When illustrious ‘80s actor Corey Feldman emerged with his recent musical project, Corey & the Angels, many people were left scratching their heads. They couldn’t seem to understand how the long time thespian’s passion for music could transcend any insecurity he was apparently supposed to feel. After his now infamous Today Show performance video went viral and drew harsh criticism, he retreated from the public eye for a while, which if you know Feldman, is completely understandable. The Los Angeles native, by all accounts, is one of the most congenial “celebrities” out there.
And he cares – he truly cares about the music. His father was a member of the ‘60s psychedelic rock band Strawberry Alarm Clock, his sister was in The Mickey Mouse Club and would perform Beatles songs at Disneyland, and his grandmother had an old grand piano that entranced him as a child. Music was a constant in his life.
“Sean Cassidy was like my idol,” Feldman says from his home in L.A. “That’s when I was 7 years old. My grandmother had this antique piano. Ironically, on the back of Sean’s album, was a photo of him at 3 or 4 years old standing by this piano. I remember thinking, ‘I would like that to be me one day.’ I remember thinking I would like to be taken as a serious musician and look back on some baby photo of me standing next to my grandmother’s piano.”
Thrust into the limelight at an age when most people are still playing with toy bulldozers in their sandboxes, Feldman landed a series of major film roles in movies like The Goonies, Stand By Me and Gremlins. Before he knew it, he was experimenting with hard drugs and alcohol, but had the frame of mind to quit before he even hit the “magical” age of 21.
“I went through the drug scene at a very early age,” he explains. “ it only lasted for two years. I was out of that really quickly. I saw enough. I was actually completely sober and off of all drugs by 18. Three years before I could go into a bar and order a drink legally, I was already not drinking. When I got to my 21st birthday and everybody wanted to party, I was like, ‘Naaaaah.’ I took my first drink and first hit of weed at 13. By 15, I took my first hard drug and around 17-and-a-half, I was done.”
Today, spirituality is at the forefront of everything he does. The 45-year-old essentially sees no point in living if he doesn’t have faith in something greater than himself. He started what he dubs, “The Angel Program” with that foundation in mind.
“There’s no point in existence if we don’t have a spiritual base to start from,” he says. “Anybody who doesn’t see that is kind of in denial. Maybe you’ve just never seen the light and have just been shrouded in darkness your whole life, so you don’t know the possibility of what it even can be on the other side. At the end of the day, if you believe in God, pray to God and have spiritual guideline for that everything you do…number one, you’ll always be honest and two, you’ll always have a moral fiber. Beyond that, you’ll also be able to help others find that light. That’s what we do through our music in our performances. That’s what The Angel program is all about-spreading love and light.”
As Corey and the Angels continue to crisscross the country, he will likely run into more skeptics along the way who want to condemn him for having the “angels” scantily clad in lingerie while claiming he’s helping and empowering beautiful women. While they may have a point, Feldman’s love and genuine belief that he is doing something good will always prevail.
“The angel theme was around long before the band,” he says. “I created the company Corey’s Angels about five years ago with the intention of helping beautiful females who are often misunderstood. There’s a lot of immediate judgment against them just because they’re beautiful. People assume they can’t possibly have real talent, intelligence, or be worth anything other than their looks or bodies. We decided to create this company with a ‘wink-wink, nudge-nudge’ to folks at home that we are going to try to tempt you all with this salacious idea of these girls in lingerie wearing angel wings. But really, I just wanted to help these young ladies to realize their dreams by becoming these artist they’ve always dreamed of becoming.”
