Though Icon News host Lew Marklin was born in Cerritos California, He has spent more than half of his life in and around Santa Barbara California where he attended school at Santa Barbara City College and briefly at University of California Santa Barbara. Recently Icon News visited the VMA's and Marklin made remarks about Katy Perry, who he called his third favorite star on the red carpet in 2011 after mentioning her as a fellow Santa Barbara alumn.
It turns out that Marklin and Perry share many similarities and have crossed interesting paths, many times. Both left high school in the 9th grade to pursue music careers and recieved their GED in Santa Barbara, only Marklin recieved his at the Marge Schott center, quite a bit later. Marklin recorded his first record, in 1990, at the age of 14, at Master Tracks Recording Studio in Santa Barbara and started his record label, Project Records, that would later turn into Atomic Lawn Entertainment in 2000.
Marklin acquired legendary music attorney Brian Rohan and manager Todd Singerman (Motorhead) at the age of 16 and performed on The Arsenio Hall Show and Into the Night With Rick Dees, but after losing his father, at the age of 17, Marklin who was known to the world as Mark-E, decided to walk away from music to become a Christian and pursue a life of ministry. Mash, attended bible college and was licensed with the Assemblies of God, where he would become a Youth Pastor, Worship and Music leader and travel preaching as an evangelist, before returning to entertainment in 1997.
Katy Perry, also has roots in church, of Perry, Marklin remembers "When I was first introduced to Katy and her music it was 2005 and she was known as Katy Hudson. Her father was a pastor and a friend told me I needed to hear his pastors daughter sing. I thought she was great, but at the time I was transitioning from music to television. I was not interested in doing anything with music anymore. The next time I would hear Katy's music, it was I kissed a girl. She had changed her name, hair color and music and though I liked the song, I was initialy in shock because I had only known her as a Christian artist." Marklin, who has faced his fair share of criticism for his work on ADHDtv, adds "I am sure that it must have been a strange and rough transition, at first for Katy.
I have been down that road myself, and I think that she is an amazing artist and a force to be reckoned with. I am very amazed by her and proud of her for all that she has achieved." Marklin who now produces a weekly Christian TV show and is on staff at his church as the head of the televsion media department in his spare time, remembers that his first editing project as an SBCC intern was for Music Academy of the West, where Perry attended as a 9 year old and says "I love reminiscing stuff like this because it reminds me that this is a very small world we live in, which makes it that much easier for us to change it! God works in mysterious ways.
The entertainment industry has been borrowing great performers and artists from the church for a long time, names like Little Richard, Elvis Presly, Reggie White, Evander Hollyfield, Whitney Houston, R. Kelly, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Alice Cooper and now Katy Perry. It's a breeding ground for practice, teaching, love and attention which nurtures talent and confidence in artists at a very young age, when they are impressionable enough to absorb it." Marklin's personal take on Devil worship in the music industry "I just think that it's silly.
I don't believe in it personally, I just think that it is a group of very immature, selfish individuals trying to get attention through shock value and showing their utter disrespect for humanity by worshipping any dark force that would promote suffering, death and destruction of another living thing. They are simply counter productive to the causes of humanitarianism that we fight for because they are too lazy to apply their time, powers and energy towards fighting for anything or anyone other than themselves and their freeloading frenzy to party like idiots until they drop.
The only devil is the one within themselves, and the demons are their actions. Am I scared of them? Why would I be scared of a bunch of out of shape drug addicts, alcoholics and smokers who are still in bed at noon when the rest of us have been to the gym and are now out circling the globe ten times over. Halloween is for children."
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