(part 200) SONGS....LOTS AND LOTS OF SONGS

West Hollywood and the Sunset Strip

It might appear to some who have read what I have been writing here that I have a problem with AA, which I do not. The program of Alcoholics Anonymous, as laid out in the simple text of its book, is straight ahead, and works.

My problems were with me, and various members of the program who attempted to shove their version of AA down my throat, and then say they were only trying to help.

If you've read my story, you are aware that I probably came to the program a total and complete mess. Possibly more of a mess than some others.

As I began my life in AA, I'd found different books about spirituality that I used to deal with my life and it's numerous problems.

But rather than dealing with many of my own character defects and flaws at a rock bottom level, I covered many of them over with techniques I found in some of these books.

Science Of Mind gave me a way to focus my attention, and worked in the sense that I, either by coincidence or design, was able to appear to have something tangible occur in the way of results. But when the house of cards I built collapsed, I was again faced with the bulk of the problems I came to the program with.

In the early days of my sobriety I lived in West Hollywood and the surrounding area, which was full of well off, sometimes quite successful, people. A lot of show business people, doctors, lawyers, etc.

I had fallen into the trap of equating success in sobriety with success with money, property, and prestige. Back then I didn't know any better, and it just seemed to be the way it was.

Because of my initial financial success in the program, I knew about both sides of the proverbial coin so to speak. I had played the role of the successful person for awhile, and then the role of the loser. This is not an overstatement. It was literally that stark.

The west side of L.A. is either hot or cold, like it or not. The competitive reality exists there, and you either get it or you don't. I'd never gotten it from the standpoint of being an ongoing success, but I knew the area like a coyote knows his hunting ground. I'd spent too much time there not to know how it worked.

One of the strangest things about 12 step programs, particularly in places like West L.A., is that people come to them because they have problems beyond just drugs and alcohol.

After they've been clean and sober for awhile, they start acting like they don't have those problems anymore, or that they've fixed them all.

This was and is a dangerous mindset, and in my world, an absolute nonstarter. If nothing else, I knew I was screwed up, an opinion shared by most who knew me. I guess it is always easier to focus on someone like me than to have to look at oneself.

I was never quiet about my problems. I just couldn't hide them. I tried, but never had success in sustaining the persona of "every thing's fine." My resentment toward living sober like I'd lived when I was loaded, bothered me to no end and I said so.

I would appear at times not to be sober at all, because I was so vocal about these debilitating conditions. But beneath that outward appearance, I was on a 24-hour a day search for real answers to my problems, and for peace, although nobody much thought so then, or thinks so now.

Difficulties again rose along the way when I got involved in a second relationship with a well known actress on the program. This ended after we had a fight over me collecting junk stereo equipment to sell.

I had piled this stuff around her apartment, where I was living, and she had finally gotten tired of it and said something harsh to me about it.

My reaction to her scolding me led to the fight, and I raised my fist as if I were going to hit her. I didn't, but knew I had come too close to the real thing. I decided it was unacceptable on my part, and my punishment for this act was to remove myself from her home immediately.

A few weeks later, I was in an AA meeting in the area, and she and her new boyfriend walked in together. When I saw them I felt like a trapped rat. I would have left, but I was leading the meeting, so I stayed.

In somewhat of a panic, I searched my mind for a way out of the situation. Coming up empty I simply walked toward them and watched their eyes as they saw me approaching.

When I reached them I smiled and stuck out my hand saying, "I'm glad to see you both here, thanks for coming." I'm sure they were as surprised as I was to hear those words come out of my mouth.

After that incident, I could not shake the fact that that simple gesture had calmed the waters and eased the tension of the moment. I studied the phenomenon over and over, and began thinking of how it could be used in my life overall.

I got out my Science Of Mind book, after a long absence, and recall reading this sentence by Ernest Holmes. "If you're not loving everybody unconditionally, start now."

Hell I knew I wasn't loving everybody, so I just started trying to at least find something good in those whom I'd had trouble with, which was almost everybody.

It was hard to do, but I kept at it. When my mind started ripping into them I'd quiet it, and insert something less negative. Like I said, it was hard to do and extremely tedious, but I kept up the practice.

In 1979 I was painting the interior of some guy's house, and had about three and a half years of sobriety. As I worked I wondered if I was ever going to get out of the seeming rut I was in.

Carol Paulus, whom I still knew, and talked with periodically, told me about a lawyer she met who was interested in getting involved in the music business.

She said she'd told him about me, and said he wanted to meet me. At first I brushed it off, but it kept coming back up in conversations over time.

Finally after realizing she wasn't going to give up, I agreed to meet with him at Carol's apartment, and play him some new and unpublished songs I'd been writing. If nothing else, I always had songs. Lots and lots of songs.

(part 199) STILL CLEAN AND SOBER

As you read this, I would remind you that I'm not telling you I'm right or wrong. I am telling you what happened to me and how I handled or, if you like, mishandled it.

In the aftermath of the humiliation of failure and blame, I fought to stay clean and sober through it all. Whatever success I had appeared to have had earlier on, was now gone. I was wiped out completely.

The expectations and moral demands laid on me by others, and how I should handle my emotions and thinking, was something I failed miserably in accepting or doing. It was not them who had lost it all, nor did they carry the dark history that I came to the program with.

My biggest problem was me, and my old ideas of complete capitulation in the wake of an all too familiar sense of disgrace. The old demons rose up inside me, and I found myself engaged, night and day, in a personal war with the old Bobby Jameson.

The world around me faded into the background as I wandered aimlessly from AA meeting to AA meeting in search of help. Too many times I ended up at the same one as my ex-girlfriend, and the whole painful mess would replay in my mind all over again.

Feelings of loneliness and worthlessness ran my life 24-hours a day. While I sank into a mire of self pity and self recriminations, I did not drink or use. To me the only real mistake I could have made at that point would have been to get loaded and/or kill myself.

Many were the times that I sat alone in fear of God and other human beings. I isolated myself behind a wall of AA sayings and phony emotional disguises to ward off the preaching of others.

Rather than deal with the real issues of a total sense of lack of self worth, abandonment, and failure, many had the tendency to mouth one liners like "Let go and let God" as their only notion of support.

God at that point was the last thing I dared or wanted to rely on. In my mind it had been my reliance on God in the first place that had led me down the path to the slaughter house. I didn't expect any agreement on the issue, but for me, letting go and letting God scared the shit out of me.

I existed for as long as I could in this make believe world of denial. Bur eventually, it was my anger at people and their various versions of the facts that caused me to snap.

The phony role playing in someone else's scripted version of the events is what I finally rebelled against. For anyone to say that what had happened was nothing more than "God's will" to my face, was the straw that broke the camel's back.

The condescending attitudes of the "Holier than thou" was eventually met by me fighting back and yelling, "Well fuck off! Who the hell needs a God whose will is always that I lose everything?"

To say the least, this was not welcomed by more than a very few, and my reputation for being quick to anger and slow to forgive, added to my difficulties.

I struggled on through months of depression and anger, trying to sort out my place in the realm of the 12 step programs that had saved my life. I searched for my own footprints in the sands of confusion.

I laid out the real facts as they'd truly happened and accepted them. Not in a peaceful or humble way, but at a rock bottom level of, "Here's how is."

I quit debating with the self appointed "Spiritual" people. I admitted to being incredibly pissed off at God, and said on more than one occasion, "If God's God, than he can handle my anger."

I based my position on the fact that I was still sober, and dismissed the words of those who said things like, "But you're so angry and unhappy."

There were actually those who seemed to know what I was doing, but mostly I was looked down on as someone who hadn't surrendered my will to God, and was constantly told as much by far too many.

To them I said, "I did surrender to God in the beginning, and I trusted him completely until I found that trusting him got the same results as not trusting him." They shook their heads, and gave me the "Oh Bob" look and walked away.

There were even those who said I should go get drunk and then try and make it back to the program with a better attitude. To these idiot assholes I said, "Go fuck yourself."

In the long run I was just the pissed off guy who stayed clean and sober during those times, and learned a lot about sobriety from the raw side.

I had lost everything alright, but I hadn't gotten loaded over it, and in the end that was all that really mattered. I'd weathered the storm, and turned my back on God, but I never threw in the towel.

I banged my way through it, and looked and sounded like shit doing it, but I was still in the game. I was still clean and sober.

(part 198) GOD'S BEAUTICIAN

I AM GOD'S
BEAUTICIAN
I DO HIS
HAIR
SOMEDAYS
GOD IS A SHE
AND I DO
HER HAIR

I SEE THAT
PRECISE LOGIC
IS YOUR
GAME
AND I AM WILLING
TO PLAY
BECAUSE I AM
NOT SO PRECISE

IT MAKES
YOU MAD
THAT I DO
GOD'S HAIR
I DO
NAILS TOO
MOSTLY GOD
IGNORES ME

BUT YOU CAN'T
IGNORE ME
BECAUSE YOU
ARE NOT GOD
I AM NOT
GOD EITHER
THAT'S WHY
IT'S OK TO BE ME

IF I WERE
GOD
THEN SOMEBODY
LIKE ME
WOULD HAVE
TO DO
MY NAILS
AND HAIR

Bobby Jameson Aug 24, 2009

(part 197) ENOUGH BLAME TO GO AROUND

Looking back now at the RCA deal, and all the money spent by my girlfriend's father, I can see clearly that it was a bad idea. The original amount of $15,000 was as far as it should have gone.

I was newly sober, and the first check allowed me a real opportunity to have some choices I would not have otherwise had. It was a generous and well meaning gift.

What occurred, subsequent to that, changed the dynamics and took on a life of it's own. When RCA bought the first four songs I recorded, and gave me back the initial money I'd spent in the studio, those of us involved found ourselves in the midst of an alteration in perspective.

The future seemed more clearly defined as to the possibilities that lay ahead, once the label bought the four songs. My investment in the studio, with the money I'd been given, had paid dividends.

There had been no plan to invest more money, and I hadn't asked for any. The kicker was that a record company came into the picture and things changed.

None of us knew about DP, or his association with Bob Summer, the president of the label at the time. We did not learn of his involvement until later in the unfolding sequence of events.

My belief in 1977, which was shared by my girlfriend and her entire family, was that I was being guided by a "higher power" because I was sober and in AA.

This may look somewhat preposterous now, but back then it was as concrete a scenario as we could imagine. Three of us were in AA, and the rest of the family was in Alanon, so this thinking was not odd whatsoever.

Each of us, in our own mind, had reason to believe. We wanted to rely on such a thing, and so we did. We collectively and individually convinced ourselves of what we wanted to be true. That was what led to the idea of further investments.

I'd gotten my money back from RCA, so I wasn't walking around with my hand out. I had $16,000. The second investment was proposed by the family. It was a way to construct jobs for my girlfriend and her sister.

I saw nothing wrong with the idea, and so it happened. Both of them were in L.A. and needed a way to make money, and their father decided this was what he wanted to do. Again, it occurred prior to any knowledge of the problems that arose later.

Following the second check, four significant things came into play: the appearance of DP, his involvement with RCA's president Bob Summer, DP's desire to manage me, and the internal politics at the label itself.

As I have already said, none of these things were known by us at the time of the second investment. In fact, the president of RCA, my girlfriend's father, and I, all sat together in Bob Summer's office in New York, at one point, talking about how well the whole deal was going to go.

As a result, we all felt the future was bright, and that what was being done by everybody made complete sense. It was extremely positive. It is only in hindsight that 20/20 vision comes to such a critical view of those day's decisions made by us all.

It is seemingly logical now, after the fact, to offer up opinions and conclusions that were unclear and unknown then.

For my part, I was guilty of believing that I had put my past behind me. I was guilty of trusting God, sobriety, and myself to accomplish that which I had never accomplished before, a successful outcome.

Had I been more cynical, and used what I had learned from my own past experience, I would probably have fared better than I did.

But back then, I was enraptured by my belief that sobriety and life would be a celebration, and not the wholesale slaughter of emotions and dreams that it became.

To fault me now, as I tell this story, for believing that a better life was possible then, is a very dangerous judgement for anyone to make about what drove me.

I was as honest and forthright as I had ever been, and sought only to write songs and make recordings of them. I never asked for money in the first place, but once it was given, I managed it as best I could for all concerned.

I paid bills like rent, salaries, and recording costs. I did not throw money around. I drove a used car and had an apartment. I informed them all of each thing that I was doing. I did this because it's what I learned in AA.

When human beings are disappointed by what happens, and the outcome is not the one they hoped for, possibly those same human beings attempt to assign blame on others for the unwanted result.

I assigned blame to myself, RCA, Bob Summer, and DP. The rest of the blame I heaped on God, for not protecting me and a family of people who trusted me.

I could handle the up front knowledge of failure in the music business, because it was all I'd ever known, but this had been different. It happened in sobriety. It had gotten so close, only to be swept away in the end by a tidal wave of deceptions and manipulations.

I spent a great deal of time talking to God about this. It was said that God talks through people, and I heard every chicken shit answer I ever want to hear about why this happened from too many on the program.

Some were highly successful people in the music business, who had never spoken up at all until the end. And when they did speak, it was only to offer criticism.

I told them I had trusted God, and they laughed at me, saying, "You need more than God in the record business."

At another point, following the collapse, I sat in a tax auditor's office with my girlfriend and her father while we heard the amount of taxes that were owed.

My girlfriend's father made it quite clear in that office that he blamed me for getting him into a financial bind, and that he was not happy about it. I suggested he put it all on my back instead of his, to which he scoffed, "What are you going to do about it, you don't have any money?"

I felt like a child being annihilated by their parent. Later I had an argument with him saying, "You didn't invest in me. You used me as a means to give your daughters money, because you felt guilty about failing them as a father when they were growing up, because you were drunk."

His wife later made sure that I knew this was true, and for that I am grateful...

(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.