Then And Now

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Well it is 2014 and the end of June. When I began this blog it was in November of 2007 and a lot has gone on since I was here last. Currently my 95 year old mother is in the hospital having had a stroke as well as pneumonia, and my 70 year old schizophrenic brother Bill, had some sort of blackout/seizure and fell at his apartment, and could not get up. I had to call the police to get into his place and they found him sprawled out on his kitchen floor. I myself have been trying my damnedest to carry on and keep things afloat, but the load has been, to say the least, a heavy one to bare. The headaches I had when I started writing some seven years ago are still with me, and make all of this seem impossible to cope with, but a day at a time I muddle through.

I spent and hour or so today looking through some of what I wrote in the past and thought I might come here to convey a few new thoughts and feelings. There was never any doubt, when I started this blog, that what I might write here would change anything in my life much, which it hasn't. I got older, I'm still clean and sober, and I still feel as separated from the human race as I did when I began. I think if I hadn't had these headaches all the time I may well have done much better, but the limitations of 24-hr a day pain, for nearly sixteen years, allows little peace I have found.

As years have come and gone, so have the people. A few stay on but many more do not. It is excruciatingly painful to watch some, that I have truly cared for, begin to lose interest and move away, and then disappear altogether. But in part, it seems to be because of the physical limitations I am forced to exist with, to try and function with. If I could live my life as I chose to, instead of being chained to this rock, then I believe much would have been different. I spend each day trying, with all the power I can find, to get well. I never truly give up my belief that I can, and will, even though at times I have felt like throwing in the towel. Because I was able to get clean and sober, and stay that way for thirty-eight years, I have the model for eventual success with these goddamned headaches.

Then too, there is the fact that I am a pain in the ass, and hard to get along with at times. I do not shy away from this fact and freely admit to it. But again, for the most part, it is a direct result of always having to fight through headaches while trying to communicate with people. If I sound like nothing more than a whining weakling I apologize. But it has, and is, next to impossible to explain my actions without putting this fact squarely at the front of the line. I only hope that someday soon I can show up without this malady and people can judge for themselves the difference it makes, not in words, but in completely concrete terms and actions, as in transformation.

No one can ever know what is in my heart or my mind other than by my trying to convey that in words and/or some form of artistic endeavor. My experiences are what they are and my dreams still flash on the horizon. I only hope I get the chance, to be on the outside, the human being I am on the inside...and make some of those dreams come true. For those who have cared I thank you. For those who have left, or are leaving, I salute you, and for those who have found fault with me I understand completely.

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(part 278) IT WAS THE COVER NOT THE MUSIC

The album, Songs Of Protest And Anti-Protest, was the lynch-pin for the entire deal with Mira/Surrey's expansion into Europe in 1965, and here's why. This is something no one understands, and a subject I tried to explain to Steve Stanley on more than one occasion with little success. The Europeans wanted the album cover with Brian Jones picture on it for their market. They knew it would sell on sight. Surrey was created as a budget label that would sell records without promoting them in the usual way. It was a rack job operation. That means that the records would literally be sold on visual interest of shoppers from metal racks at grocery, drug, and variety stores, for discount prices. The Europeans were convinced that the Songs Of Protest cover was perfect for this kind of business, so they wanted it. They weren't as interested in what was in it musically, Ducey's version or mine, they were in love with the album jacket's art work and the picture of Brian Jones.

The necessity for Mira/Surrey, because the Ducey version could not be used, was to find someone to write and record ten new songs to the titles already printed on the album jacket. Surrey wasn't trying to make a great album at that point, they were trying save that cover because of it's importance to their overall deal with Europe. Like it or not, the music was a secondary point back then, and merely a vehicle to preserve the use of the album jacket. Mira/Surrey's hope was that it would be halfway decent musically and good enough to serve it's greater purpose. No one knew initially that the album was going to turn out as good as it did, that was a bonus.

The Ducey version was kept from being released because of contract problems with Chris Ducey. When my version, the Chris Lucey version, was completed, the problem with contracts came up again. I refused to sign the contract that was presented to me because I didn't know what it actually said. I asked for legal representation before I would sign it, which was denied me. Randy Wood got so pissed off, because of this, that he threw me against a wall and demanded that I sign the contract, which I again refused to do until I got a third party to tell me what it said. In a decision, which can only be deemed as illegal, Mira/Surrey released the album anyway to protect their own business interests in Europe. This was, and still is, the legal status of the Chris Lucey version of Songs Of Protest. Like the Ducey version before it, the Lucey version should not have been released until the contractual problems were sorted out. The difference being that Ducey had people who made sure of this, while I a twenty-year-old kid did not.

None of the legal problems with the album were ever dealt with, and they have always existed. They were just unknown, outside of a few people. Chiapetta assumed, along with everybody else, that I was dead, so she sold the master to Ace thinking no one would ever know the truth, or care that I had been harmed. The problem was that I wasn't dead, I was just missing. It was because Steve Stanley called me in 2003 that I found out about the album being released on Rev-Ola, a company I'd never even heard of. Had Steve not called me I very well may never have known about this at all. I wasn't keeping up with the music business, so it was his call that alerted me to it and brought me out of seclusion. And over time it was Steve Stanley who gave me all the information I didn't have. I knew nothing about Ace, Rev-Ola, or Cherry Red, and I had forgotten about Betty Chiapetta altogether. I learned all these things from Steve Stanley, a stranger, who'd gotten hold of my Social Security number and used it to find me by hiring a private investigator. It's an odd kind of karma I guess, because the guy who found me when I didn't want to be found, is the same guy who unwittingly gave me all the information I now have, and use, in fighting this battle over the rights to the album Songs Of Protest And Anti-Protest. The album I created.

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(part 277) REOPENING AN OLD WOUND

Over a period of years, and I do mean years, I was totally frustrated and limited to conversing with Steve Stanley, and always by telephone. I had no one else to speak to, because no one else would give me the time of day. It was Steve and me talking for years about the music business with no other input whatsoever. I spent endless hours explaining details to him about what really happened, what the conditions and circumstances were back in the 60's and 70's when the work was actually being done. I told him things that few knew, in hopes that it would have a positive effect, but it didn't. Nothing changed. It was as if I'd spent the time in a vacuum with my words being gobbled up, bottled, and shelved, like so many jars of jam. The stories and details just passed from me to him and stopped there. Little of what I shared with him made much of a difference at all.

During the period between 2003 to 2007, one single fact became totally apparent to me. Steve, and all  those involved in the acquisition and release of Songs Of Protest, did not know the story of how or why the album had been made. They all lacked the concept that Surrey Records was a budget line label for Europe. They'd mistakenly concluded that Surrey was a regular label and had released Songs Of Protest in a wave of publicity, which had not been the case at all. It was useless to try and get Steve to understand the real story, a story that flew in the face of what he and the others believed. Most of what was written in the liner notes by Steve, or what was said about the album was just plain wrong, and from what I could tell, people had simply made up their own set of facts and then passed them around as gospel. There was no one anywhere, except me, telling them they had it wrong, and I only had Steve's ear, so by default, what was believed was accepted as truth. This fact led to a gnawing distress within me over time because I continued to have no voice in the dissemination of the information about my own history. I recall arguing with Steve about the title of Metro Man on the Rev-Ola cd. I told him that the song was actually Vietnam, the original acoustic demo, and that Metropolitan Man, or Metro Man, was a completely different song. His response to that was, "Are you sure?"

"Am I sure? Goddamn Steve, I wrote the fucking song, of course I'm sure."

This was what I was up against. A person who believed things that weren't true to the point of arguing with me about their validity. "If this was the case with Steve," I thought, "How much worse would it be with others?"

It was a long time before I found that out. It wasn't until I actually began seeing what was written by others that I understood just how far-fetched and inaccurate it really was. My mother got a computer before I did, so little by little I learned to venture onto the internet and saw for myself what was out there. Biographies written by so called music historians that said things that made me wince. Ads that Rev-Ola/Cherry Red had run as promotion for the cd were almost pure nonsense. They had come up with a version linking the Billboard ads in 1964 to the release of the Chris Lucey album in 1965 which was just plain false. I'd heard variations on this theme from Steve Stanley in earlier conversations, but it wasn't until I read it for myself that I got a sense of how screwed up they really had it.

By 2006-07, my frustration over these things reached the boiling point. I still hadn't heard a word from Joe Foster and still hadn't received a single copy of the cd. The only copy I possessed had been sent to me early on by Steve. In my mind it was like returning to the old days where anger was the single most prominent feature I possessed. An anger born out of a sense of futility, an anger fueled by blatant disregard and lack of fair play. I understood, finally, that there weren't going to be any royalties, no pleasant hellos or respectful conversations. It was just the same old shit, the same old "We got the power and you don't!" After nearly four years of waiting to hear from someone, anyone, and talking endlessly to Steve, I just pretty much had had it. I was convinced that if I didn't do something, nothing was going to change. Those who had been responsible for the album's release had collectively ignored me as if I didn't exist or have a voice in the matter. They presumed, I suppose, that if they didn't speak to me I would somehow disappear back into the woodwork where I'd come from. But in my way of thinking that was the last thing I was going to do. They just hadn't understood at all that fucking me again after 40 years on a record I already got fucked on, might well pose a significant problem for them. They had made the mistake of underestimating my emotional reaction to the reopening of an old wound, a wound that had healed over until they came along and ripped it open.

(part 276) CHANGES IN REALITY

from Mojo Music Magazine 2004

Reality is a stubborn thing! When unwavering and steady in it's grind, it is easier to cope with no matter how stark it may actually be for the one experiencing it. The fact that it stays the same and doesn't change overtime, makes it easier to accept. But in my world, and in my life, reality had a nasty habit of changing completely. Things that had been one way for a long time suddenly shifted in front of me to a completely different place, due to outside influences beyond my control. Such was the case on the day Steve Stanley called, in 2003, after hiring a private detective to find me. Had I wanted to be found I would have told people where I was, which I hadn't done, so it is a simple fact that I state here.

What had become routine for me, although dreary as hell, was suddenly pushed out of the foreground to make way for a whole new set of circumstances for me to deal with. I was not asked before it happened, it just happened, and I was forced to deal with it. In reality, looking back now, I wish I had just hung up the phone and not spoken to Steve Stanley. The hook into me was the part where he said the record had been released. It got into the soft part of my flesh through the old door to dreamland and fantasy. Fact is, I did talk to him, repeatedly, because I was weak and wanted to believe in the same old story, the same old promise, the same old lie. For as much as I had learned and changed, in reality, I had not learned or changed at all. Bottom line, I was still Bobby Jameson wearing Chris Lucey's shoes, and that first telephone call proved it.

Chris Lucey! The name was even a fake. It was someone who didn't exist, other than in the form of a 1965 album that nobody ever heard of. But I was the guy who made the album, after Surrey Records parted ways with the real Chris Ducey over contract problems and was forced to kill the release of the original record. The previously faceless, nameless voice of Bobby Jameson was now unearthed as the person behind the creation of the album Songs Of Protest And Anti-Protest some forty years later. You could tell me reality didn't shift, but I watched it happen. Of all the work I ever did, this album would have been last on the list of possibilities I ever imagined I would be remembered for.

In 2004 Steve Stanley wrote an article for Mojo Music Magazine which can be read here. It heralded my reluctant return to the world of the infamous and slightly remembered. I refused to let him record an interview saying I thought he had enough material from talking to me over time to write it, which he did. I had grown weary by that time of the circular nature of the answers he was giving, regarding Rev-Ola, Joe Foster, and the others involved in the cd's release. I told him I would only authorize the article if it clearly stated that I had never been paid for anything, which he agreed to.

I had attempted, with little success, to enlighten Steve as to the real story behind the album's creation in 1965. When Steve informed me that Ace Records had acquired the master from Betty Chiapetta, at Surrey, I told him that she had no right to sell the master because of the inherent legal problems surrounding the creation of my version of the album. My position fell, to a great degree, on deaf ears, so my enthusiasm for the release continued to wane. Each time I made a specific point about the facts, such as the song rights, I found myself frustrated by the response. I had no voice with those I was talking about, I only had Steve Stanley's ear. I repeatedly asked him why Joe Foster refused to talk to me, and why he wouldn't send me a few cd's? The answers were mostly, "I don't know, I'll ask him."

CHRIS LUCEY: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

http://lifeandtimesofbobbyjameson.blogspot.com/2012/05/chris-lucey-what-really-happened.html