Man who led Bob Dylan to Christ says legendary singer is still walking with Jesus
http://blog.godreports.com/2012/10/man-who-led-bob-dylan-to-christ-says-legendary-singer-is-still-walking-with-jesus/
Brooklyn-born Messianic Jew Al Kasha, 75, the double Oscar winning songwriter who in 1978 prayed with Bob Dylan at a Bible study in his Beverly Hills home to receive Christ, believes that Dylan never lost his faith despite many rumors to the contrary.
Bob Dylan made a well-publicized conversion to Christianity, went through a discipleship course at a Southern California Calvary Chapel, and produced three strongly Christian albums, Slow Train Coming written in Kashas home Saved and Shot of Love.
However, when a fourth Christian album failed to materialize in 1983, a rumor was circulated that Dylan had renounced his faith.
His new album, Tempest, is replete with Christian lyrics, as Kasha notes: I am absolutely thrilled that Bob has shown through this new record that he has never lost Gods calling in life, he said. Hes never given up.
I get upset when people think that he has because you dont write all these songs just out there. It takes time to write them and theyre all about Christ so Ive said this in the past the media has hurt rather than helped him.
Kasha went on to say, I have known Dylan since 1960 when I was at Columbia as their youngest-ever record producer and they were going to drop him from the label as his first CD only sold 7,000 copies.
I was 22 years old and they had all of these great artists like Rosemary Clooney, Guy Mitchell as well as Johnny Mathis and Tony Bennett, and when I heard this in a meeting, I stood up and, with my legs shaking, and told all of these veteran record producers, We cant drop him. Hes a great song writer and they finally agreed and now the rest is history.
Despite all of his success, having won two Oscars for the theme songs from The Poseidon Adventure (The Morning After) and The Towering Inferno (We May Never Love Like This Again), (both with Joel Hirschhorn), he had a secret that was destroying his life he was suffering from agoraphobia.
He told me that it was destroying his life, but then one night, in the bedroom which he woulndt leave, he tuned into a late Christian TV show and realized that Jesus was indeed his Messiah. He prayed in his room and gave his life over to Christ and was healed of his agoraphobia.
His first LP.
I was at a friend’s house in the mid-1960s and someone brought in three of Dylan’s albums. Dylan was not popular yet and none of us had heard him. He started playing them and everyone was mesmerized.
Then he said, “I’m not sure whether I like this guy or not.”
Me: “I’ll buy them from you if you don’t want them.”