(part 10) THE TIDE TURNED

Ciro's nightclub Sunset Blvd.

After the sick child incident I rebelled against the "Tony's in charge of everything without question" premise. I began to openly disagree with Tony's ideas regarding my future. For example, I refused to let him book me into shows unless I had a band, which I never got. I flat out refused to go and told him if he booked me I wouldn't show up. I brought up the long list of odd things he had done and confronted him for the first time.

I had changed since he first met me. From the hungry kid to a more seasoned performer who'd been on the road a bit and had learned a few things. I asserted myself and my position and Tony didn't like it. The fear of being disapproved of by Tony, which had always been the case, began to crumble in the wake of my new found willingness to stand my own ground and claim my own selfhood. Tony's iron clad power over me had shifted to a "we better work together or else."

Or else what? Therein was the dilemma. Tony's position had always been, "I made Bobby Jameson." He believed, or at least he claimed to believe, that without him I never would have gotten off the ground. In large part that was true. But then I became me, and when that happened, I reclaimed myself from Tony. My new position had become, "yeah, you probably did make me Tony, but now that it's happened I am not the same willing little kid you could control with promises like before."

It was a Mexican standoff and Tony knew it. Hell there was no way he could force me to do anything. It wasn't like he could refuse to pay me if I didn't go, because he wasn't paying me anyway. Everything he could have used for leverage didn't exist. You can't take away something you were never provided with in the first place. Tony had painted himself into a corner with his own greed and lack of real fairness. When it came time to use his chits he didn't have any and I damn well knew it.

(If you are reading this and have no real sense of a timeline let me clarify briefly. Most of what I have discussed here only took about 6 months to occur. The beginning, middle, and eventual end, of Tony and me was like a ride on a rocket ship. It had started out of nowhere and changed my life forever in 9 weeks. Then 4 or 5 more months of weirdness and it all ended with a bizarre conclusion. Everything that occurred between us went extremely fast. No real plan at all. No time to consider anything before it was done. So in essence mistakes had become commonplace).

As I was saying, Tony had become aware that the power he had had over me was now different. He could no longer command me like a dog without fear of being bitten. He looked for new ways to gain control and one of them was a live performance in Los Angeles which I had never done, other than American Bandstand, and a few other local television music shows, like Ninth Street West and Lloyd Thaxton. I knew that I would be performing by myself again, but Tony convinced me it would be the last time I'd have to do it, so I agreed.

He rented the old Ciro's nightclub on the Sunset Strip and put a 35 foot black silhouette of me on the roof which said, "Bobby Jameson Here! One Day Only." I don't know how many people Ciro's (now the comedy store) holds, but it was full on the day I played there. It was invitation only and I did my job well. I played by myself for those people with my guitar, an amplifier, and a microphone. No band just me and I was good. That was the last time I ever went on stage alone again. It seemed to be a moment in time that just got stuck and hasn't moved since that day.

After I played, I vaguely remember talking to people. I couldn't tell you who was there, but I remember leaving pretty quickly afterwards. I knew Tony would be making use of my work and make promises to people about my availability to perform somewhere. I knew he would get money in front from some of them, and I knew he never intended for me to show up. He just made money by promising things, but the promises were only used to get the money. It was a quirk I discovered about him. He could have made so much more if he had done it right, but he seemed doomed to an addiction of always pulling something off on people, like that was the point, when in fact that was the smallness of Tony.

He had big powerful ideas, but he always went for the chicken shit payoff. He had been offered deals by just about every major record company there was for me, but he wouldn't take it. He wanted to be like Col. Tom Parker who represented Elvis Presley. He wanted to be a big shot. The tragedy was that he damn near made it, but figured out a way to screw it up at the last minute. That was, and I would guess still is, Tony Alamo. It is easy for me to see this in Tony, because I have seen it in myself. Always getting so close to the dream coming true, and then at the last minute doing something insane, or just plain stupid, to screw it up, always with the tag that they, or he, or something made me fail. This is classic alcoholic thinking, I know because I am an alcoholic and I believe that Tony Alamo is too.

(part 9) EACH TIME I HEAR THE NAME TONY ALAMO

There is no explanation for this story. There is no hidden meaning. It was just one more confusing day in my life with Tony. The reason I posted this, is because for 43 years I have not forgotten it. Like a mental tattoo, it is just there in my mind, brought to life each time I hear the name Tony Alamo.

I still do not know why he sent me there. I was promoting a record and then out of nowhere this turned up. It is of primary importance to me, in that it preceded the eventual collapse of my relationship with Tony Alamo. This episode signaled to me, in the deepest way possible, that Tony was thinking in completely different terms than I was. He now appeared to be using me for some other purpose of his, which I could only guess about based on what I knew.

The ill child and my unwitting part in it, caught me completely off guard and placed me in a no win battle with myself. What did it mean? I didn't and still don't know, but I know it meant something to Tony. It caused me to change, in some final way, my entire view of what I was doing with him. I began questioning deeply whether I should continue to do anything with this man, who had single handedly put me in the life I was living.

This kind of cross purposes split me in half and left me with two completely different options to choose from. A crossroad! What was I going to do? How at 19 years old was I supposed to figure this damn mess out? Part of me still needed Tony and part of me was sure I had to get away from him before more weird things occurred. I knew for sure that Tony had been on some sort of God trip, but now I had to consider what that really meant. I had been kind of ignoring it, as best I could, hoping that it was just some trip he got on when he smoked pot. But in light of the kid in the bedroom, I began looking closer, a lot closer, at Tony's ranting about God.

There had been spooky overtones about religion in that house, and I had felt like a captured rat in that room with the priest and people falling to their knees. Hell I could have easily just assumed that the kid was excited to see me and was jumping up and down on an adrenaline rush. But those people seemed to take it to the next level, whatever that was. They appeared to me to be assigning some greater meaning to it all. Anyway, that's why I pretty much just ran out of the place and didn't talk to anyone. I did not want to discuss what had happened. I was 19. I was a damn pop star, not anything else. I was still that kid from nowhere who wanted to be famous.

Go to part 10

(part 8) TONY SENT ME, I WENT

Toward the end of me being Tony's boy, I was flown alone to a city, I believe on the east coast. It could have been New Jersey or New york but frankly I'm not sure. As much as I was moving around It could have been anywhere. The plane landed and I was met by a limo. The driver had been directed to take me to a lower middle class home in the suburban part of whatever city I was in. I had zero information about what was transpiring, but didn't think it was any different than what I'd been doing, until we pulled up to a small house on a residential street.

There were a lot of people out in the street and on the sidewalks staring at the commotion from their yards. The whole area was loaded with cops and a bunch of press. Flash bulbs were going off, and the police were trying to keep some kind of order as the crowd moved in on the limo. I asked the limo driver where the hell we were, and what was going on, because this obviously was completely different than anything I'd expected. He could only say that he'd been directed to pick me up at the airport and bring me to this address and that was all he knew.

At this point someone was tapping on the window and motioning for me to get out of the car. Without knowing what to expect I reluctantly did so. I was greeted by a number of very official looking people in suits, who appeared to be very happy to see me, which was somewhat of a relief. "Hi Bobby!" came a voice of one of the greeters, "Very glad to see you and thank you so much for coming. This will mean everything to the parents." Now I was really confused. What parents? What was this guy talking about? I was completely in the dark and tried unsuccessfully to obtain some info as to what the hell was going on.

"Bobby, this is his honor the mayor," of wherever we were, "and he has been looking forward to meeting you personally." I reached out and shook his hand and barely could make out what he said to me. The crowd had begun to push it's way closer to us, and I was keeping one eye on them and the other one on all my new buddies. I'd been in crowds before that just all of a sudden got out of control, so I was none too comfortable being out in the middle of the street with these guys. A helicopter kept flying in circles above us making a hell of a lot of noise, and this just added to my anxiety.

At last we made it to the house and in through front door where even more people were waiting. They were all trying to thank me at once for coming, and I was just getting more and more uncomfortable and kind of angry, because no one was bothering to fill me in on any of what they all seemed to know about why I was there. Everybody was trying to touch me and shake my hand as I was escorted down the narrow hallway of this small house. We got to the doorway of a back bedroom and all of the noise around me suddenly grew quiet as I entered the room.

Inside were more people and what appeared to be the parents of a sick boy who was lying on his back on a hospital bed in the very center of the room. There was a priest and a couple of nuns or sisters holding what looked like rosary beads, and they were all staring at me with a look that I find difficult to explain. Kind of like OK, do something. I just stood there looking back at them, not knowing what they wanted from me. I heard a voice begin to talk and it was the mother of the sick boy telling him that I was there in his bedroom.

I looked over at the kid who had not moved a muscle since I'd arrived. The soft voice of his mother seemed to awaken him to the fact that I was in his room, standing by his bed. He turned his head toward me and asked in a weak voice, "Are you Bobby Jameson?" "Yes, I said, I'm Bobby Jameson." All of a sudden out of nowhere this kid sat straight up in bed, as if some invisible chord had yanked him up. I was somewhat startled by this, because he had not moved at all since I'd arrived. His mother started speaking again, telling him I was there to autograph his copy of "I'm So Lonely." God, I thought! Why didn't someone just tell me that that was why I was here, to autograph this sick kids record.

For a moment I was relieved that I now knew what the big fuss had been about. But then the kid got even more animated and stood up on his bed and as he did so, there was kind of a gasp from those in the room. He began jumping up and down on the bed yelling, "Bobby Jameson's here, Bobby Jameson's here." I just stared at the kid jumping up and down on his bed, not knowing what I should do at that moment and feeling extremely awkward and wanting to leave. Simultaneously the parents and a few others burst into tears and fell to their knees, muttering words of thanks and I'm not really sure what else.

I quickly signed the record and began my retreat to the door leaving them behind and hearing them still crying as I went. I did not stop or speak to anyone on my way out of that house. If they spoke to me I didn't hear them. I heard nothing. I was angry and confused that I had been taken there without being made aware of the circumstances. I hit the street, and again I spoke to no one. I saw the limo driver and motioned to him that I wanted in the car and out of this place now.

He seemed to know exactly what I was thinking and opened the door to the limo, which was still parked in the middle of the street. He drove me straight to the airport and on the way there I learned from him the circumstances of the boy, which he had learned from talking to people outside the house while waiting for me. The kid was gravely ill, not expected to live, and had not walked for 6 months until I showed up in his bedroom. I did not want to hear any more and closed myself off to the world as we drove on to the airport.

Before I knew it I was back on the plane and in the air headed to, God I didn't know. I didn't know anything except that I was ready to tear Tony's head off for sending me there at all. Why in God's name did he send me there? And why didn't he tell me about the sick kid? What was he going to do next, and how was I supposed to be ready for it whatever it was going to be? I didn't know the answer to that and it scared me. I had a terrible sense of uneasiness about Tony and I knew that I would not go on forever doing what he told me to do.

Goto part 9

(part 7) THE TALES OF TWO CITIES

click
Billboard Magazine 1964

I am doing my best to write factually about the events in the life of (me) Bobby Jameson. There has been, and continues to be, enormous contradictions regarding what Tony Alamo has said about these events, and what (my) Bobby Jameson's position is. There is widespread interest, it appears, from followers and ex-followers of Tony Alamo.

Some will not believe what is said here, because they won't ever believe anyone but Tony. Others will want to believe what is written here, simply because anything that negatively portrays Tony Alamo fits into their way of thinking. I am not interested in either side's position. I have my own side to represent and it can only be represented honestly with facts known only to Bobby Jameson and Tony Alamo.

In the end, there will be two different versions of the same events, as described by the two individuals who were originally involved. While Tony has spent decades representing his version of these events, it is only after 43 years, that (my) Bobby Jameson's side of this story comes to light.

Tony Alamo made millions of dollars with his brand of honesty, and hurt countless human beings in the process. Bobby Jameson made nothing, and has struggled for over 4 decades to make ends meet while obtaining and maintaining 31 years of sobriety. It is only because of the internet's creation and popularity that this opportunity to tell my story became possible. Prior to the internet Bobby Jameson was no more than an obscure fact of music history.

go to part 8

(part 6) TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN

My record "I'm So Lonely" was a full blown hit in Cleveland and Detroit. So naturally Tony started booking me as the guest star at some big shows. I opened for The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, and Chubby Checker, who at the time were all successful acts. I was never paid one penny for any of the live shows I did. Tony always told me that they were just promotion, and I was doing them for the exposure and to push record sales. Hell the record was in the top 5 all over the mid-west, why did I have to do free promotional gigs?

Of course looking back on it now, I realize Tony was getting paid, he just wasn't paying me. Once again, I believed what Tony told me. I was 19 years old and this man had changed my life. It is far easier now to see the truth than it was for me at that time. It was during this period of working hard that Tony first introduced me to the dexedrine, which I have already mentioned. The point was to keep me going no matter what. Keep the train moving. Don't let a little thing like being exhausted get in the way.

I was flying around on airplanes and riding in limos. I barely knew what city I was in most of the time. The haze began to be my everyday life, and the use of pills to get up and pot and booze to come down had become routine. Not only was I doing these live shows and not getting paid, but Tony was booking me all over the country, and in parts of Europe, with no intention of ever having me show up. He'd book me, get the front money and that was that. I did not find out about this until some time later.

One of the giveaways to this was when I was doing a live interview, by telephone, with a Cincinnati, Ohio radio station, where people called in to talk to me. The trouble was that everybody was pissed off at me and finally I asked why? "Are you kidding me?" the DJ asked, "No!" I said, "Why are you people so mad at me?" The DJ answered, "Because a couple of weeks ago the mayor of Cincinnati and 1100 kids waited at the airport for you in the rain. They were there with the key to the city and you never showed up."

It was like being slapped with a rope across the face. "I gotta tell you man," I said, "this is the first time I've even heard about it." There was silence for a moment at the other end of the line. "Are you telling us, because there's a lot of people listening to this show Bobby," he said, "Are you saying that right now is the first you've heard about this airport thing?" "Yes! That's what I'm saying. I didn't know anything about it or I would have been there, period. I feel awful, I don't know what else to tell you. I just wouldn't do that If I knew, I just wouldn't do that." The interview ended and I could not believe that what had just happened actually happened.

What the hell was Tony doing? It was my name getting trashed, but it was Tony Alamo's plan. I began wondering how much of this was going on? If I didn't know about Cincinnati, what else didn't I know? I begged Tony to tell me what was going on. I also insisted that he get me a band to work with on the road. I told him how hard it was to go on stage by myself and perform over and over again without backup. "They love you!" he said, "You don't need a band. You're better when you're alone. A band would just take the focus off of you and you're the star. You don't need a band."

On and on it went. I could never get what I needed. I'd just show up and play, until I started screwing up. That was a big deal! That was different! Tony had never seen me foul up while playing. It just hadn't happened, ever, until it happened. He changed his tune a bit. "Well maybe a band is not such a bad idea, let me work on it." I never got a band. What Tony did was to start asking guys from other bands, who were playing at the same shows to play with me. A lot of them were glad to do it and that's how it went. Tony always avoiding laying out cash for anything. Always getting someone else to do the work while he collected the money.

In case the point hasn't been made enough, let me be absolutely clear here. I was not paid one red cent for doing any of the things I have discussed here. "I'm So Lonely" sold a lot of records. I was told by the distributor in Detroit that the only record that he'd seen do better was Del Shannon's "Run Away". I am not saying "I'm So Lonely" was a mega-hit I'm just saying it sold a lot of records. There were other people who did more shows than I did, but I imagine they were paid something, at least I hope so. But I am still of the belief that Tony Alamo owes me money for what I did. Do I believe I will ever get it? No! I know Tony too well.

go to part 7

(part 5) ME, TONY, PETER and GORDON

Terry Knight CKLW DJ

Peter Caine was a good guy. He was also a photographer who got hustled by Tony Alamo into taking most of the photos for the Billboard ad campaign. Peter ended up being my only friend and helped me to finally break away from Tony and go to England, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

To this day there is still an unpaid bill at Billboard for most of the ads that were run. Somewhere between $13.000 and $14,000 I believe. You see Tony either couldn't or wouldn't pay for the ads. But what he did do, was find someone else to guarantee to Billboard that the account would be paid. In this case that someone was Gordon Gessler, the son of wealthy diamond dealers in Beverly Hills. Gordon was kind of a goofy guy with a pretty good heart and Tony used him to accomplish Tony's goal, which was to get the ads in Billboard.

Tony succeeded, as Tony was prone to do, and then had a falling out with Gordon once the goal was accomplished. I am by no means blameless in all of this, because I ended up moving in with Gordon's ex-wife Lois Johnston who was 29 years old while I was 19. At the time I thought she was one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen. Part of the star game is beautiful women, so I was sure I'd made it when I actually moved into Lois's house in Benedict Canyon.

As the ad campaign moved forward into it's climax my record "I'm So Lonely" began getting heavy airplay throughout the mid-west and Canada and started climbing the charts in places like Detroit and Cleveland, Ohio. There was a huge 50,000 watt station in Windsor, Canada called CKLW just across the river from Detroit. A young DJ named Terry Knight took it upon himself to single handedly break my record and make it a hit which he succeeded in doing. CKLW was heard in a wide spread area of the mid-west and the record climbed into the top 5 and I believe made it to # 1 in a number of places.

The point of this is, that now I was in demand. Tony could go to work on more people using the record's success as leverage to bend them to his will. First was Dick Clark at American Bandstand who Tony convinced to put me on the show. Following that a number of other more regional music shows became willing to put me on too, because Bandstand had. Tony was no fool. He knew how to use one success to accomplish another.

He did a lot of things right. It was just that he always managed to do something that was so outlandish that it made the earlier successes nearly null and void. An example would be that as I was out touring around the country Tony sent me and some other people to Denver, Colorado saying we were booked into the Denver Hilton and were expected. He told us that all we had to do was go there and we'd be welcomed with open arms. All of this was true.

We were greeted at the front door by the hotel manager and staff, and then escorted to a suite of rooms. We joked with each other for hours saying we were really in the big time now. Later, at about five o-clock in the morning, we were awakened by loud pounding on the door of the suite. We opened it to find a number of hotel security who were there to remove us from the hotel for fraud.

Here's what happened. Tony had telegraphed the Denver Hilton and told them we were coming and to treat us with care, because we were important friends of, Tony signed the telegram Conrad Hilton. Well when the manager of the hotel in Denver, who I believe was a Hilton himself, found out he had been bull-crapped by some Hollywood conman he was a little bit pissed off. So when I say that Tony did a lot of things right, but always managed to screw it up, this is what I was talking about.

These kinds of off the wall scenarios continued throughout my time with Tony and I will discuss some of them throughout these writings. As you may well imagine I had a tough time trying to understand this man, who on the one hand was making my dreams come true while on the other was scaring the crap out of me by doing things like The Denver Hilton fiasco. For a long time he was able to convince me that this stuff was just a mix up and not to let it bother me. My job, he said, was to "concentrate on the music" and he would take care of the business.

All the while Tony was continuing to smoke pot and began having episodes where he said "God was talking to him and telling him to except Jesus as his Lord or die." This too was bewildering to me, because it came out of nowhere and then would vanish as if it hadn't even occurred. Tony used to say, "it was just the pot talking and that he'd just gotten too high." The real trouble for me was, that whether or not it was the pot talking I began to feel more uneasy with Tony's explanations for why these things kept occurring. Looking back on it now I can see that these outbursts were the beginnings of Tony's eventual conversion into some dangerous cult like form of christianity.

go to part 6