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If you who are a fan of Paul McCartney’s Wing’s and/or a fan of drummer Joe English, have been looking for an update on Joe’s whereabouts, Esquire’s Kate Storey has the update you’ve been looking for. Although this article goes deep into subjects more than merely focusing on Joe, below you’ll find more focused excerpts from this article and a link to the full article.
Excerpt:
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 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.
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.
Watch the video below:
Link to full interview: HERE
