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Status: B.J. Thomas continues to perform around the U.S. in 2009.

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Review

B.J. Thomas is a survivor. Cutting his musical teeth in the drug culture of the late '60s and early '70s, the singer most famous for the megahit "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head," has outlasted his idols.

Today he's happy and healthy, free of the drugs and alcohol that plagued him since age 15. In early 1986, he entered a treatment program in east Texas for five days and exorcised his habit for the second time in a 10-year period.

Gone is the slight singer who in early photos looked brooding and intense. Looking robust and serene, Thomas, 45, leans back in his chair and counts himself lucky.

"Coming where I come from, I never should have ended up with a career and family," he said. "I tried to blow it all, but I still have it."

The career consists of 40 albums that have produced 15 Top 40 pop hits and 10 Top 40 country hits, five Grammys and more than 20 million records sold. The family is wife Gloria, to whom he has been married 19 years, and three children, ages 18, 10 and 8. In addition, Thomas is now an in-demand speaker on the prevention of drug and alcohol abuse.

He was in town to help open the Neurobehavior Unit, a facility at Laurelwood Hospital for treating head injuries, stroke, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and genetic disorders.

Thomas at first is reluctant to rehash his drug problems. It's a period of his life he wants to forget. Running his hand through the hair that trails down his back, he shifts a bit uncomfortably, then looks thoughtful.

It's not easy to talk about one of his idols, but he thinks the drug use had its roots in family turmoil.

"My dad was my all-time hero," he said. "He was an alcoholic. I was raised in an alcoholic, abusive situation."

Born in Hugo, Okla., Thomas moved to Houston shortly after birth. He recalls that those early years were often chaotic. Frequent moves were common. Family gatherings often ended with fights or broken dishes. Although his mother was a stabilizing force, his father, who died in 1972, drank regularly and was often violent.

But he also was a powerful influence in the singer's life. Thomas says he began to think about a singing career when his father took him to see Hank Williams perform at Houston's Coliseum.

"I didn't have a lot of communication with my dad," Thomas said. "But there was one thing we both loved, and that was music. It was the way I had of communicating with him and other people."

At age 14, Thomas joined the church choir. At the same time he also began to drink. At 15, he started using drugs, at first recreationally.

It was the thing to do.

While still in high school in Rosenberg, he became a member of the Triumphs band and recorded his first hit, the Hank Williams classic "I`m So Lonesome I Could Cry." Soon he had a bid to work with soul singer James Brown, and shortly after that, Dick Clark asked him to tour with his troupe of singers. More hit records followed, and by 1967 he had sold 4.5 million records and was making $2,500 a performance.

The money and road trips soon made pill use a regular habit. Thomas says in his autobiography, "Home Where I Belong," that if he had a sore throat from singing, someone slipped him a pill.

"It seemed to me I was singing better than ever," he wrote, "and I had completely forgotten about my sore throat. I thought the pills were great and started taking them before every show to give me an edge."

As the pill-taking increased, Thomas' personal and professional life swung into high gear.

In 1967 he met Gloria Richardson, a one-time department-store model; he married her in 1968. The money was rolling in, but the pill-taking had started to affect Thomas' behavior. Early in 1968, he had a fight with a hotel clerk in New York and was slashed with a razor. He says now that the fight started "just from being wasted." By 1969, Thomas writes in his book, he was an addict.

A year later, Scepter Records label mate Dionne Warwick touted Thomas to Burt Bacharach to record the theme song for the movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." The result, " Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," became the singer's biggest hit.

Over the next six years, Thomas grossed more than $13 million from his music while his drug use became heavier. After pills came cocaine - along with paranoia, rages, a failing marriage and a faltering career.

After he and his wife separated in 1975, Thomas began a swift slide as his hit "Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song" soared to the top of the charts.

"My family was always a real anchor for me," he said. "Even though I might have been abusing myself or messing up in my business, I always had it to hold onto - that I had a home, had a place to go. When I lost that, it was bottom for me."

At the bottom were several brushes with death.

The first occurred on a flight to an Army base in Hawaii where he was to perform. After taking 80 pills, Thomas stopped breathing; his nails turned blue, then black. For three hours, he was hooked up to a respirator to keep him alive.

"When I came to, I wished I would die," he said. "The nurse in the hospital said, `You will die if you keep this up."'

But he did keep it up. By early 1976, the singer was taking so many drugs he hardly ate and sometimes would be awake for six days at a time. At one point, he found himself on a ledge outside a house he was renting in Pacific Palisades, Calif., a 100-foot drop to the ocean below him.

When his wife asked him to come home soon after, Thomas went.

A religious conversion followed in which the singer says he stopped drugs "cold turkey" with no withdrawal. For the next four years, he traveled the country, testifying to his faith and making gospel records and albums.

Still, his association with drugs was not over.

"There was a slow drift back into marijuana use," Thomas said.

He also began to drift away from religious recording and public testimony about his faith, finding he felt uneasy with organized religion. In early 1986, Thomas again found his drug use and drinking forming a wedge between him and his family.

"Even though I tried to justify and rationalize the marijuana use, I finally had to admit it was causing me just as much problem as the hard drugs - the way I related to my family," Thomas said. "I spent a lot of time just off in the clouds."

In February 1986, he again renounced alcohol and drugs at a five-day workshop for dysfunctional families. He also put to rest the early traumas from his family life. Today, Thomas says, he has no urge to drink or use drugs.

"It was a funny thing," he said about the workshop. "I'd been drinking and using drugs since I was 15, and I was 43. After that experience, I was totally free. I don't feel like there's any chance I'll take a drink or abuse myself with drugs again."

This year, Thomas expects to have 150 singing engagements. In the spring, he plans to release the theme from the TV series "Growing Pains," which he recorded with Dusty Springfield. His latest album, "Throwin' Rocks at the Moon," contains a song called "Broken Toys "written by his wife and Nashville songwriters J.D. Martin and Gary Harrison, which has been adopted by child abuse agencies throughout the country as their theme song.

And he's looking forward to doing even more.

"I realize that some of my best work is ahead of me as an entertainer and a person," he said. "I've had to let go and do the best I can with my music and my family."

-- Carole Keeney | January 1988