Rounding out the impressive résumé is the title of composer/lyricist for numerous hit records over five decades, ranging from Elvis Presley to Aretha Franklin to Donna Summer.

It seems Al Kasha – writer, composer, producer, and executive – has been living the ultimate Hollywood success story.

However, like the most endearing stories of success, Kasha’s started in a much different place. He grew up living over a Brooklyn barbershop in a challenging family situation. Though life at home was grim, hope laid in what was across the street: the Warner Brothers-Vitagraph studios.

As a kid Kasha and his brother played extras in various movie trailers. It was there someone overheard him singing – and a showbiz career was born.
Before long, awards and acclimations were rolling in, especially after moving to Hollywood in 1968. All seemed good to the world, but Kasha held a devastating secret that was destroying his life.

“I had a fear called agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is a fear of outdoor spaces, pretty much locked into my home,” he recalls.

Ceil, Kasha’s wife of 43 years, recalled to ASSIST News Service, “for two years, because of his agoraphobia, he wouldn’t leave the house; in fact, he wouldn’t leave his room. I had to serve all his meals in his room. He could not even get out of that door.”

The anxiety disorder tied him to his Beverly Hills home, the only place he felt safe. Now in the spotlight with studios and artists expecting more everyday, Kasha put pressure on himself to be perfect, striving to earn the next award, looking for something that always seemed out of reach. “Why I was agoraphobic is that I was a perfectionist,” he says.

“Even though the world gifted me with Oscars and other tokens of recognition for my work, my whole life was based on the bondage of achievement. I never truly felt the peace which I had once assumed would accompany that kind of acclaim. Always striving for the next plateau produced only emptiness inside me,” he explained to ASSIST.
Desperate to free himself from his fear, Kasha tried to find a solution. “I tried psychoanalysis, but it wasn’t healing me,” he tells Living Light News.

Then, on Oct. 8, 1978, at three o’clock in the morning, Kasha stumbled upon a message that would change his life.

“I couldn’t sleep and I turned on the television and watched the Robert Schuller show. He said God’s perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4: 18-19 of the Bible),” he recalls. “The writer in me turned it around to fear casts out love.”

“This struck me, as I certainly knew what it meant to be paralyzed by fear,” he told ASSIST.

“I got on my knees, placed my hand on the television and began to pray. In my prayers I said, ‘If there is a Jesus, please reveal Yourself.’ A tremendous heat overtook me, an all-enveloping warmth. I was in an air-conditioned apartment where the windows were glued shut and suddenly they began to shake and open, and a light poured in … a blinding light.

“I felt a powerful pressure in my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I knew something beyond my comprehension had taken place. The next morning I accepted Jesus …” This incredible, life changing experience transformed Kasha’s life like he couldn’t have imagined.

“God saved my life and turned my life around,” he tells Living Light News. “When I came to know Christ in my life, I was healed of agoraphobia." Determined to dedicate everything to God, Kasha brought his Christian faith into his work. “Everything I write I give over to God. I write it for God or to God,” he says.

“When I first [became a Christian] a lot of the movie studios wouldn’t hire me. They were afraid, not that I wouldn’t have talent, but that I would talk too much about Jesus. But what happened was I kept having hit records, which has nothing to do with motion picture writing – a disc jockey puts a record on and it becomes a hit.”

Soon studios were back at his door. “God showed me this is why He put me on the earth. To write music, to write songs. I can’t think of anything that I’ve done since 1978 that I wouldn’t be proud of – I don’t do anything violent, vulgar, or dirty,” the 74-year-old says. “I try to write about hope … I try to give people inspiration.”

More than that, the “master of disaster,” as he’s known for numerous hits in disaster movies, is passionate about sharing the message he heard on an early morning broadcast years ago.

“I funded an organization called Faith Over Fear. I travel around the country and the European world and pray for people,” he explains.
“I want to let them know there is a God ... If He changed my life, He can change theirs … I try to tell people that He is a miracle worker, that Jesus is a miracle worker. Just by travelling it shows that God has healed me of agoraphobia.”

Kasha, whose new show In A Booth At Chasen’s is about Ron and Nancy Reagan, is convinced his many accomplishments enable him to share Who and what is most important to him.

“God’s perfect love casts out fear, and it turned my life around,” he says. “That’s the centre of my life – Jesus Christ.”

photo courtesy Al Kasha