It was 1982 when Jericho, consisting of guitarist/vocalist Tyler Whitney and bassist/vocalist Jason Everett, released their first demo, a forgettable record called Under the Stars. "The demo was bad!" Tyler recalls, with a laugh. "Even when we were making it, we were sort of looking at each other and saying, 'Man, this is bad, isn't it?'"

"We'd been a band for maybe a month at that point and I think it was way too soon to be entering the studio," Jason explains. "We weren't familiar with each other, I wasn't familiar with the songs, since Tyler had written them all. It was too fast. We wanted to go out there and make a name for ourselves and get signed two seconds after we got the idea to have a band and it just doesn't work that way."

Indeed it doesn't. Jericho would release a second (much better, in the band's estimation) self-titled demo before entering the studio to make a third in 1987. There was still no record deal on the table, but Tyler insists by that time, he and Jason had made their peace with that fact. "It's funny because we'd just sort of had this talk and said, 'Okay, well it doesn't look like it's going to turn out the way we want it to, but we can still have fun with it.' And then it all just happened. It's so ironic to me that we spent so much money and so much time chasing after it and the minute we gave up, it just kind of fell into our laps. It was like God said, 'here.' It was that easy."

Frankie Wright, a longtime friend of Tyler's, had recently been hired by JLN to produce such acts as Melodi Dixon and Phoenix Reeves and Tyler decided to use that connection to his band's advantage. "It was my idea, my fault!" Tyler confesses laughing. "I called him one day and I said, 'Well, Frank, congratulations. It looks like your on your way. I'm proud of you. And you know, Jase and I are going to need someone to produce our next demo...and we're going to need a place to record it. So, what do you say?' I wasn't subtle about it at all! I thought he would hang up on me, but he actually agreed to it!"

"Call it temporary insanity," Frankie jokes. Using his access to the JLN recording studios, Frankie ended up smuggling his friends into the studio, recording the demo after everyone else had gone home for the day. For two weeks, no one knew about this, but eventually, they were caught - by none other than Joel Gibson, co-founder and former President of JLN Records. The result was not pretty.

"Joel wasn't happy," Frankie says simply. However, after Mr. Gibson took a good listen to the bootleg demo, his anger began to subside. Impressed by the hook-filled melodies and honest lyrics, he called Frankie and put an offer onto the table. "He'd actually fired me after that and then one day, he called and said, 'Well, I'm willing to give you your job back and I'll even sign your friends...if you'll take over the vocals.' I told him no, because it wasn't my band and I really didn't have any desire to be in it. They were the ones who had done all this work for it and I didn't want to come in and steal all the glory."

Much to Frankie's surprise, Tyler and Jason weren't offended at all by Joel's suggestion and actually seemed rather interested. "It didn't upset me at all," Tyler insists. "I got so giddy when I heard the word 'sign' that I would have agreed to having a dog bark out the songs! I was just so happy about getting signed I didn't care who was singing."

After some soul-searching and persuasion from Tyler and Jason, Frankie agreed to take over the vocals and Jericho was signed to JLN in May, 1987. One of the very first things on their agenda was to change the name of the band. A Few Good Men, drawn from Frankie and Tyler's pasts as Marines, seemed to work perfectly. After the name change, the band was ushered into the studio, to begin work on their debut album. "A lot of the songs that we were actually recording for the demo ended up on the first record," Jason shares. "We just completely started over on them, with Frankie singing them instead of Tyler and me.

The original three members of A Few Good Men describe the Summer of 1987 as a "huge blur." "We had so much going on at once it was crazy," Tyler remembers. "We were recording the first record, Frank was producing two other people and then we ended up doing a deal with Word, who gave me a songwriting contract and ended up distributing us to the Christian market. And then somebody got the idea to release an EP before the actual album, so we had to write all the songs for that and then go record it in Nashville...and there, of all places, is where we met Jory."

Jordan Stone, an Alabama native, was in Nashville furthering his own education. A self-taught drummer, he often acted as a session player on records, to earn extra money. He met up with the band in September of 1987, having been called in to play on the song "Lost in Space" and there was an immediate connection. "Right off, I knew I liked these guys," Jordan affirms. "I liked the sound, I liked the style, I liked everything." The feeling was mutual. After playing on two of the EP's four tracks, Jordan was asked by Tyler to become A Few Good Men's full-time drummer. "I wasn't expecting that one!" Jordan admits. "He just asked one day and I said, 'Yeah, I'd love to!' I didn't think about it or anything. I just said yes and there you go."

The Lost in Space EP released on Halloween, 1987 and shortly thereafter, the fully-assembled band embarked on a promotional tour to get their names out there. "That was so much fun!" Jordan enthuses. "The whole thing was so new to me and to go from being some anonymous nobody to being on TV in a band was so huge for me. I couldn't get over everything that we did, the places we went, and the fact that I was really there. It was amazing."

The band's full-length debut, Take My Life, released in early 1988 and it seemed the industry could not get enough of this jangly rock foursome. However, by the summer of that year, the band began to implode from within. "Jory was the first one out," Tyler recalls. "He wanted to go back and finish his education, so after the Crawl tour, that was it for him. And then, a few months later, Jase called me and he said, 'I don't think I want to do this anymore.' That was really when the band died, I think."

The departure was an amicable, but painful one. Left without a drummer and bassist/founding member, the future of A Few Good Men looked bleak. "We talked about replacements for Jase and Jory," Frankie admits, "but we never really committed to anything. We had people fill in for certain shows, but nothing definite." When the label approached about a sophomore record, Tyler decided that A Few Good Men would not replace their missing pieces and simply disband.

"For me, a lot of the heart was gone," Tyler admits. "It was our dream - Jason and I - and with him gone, it didn't feel right to me to keep going. I didn't want to be like a Menudo of sorts and replace him and Jory, because I knew it would never be the same. I resolved, 'Okay, well, we've had our fun, but it's time to stop now.'"

Reaction from the label again wasn't pretty. "Joel almost had a heartattack!" Frankie laughs. However, they did eventually agree to let the remaining members of AFGM out of their contracts, on the condition that they release one final EP, as a way to say goodbye. Having the idea to try and reunite the band for one final hurrah, Frankie got on the phone, coaxing missing pieces Jason and Jordan to return to record the EP and embark on one final tour. The result, the One Last Time EP, released in September, 1989 and seems to be a fitting goodbye.

"The last thing we want is for people to be sad for us," Tyler insists. "If anything, be happy for us, because we got the chance to live a dream and make some history. We enjoyed every minute of it, truly."

The true "end" for AFGM will come in May of 1990, when they perform their final concert. In the meantime, you can currently catch them on the BLT tour, running through February.