted to talk to English during their years reporting on the Word of Faith Fellowship for the AP and their book but say the church blocked interviews with members.

“I saw English at the sentencing for Word of Faith Fellowship minister, Kent Covington. After Covington was sentenced [for fraud in 2019], I walked over to English and introduced myself,” Weiss told me. “As I began to ask questions, his wife, Dayle, who used to be married to Allman Brothers guitarist Dickie Betts, pulled him away. She mumbled that he didn't want to talk.”

Weiss and Mohr were, however, able to get a picture of English’s life in the church thanks to interviews with former members as well as audio and video from inside the organization. According to their reporting, English rarely speaks about his rock history and is treated no differently from any other member. Tasks are shared among members, and English has done janitorial work for the church and, other times, he and his wife counseled teenagers.

After Weiss and Mohr first began reporting on Word of Faith Fellowship for AP, English and several other members of the church recorded testimonials for a local radio station which were posted on YouTube. In 2018, English gave an emotional interview about his years of drug abuse and his introduction to Whaley. English was introduced to the Word of Faith Fellowship by music promoter Ray Nenow, who’d visited the church with English’s wife.

“We had tried everything. We’d tried rehab, we’d sent him to other ministries,” Nenow says in the 2018 recording. “We sent him everywhere, we tried to get him help. We couldn't help him. It wasn't until we got here and the prayer and the things started happening in his life that things started to change. He started to get free.”

The video is posted on YouTube and titled, “Word of Faith Fellowship Members Share: From Profane Music To True Worship.” And English sits next to Nenow and another member named Andy Kidd. English looks subdued in a suit jacket, white dress shirt and purple tie; his hair is combed back and he’s well-shaven. When the interviewer gets to English’s portion of the story 14 minutes in, English seems uneasy, saying with a Southern drawl, “It’s hard to talk without crying.” After a sharp breath, he talks about his introduction to Whaley and the church.

“She looked at me and gave me a hug and she could see that I was a troubled man but you know what she cared nothing about… in the world they wanted to know about your history with Paul McCartney and Wings. She wanted to help me because she knew that I had problems, and she could care less what I had done in the past. And I had never met anyone like that except my wife Dayle.”

After English explains his path to Word of Faith, the interviewer asks English to sing, and he stands up and belts out a song called “Your Love Never Fails.” English also seemed to address reporting on the organization.

“I hear about all the attacks. Hear all the stuff that’s said about the church and Sam and Jane,” he says. “I remember back when I came here, how messed up I was and I remember the love that she showed me. Really, nobody can really tell me anything because I know, I know the truth in my heart that when I was desperate and down and out, she just took me and held me and told me she loved me and God was going to help you if you want help. I've had struggles since I've been here, [but] you can get help if you want help, if you open your heart and say, ‘Jesus help me.’”