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Posted on July 17, 2020

Lincoln Brewster Interview: Leaving the music business turned into his greatest career move!

Lincoln Brewster Interview: WAAAY DEEP Conversation! Lincoln talks about the stress and anxiety he grew up in, his conversion experience that allowed him to feel the peace he’d never felt before… a great story how at 19, he landed the gig with Steve Perry… how leaving the music business and going to work for a church inadvertently turned into the greatest career move he ever made… dealing with depression, anxiety, and a period of time where he questioned his faith, his Fender signature strat, mellowing, and loads more. 100% REAL, very cool

Lincoln Brewster Interview: Lincoln Brewster is a contemporary Christian guitarist, singer, and songwriter & the senior worship pastor at Bayside Church in Granite Bay, California. He was the lead guitarist for Steve Perry’s (Journey) solo project For the Love of Strange Medicine, and toured with Perry for 6 months. Lincoln’s about to release his 10th LP & as a sideman, has played with Darrell Evans, Michael W Smith & others

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One thought on “ Lincoln Brewster Interview: Leaving the music business turned into his greatest career move! ”

Hi Lincoln, my name is Rodney Shaw. I have an ES-335, that is in a good as or maybe better condition than most reissue guitars now available (Strats and Gibsons). It was built in 1959-1960 and contains fingerboard woods that are no longer available to current reissue guitars now available. If you are interested as a collector, you may see it and play it at my home. During your telcon with me you assured me that your father was an expert on Gibson guitars, so if you wanted hiim to view it also he is welcome to come. The current crop of 335’s that I have seen, seem to have finger boards that are ate up, or front and backs that are all scratiched, you will be surprised. Rodney Shaw

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Lincoln Brewster

Singer/songwriter and guitar virtuoso who toured with ex-Journey vocalist Steve Perry before finding solo success as a Christian artist.

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• Lincoln Brewster: In Spirit and Truth

By Ann Marie Chilton   •   May 15, 2008

As a former guitarist and composer with platinum-selling rock band Journey , Lincoln now chooses to openly praise God with his talent, and through his message, encourages others to follow Jesus Christ.

He and his band played at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association headquarters in Charlotte, N.C., where we had a chance to sit down with him.

Q/ You’re a “worship leader,” so why exactly do we worship?

A/ In terms of what it does for the believer, the Bible says that God inhabits the praises of His people. The Bible also says that times of refreshing come from the presence of the Lord. So when we worship and we praise God, He’s there. He shows up, and that brings refreshing and encouragement.

For me, if I had to go back to when God really did something in my heart and really changed me, a lot of that happened just in moments during worship–and during preaching as well, hearing the Word. But my heart was softened during the worship, and then you want to hear. It can be a lifter in different ways.

We worship because God commands it. It’s all about relationship. If you look through the Bible, God is always about relationship.

Interesting thing, when we look at Jesus, he was probably the hardest on the Pharisees, but really they were some of the most holy living people of the day. Why would you be hard on those guys? Well it was all heart, authenticity, intent, relationship. God is way more focused on the inward things than on the outward things for sure.

When you start to break it down, true worship is in spirit and in truth. It’s got to be honest. You can go through the motions, but you don’t get worship credit just for showing up during the music time at church.

The Romans 12 thing is that we would all offer our bodies as living sacrifices, and that is our reasonable act of worship.

“…Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship” (Romans 12:1, NIV).

And clearly when you look at people, it’s by design that we worship. It’s what we were made for. We worship everything under the sun, so we don’t have a worship issue: we’ve got a direction issue.

Q/ How can worship be evangelistic?

A/ I struggled with this question when we moved out to Bayside. Bayside is a highly evangelistic church, and here I am really worship focused … I didn’t know how my wife and I were going to fit in, or how that was going to work.

And one day, I just remember God going, “If My name be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Myself.” And I was like “Aha! So we’ve got to lift Your name up and then You’ll draw them.” Yes, it’s simple. It was so simple it felt silly.

Yet you talk to people in certain circles and they go, “Oh, you can’t do worship. It’s foreign to nonbelievers.” I understand the concept of that, but I think that when we dilute the idea that God’s power can work through our obedience, then that’s silly.

My job in [the worship] process is to lift Him up, and then God does the rest. I always want to challenge people to worship authentically in truth and passionately. Seek after God.

Q/ You have a new CD, and it’s coming out in September, “Today Is the Day” …

A/ Yeah. The 23rd is the actual date.

Q/ So what themes did you explore in those songs as you listened to what God was laying on your heart?

A/ Clearly, our pastor, Ray, his influence will be all over this CD in terms of the content. Today is the Day is very like, “Hey man, let’s go for it! I’m leaving my past behind. I’m moving forward.”

“Let’s go for it! I’m leaving my past behind. I’m moving forward.”

There’s another song called “Best Days,” that the rest of your life can be the best of your life, that’s what that song is about. It’s Philippians 1:6.

“…He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).

It’s funny; I’ve actually needed to write a verse for that song. It’s almost finished. It’s already totally recorded except for two verses, and I think I got them today, which is really cool.

It’s that declaration. “By God’s grace, I won’t be captivated by culture, controlled by critics, discouraged by problems or distracted. When times get tough I won’t back up, back off, back down or back out. To my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I say, ‘however, whenever, wherever and whatever You ask me to do, the answer is YES'” …

That to me is the content for the verses of that song. The kind of pre-chorus, it says, “With everything that You’ve started in me, I believe that You will be faithful. And I receive everything that You’re doing in me, and I believe that the rest of my life will be the best days of my life.”

It’s a real kind of positive, optimistic outlook. Some people have gone, “Well how can you really say that? What about people who are ill?”

“It’s a real kind of positive, optimistic outlook.”

If you look at the Christian life kind of holistically… so you die. Great! That’s when it really is going to get good. I think it’s ok to believe God for great things in this life.

I knew a lady, a good friend of mine who was on our worship team, who had brain cancer. She told me that she had some of the best time with the Lord after she got sick, which is pretty awesome if you think about it. She knew that she was going to get to see Him soon.

So that’s definitely one of the themes, letting God’s glory shine through your life. There’s another song on there called “Let Your Glory Shine.”

There’s one that’s called “Give Him Praise” that’s kind of a R&B Gospel flavor that a guy named Israel Houghton sang on with me. It’s just an absolute riot. It’s probably one of those speeding ticket songs if you listen to it in the car!

I wanted to make a very encouraging and uplifting project that was very worshipful at the same time.

Q/ It’s good with all the things that are going on in the world; people may feel in a spiritual slump and need a positive message.

A/ Yeah, it’s funny. Our bass player Norm, he drove down last night and he had a crazy day yesterday: his flight delayed, just a really miserable day.

He said he was driving down in the wee hours of the morning from Raleigh, and he told me this morning, he was like, “Hey, man. I was just listening to ‘Today is the Day’ on the way down. I just really got to say it like really got me pumped up!”

And I was like, “It works!” To me, when it really hits home with people who have been playing it … that’s a good thing.

Q/ You spoke earlier about how you were at the Ottawa Billy Graham Crusade [in 1998]. What did that mean to you?

A/ There’s actually a lot to it … I was involved at the time with a church that left me pretty confused theologically. I had been taught all kinds of things about the presence of God and somebody carrying the Holy Spirit.

When Dr. Graham walked on the platform, and it wasn’t a weird thing at all, I had just never sensed the presence of God on someone’s life like that ever. It blew me away.

Obviously God very uniquely blessed him and gifted him, and even being here [at BGEA], you know, … I just start to cry. I think he represents to me all the things you want to be for God. His humility is just challenging and inspiring: his faithfulness, his consistency.

The thing that stunned me at that Crusade was he got up and spoke, and it reminded me of how Paul says basically, “I didn’t come here to ‘wow’ you with big words. I just came to preach Christ.” And that’s all he did, and gosh he probably spoke maybe 10 or 15 minutes. It was short. It was just unbelievable.

It felt like, “Ok, so God uses men on the earth.” Watching Billy Graham, if he was any less there, if he was any less of himself, he wouldn’t even be there. It’s absolute minimum Billy and maximum God. You don’t see that very often.

It’s just challenging. … We played in Indianapolis, and when I saw him on the screen I remember vividly looking up where I was standing and going, “Oh, Lord, let me be serving you like that. Let me get to that age, and when I am, let me be serving you like he is.”

Ottawa was specifically very special. My wife was there, and we had a similar experience–the powerful presence of God. We had come out of a charismatic background, and I left [the Crusade] and went, “Ok, I have never felt the presence of God like that.” And that was an eye opener for me.

God will move wherever and whenever he pleases and through whomever he pleases. And boy did He ever!

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Lincoln Brewster

What is “real life?" Is it the pain, struggles, and moments where hope is in short supply? Is it faith in a God we can’t see and hope for a future we don’t yet know?

For acclaimed worship leader Lincoln Brewster, “real life” has meant all of that and more. Born and raised in a small town in Alaska, Brewster’s childhood in a broken home was perhaps a little too “real.” It was an environment darkened by his stepfather’s violent behavior and alcohol addiction. An environment from which Brewster and his mother sought solace in music.

“My mom loved music and played with local bands,” he says. “She was the one who inspired my love for singing and playing instruments.”

As Brewster bonded with his mom through music, he began mastering a variety of instruments —including a stunning prowess on the guitar. It was this incredible talent that caught the attention of mainstream labels, landed Brewster a “gig” playing with rocker Steve Perry (formerly of the band Journey) and earned him a mainstream record contract by age 19.

But God had other plans. After attending church with his high school sweetheart and now wife, Laura, Brewster yielded his life to Christ. Filled with a new passion and purpose, Brewster walked away from the promise of rock stardom to take a job at his local church. This new trajectory eventually led him to a recording partnership with praise and worship label Integrity Music.

Since that time, Brewster has performed and crafted songs that have helped shape the sound of today’s modern worship while also climbing Christian radio charts. These include global anthems such as “Today Is The Day,” “God You Reign,” “Everlasting God,” “Salvation Is Here” and “The Power of Your Name.”

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Lincoln brewster's official website.

www.lincolnbrewster.com

discography

Today is the Day (2008)

Let the Praises Ring (2006)

All to You… Live (2005)

Amazed (2002)

Live to Worship (2000)

Lincoln Brewster (1999)

Lincoln Brewster's Real Life Debuts at No. 1

Lincoln Brewster Shares 'Real Life' on New CD

• Bible Engager's Blog
• Blog de la Biblia

Christian singer, songwriter and guitarist Lincoln Brewster walked away from a high-powered rock-n-roll career to serve Christ and others. He never looked back. Instead, he’s used his God-given talents to reshape the sound of worship music, having made a lasting impact on the entire genre. He will release his 8 th album, Oxygen , to fans on Aug. 19.

We recently interviewed him at our headquarters in New York City to learn a little more about the man behind the music.

In this Q&A, Brewster, senior worship pastor at Bayside Church in Granite Bay, Calif., shares his story and his heart for God.

ABS: Tell us about your early career.

LB: I was playing guitar and touring with Steve Perry (formerly of the band Journey) in Cincinnati. I was standing at the edge of the stage, playing at a concert. People were grabbing my legs, screaming and going crazy, and I remember looking up at the roof and saying: “I’m sorry God. I’m not using this talent for you.” People showed up for themselves. We showed up for ourselves. I saw the emptiness of the whole experience.

ABS: What happened?

LB: I moved back to Modesto, Calif., and got offered a job at a local church. I prayed for a week and during that time, I got four offers to go on tour. I talked to my pastor and said, ‘I am praying my face off, and I’m not hearing anything.’ My pastor said, ‘Sometimes the teacher doesn’t talk during the test.’ I knew at that moment what God wanted me to do. I took the job at the local church.

ABS: What did you do during that season in your life?

LB: I went from being served to serving others. I vacuumed. I ran sound for weddings on the weekends. A lot of people questioned my sanity, me being one of them. But three or four months into it, I was asked to lead worship for youth. A lot of songs in church were beautiful, but a little funky—and not in a good way. I’d think: ‘What if I redid the music and put a different package on it?’ I started to repurpose the songs and gave the music a little different spin.

ABS: Was there a significant song that made you feel like your music was going viral?

LB: Someone said I had a big part in shaping how workshop music sounds today. And I thought: ‘I did?” I take whatever God puts in front of me and I’m faithful to giving it my best effort.

ABS: Tell us about the making of your new album?

LB: Four days into the making Oxygen , my wife Laura was diagnosed with appendiceal cancer. I wanted to pull the plug on the album, but I felt God wanted me to keep going. The Bible tells us to trust, and I had to learn to do that in a new way. It was difficult. Many of the songs were forged in the midst of a lack of clarity.

ABS: Can you tell us more about that?

LB: I wrote “On Our Side” while Laura was in the hospital recovering from major surgery. I was with her at about 2 or 3 a.m., and I was writing the lyrics in her room. I was thinking: ‘Would this song mean anything to her?’ For the song to be meaningful, it had to be hopeful. I changed the whole message of “On Our Side” because of that experience. I think all of us would live differently if we believed that God has our back and that better days are ahead.

Watch the whole interview with Lincoln Brewster at ABSAtrium.com/live .

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Maria Wolf is a writer at American Bible Society and has more than 20 years of experience as a journalist. She is a classically trained soprano who uses her gift of music to minister to the congregations of St. Gertrude in West Conshohocken, Pa., and Mother of Divine Providence in King of Prussia, Pa.

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LINCOLN BREWSTER

• Published May 10, 1999

Creating music is a mysterious thing. But the music of life is larger than any notes you could play or words you might sing. Each day brings with it another opportunity to create a new song. For {{Lincoln Brewster}}, there's no doubt that it's with this kind of music that he seeks to hear the applause of an audience of One.

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Lincoln Brewster

Lincoln Brewster began playing music at a young age and attained a level of success before he was 22 that many musicians never reach.   But he realized very early in his career that he wanted more than success in this world. Lincoln wanted to play his guitar and sing songs that would help bring souls closer to Christ...he wanted his music to make a difference. Born in Fairbanks, Alaska, Lincoln first showed his musical gifting before he turned two, keeping remarkably good time with a pair of broken drumsticks during his mother Cheryl’s band practice.  Later, when his family moved to the coastal town of Homer, Alaska, Lincoln picked up the mandolin at age five, often playing for cruise ship tourists.         Sadly during this time, Lincoln’s home environment was darkened by his stepfather’s violent behavior and alcohol addiction.  So music often helped bring solace to both Lincoln and his mother. It was a tough life for a young child, but his musical talents continued to grow in spite of their tumultuous homelife.   By the time Lincoln had entered his mid teens, the family had relocated to Modesto, California. All the while, Lincoln continued to perfect his craft, eventually recording an instrumental demo that opened the door for a meeting in Los Angeles with an executive for Guitar Center and later a connection to a Sony A&R rep named Randy Jackson (formerly of “American Idol” fame). During this time, Lincoln began attending church with his high school sweetheart and future wife, Laura.  Soon after, while in LA and alone at a friend’s apartment, Lincoln accepted Jesus Christ into his heart. Lincoln left LA and returned home to his “normal” life.  But, one afternoon while practicing his guitar, he received a call from Steve Perry, the former lead vocalist for Journey.  Unable to believe his mother when she announced the caller, Lincoln later found out that Randy Jackson had passed his demo tape on to Perry who liked what he heard.    Lincoln’s path was about to change. At the ripe old age of 19, he gave up his day job at a local store, moved to L.A. and was catapulted into the world of a rock star.  One day, he was a clerk behind a counter, the next he was in rehearsals with a legend.   Within months, he was co-writing and recording Perry’s solo project For The Love Of Strange Medicine and leaving to go on a nationwide tour with one of the biggest names in rock/pop history.    Lincoln decided that another big change was in order as well.  He and Laura were married in April of 1994, just a few months before he left to go on the road. Although it was the opportunity of a lifetime for a young man, the tour life left him unfulfilled and empty.   Referring to the fans who crowded the stage nightly, Lincoln says, “We were receiving all of the worship… that’s just not what my life is about.”   So, when the tour ended, Lincoln decided to make another life change, turning down all other offers from mainstream bands.  Instead, he and Laura moved back to Modesto where he took a job at his local church as “the technical guy,” running the house sound system when only a few months before he had played guitar in front of thousands of people.  It was one of the hardest decisions that he’d made, impacting not only his career in mainstream music, but his paycheck as well.  Money was tight, but Lincoln and Laura kept their faith that God would provide. And, He did.  This job would prove to be a key training ground for Lincoln as he eventually started leading worship for the church’s youth group. “I just knew that God had created me to do this. Every fiber of my being was saying YES! This is it!” It wasn’t long before God revealed what His next plan was for Lincoln.  He and Laura moved to Nashville to help start a church.  It was a leap of faith, and during the first two months, they slept on the church floor while they looked for a place to live.  They spent three years in Nashville, preparing for whatever God had in store next.  During that time, Lincoln also toured with GRAMMY Award-winning Christian music artist Michael W. Smith and connected with representatives from Integrity Music. Lincoln signed with Integrity and in ’99 released a self-titled debut album. In that same year, Lincoln was offered a job that took the couple back to California and closer to their families.  Bayside Church near Sacramento hired Lincoln to lead their music ministry and it was a perfect fit.  Shortly after, Lincoln and Laura started a family of their own – welcoming sons Levi in 2001 and Liam in 2004. The young family flourished in the Bayside community, and he was blessed to be able to fulfill his duties as Worship Arts Pastor while also touring and recording with Integrity.  Over the years, he has recorded numerous critically acclaimed albums including Live to Worship, Amazed, All to You – Live, Let The Praises Ring: The Best of Lincoln Brewster, Today is the Day, Real Life and most recently a Christmas album, Joy to the World. Along the way, Lincoln has enjoyed Christian radio successes with the No. 1 singles “Everlasting God” and “The Power Of Your Name” and top 10 singles such as “Today Is The Day” and “Salvation Is Here.” Years after leaving behind his rock star dreams, this husband and father once again finds himself sharing music with capacity crowds at concerts and festivals, this time leading them in worship with songs like “There Is Power,” “Made New,” “Today Is The Day,” “Let The Praises Ring,” “Love The Lord,” “God You Reign” and “No One Like Our God.” His songs have been featured on 10 albums including his latest, God Of The Impossible, a reminder that God is bigger than anything we face and nothing can separate us from His love. It is a theme that echoes throughout Lincoln’s life: from a childhood overshadowed by abuse, to a life filled with forgiveness and a ministry that has inspired believers around the globe. While still serving as the Worship Arts Pastor, the Bayside Church staff support Lincoln as he tours and makes guest appearances at churches, festivals and events around the country. His love for what he does is obvious. When he steps in front of a room of full of people, he involves the audience in his music, teaching the songs to them, inviting them to sing along. He shares his heart like an open book and teaches as he plays, talking about his personal journey with God and the faithfulness he’s found.    Lincoln knows he is blessed.  “I’m truly grateful to be able to do what I do. I know I don’t deserve it, but I am committed to doing my best with what God has put before me.”

Today Is The Day

Paul baloche, love the lord, let the praises ring, more than amazing, shout for joy, god you reign, lincoln brewster & reid mcnulty, you are the one, brewster, lincoln\baloche, paul, there is power, while i wait.

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Lincoln Brewster

Lincoln Brewster was born and raised in Homer, Alaska. When he was a year old, his mother noticed his ability to keep rhythm on a drum set given to him by his grandfather. By the age of 12, he was in a local band, and at 19, Lincoln landed his first mainstream record contract. He has released 9 albums, released over a dozen singles, and is currently a worship pastor in California.

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Lenin and the Russian Spark

On April 16, 1917, a short train carrying thirty-two passengers steamed into one of St. Petersburg’s less distinguished stations, completing an eight-day journey from Zurich. These passengers were arriving late to a revolution that had started without them, earlier that year, after food riots broke out in the imperial capital. But one of them—Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov—would quickly seize control of events. By year’s end, he had launched what would become the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which replaced the empire it despised but remained largely within its geography. Reflecting on these events years later, Winston Churchill would compare Ulyanov, or Lenin, as he styled himself, to a “plague bacillus” that had been introduced into a body at precisely the moment it could do the most harm. The train injected the bacillus late at night, when it arrived and was greeted by a delirious crowd. The next day, Lenin was off and running, speaking and writing at a frantic pace, rejecting compromise, relentlessly pulling the Revolution toward his hard Bolshevik line.

“ To the Finland Station ,” Edmund Wilson’s history of socialism, published in 1940, took for its title the name of the dreary railroad terminal that welcomed Lenin to St. Petersburg. Serving St. Petersburg since 1870, the year before the Paris Commune, the station was described by Wilson as “a shabby stucco station, rubber-gray and tarnished pink, with a long trainshed held up by slim columns that branch where they meet the roof.” It was not one, he continued, suited to “the splendors of a capital.” Decades after Lenin's arrival, when Wilson was doing his book research, he found peasant women sitting there, with “bundles and baskets and big handkerchiefs around their heads,” seated on “benches rubbed dull with waiting.” Long after the Revolution and all its world-changing promises had settled into a grim stasis, waiting was still a Russian specialty.

The train entered Finland Station a hundred years ago this week, and the end of its voyage marked the beginning of new, seismic events that reshaped the world as the First World War was ending, unhappily, for nearly all of its combatants. It’s a centennial that President Vladimir Putin, no fan of dissent under his own rule, has some  ambivalence  about commemorating.

A new book by Catherine Merridale, “ Lenin on the Train ,” pays careful attention to the secret rail journey through Germany, Sweden, and the Grand Duchy of Finland that brought Lenin to his destination. A hundred years ago, Russians reeled from a war that was going poorly, a tsar, Nicholas II, who was failing, and the constant threat of invasion and intervention. Lenin’s arrival in 1917 was orchestrated by cynical German leaders who were eager to weaken Russia’s fragile government by sending in a well-known incendiary element, in order to inflame tensions that were becoming acute thanks to catastrophic military defeats, a long history of suppressing dissent, and the simple lack of food. Lenin’s first newspaper had been called  Iskra , or “spark,” after a line one poet, Alexander Odoevsky, wrote in response to another, Pushkin: “from a spark a fire will flare up.”

That is precisely how it turned out. Lenin was quite willing to accept help from his sworn enemies, although he went to some lengths afterward to cover up the German origins of the plan. Later, it was important to him to call it a  sealed  train—a phrase that became famous in history. It described a train passing through Europe secretly, in a state of extraterritoriality, without passport controls, almost as if it did not exist. It just glided quietly through the cities of war-torn Europe, under German protection, carrying its deadly cargo toward Germany’s weakened adversary on the Eastern Front.

Map by Catherine Merridale and Frank Payne, from Catherine Merridale’s “Lenin on the Train” (Metropolitan, 2017).

Churchill’s image of Lenin as a bacillus had a certain resonance for other reasons: the occupants were quarantined on the train, as if it carried a rare disease. Almost no one was allowed to get on or off. Stefan Zweig, the Austrian essayist, called it a “projectile,” as if it were a canister filled with sarin. The little band of revolutionaries who boarded at Zurich had only each other, as they passed through one city after another: Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Berlin. True, there were German soldiers watching their every move, but they stayed in a forward part of the train car, separated by a line of chalk drawn on the floor, which served as an international border between “Russia” and “Germany,” two nations that were technically at war and could not speak to each other. Lenin tried to avoid leaving his carriage, to be able to say later that he had never set foot in Germany, but in Frankfurt the band of passengers secretly stepped off the train to spend the night.

The United States also had something to do with the decision to send the sealed train on its journey, albeit indirectly. Ten days earlier, on April 6th, Congress had declared war on Germany. The imminent arrival of American arms and men promised to transform a war now in its third year, and to bring enormous resources to bear on the Western Front. As a result, Germany was desperate to finish off its huge enemy to the east, and eager to try anything. Maxim Litvinov, a Soviet diplomat, later said that the decisive factor that led the Germans “to authorize the passage of our comrades was the entry of the United States into the war.” Still, the success of the plan surprised all of its authors, including its central protagonist. A day before he left, Lenin was still trying to round up support, and telephoned the U.S. Embassy in Bern. A young staffer answered, but, to him, the matter did not seem urgent—he was on his way to play tennis—and he told Lenin to call back the next day. That return call never came; the staffer, Allen Dulles, went on to become the head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Throughout the winter, Lenin had been quietly living in Zurich with his wife, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, of very little concern to anyone, banished indefinitely from his homeland. They lodged with a cobbler and rarely went out. The great revolutionary was something of a bookworm, going to the public library every day when it opened at nine, coming home to his tiny apartment for lunch at 12:10, and going back to the library from 1 P.M. until closing. There, he read longingly of earlier revolutions—the Paris Commune above all—and wrote inflammatory articles that were read by tiny numbers of purists, equally far removed from the action. But his own revolution seemed to be receding. He was getting older, and he thought it would be many years before Russia was ready. Krupskaya later wrote, “Never, I think, was Vladimir Ilyich in a more irreconcilable mood than during the last months of 1916 and the early months of 1917.” “We old folks may not live to see the decisive battles,” he admitted glumly in a January speech. He felt “corked up, as if in a bottle,” his wife said.

On March 15th, the day he heard the news that food shortages had led to chaos in Russia, he was stunned, and walked to the lakefront in Zurich, where newspapers were publicly posted. There, for the next few days, he received the vertiginous news. The tsar had abdicated! Up was down, and vice versa. Could he go back now? A new world was opening up. It was almost surreal.

In fact, the word “surrealism” was coming into existence at exactly that moment, one of the many ways in which artists and writers were trying to invent what Guillaume Apollinaire, the inventor of the word, called a “New Spirit.” To a surprising degree, Zurich, the Swiss city we think of as home to banks and burghers, was also a fountain of creativity, embracing irrationality even more passionately than Paris did. From around Europe, expatriates had descended upon Zurich to escape the horrors of the war. Not far from Lenin’s flat, James Joyce was writing word symphonies into his “ Scribbledehobble ” notebook and beginning to write “ Ulysses .” A few streets away, another word, “Dada,” had been coined to describe the deliberate nonsense one group of spirited artists wanted to create, reading poems full of words that they invented on the fly, choreographing Dada dances, and spending much time, the way artists do, in a local café that they called the Cabaret Voltaire. They chose the word “Dada” because it meant so many things in so many different languages—a rocking horse in French, or “yes, yes” in Romanian and Russian.

Yes, yes. The tsar had abdicated! Through all the noise and nonsense, it was becoming clear. Lenin  had  to get back to Russia; he wrote a friend, “We have to go by some means, even if it is through Hell.” But how? Briefly, Lenin toyed with the idea of renting an airplane and simply flying over Europe to land in Russia. Such a death-defying act might have made him the greatest Dadaist of them all. But it was not feasible in 1917, and he sulked, furious that the Revolution had started without him.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, another banished expatriate, this one in New York City, was also absorbed in the news from his homeland. Each day in the early spring of 1917, Leon Trotsky would commute from the Bronx to a tiny basement newspaper office at 77 St. Mark’s Place, in the East Village. Within a year Trotsky would become, with Lenin, the other architect of Russia’s transformation into the Soviet Union. One of the more sublime headlines that would appear in a year full of them displayed New York’s robust self-absorption for all to see: BRONX MAN LEADS RUSSIAN REVOLUTION.

To call Trotsky a Bronx Man was an exaggeration—his passage through the borough was brief. But it was meaningful, as a recent book, Kenneth D. Ackerman’s “ Trotsky in New York, 1917 ,” reveals. Trotsky and Lenin had known each other a long time, as allies and rivals, since the old days of  Iskra —the spark. Trotsky had arrived in New York on January 14th, after being expelled from France and Spain, and found work at  Novy Mir , a tiny Russian newspaper that was sold for a penny around the East Village and the Lower East Side. Remarkably, it employed not only Trotsky but Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, who would go on to become another important leader of the Russian Revolution until, like Trotsky, he fell to Stalin’s purges.

The offices of Novy Mir.

Despite its high-octane Bolshevism,  Novy Mir  was quite happy to accept advertisements from Budweiser, tobacco companies, phonograph manufacturers, banks, and other pillars of the American economy. That helped to pay the staff, who scrounged for lodgings where they could. The Trotsky family found a three-room apartment that cost eighteen dollars a month just west of the Bronx River, near the 174th Street subway stop on the old Third Avenue El. On his way to work, Trotsky often stopped at small deli in the Bronx, the Triangle Dairy Restaurant, which was serviceable for a cheap meal.

On March 15th, the news of the tsar’s abdication crossed the Atlantic and reached Trotsky in the Novy Mir office. Across New York’s Russian districts—including places where huge numbers of Jews who had fled the tsar’s pogroms had settled—the news spread rapidly from window to window, across the clotheslines and fire escapes. Like Lenin, Trotsky knew immediately that he must return. But to cross the North Atlantic in the spring of 1917 was no simple matter, especially in his case. In addition to the German submarines, there were the British and the French, who were in no hurry for the Russian Revolution to begin, since Russian troops were desperately needed on the Eastern Front. Trotsky made it on a ship to Halifax, Nova Scotia, but was detained there for a month before international pressure finally compelled the British to release him and let him continue east.

Lenin’s voyage was simpler, because the Germans wanted this projectile to gather speed and destroy Russia once and for all. The fastest way to introduce him into Russia’s bloodstream was by rail. Lenin had been denouncing the railroad as an instrument of oppression, and the “summation of the basic capitalist industries, coal, iron and steel.” But it was efficient. Because the trip took place on a German train, we have a fairly good idea of the timetable. What the Germans called  der Russenzug —the Russian train—left Zurich at 3:10 P.M. on April 9th. As Stefan Zweig wrote, “It was 3:10, and since then the world clock has kept different time.”

Accommodations were ordinary: a wooden carriage, painted green, with two toilets and a baggage room. In one of his earliest official decisions, the future leader of the Soviet Union decreed a system of tickets to the single toilet. Those using the toilet to smoke were given "second-class” tickets, and had to wait behind those who needed it for more basic purposes. It was a long journey, interrupted by occasional stops, when the train would be guided into a siding and the authorities asked questions in whispers. North of Berlin, the train became an amphibious vehicle, as the carriage was separated from its locomotive and placed on a ferry to cross the Baltic. In Sweden, the plans were nearly derailed because the extraterritorials had no papers; but German efficiency took over again, and soon they were on their way. In Stockholm, a memorable photograph was taken during a rare descent from the train, showing Lenin walking fast, with an umbrella and derby, looking more burgher-like than usual.

From Stockholm, the train proceeded very far to the north, nearly to the Arctic Circle, before crossing into the Grand Duchy of Finland and curving south again, toward St. Petersburg. It was 11 P.M. on April 16th when Lenin approached the Finland Station. A marching band was on hand to play “La Marseillaise” and other songs of the revolutionary left; a triumphal arch had been built, and a large crowd came out to welcome Lenin back. The scene was carefully re-created twenty years later by a Soviet artist, Mikhail Sokolov—so carefully, in fact, that he inserted someone who was not there at all, but needed to be: Josef Stalin, smiling, just behind Lenin.

In a Soviet painting from 1935, Lenin arrives at the Finland Station in Petrograd, April, 1917. Josef Stalin, who was not actually present, is fictitiously depicted standing behind Lenin.

Not everything changed overnight. The carnage of the war did not slacken simply because they had made it through the lines. But Lenin deftly took advantage of the public’s exhaustion with the war, demanded that Russia stop fighting, and turned his attention to the bitter struggle for power that followed the tsar’s abdication. It might have gone in many different directions—the United States was hopeful that a proud new democracy was beginning, and was the first to recognize the early post-tsarist government of Alexander Kerensky. But Lenin and his allies—including Leon Trotsky, who finally made it back—carried the day and built something very different, a new kind of state that the world had never seen. For many Russians, exhausted by war and privation, it was a time of immense hope. The Germans who had sent Lenin were also hopeful. Soon after his arrival, a German diplomat in Sweden wrote a note to a colleague: “Lenin’s entry into Russia successful. He is working exactly as we would wish.”

Not long after his return, Lenin wrote that “there are no miracles in nature or in history,” but he admitted that, now and then, “peculiar co-ordinations” occur that “must appear miraculous to the burgher’s mind.”  So his train journey to the Finland Station may have seemed, even to him; the remarkable result of a series of secret cables, passed between allies and enemies, which resulted in the complete transformation of the world’s largest country. And, by extension, the rest of the world, for the huge fact of Russia was never possible to ignore, then or now.

On November 7, 1917, Leon Trotsky coined a phrase that historians still use, in his angry remarks to the Mensheviks as they departed the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, in St. Petersburg, leading to the victory of the Bolsheviks. “Go where you belong from now on—into the dustbin of history!”

Just who belongs in the dustbin and who does the sweeping up changes over time. In 2009, a bomb blew open a hole in the backside of Lenin’s statue outside the Finland Station. In recent weeks, young people have been demonstrating against Russia’s leader and his tsar-like pretensions, his suppression of freedoms, and his cynical foreign policy. A hundred years after Lenin arrived at the station, the dust particles continue to fall from the explosions of 1917.

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