A British rock-star-turned-celebrity-preacher is really just a schmuck from Cleveland Heights

The year was 1977, and the musical Beatlemania was about to launch on Broadway. Thousands of rockers who'd spent their teenage years worshiping John Lennon, dressing like John Lennon, believing they were John Lennon auditioned for the show.

Caspar McCloud, a pasty British guitarist, was among them. He was celery-thin, crowned with a blond shag cut, and walked with a forced swagger that spoke of achievements he didn't actually possess. Though he'd never performed on Broadway — or any other stage, really — he reeked of confidence.

And why shouldn't he? He liked to tell people about his childhood in Manchester, England, where Genesis' Peter Gabriel had christened him the best guitarist he'd ever heard. McCloud was so obsessed with practicing, he confessed to friends, that he often fell asleep with his guitar in his arms.

So he arrived for his audition in full Beatle regalia. Of the 3,000 people trying out for the role of Lennon, he was one of the few who actually came from England. "I was built for this part," McCloud recalls in his autobiography.

The director asked him to play "Help." McCloud strummed his guitar like it was an instrument of God. But he only made it halfway through the song before the director cut him short. "You, you're it," McCloud remembers him saying.

There was no need for further auditions. "In less than a minute," McCloud writes, "I went from nobody to a rising star on Broadway."

He was soon sharing rehearsal space with the Rolling Stones and hobnobbing with the guys from Santana. He partied with people who snorted coke from bathroom sinks and barfed up hundreds of dollars worth of alcohol. But after six months, he began to feel restless. There was no real glory in impersonating the famous. McCloud wanted to be the one others impersonated. So he quit.

He would soon doubt his decision. The "glamorous solo life," McCloud recounts, "consisted of playing for a handful of people in a smoke-filled bar, being paid barely enough to buy a bag of fish and chips." But talent attracts money, and a few months after McCloud broke from Broadway, the record companies came calling.

Virgin wooed him at the fanciest restaurant in England. Sony invited him to meet the real Lennons. What sold him, however, was the gushing of Atlantic Records CEO Ahmet Ertegun, who told McCloud he had "the moves and charisma of Mick Jagger."

Caspar signed a two-record deal. His first album, Self Portrait, filled with angsty, soulful rock, made it to the top of Billboard's music charts. It wasn't long before private jets were delivering him to sweaty, cheering audiences in Australia and he was hanging with Sting, Gene Simmons, and U2.

"These were the days when I would be recording in the 'A' room and Madonna would be in the 'B' room next to me," he says.

But he was also becoming increasingly religious. The deeper he delved into the life of a rock star, the more he realized that it was no place for anything spiritual. Record execs wanted him to play gay clubs, and they wouldn't let him sing about God. "I had become a slave to a life that was no longer mine," he says.

So just as his career was soaring, McCloud kissed it all goodbye.

As he tells it, his pact with God began in the late '70s, when McCloud was concentrating so much on music that he drove away his wife. In a last-ditch effort to woo her back, he flew to her sister's house in Indiana. On the plane, he sat crunched in a too-small seat, looked out the window, and prayed.

He felt "like the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth was sitting in the empty seat next to me, just holding me." At that moment he became a full-fledged Christian.

McCloud reunited with his wife, quit the rock life, and launched the Ministry of Three, a Christian band inspired by Zeppelin, Johann Sebastian Bach, and God. Once again, he found quick-strike fame.

The band was soon playing before thousands of screaming kids at churches and arenas across the country. "Caspar is an amazing guitarist — as skilled as you'll ever see," says Seth Barnes, head of Adventures in Missions, a Georgia outreach ministries group. "He resonates with people. I've known people who have driven three or four hours to hear him play."

Fans like Michael Stark describe McCloud's shows as religious experiences in themselves. "Their hands go to war on your behalf, their fingers fight furiously on the fretboards against the forces of evil, and there's still a beat you can groove to," Stark writes on one fan site. "If any of the Osbourne kids are ever to get saved, it's probably going to be at a Three concert."

But McCloud knew people weren't really cheering for him; they were cheering for God.

"I remember I was at a concert — it was another full house," McCloud recounts. "From the stage all I could see was a sea of teenagers . . . the Lord would use me as his instrument."