Dennis Quaid is best known for being a talented and prolific actor, but he’s always been a talented musician as well. If you don’t know Quaid’s story, you might find it odd that he’s releasing not just a new album, but a gospel album. It’s called Fallen: A Gospel Record For Sinners.
This isn’t the first time Quaid has pursued his musical talents: a band he was in even received a record contract in the early 90’s. But their success was sidelined by Quaid himself.
Dennis Quaid’s History of Addiction
“I was in a band,” he told People magazine “and we got a record gig… They broke up the night they got it, and they broke up because of me, because I was not reliable.” The reason the band could not depend on him, he says, is because he was addicted to cocaine.
After rehab in 1990, Quaid turned to the faith of his childhood. He says that the gospel album is just a natural outpouring of his love for music and his relationship with God. “I grew up at the Baptist church; I love the hymns that I remember from being a kid,” he said. “The songs are self-reflective and self-examining, not churchy. All of us have a relationship with God, whether you’re a Christian or not.”
Quaid also added that though he grew up in the church, he never found a personal relationship with God until after getting help for his cocaine addiction in 1990. He said he was using drugs, as many people do, “to fill a hole inside us. When you’re done with the addiction, you need something to fill that hole, something that really works, right?”
What worked for him was reading the Bible and pursuing a relationship with Christ. He wrote his first Christian song for his mom, Juanita, in 1990, after getting out of rehab. It’s called “On My Way to Heaven.” Quaid says he wrote it “to let her know I was okay, because I wasn’t okay before then.”
Dennis Quaid, A Man Redeemed
Now, at age 69, he says, he’s more than okay. He has multiple acting projects coming out soon, and will even be playing Ronald Reagan in an upcoming biopic. The father of three says he’s now “the happiest I’ve ever been.”
He says the hole he once filled with drugs has now been filled by a relationship with the Lord.
“We’re all looking for the joy of life, and drugs give that to you and alcohol and whatever it is for anybody give that to you really quick. Then they’re fun and then they’re fun with problems, and then they’re just problems after a while. That’s really what we’re looking for, the joy of life, which is our gift, actually, the relationship with God that we all have. It’s at the bottom of it, the joy of being alive.”
