(part 196) THE REAL WORLD

THE REAL WORLD
OF MAKE BELIEVE
WHERE PROMISES
AND RULES DECEIVE
A PLACE WHERE LOVE
CAN BARELY GROW
NOT WHAT WE DO
BUT WHO WE KNOW

I MY STORY
PUSHING BLAME
ON HE AND SHE AND
WHAT'S THEIR NAME
BUT IN THE END
IT'S I WHO FELL
AND I TO BLAME
FOR MY OWN HELL

WIGGLE WAGGLE
TONGUES ON FIRE
BOBBY JAMESON'S
A LIAR
POINTS AND COUNTER
POINTS A GAME
CALM YOURSELVES
I'LL TAKE THE BLAME

BLAME FOR THIS
AND BLAME FOR THAT
BLAMELESS FEW
FROM WHERE YOU SAT
HOUSES MADE
OF GLASS ALONE
WOULD WARN AGAINST
THE FIRST STONE THROWN

JUDGEMENT ROLLS
LIKE FROZEN DICE
FROM HEARTS SO COLD
THEY TURNED TO ICE
ACROSS THE STAINLESS
STEEL OF YOU
ERECT AND SITTING
IN YOUR PEW

Bobby Jameson Aug 21, 2009

(part 195) SLOW MOTION CRASH

Before my girlfriend's father got sick and died, there was a series of events that played out. It was similar to watching a car crash in slow motion.

I received a letter from RCA saying I'd been dropped from the label, and I remember thinking to myself, "That's it? I'm just dropped?" There was no explanation to it, just "you've been dropped."

I called my girlfriend and then her father, informing them of what had happened with RCA, which was like pouring salt on an open wound. They asked if there were any reasons given, and I said, "No! They just dropped me."

To have had a record that was being played on radio stations around the country, and getting a short cold letter saying "you're out," was like getting kicked off a baseball team for hitting a home run.

I could not offer them anything, logically, that could explain what had happened to their investment or their faith in me. There was absolutely no reason at all why "Stay With Me" had not been a success for RCA, other than DP and internal politics.

I could not convince my girlfriend's father that what had happened was not my fault. As a result, all money stopped coming in, and the road ahead grew darker still.

I lost my apartment and all visible means of support. My once bright world collapsed around me like a house of cards. I was now faced with an all too familiar question of, "now what?"

Going from a self supporting sober member of society to a flat broke musician, with no home and no job, was almost more than I could bear. I sat in my living room and looked around my apartment for the last time. I hung my head at the thought of what lay ahead.

There was no other answer than, "don't kill yourself or get loaded, and put one foot in front of the other and just keep moving." It was something I'd done many times before. I reached out to people, but was treated more like a leper than a person in need of support.

The justification for this was that I had somehow convinced my girlfriend and her father that I knew what I was doing, and they'd trusted me only to find in the end I was an idiot and a liar. The entire blame for the failure was placed on me, and for the most part that remains the conclusion today.

Rather than a person following a path to a successful outcome, I was regarded as a fast talking con-man by most in AA. My despair was so overwhelming that I feared for my life and indeed my sanity.

Those two things I again knew only too well from past experience. The fact that I was sober and had to endure them once again was both mystifying and terrifying.

I had truly believed that I had had a partnership with God, and was simply doing what he wanted me to. I believed that all of what had started by me getting sober, and writing a few songs, had been the right direction.

I was now sitting in the ruins of what was obviously another Bobby Jameson pipe dream. I remember looking in a mirror at my face saying "what an asshole you are," and shaking my head in disgust.

At that moment I couldn't believe that I'd thought that anything that happened in my life would ever turn out well. It never had in the past, and now here I was again standing in the ruthless reality of my pathetic existence.

I wandered through those days aimlessly holding on to my sobriety a moment at a time. I rented a bedroom in a guy's house for $200 a month, and in the end, couldn't even pay that.

My girlfriend had gotten a job at an advertising company on Sunset Blvd., and I went by her office to tell her we could still make it because we had each other and were sober. As I stood in the doorway of her workplace, like a broken child, she slowly closed the door in my face saying "It's over Bobby, go away. It's over."

I broke down in tears on the sidewalk of Sunset Blvd. where so much of my life had been left. As I stared at the familiar surroundings of "The Strip" I tried to hide my shame and humiliation from passersby, but could not.

They eyed me coldly while I leaned against the building and sobbed. I had nothing left. And once again, I was a human reject in utter pain and desperation. The disillusionment I felt that afternoon is with me still.

The feelings caused by my failings, and my dismissal by virtually everyone, was devastating. In that moment in my life I had nothing to live for or with.

I did not know what to do. For the next number of months, I learned what it was like to be sober and regarded as the thing not to be in AA. I found that other rejects around the program were my only salvation, and that their lot in life was now mine as well.

It was my anger then, that rose up inside me in those dark days, and pulled me through. Anger at the lies told about me, and anger at the assumption that I would probably drink as a remedy for my shortcomings, as assigned to me by the "good people."

Like a thirsty man, consuming his own sweat to stay alive, my anger refused to let me get loaded.

(part 194) SEA OF TEARS

HOLY GHOST
THE SACRED
PRISM
I INSIDE EACH
CRITICISM
STAND BEFORE
YOU
IN MY
BLEEDING
CRIMSON WOUND
AM I MY
PLEADING

WRITE
MY WORDS
UPON THE SKY
I OUTSIDE
EACH
WATCHFUL EYE
STANDING ON
A SEA
OF TEARS
HOLY LIGHT
IMPALES
MY FEARS

NAKED ME
THE FLESH
NOW QUICKENS
MYSTICISM
HOW IT
SICKENS
WORDS
THAT HAMMER
IN THE NAILS
RUTHLESS WORLD
WHICH STILL
PREVAILS

Robert Parker Jameson April 4, 2009

(part 193) RAGS TO RICHES...TO RAGS

In 1978 I had a little over two years of sobriety. I was signed to RCA, and had a record released and being played on the radio. I had a relationship with a women and her family, I could pay my own rent, and my expectations for a real life had actually manifested into a concrete reality.

I'd gone from an insanely suicidal, loaded loser, to a somewhat well balanced, sober, recording artist in a couple of short years. Many in AA referred to me as a "gold cadillac" story, which meant I'd gone from "rags to riches" in sobriety.

While my girlfriend's father and I sought to rectify the problems that continually arose with the promotion of my record, neither of us could have possibly contemplated the end result.

Whatever the collective facts were in the dark backdrop of RCA's internal workings back then, I can only guess about now.

There was no way for us to gauge what was happening behind the scenes in 1978, or remain unscathed by it. In essence, "we never saw it coming." It, being the total calamity that ultimately befell our all-out efforts to secure a success with "Stay With Me."

In the final analysis, my girlfriend's father coughed up over a hundred grand to the cause, only to see his investment go down the tubes.

The fact was, that RCA never did ship any records to the markets where radio airplay had created a demand for it. Whether by stupidity or purposeful sabotage, "Stay With Me" was left hanging on the tree to rot in the sun like a ripe, but unpicked fruit. In time it fell to the ground and was left for dead, while me and my girlfriend and her family were to left to bury the carcass.

My positive demeanor was ripped away by circumstances once again, and replaced with the old familiar failure persona. My stable "can do" attitude of the past couple of years disappeared under the bright lights of humiliation.

To try and sum up in mere written words what it actually felt like back then is an impossibility. Likewise, for me to understand what my girlfriend's father and her entire family felt like, is also an equally impossible task.

Suffice it to say, it was intolerable, and it grew worse as it engulfed all of us like a living nightmare, coupled with shock and despair.

For me, there was no way to see it as anything but an unmitigated disaster. I floundered in a sea of regret and failed responsibility, which cut into my very core.

The return of my past into my present, was like dying and being awake to experience myself being dead. My faith and fragile trust in God, was crushed like a child's toy under foot, and the lack of help and support from anyone in AA was something I will never forget.

While many ran to the aid of my girlfriend, I was ignored like an abandoned child, and buried under a mountain of blame, heaped on me by her supporters.

As I struggled to maintain, not only my sobriety, but my sanity, during this chaos, I am stricken, even now, by the enormity of that dismal task. Day after day, month after month, I disintegrated into the familiar territory of Bobby Jameson, "loser."

Had I been able to trust God at that point, which I could not, I may have done better than I did. But in those dark days my most constant thought was, "Why, God? What was the fucking point? If you were just going to let this happen again, why did you let us get so far?"

That was my mantra! That was my question to God! "Why? Why did you let this happen? If getting sober, and being as above board as I'd ever been in my life got me the same old results that I got when I was loaded, then what was the Goddamned point?"

I could not, and still can't, answer that question to my satisfaction. I will tell you though, I have had to live with, for over thirty years, the smug condemnation and opinion of others, hurled at me by the self appointed spiritual experts on this subject. Those, who in no way experienced the trauma, but were all too eager to offer their opinion on the matter.

Back then, I was shoved to the outskirts of AA by many, once it was known that my successes had turned into a disaster. The fickle nature of members of twelve step programs was seared into my consciousness forever.

My then faltering ability to believe there was a God who cared about me, vanished altogether. Not because I didn't get what I wanted, or asked for, or demanded, but because the wholesale slaughter of dreams and lives went far beyond that.

In less than a year of the collapsed business adventure, my girlfriend's father was diagnosed with bone cancer, and died a slow and painful death.

This too, was heaped on my back by his entire family, including my girlfriend. Their belief was that he got sick as the direct result of the stress caused by his involvement with me, RCA and Bob Summer, and the music business in general.

(part 192) IT'S NOT PERSONAL...IT'S JUST BUSINESS

Doheny Toweres where I lived in 1978

Unlike now, the panorama of issues and events in 1977 and 1978 were not as clear to me. The fact that I could get Bob Summer, the president of RCA Records on the phone, as I did in the Cleveland warehouse, gave both myself, and my girlfriend's father, the incentive to forge ahead, which we continued to do.

Back then it looked like we were encountering problems and then resolving them. Each issue was analyzed and dealt with on an ongoing basis, such as the DP problem. It came up, and I made a decision about it and moved on.

When we found out that records weren't getting shipped, I talked the president of the label, who appeared receptive to my concerns, as well as being accessible to me.

In our minds it was business. Things happened and you dealt with them, or so we thought, but it was impossible to ever really know how each individual piece affected the whole situation.

There were political problems at RCA as well. The president, Bob Summer, was relatively new, and had not gone through the customary channels before signing me as an artist/producer for the label.

As I mentioned in earlier posts, the A and R people on the east coast felt slighted by the then president's decision to take me on as his pet project. The fact that he may well have done this at the urging of DP, a cocaine dealer from my past, would have made Bob Summer's actions that much more suspect.

Perhaps the president of RCA Records was unaware that those below him were determined not to help make "Stay With Me" a hit for the label.

It may have also been the case that there were those within RCA that were committed to the demise of Bob Summer as well. Possibilities such as these would have been beyond my understanding at the time, and completely beyond my control. They were blind spots that riddled the landscape.

From my personal standpoint, I saw one thing as being crystal clear. Stay With Me, when presented to the public on the radio, was a hit.

The fact that the record itself was simultaneously unavailable to that very same public, for whatever reason, was the new glitch.

Someone could hear the song on the radio, decide to buy it, but find they couldn't when they tried. This proved to be one of the most insidious problems I have ever endured in the dark arena of music as a business. The pettiness, yet overwhelmingly negative effect of this single issue, still haunts me today.

While the record continued being added to one radio station after another, the opposite reality was also coming true. It was now starting to be dropped by those stations who found it was unavailable in stores in their area.

This did not happen all at once, but slowly, like a painful twisting in the wind over a few months. To make matters worse, DP decided to send someone to where I lived, and threaten my life if I didn't go along with his demands to manage me and play ball.

The person he sent was GM, who you may remember as my partner in crime burglarizing hotel rooms, when I was still getting loaded.

His appearance at my door, one afternoon, was one of the most clarifying moments I can recall from back then. It put an end, forever, to the word friend, as used by DP, to explain our relationship.

There was no friendship. There was a person who made demands on another person, and if those demands were not met, then an enforcer was sent forth to accomplish the goal by threatening the life of he who would not conform, namely me.

GM stood like a dark shadow in front of me in my apartment. He talked angrily about how much DP had done for me, and that I was way out of line in refusing to let him manage me.

He threatened to throw me off my own balcony, which was eight stories up, if I didn't buckle under to DP's demands. He was more than capable of doing it if he decided to. There was no question about that.

I stood there like a zombie and stared back at him saying, "Do what you gotta do, G, but I'm not letting DP manage me, and you aren't gonna have an easy Goddamn time with this chicken shit job he sent you to do. If I go over that fucking
railing, you're comin' with me."

This was not a bluff. It was the literal truth at that moment. "I'm not gonna do what you guy's want, no matter what you do to me," I said.

Both DP and GM knew me from the past, and had observed, on numerous occasions, my propensity for insanity, so it wasn't like I was a pushover in the matter.

GM watched my eyes and body language like a hungry animal. He was looking for the fear scent in me. It was there alright, but so was the "I'm a crazy fucker and you know it" scent, and it was stronger.

He stood there and studied me for a long time before he spoke.

"You're a strong son-of-a-bitch, Jamerson," he said. He always added an r to my name when he said it. "You probably would get thrown over that railing before you ever changed your mind, you crazy asshole."

"Yeah!" I said, "I probably would, G." He half smiled at me and turned toward door. As he headed out he said, "Oh yeah, DP wants the guitar he bought for you in Nashville."

"OK," I said, "there it is," pointing to the Gibson Dove.

GM grabbed the guitar by the neck and looked at me one last time....I stared at him motionless, with the same determined look as before...He shook his head and turned and left....

I will always remember the sound of the door as it closed....I stood there for a long time before I moved.....

(part 191) CLEVELAND DISTRIBUTOR FOR RCA

In Cleveland, Ohio we searched and searched, but could not find "Stay With Me" for sale anywhere. Based on that single fact we headed straight to RCA's distributorship.

My girlfriend's father and I simply walked into the building and found no activity going on whatsoever. There were two guys sitting in chairs behind desks having a conversation, but other than that, nothing.

As we approached them they appeared somewhat surprised to see us there, and asked, "Can we help you?"

"My name is Robert Parker Jameson," I said, "and I'm an RCA artist. I came here to see if you have any copies of my record in stock."

They looked at each other like a spaceship had just landed in front of them, and one of them stammered, "Well, yeah I guess so, who'd you say you were?"

"Robert Parker Jameson," I said again. "and my record is "Stay With Me" on RCA. It's on the radio here in Cleveland. We've been all over town trying to buy the record, but couldn't find a single copy of it in any store, so we came here to see if you even have the record."

They looked at each other again, trying to compute what was going on, and one of them said, "I'm sure we got that record here, uh, yeah, uh, we got that record."

"Well where is it if you have it?" I asked, "We'd like to see it, because I flew here from L.A. and he," I motioned to my girlfriend's father, "flew here from New Jersey just so we could see if you have the record in stock."

I stood there like a statue, with no plans to leave that building without an answer, and at that point, my girlfriend's father was of the same mind.

We waited, and I said again, "I want to see the record. You say you have it here so where is it?"

Since I may have been the only artist who ever came into that building asking to see his own record, the two of them were unprepared for what was now happening, or how to respond to my demand.

They began looking through paperwork on their desks, when one of them eventually said, "Here it is, I got it, it's over there." He pointed to stacks of boxes piled on top of each other and said again, "It's right over there in that stack."

"How many do you have?" I asked.

He looked down at his paper again, studying the print, and announced, "Twelve! We got twelve of em."

I looked at my girlfriend's father and shook my head. "Twelve?" I asked, "That's it? How many did you get all together?"

He looked at the paper again, "Twelve! That's all they sent us."

"So RCA sent you twelve records and that's it?" I asked.

"According to this," he held up the paper, "that's it."

"Where are they exactly?" I asked, "I want to see them."

They looked at each other again. One of them drug himself out of his chair, and went over to the stacks of boxes and searched for the record. "Here they are," he shouted triumphantly, "here they are, I got um."

I walked over to where he was and looked down at a brown box the size of a 45 rpm record and opened it. "Eight," I said, "there are eight records here," I repeated, glancing over at my girlfriend's father.

By now I was getting irritated. I turned to the two guys again and said emphatically, "I want you to call RCA in New York, right now, and ask for the president of the label, Bob Summer, and tell whoever you talk to there that Robert Parker Jameson is standing in your building in Cleveland, and wants to talk to Bob Summer."

They both looked at me like I was completely nuts, but for whatever reason, seemed to think that what I'd asked them to do would be more like entertainment than a problem, and said, "OK!"

One of them picked up the phone and started dialing, and in a few moments began reiterating to someone what I'd said.

"Ok," he said, "they're gettin' em," and handed me the phone.

In a minute or so I heard Bob Summer's voice on the line, "Bobby?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm here," I replied,

"What are you doing in Cleveland?" he asked.

"I came here to see if "Stay With Me" was in the warehouse." I answered.

"Why?" he replied.

"Because the record's on two radio stations here and doing good, but no one can buy it in Cleveland, because you haven't shipped any records here. I'm standing in the warehouse, right now, with a single box of eight records, and according to the invoice only twelve records were ever sent here."

There was a noticeable pause on the line, and I glanced over at the two guys, who appeared spellbound, as they listened to me talk to the president of the label on their phone.

"Well I don't know what to say to that, Bobby. It must be a mistake of some kind," he said.

"You know," I went on, "I got a call from a program director up in New England a couple of days ago, who told me RCA hasn't shipped any records there either. He said he was going to have to pull "Stay With Me" off the air, because no one could buy the record there. That's why we came to Cleveland, to see if we could buy it here, but we can't."

There was no response. "It's a little hard to sell records, Bob, if the company doesn't get them into stores, if you know what I mean," I said.

"Yes," he replied, "I know what you're saying, and of course you're right. I will look into it and see what the problem is as soon as I get off the phone with you."

"OK," I said, " I just thought I'd come here and find out for myself, so that's why I called you."

"I'm glad you did," he said, "I didn't know this was happening."

"OK," I said again, "Thanks for taking my call and talking to me about this. I guess that's it, Bob."

"Alright, Bobby, you take care of yourself, and I'll go see about this immediately." I handed the phone back to the warehouse guy and said, "Thanks, man, I really appreciate it!"

"No problem," he said smiling, as he took the phone from my hand, "you ought to come by more often. I'll be telling my grandkids about this one."