Johnny Rhoads The Rock Band Drummer Who Found Out What Life is All About

 

Fr om gospel music roots to divorce and near suicide to Hall of Fame

 

  by Kathleen Goolsby   Nov 2007  

When he's onstage, Vater drumsticks in hand and dominating the music of Christian rock band Rock of the Ages (RotA), Johnny Rhoads grabs people's attention. "I try to make an impact in somebody's life through my music, in my lyrics and even by a certain way I hit my drums," he says. But even in normal circumstances, he would not go unnoticed.

He's short, has long hair, and from his clothes and jewelry you might think he's a biker. You'd definitely notice the large cross tattoo extending almost shoulder to elbow. If you, as others, commented on the cool-looking cross, he'd tell you all about Jesus. And you'd definitely notice that when he talks about Jesus the piercing look in his eyes softens and reveals a glimpse of a deep inner love.

It's been years since he played in his first band in the 1970s, which played Led Zeppelin-type music. He didn't play with a Christian band until the late 1990s. In between, he became a professional wrestler. After the Christian band broke up, it was on to blues music.

Johnny got sidetracked from his relationship with God along the way, went through a bad divorce, ran into a lot of difficulties and reached the point where he wanted to kill himself. But God pulled Johnny back. Today he loves telling the story of what God has done in his life, how God loved him despite those troubled years, and how he can now look back and see that God was working through those circumstances to bring about his plan for Johnny all along. In recent years, he wrote a song about the troubled years: "Back From the Dead," describing "being dead" as "when you're living the way you want to, instead of living for the Lord."

After the troubled times, came RotA, starting out as a project through a praise and worship team in a "biker church" in Fort Worth, Texas, and now recording its fifth CD. And the Lord brought him the perfect wife. Recently RotA launched a unique ministry through its music, and the band is seeing the Lord use it to speak to the hearts of people who have turned away from God or never even heard of him.

"When I was 14, my goal was to become famous and attract a lot of women," recalls Johnny. He's now touched fame. This year, he was inducted into the Christian Drummers Hall of Fame on April 15. He is the first independent drummer (not signed to a major label) to receive this honor. But fame is no longer his goal.

"If the Lord lets our band progress to be famous, that's fine. But that's not my goal and not my reward," he states. "It's not about me anymore. What I want to do is share the Lord with others. If I can help one kid from going to hell ... that's what it's about."

His life story impacts people who hear it, whether it's in his spoken testimony at the end of his first CD, or in the music he writes and performs or in a one-on-one conversation with a kid who comes up to him after a show to talk about his music.

Sound. You'd be aware of it if you heard him telling his life story. Voice loud. Sometimes soft. Words speeding up to get to the good stuff. Quiet pauses at the main points. Rhythm. It's the drummer within him.

The early years

Someone gave Johnny a set of bongos when he was in third grade, but he was just about as happy beating on the phone book. "I banged on mom's pots and pans and anything else I could get my hands on. I was always interested in drums," says Johnny. His first drum set was a Christmas gift when he was in sixth grade.

Country and gospel were the early music influences in his life. "Before my mom was born, my grandfather picked with Ernest Tubb in the 1940s." (His Texas Troubadours band was a regular on the Grand Ole Opry radio show for four decades). Later, Johnny's mother and aunt traveled with the Happy Goodman family in the 1950s. (Howard and Vestal Goodman and their children won Grammy awards for two of their gospel albums.) His mom and aunt also made a blue vinyl record album when they were teenagers.

Johnny liked watching the old gospel music shows on TV on Saturday afternoons, before "Hee Haw" came on. And he sang duets in a Baptist church in Fort Worth.

As a child, he prayed and asked God to come into his heart and save him.

Billy Graham was also a big influence on Johnny. "My grandmother watched his crusades on TV, and I watched with her. Billy Graham was a larger-than-life kind of guy. I really respect him."

Despite his love of beating out rhythms, Johnny says he grew up wanting to play the trumpet like Doc Severinsen, the bandleader for the NBC Orchestra on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show." "I was completely blown away by Doc - that's what I wanted to do," he recalls.

But in junior high school, the band director told Johnny he didn't have the diaphragm necessary for playing a trumpet.

At age 14 - thinking of becoming a famous rock drummer one day - he started jamming with his friend, Mike Fief, whom he'd known since they were 8 and Mike's aunt was the baby sitter. God was moving things into place in his plan for Johnny's life.

After years apart, God brought Mike back into Johnny's life. When Johnny joined Crush in the 1970s, his first experience with "a real band," Mike was on bass guitar. It was a secular band, playing rock music. Crush later split up, all the guys just growing apart in what they wanted to do.

The troubled years

Johnny switched to playing country music off and on for a few years but says it just wasn't his thing. So he left music at 19, deciding instead to become a professional wrestler.

His aunt was married to Johnny Valentine, a wrestler; and Johnny Rhoads grew up watching wrestling with his uncle. "He explained wrestling to me, and I knew a lot of wrestling was fake," says Johnny. "So I felt like I was still in entertainment while I was a wrestler. And I really wanted to be in show business."

But he suffered a neck injury and doctors warned him to quit; so his career in the wrestling arena was over.

He hooked up with two guys who had been in Crush and had moved on to a band called Class-X, which played classic rock. In 1988 and 1989, they played in a near-downtown-Dallas area known as Deep Ellum, a Texas mecca in the 1920s for jazz and blues artists and transformed in the 1990s into a popular night spot for urban dwellers. Johnny recalls those years as "a lot of fun." He left when a member's drinking began ruining the band.

Next, he and a friend started Cornerstone, a Christian band. They played for three and a half years in shows locally, did two albums, and got a lot of air play in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

But Johnny's road got rocky. A bad divorce. Alcohol. Disagreements with band members. Troubled relationships elsewhere in his life. Johnny left Cornerstone. He describes that time: "I was going through a lot of stuff in my life and got completely away from the Lord."

"But later, one night at the kitchen table, with my face in my hands, the Holy Sprit spoke to me: you remember me?' I got on my knees and wept for not serving the Lord. He had given me a gift of music to bless other people."

Rock of the Ages takes off

Seeking a place to use his God-given talent and serve the Lord, Johnny started playing drums with the praise and worship team at Freedom, a biker church in the Fort Worth area (later known as The Haven and now The Rock). This wasn't a Sunday-morning/in-church-only kind of group. They played their Christian music and did outreach in parks, apartment complexes, downtown Fort Worth -"whenever and wherever we could," says Johnny.

But Johnny was broke from the divorce and troubles; he needed money. A member of the praise and worship team introduced him to John Nitzinger, a Texas blues legend guitar player who had played earlier with rock star Alice Cooper. John asked Johnny to be his drummer. The next three years were full of blues performances on Friday and Saturday nights and then being in the praise and worship team on Sunday mornings.

"It was a great help to me financially," says Johnny. "But I knew the Lord wanted me to move away from that. I made a promise to play my music only in a way that serves the Lord."

Pastor Mark Lakins at The Haven (now The Rock) approached Johnny about recording a CD with diverse music, featuring the praise and worship team. Rounding out the team for the CD (titled "The Haven"), the pastor brought to the project Danny Hochmeyer ("who has a phenomenal voice") to sing lead and also Chris Gill, a guitar player who was a newcomer at the church. God was moving again.

A while later Johnny says, "I was reading my Bible and felt the Lord's very strong presence within me, calling me to do a solo CD. But I didn't have a band or a studio or money to do the recording."

But Chris Gill had a studio. God also brought back into Johnny's life Mike Fief, his friend from childhood and his first band. "That was something very important," he says, "because the relationship between a drummer and the bass guitar player needs to be so tight." They added Len Jennings (the band's current lead singer), and Johnny had a band, Rock of the Ages.

They made the recording, and the album was almost finished. But Johnny didn't have the necessary $1,400 to finish the process. He prayed. One day Pastor Mark gave them $500 and also suggested pre-selling the CDs at the church. "We passed out a stack of manila envelopes one day at the church while our music from the CD was playing over the loud speakers," Johnny remembers. "People wrote their names and orders on the envelopes and put their money inside. We got more money than we needed to finish the CD."

He's a drummer with a message. At the end of that CD, Johnny shares his testimony. "I did that because I wanted people to know why I do what I do," says the drummer. "I said on the CD, God loves me, with all I've gone through and all I've done, he'll love you too; and he has a plan for your life, just like he has for me.' In my testimony, I also describe how I got so far away from God and reached the point where I wanted to kill myself."

A man who bought the CD and shared it with his truck driver brother called Johnny one night. "He told me his brother was ready to kill himself but listened to my testimony on my CD and then decided not to kill himself." God was still moving, working through the CD. "Later the brother called me. I could hear my CD playing in the background. He told me, wanted to call you and say thanks for being faithful to what God called you to do. You saved my life.'"

"To me, that made the whole CD worthwhile," states Johnny.

The band felt the Lord was leading them to keep the group together and start a ministry. "We all have a desire to serve the Lord," Johnny explains. "And I know that God led us together to use us."

Len adds that "This band got me to run to the Lord instead of running from him. Because of that I am now a better father and husband. I am doing my utmost to live for the Lord in every area of my life. Jesus promised that we would have life more abundantly, and I can say for sure that my life is abundant beyond measure."

All the lyrics are inspired by the Lord, says Johnny. "I pray a lot, and the words start flowing to me."

They recorded two more CDs. Their performances branched out far beyond the church in Fort Worth. They did a show in Beaumont, Texas - the 9/11 Festival in the Ford Pavilion, seating 14,000. 

For the last three years, RotA played at the Thunder Over Texas show (an annual Christian motorcycle rally). During one of those performances - at the huge Texas Motor Speedway, home to NASCAR, Indy, and several other races - the band recorded another album, "Rock of the Ages: Live."

Chris says, "I really believe this band is meant to be a blessing. It certainly has been to me. I am happy to be used as a vessel. Being a struggling Christian, as we all are, I feel these songs speak to somebody who may be feeling the same kind of things or struggling in the same areas."

Praying for a wife

Johnny had been divorced a year, was counseling with his pastor and was praying for a wife when the Lord brought Shiela into his life. Johnny, who is five feet, six inches tall, says, "My prayer was, need a help mate. She needs to be shorter than me. And I'd sure like her to have blonde hair and blue eyes. But most of all she needs to have a heart for you - she needs to love you more than me.'"

"A year later, Shiela walked into our church, and we made eye contact," he continues. "The Holy Spirit whispered to me, her.' For a couple of Sundays we just looked at each other and smiled." On a later Sunday, they finally spoke - a short conversation at the water fountain at church. She had been praying for the right mate, too. "She told me that on the earlier Sunday when we first made eye contact, the Lord told her, him.'" They dated a year and then married.

Anyone who talks with Shiela for a short while realizes quickly that she's deeply in love with her husband and proud of him, too. With both having been divorced before, they know it's vitally important to have the right wife or right husband. "You have to be equally yoked. Darkness and light can't live together," states Johnny. "We have a Christ-centered relationship."

"I love her more today than when I met her," he adds. "And she is truly my help mate. Shiela constantly lifts me up in prayer and supports me. She also works hard, handling a lot of administrative duties supporting the band."

Let there be light!

Supporting the band these days also involves more and more time in prayer. In addition to Christian venues, the band became convicted earlier this year that the Lord wanted to use their ministry in secular places, too - places where there are people who wouldn't go to a church or a Christian event and places where people wouldn't listen to a preacher.

"We had a hard time with this decision," says Johnny. Their church was involved in the decision, and church members go with the band to these performances, surrounding them and praying for their protection and for the Lord to minister to people hearing the music. Other members of the church gather at the church to pray through the performances.

With intrepid first steps, they launched this very serious, and admittedly controversial, new ministry and were booked to perform at a coffee house in another Texas city. The man who booked the band was no longer there when they showed up to play. The first song they did that night was "Let There Be Light." Johnny shakes his head slowly from side to side, remembering and describing what happened.

"At the first mention of the name of Jesus in that song, the room emptied in two minutes. The manager told the sound manager to turn us off once he realized we were a Christian band, but the sound manager refused. The only people who stayed were people who knew we were a Christian band and came specifically to see us. Some of the folks who left kept peeking back in the door and heard bits of our songs. But it wasn't a loss. There were three boys there who came up and talked to us after the show."

Back at the hotel, Johnny says he prayed again, asking God for clear direction as to whether the band should go into places where singing about Jesus was not welcome. "The answer I received was a reminder that Jesus went to the tax collectors and prostitutes, and he told his disciples that he came for the sick, not the well."

They then altered their lyrics slightly for their performances in this ministry. Under the Holy Spirit's guidance, they wrote lyrics such as "We serve a master who's the end and the start." The new words are more subtle than saying Jesus' name, yet some people in the crowd catch on. The music is so positive-sounding and uplifting - different from what the secular crowds are used to hearing from bands, and they notice the difference. They also notice a difference in the band members' behavior.

Shiela recalls one night when, "At the end of the show, a couple came up to the guys in the band and said, guys are Christians, aren't you? We haven't been to church in a long time, and our kids have never been to church. Where do you go to church?" God is still moving in this drummer's life, though sometimes in mysterious ways.

"We're there to show the love of Christ - but we do it by example, not by stating we're a Christian band," says Johnny. After some of these shows in secular places, we've had people come up and say things like: something different about y'all! What is it?' And we've had people ask, you Christians? Can I talk to you about God?' When they ask, we have an opportunity to tell them that Jesus loves them."

Music is an influencer of people. "Music was made by God - all things were made by God," Johnny reminds. "But Lucifer - the original praise and worship guy - perverted music to bad purposes, as he does with everything else. There is so much trash in music these days - sex, drugs, slapping girls, etc. - and it puts it in kids' minds that this kind of behavior is OK."

Some of those kids are the ones now hearing RotA play music that's different. Mike, who began jamming with Johnny when they were 14, comments, "I'm thankful that we play music with such a positive message and that, through this music, God can change hearts."

Johnny Rhoads has come a long way from the 14-year old who wanted to be a famous drummer and attract a lot of women. Today, his attitude is: "For me, when the rubber meets the road, it's all about Jesus. God can use anyone, whether they're a welder or carpenter, a street sweeper or dishwasher, or a writer or musician. The Bible says we're to do all to the glory of God. When Jesus came to town in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday so many years ago, it was a donkey that carried him to the people. My music and I are just a donkey."

To book the band or schedule Johnny for a speaking engagement e-mail Johnny Rhoads at rotadrummer@yahoo.com. For CDs, visit http://www.myspace.com/johnnyrhoads.