(part 160) YOU KNOW, PERFORMING

My brother Bill

On the flight back to L.A., I thought a lot about the things that had helped cause me to be in the trouble I was in. Back in Tennessee there were some who were trying to put me in prison for five to ten years for sales of a controlled substance, but here I was on a plane leaving town.

Because DP had grown up in Nashville, and knew a lot of the people in law enforcement, he was able to get permission for me to leave the state temporarily.

I knew that getting loaded was behind most of the crap I did, and was the central cause behind the continuing chaos, but there were other factors as well.

Looking out the window at the horizon, I knew I'd have to come back to Nashville at some point, or keep running, but right then I was reluctant to entertain either choice.

I was truly aware at that moment that I'd gotten myself into deep shit, and that "the police are out to get you" paranoia was now clawing its way into my brain.

The last time I'd felt this way was when I was running away from L.A. to get to Nashville. Now I was running away from Nashville to get back to L.A., and for the same kinds of reasons, bad decisions while loaded.

* * *

As I looked further back into my past, and the causes for what I did and why I was the way I was, I remembered Tucson, Arizona in 1957. My then stepfather Don Macdonald, and my older brother Bill did not get along at all, ever.

Bill, who was epileptic at the time, was taking phenobarbital for the epilepsy. Well phenobarbital is a barbiturate and can make you think you're bigger and badder than you may be.

So on a morning before going off to school, Alice Vail Jr. High, Bill and my stepfather, Don, got into a flat out fist fight in the kitchen. I mean it was like a fucking street fight on linoleum. They both got their licks in, but in the end Don was just too big for Bill to beat, so he had to concede the issue to my stepfather.

My part, other than terrified bystander, was to stand on a kitchen chair after the fight, and clean the blood splatters off the wall in the breakfast nook connected to the kitchen.

I stood on the chair with a damp sponge and wiped the walls down, removing the evidence of what had just happened to my morning. I remember feeling dazed and confused as I watched my arm go back and forth across the wall like a windshield wiper.

Shortly, I was on the bus headed off to Alice Vail Jr. Jail as we liked to call it. I just stared out the window and saw nothing except the instant replay in my head of Bill and Don beating the crap out of each other in the kitchen.

I could hear the yelling and swearing, and feel the anger and hatred the two of them felt toward each other, surging through my whole body. Later that day in school, I was reprimanded for staring out the window and day dreaming instead of studying. "Day dreaming, shit!" I was in semi-shock all day long, maybe all life long.

* * *

Staring out the window of the plane was like staring out the window of the bus that morning back in 1957. I looked out, but saw nothing except the inside of my head, and the world of bad memories that had haunted my every step since then.

My thoughts during the flight were a lot like they had always been, full of regrets and promises, and an undying resolve to somehow make it better. So far, I had not done anything but make it worse.

I didn't have any plan for what I'd do when I got to L.A., or where I'd go when I got there. I hoped I could get Carol Paulus to take me in since I hadn't seen her in quite awhile, and hoped she would be glad to hear from me, and maybe agreeable to having me around.

I vowed to be on my best behavior, and hoped I could maintain some sort of balance for a reasonable length of time. Other than that, I was like I'd always been, just show up and smile a lot, you know, "performing."

(part 159) I INHERIT BUT THE WIND

I INHERIT
BUT THE WIND
EMPTY AIR
AN EMPTY TIN
COBBLESTONES
OF DESTINY
THE FUTURE WAITS
DIRECTING ME

I THE PAYER
OF THE TOLL
HEAVY BURDEN
ON MY SOUL
I WHO COME
AGAIN, AGAIN
I INHERIT
BUT THE WIND

THIS MY SPACE
AGAINST THE WALL
OF RECKLESS TIMES
THAT COME TO CALL
ASK ME NOW
WHERE I HAVE BEEN
I INHERIT
BUT THE WIND

Robert Parker Jameson April 20, 2009

(part 158) GET ME TO THE PLANE ON TIME

I was bailed out of jail almost immediately, and assumed that it was by someone connected to DP, who didn't think it was a good idea to leave me in there too long, for fear I would get pissed off and cut a deal to get out.

Since DP knew I had the information about where the cocaine came from, I guess getting me out and on the street, was of primary importance to him. I hadn't said anything, but still, I'm sure he didn't want to take any chances.

The whole ordeal turned me off about Nashville, and I started making noise about going back to L.A. There was the pending legal matter of course, but I now felt about Nashville the way I'd felt about Los Angeles and Hollywood before I left there.

I was too conspicuous to be comfortable. I guess the guy Hugh, who'd set me up, was none too popular at that point either, since it was now known that he was the snitch. Anyway my problem was not him, it was me.

Because I was loaded all the time, it is hard to recall everything that happened back then, but soon after this event I secured a one-way plane ticket back to L.A., and was given permission to leave the state; Dp had friends in the District Attorney's office.

He also had a friend who was a Nashville cop. The reason I bring this up is to show how both sides were intermingled, and because on the day I was to fly back to the west coast, I found myself running way behind schedule.

I was so late in fact, that it appeared it would be impossible for me to get to the airport in time to make the flight. That's when DP's buddy, the policeman, said "I'll get you there on time, Bobby, let's take the cruiser."

The cruiser was a Nashville police car. I hopped in the passenger seat and buckled up, for what promised to be an extraordinary ride to to the airport with plenty of time to spare.

As we made our way into traffic he turned on the flashing lights and siren, and barreled through city streets and then onto the freeway.

At about a 110 miles an hour, cars and trucks were pulling to the side to let us through. I was amused by this, because I knew it was nothing more than me, the loaded has-been pop star, just out of jail, headed to the airport, with a ticket paid for by a cocaine dealer, who was my friend, and his friend the cop was driving me there. "What a trip!" I thought, "What a fucking trip!"

After a harrowing ride we pulled into the airport and up to a no parking section near the front door of my airline. I turned to DP's friend, laughing, and said "That's the best Goddamn ride in a cop car I ever had."

He shook my hand, smiling, and said "You take care Bobby, and say hi to all them pretty California girls for me, will ya?" "yeah," I said, "I'll do that, and thanks for the ride and all your help."

I stepped out on the walkway and waved one more time as he drove back into traffic. "What a ride!" I thought, "Man that was fun!"

I stared out the window of the plane from twenty thousand feet, and knew something had to change. My life had become nothing more than a long continuous drunk at that point, peppered with catastrophe after catastrophe.

I thought again about the idea of stopping drinking and using, and it made me shudder way down deep inside, but it wouldn't stop gnawing at me.

It had become overwhelmingly obvious that drinking and using had gotten completely out of control in my life. I looked back over the past decade of my existence, and could see clearly the connection between calamity and my using.

It was literally a miracle that I wasn't dead, and amazing that I hadn't been locked up for a long time in either a prison, jail, or nut house. I could see that it was only a matter of time, though, if I continued on my current path.

I wondered if I really could stop drinking and using? I didn't know. I'd never even tried before, and wasn't really sure I wanted to. Getting loaded for me was the only way I could start a day, get through it, and end it. I didn't know how to do anything else.

I stared at the drink on the tray in front of my seat. I reached out and picked up the plastic glass of scotch and water and took a drink. It was like shaking hands with the last friend I had on the planet, really, it was that important to me.

Whatever I was going to do, I knew one thing for sure at that moment. I wasn't going to stop right then, and I was pretty damn sure I wasn't going to stop that particular day.

I listened to the hum of the plane's engines and stared out at the sky as I settled back in my seat on my way west. Back to Los Angeles and Hollywood.

(part 157) BUSTED FOR SALES OF COCAINE IN NASHVILLE

WANTED

In Nashville, I began realizing that I was living to drink and drinking to live. One day, when I was lying on a bed, I heard an audible voice say, in a completely empty room, "You're an alcoholic."

It scared the crap out of me, and I figured God himself had uttered the words out loud personally, because there was no one there except me. Nothing else was said, just, "You're an alcoholic!"

After it happened, I looked through every part of that room for the source of the voice; under the bed, in the closet, in the bathroom, etc. I was on the second floor, so I knew no one had said it from an open window trying to screw with my head.

This didn't cause me to stop drinking, but it did implant, for the first time, a sense that drinking had become a serious problem for me. It was now a conscious realization that I never forgot from that day on; I was an alcoholic.

During this time in Nashville, I acquired some cocaine from DP so I could sell it and make some money; It was a quarter ounce of coke. I set up a time and place to meet some guy named Hugh on a lonely back road at night.

This turned out to be a full-fledged disaster. Not only was it dark, and completely unfamiliar to me, I'd borrowed somebody else's car to get there.

It was out in the country, but it appeared to be completely safe when I drove up. I waited around for awhile for Hugh, and when he got there, I pulled out the coke so he could sample it. He snorted a line, and within minutes said he'd buy some.

After giving me a couple of hundred bucks, Hugh said he was in a hurry and had to leave. He watched me put what coke I had left, which was in a small bottle, underneath the dashboard, and then drove off.

Feeling good about making some money, I started the car and swung around to head back down the deserted road to Nashville. But all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, flashing blue lights appeared in my rearview mirror.

"Shit," I said out loud, "That asshole set me up!" I pulled to the side of the road, turned off the engine, and waited for my world to fall apart, again.

Sure enough, two plainclothes undercover narcs were on me in an instant. They yanked open the door and dragged me out of the car with their guns drawn, screaming at me to lie face down on the ground.

As I lay with my face in the dirt, one of them pulled my arms around to my back and handcuffed me. He then pulled me up on my knees and continued to scream that I was a piece of shit dope dealer.

I said nothing, and watched as the other one searched the car. I thought I'd been set up, and became convinced of it, when the guy searching the car seemed to know exactly where to look for the bottle of coke, which Hugh had seen me put there before he split.

I thought to myself, "Hugh must have been in deep shit with the law and made a deal with them to save his own ass. What a punk!"

The cops called a tow truck to haul the car I was driving. They put me into their car and headed back to town to the Nashville City Jail.

I stared out the window of the police car, and once again felt as though my life was over. To get busted for drug sales in the South, I thought, was about as bad as it could get, particularly if you were from California, which I was.

We pulled up to the Nashville jail, and I saw for the first time a nine or ten story building that was in part being renovated. I was taken into an office for interrogation, where I sat for a couple of hours and was repeatedly asked where I'd gotten the cocaine I'd sold.

I wouldn't tell them where I got it, because DP was the source, and I wasn't about to give up that info. I told them I'd bought it from some guy on the street, and stuck to that story.

Finally they got fed up with my answers and moved me into a multi-prisoner cell with about fifty or sixty other guys.

I was just in time for chow, which consisted of two pieces of half-stale white bread, a single slice of warm bologna, and a single slice of processed cheese. To drink, we were given watered down cold coffee, served in a garbage can, set in the middle of the cell floor.

While I was in that jail, a young black kid worked his way around some loose-fitting steel plates that covered the windows at the time they were being re-barred. He either fell, jumped, or was thrown nine stories to his death.

The rumor was that he wanted out of the place bad. He was so afraid of being locked up in that white man's jail, that he either committed suicide, or, as I said, was thrown from the window by someone else.

It was a piss poor place, believe me, and I was white.

(part 156) LAY ME DOWN

LAY ME DOWN EASY
LAY ME DOWN SLOW
SOMEDAY I'LL GET THERE
SOMEDAY I KNOW

ALL OF THE MISERY
ALL OF THE PAIN
WILL VANISH FOREVER
AND WON'T COME AGAIN

I'LL TAKE A WALK
OUT ON THE SEA
AND STAND ON THE OCEAN
TOTALLY FREE

SO LAY ME DOWN GENTLY
LAY ME DOWN LONG
CRADLE MY HEART
AND SING ME A SONG

SING ME TO SLEEP
WITH A SWEET LULLABY
HOLD ME AND KISS ME
AND DON'T SAY GOODBYE

AND IF I CROSS OVER
BEFORE YOU AWAKE
THEN LAY ME DOWN EASY
WITH THE PEACE I COULD MAKE

I WAS FOREVER
YESTERDAY'S CHILD
AND ALL MY TOMORROWS
HAVE ALREADY SMILED

SO LAY ME DOWN EASY
LAY ME DOWN SLOW
SOMEDAY I'LL GET THERE
SOMEDAY I KNOW

Bobby Jameson Mar, 2009

(part 155) NASHVILLE: MUSIC CITY

I didn't want to go to Nashville, but I did want to leave L.A. I felt like a walking target after escaping the clutches of Camarillo State Hospital and those who were trying to keep me in there.

I was too hot. Everywhere I went people would make comments about my escapades on the Hyatt House and the tower. A number of these moments turned into physical fights in public places around West Hollywood and Beverly Hills.

I knew it was just a matter of time before one of these occurrences turned out poorly, because the local cops were still gunning for me. I can't blame them for their attitude, but I didn't want to stick around and see how far they were willing to go.

When the Nashville offer came up, it was a way out of town, nothing more. If you recall, I'd gone to Ohio with John Rhys for the same reason in 1970.

I just needed to get away from L.A. for awhile, and figure out what to do. In DP's mind it was Nashville, the center of country music, which had been getting more outlaw oriented, because of Waylon Jennings and others.

He felt the environment was ripe for what I was doing musically. It may have been a good call at some other time, but in the condition I was in, it never panned out to be anything more than a long hard drunk.

I didn't know the town or anyone in it, and had been somewhat abandoned by DP as soon as we arrived. He went off to see about his own business, because he was from Nashville.

I would sit in some stranger's apartment and try to figure out what I was supposed to do, other than wonder where the hell DP was. As usual, I didn't stay in one place very long and took to the streets of music city in search of something, anything.

I ended up near Vanderbilt University, and began frequenting two bars on a daily basis, the Exit Inn and Fridays.

I had no money, so I would do impersonations of famous people at the bar, in hopes of getting my audience to buy me drinks, which worked pretty well some of the time.

Later on my mother would send me small packages of cheap American Indian jewelry, mostly turquoise rings, which I'd wear ten at a time, in hopes I could sell them to interested customers for a little cash.

DP was kind of pissed off about this, because it prevented him from being able to keep me tied to him and his otherwise total grip on me if I was broke.

I'd been on the streets too long to allow myself to be maneuvered into poverty's corner where someone, anyone, was my single benefactor.

This kind of hold on a person was practiced in the music business a lot. They'd give you just enough to keep you coming back, but not enough to make any real difference in your life.

I learned this the hard way, so I developed my own plan in Nashville outside of DP's grasp. I always seemed to feel like someone was trying to control my movements, thoughts, and emotions by hanging little bits of raw meat out to keep me interested.

I resented the treatment, and did whatever I could to even the playing field a little. Over time DP was forced to realize that he was not in control of me.

I met a lot of dope dealers, musicians, politicians, and females in Nashville, but never got my act together enough to make anything work.

I found it hard to walk on my busted feet and ankle, so I drank all the time to bear the pain. When I say I drank all the time, I mean, if I was awake, I was drunk. I consumed more booze in Tennessee than I ever had in my life, and it just kept adding to the tortured state of my body and mind.

I was drinking in Fridays Bar one time, with a bunch of dope dealer friends of DP's, when some guys I 'd never seen before showed up at the bar.

One of them pushed me out of his way, so I pushed him back, not knowing or caring, that he was one of the main cheese balls in the area. He whirled around and said, "Who pushed me?" to which I responded, "I did." He eyed me for a second and punched me in the face, and I went after him in a heartbeat.

The crowd at the bar grabbed a hold of me before I could inflict any damage on this asshole, saying to the guy, "It's OK, so and so, he doesn't know who you are, he's a musician from L.A."

The guy looked at me, clearly pissed off by my willingness to get into it with him, and said, "OK, but keep him out of my way." With that a couple of people pulled me aside and told me, "Bobby lay off, he's a friend of ours."

"OK", I said, "But he's the asshole who started it." "Yeah, well he doesn't know you," they said, "and he didn't mean anything by it." "OK, Ok, I got it, let's have a drink." This in fact was the way much of my time in Nashville went. One questionable moment on top of another.

I had reached the point where tempting fate on any level became a game of mine. In a store in Nashville, a local mini-mart, I would play a game.

Me and some other idiots would take the power cord from an electric lamp, and strip the rubber off, leaving the copper wire exposed. We'd then take the double wire and split it into two single wires attached to the plug. Grabbing one wire in each hand, someone would then plug the cord into a wall socket.

The electricity would run up through your hands and arms and tend to seriously flex the muscles in each one to the point of twisting both of them inward like pretzels.

The object of the game was to see who could hold these live wires the longest; I almost always won, because I didn't give a shit if it killed me. I wasn't afraid of dying, so I'd just stand there like an dumb shit, holding the wires until the electricity wrenched them out of my hands.

These kinds of things tended to give me a local reputation for being nuts, because I had no inclination whatever to spare my body punishment. So when challenged to a drinking contest at Fridays I accepted without question. Not because I wanted to have a drinking contest, but because it was free booze for the participants, nine shots of free booze.

The drink was called the petrifier. It contained nine shots of different kinds of hard liquor in a single tall glass, and who ever could finish it first won.

The effect of this stupidity was an almost instant blackout. Some of the alcohol included in the drink was 180 proof white lightening, which I experienced for the first time in Tennessee.

After the second go round I ended up in a ten hour blank from alcohol poisoning, and was told I'd been standing in the middle of the street with my pants down around my ankles, hitchhiking, near Vanderbilt University.

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