(part 25) "THE GLOVE" ANOTHER TV DISASTER

Brit's build up to their new release of Bobby Jameson on it's basically new label, was as much for their own self promotion as it was for me. They calculated that making me into a star all over again would do nothing but good for Brit itself. I think they determined, at least in their own minds, that they could succeed where Andrew Oldham and Decca had failed.

As I said, "The Glove" was now becoming a story unto itself. I had these custom made gloves with zippers on the back so I could get the thing on and off with out much trouble. The glove was long and ran about 3/4 of the way up to my elbow. That was so you couldn't see where it ended. It went under my shirt cuff and just kept going. It was jet black and the zipper was silver, so it stood out pretty good.

Everywhere I went people would look at this thing and wonder why I only had one, and was there something wrong with my hand so that I had to cover it. I gotta tell you that this was one of the stupidest things I ever did. It was a great gimmick, but I got tired of wearing it. I wanted to shit can it altogether, but the guys at Brit wouldn't let me. They kept saying how important it had become and that they were building a publicity campaign around not only me but "The Glove" too.

I wore one only on one hand, but every now and then I'd switch hands just to see if people were paying attention. Every now and again someone would ask me about it, in a kind of confused awkward way. "Didn't you wear that glove on your left hand"? "No man, I always wear it on my right hand." This was pretty entertaining for me, because it gave me a way to put up with my own bullshit creation that I was now trapped into continuing.

But I had to be careful and not end up saying what hand I wore it on to someone I'd previously said it to, just in case my answer was in conflict with what I'd stated earlier to them. Pretty damn confusing, but even that became part of "The Glove" game. "What hand does Bobby Jameson wear his mysterious black glove on?" This went on for months, if you can believe it, frankly I still don't know why.

Christmas and New Years came and went and I began to feel a sense of loss not being in America at Christmas. I guess it was that I'd never been away from America at Christmas until then. As the months wore on I moved again to Chelsea, and I don't think there was a reason for it other than I conned the Brit guys into believing it was necessary. I must have played "I'm your little shining star" on them and they reluctantly agreed to it.

Knightsbridge just wasn't where most of the "pop stars" were. A lot of them lived in Chelsea. So there I was in Chelsea, playing "I'm a pop star" once again. With a new record and a new label, there was only one problem, I didn't like the record and I didn't like my image. I was as phony as a three dollar bill. I was caught again by my own dreams and chained to the "Dream Makers." They, amongst other things, had booked me on one of the biggest television music shows in England and I was going to have to lip sync "Rum Pum" for all of Britain once more, as I had with "All I Want Is My Baby."

I think the first TV show that I originally said was "Thank Your Lucky Stars" was actually "Ready Steady Go," and that this second big TV shot was "Thank Your Lucky Stars," out of Brighton, England. The producers of the TV show had arranged with Brit, without my knowledge, to do some very elaborate stuff with me, but I wasn't let in on it until the day of the show when I arrived at the television station.

They showed me a 30 foot ladder that I would be climbing up with a mirror at the top of it. The TV camera was on the ground and focused on the mirror at the top of the ladder, so as I climbed up the ladder the TV screen shot, going out nation wide, would show my hands, "The Glove" coming toward the camera. In other words it would appear to the television audience that the camera was at the top of the ladder taking a picture of me climbing up.

These days with smaller lighter cameras they'd of just had a camera up there, but back then the cameras were big huge floor models, thus their mirror gimmick. (If I didn't make that clear enough I'm sorry.) I thought the whole idea was pretty lame, but agreed to do it none the less. I was then ushered back to a dressing room to wait for my turn on the show. When I got back there, I met another act from America, who was also on the same show with me, John Hammond Jr., the son of Hammond Sr., who'd discovered Bob Dylan.

John was strictly an authentic "Blues" guy and we hit it off from the gate. We were back in that room for at least an hour and a half and ended up loaded on "hash" and "whiskey" from a pint that John brought with him. We were talking about what they wanted me to do on this TV show and laughing our asses off at the whole thing. I believe Donavan was in there with us, but wanted no part of our party, even though we tried to get him to smoke some dope with us. At some point John and I decided the coolest thing I could do was not to wear "The Glove," because the whole appearance was built around it.

"Yeah" I said, "that's a good idea, I won't wear the glove." After a while someone came back to get me saying that my spot was coming up next. I made my way back to the main stage and readied myself for their cue. We'd already run through what they wanted me to do, so I just stood there waiting for the music to start. I kept my hands in my pockets so no one ever noticed that the glove was missing. The music started and I began climbing, lip syncing the lyrics as I headed up the ladder. I could see my reflection in the mirror as I continued on, putting one hand in front of the other.

About half way to the top I could hear voices hissing below saying "Where's The Glove? He hasn't got The Glove on." At the time, I thought this was pretty damn funny, but soon found out that no one shared that opinion with me. When the stunt and song had ended I went back down the ladder to the ground, where an incensed British TV producer greeted me with absolute scorn. He told me in no uncertain terms that I had destroyed his vision and that I would never be allowed to do that television show again.

(part 24) THE GLOVE "AMERICAN POP WHORE" IN LONDON

I worked on various songs to record for Brit. They were more along the lines of "All Alone", "Vietnam", and "Gotta Find My Roogalator", which I recorded when I went back to America in 1965. They are also on my myspace site currently, which you can go to by clicking on a myspace link at the top of the page.

I had zero luck at trying to convince the powers at Brit to go along with me, which was another disappointment in my English adventure. I had also written a song called "Rum Pum Mum Num Dip Ta Dip, which was shortened to "Rum Pum" for the record. It was an overly cute song using old nursery rhymes strung together, and Brit loved it. They also loved another better song called "I Wanna Know" for the B side.

It was recorded with about a third of the players from the London Symphony Orchestra. It was a long way from Bobby Jameson and his guitar in his bedroom singing Buddy Holly songs a few years earlier to recording in London England with an orchestra of that calibre. It was a hell of an experience, but once again it was not me. It was an overly exaggerated super teeny bopper pop thing and I had a hard time coping with it.

As usual I gave it my full attention and the recording was good, it just wasn't me. The goddamn "Glove" thing was being hyped up to the eyeballs with the new record's release, and I kind of groaned about that, but had only myself to blame for starting it in the first place. I felt like a little dancing puppet all the time running this way and that for whoever was paying the bills, and it became annoying the more I did it.

It had been that way with Tony Alamo, and with Andrew Oldham, and now it was happening again. I felt like a girl with a sugar daddy. Ok we'll pay your rent but you gotta do what we tell you to do. Bobby Jameson, the good little "pop whore." It was a trade off for sure. I wanted something so I had to provide something, and "they" got to call the shots because they had the money and the power.

My life was like a crash course in the music business. In less than one year I had learned a ton of shit about myself and other people. Had it not happened to me the way it happened, I reckon I would be a completely different person than I am now, but it did happen the way it happened and I'm still trying to sort it out. When you're as young as I was at the time, you are transformed by things much more than you would be if you were older and more settled. I didn't know shit, so all of these things affected me deeply.

On top of that I didn't have anyone to rely on, you know, like a person I could talk to about how I felt inside. I was always running around with that "pop star" look in my eyes, so people never knew what I was thinking or feeling. Anyway, I was living in Knightsbridge during this time and every day, like clockwork, Lady Grey would come to my flat and hang out with me for hours. When I say Lady, I mean like "Lords and Ladies", she was "Lady" Grey.

She showed up with her two little Whippet dogs and listened to me play music and talk. I never made love to her, although I believe I could have, I just never did. I can't really remember how we met, but I think it was through Peter Caine. I think she met Peter first and then me. I liked her a lot. She is in my memory forever. Her and many other details of what it was like to be an American "pop whore" in London, in 1964 and 65.

(part 23) TIME OUT TO REFLECT AND REMIND ME OF MY PURPOSE

Bobby Jameson 2007

I started writing here because I needed, for my own sake, to get a lot of garbage out that I have carried around for a long time. I did not start writing to get the approval of anyone, with the exception of myself. I want my own approval. It is an imperative part, maybe the whole part, for why I am doing this.

When I left LA in 1985 there wasn't 1 person to say goodbye to. My life had ground into a no win situation in spades. The music business had long since blown me off and I knew it. I had no job, no money, and no place to live, and I couldn't think of one reason not to leave, so I left.

I turned my back, as best I could at the time, on all of my years in LA. I wanted to forget who I used to be and everything that went with it, and that is the load I am now attempting to write down here. Because I have surfaced after 23 years, and made myself somewhat available to just about anyone, I find myself being almost dragged at times into controversies involving records I have made and songs I have written in the past.

It is a carbon copy of my life as I once knew it being rammed up my ass all over again and incredibly enough involves the very same issues, records, and songs that it did the first time around. People are actually upset that I am unwilling to sit by and let them profit from my work without requiring them to compensate me while they do so.

It makes me remember the deadening pain I felt for years listening to some of the most dishonest people I have ever met rationalizing, for their own gain, why I wouldn't get anything for the work I did. I sometimes wonder how I managed to keep myself doing it for so long without being paid.

The only answer is I kept believing that the next deal and the next record would be the one that got me to the top. It never happened. For a myriad of reasons, I never crossed over to the promised land.

(part 22) A NEW COMPANY AND A NEW START

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I left the "Ad Lib Club" that night with a changed mind about the current crisis I was living in. Even though I'd lost my connection with Andrew Oldham, it was now immediately evident that there was, and would be, interest in me as an artist in London. I felt a bit more at ease, but vowed to stay on the job until I accomplished my task, which was to secure a new deal with a new company.

I knew "The Pretty Things" people were serious, and looking back on it now that's where I should have gone. But where I was in my mind back then was scared. I think at the time I thought I needed people who appeared more prominent, and that's what I continued looking for until I found it. Once again it turned out to be the wrong move.

"The Pretty Things" and their people were down to earth and straight forward. I incorrectly assumed that to be a negative back then. I don't know why, but if I'm honest about it I was just wrong about them and have always regretted it. I foolishly believed that people in expensive suits were somehow better than ones who didn't dress up to do business. It probably had to do with the appearance of money, and since I didn't have any I wanted to be around what I thought were people who did. I was very insecure and it showed itself in many different ways now that I look back on it.

Be that as it may, I was finally introduced, probably at the "Ad Lib Club," to a group of English businessmen who all wore 3 piece suits and ties and talked all that high class bullshit I was searching for. Chris Peers and Harry, I'm sorry I can't remember his last name, represented a new company called Brit Records, which turned out to be the forerunner of Island Records, Chris Blackwell's company. They had a hit with a girl named Millie Small called "My Boy Lollipop" and were out shopping for new artists. I was looking for a new company, so it was a match made in heaven, or so I thought.

They agreed to take me on and pay my rent, and make sure I didn't starve to death. They agreed to give me a small allowance each month so I wouldn't walk around penniless. Now when I say a small allowance that's what I really mean. Probably 60 or 70 dollars a week. I never had any money. I was about to cut my 4th record, for the third company, on two different continents, in less than a year, and I still hadn't made 10 cents. So 60 or 70 dollars a week was like a windfall to me.

I ended up moving from Belgravia where I was first located, kind of like the Beverly Hills of London, to Knightsbridge. Still nice, just not as nice. I was dating an English girl named Judy Foote who's father was in the House Of Commons, kind of like the House of Representatives here. Anyway, PJ Proby, who was an American from Texas, and a big pop star in England when I got there, introduced me to her and we kept on seeing each other over the next few months. She had a thing for "American Pop Stars" as she called them, and that was her interest in me an "American Pop Star."

As I settled into my new surroundings the story of the "glove" just kept getting bigger and bigger. It had became part of my new public persona as it were. I'd always thought it was just some stupid thing I'd done for attention, but people liked it and wouldn't let it go. While I was looking to get into a new cycle of creativity, and work on songs that I wanted to record, the English press was more interested in "the glove." But I was determined to make good on my second chance with the British audience.

(part 21) ALCOHOL SAVED MY ASS

The Pretty Things ImageLibrary/ZANI

I remember feeling as scared as I have ever felt. I had never been in the situation I found myself, that night in London, in 1964. I was absolutely on my own and did not know what I was going to do. The guilt from hitting Lois was overwhelming, while at the same time the anger at her for attacking me after shacking up with some playboy mogul for a couple of weeks was real.

I went back and forth for hours until I'd worked myself into a frenzy of confusion and fear. I had no money to speak of and had nothing going in the way of any business contacts or opportunities. I had always relied on others to do the business while I concentrated on the music. Even though the people I'd trusted had pretty well made a mess out of things, I still wished there was someone who could take the reins and guide me in the right direction.

As I sat alone that night I thought I was going to lose my mind. I went and got a drink of scotch from a bottle we kept around and poured a big glass half full. This was to change my life, though at the time I didn't know it. I was just trying to calm down and gain some sort of control over myself.

As the alcohol began to take effect I found myself begin to think more clearly and rationally. I began to formulate a plan in my head about what I could do to help rectify my crumbling situation. First, I thought, pull yourself together and act like somebody who knows what they're doing. I went and took a shower, washed my hair, and dressed to go to the "Ad Lib Club."

"I was a Goddamned pop star," I thought, and I was going to Goddamn well act like one and look like one. Honestly, it was all I knew how to do. Kinda like a good whore dressing up to do business. In essence, I was a good little "pop whore." I have nothing but admiration for whores by the way, because I am one. I looked at myself in the mirror in the living room of my flat, which was full length, and I looked good. I looked like a "pop star."

I finished my drink and headed for the street to hail a cab and go sell myself to the highest bidder. That was my plan! To present myself at the "Ab Lib Club" and circulate the message that I was looking for new representation and a new record deal. That night started a long time trend for me called "have a drink and make a new deal." I became a professional at starting over and over and over. In fact I'm currently doing it again.

As I milled through the crowd at the "Ab Lib" I looked for familiar faces as a form of anchor for my still newly fractured reality of being alone and unemployed. I ordered a drink, because I wasn't about to let the fear from earlier that night get a hold on me again. Alcohol was clearly my friend and ally.

I ran into the band "The Pretty Things" along with some of their management, and made it clear to them that I was seeking a new deal. They were interested right off and said so quite clearly. I felt as though they were an ace in the hole for me, and it relieved some of the pressure I'd been feeling. But remember! I said, "I was a whore!" and like a good one, I was gonna keep on lining up interested clients as long as I could.

Even though I'd been abandoned by everyone I'd started out with, it didn't mean that there wasn't significant interest in me as an artist. Like it or not, I was very well known in London at the time, and in the world of celebrity that counted for a lot. "The Pretty Things" management were no fools. They recognized the potential and voiced their opinion quickly. I have always remembered them with great fondness for that.


Pretty Things clippernolan.wordpress.com/

(part 20) SO NOW WHAT DO I DO?

1964 Dave Lawson

After the "Ready Steady Go" television debacle I felt like hiding underground forever, but the publicity raged on anyway. I couldn't believe they were still promoting the record after what I'd done on TV, and I couldn't get Andrew to meet with me. I began assuming the worst, which was, that he had no plans to talk to me, ever.

I complained bitterly to Lee and Peter about Andrew refusing my calls, but they were unsuccessful at getting a response from him either. It became apparent that Oldham had done a one shot deal with his Bobby Jameson project, and if "All I Want Is My Baby" wasn't a big hit, which it wasn't, he was not planning to do a follow up.

The investor friends of Lee Karsian, the people who had paid for me to come to England, began questioning Lee about the Oldham deal and any further plans regarding another record. From what I could gather, because I hadn't been in on the original deal Lee and his partners made with Andrew to get me to England, Lee had simply trusted Andrew and there was no contract, or it was limited to a single release.

To this day I still don't know what actually happened--so much for trusting the adults. In both the case of Tony Alamo and Andrew Oldham there were no contracts that I ever signed. It seems that people were just taking shots and releasing a record and waiting to see how it went. In the case of "I'm So Lonely" it did pretty well, but in the case of "All I Want Is My Baby" it had not lived up to the hype.

Tony Alamo and I could have continued, but he had flipped out on his God trip. Andrew on the other hand appears not to have had any follow up in mind unless my record with him was a big hit, which it proved not to be. Although I had been treated pretty well since I'd come to England, lived in a nice flat, and was treated like a star, things had begun to unravel over the months since I'd first arrived.

The mood of everything changed. Lee had obviously pissed off his London contacts when they learned there was no real agreement to continue forward with Andrew Oldham and Decca Records. I was just someone who had cost them a lot of money and hadn't paid off in the way they believed I would. I was now just dead weight to them. A bad investment. Because of this Lee Karsian bailed out and went back to America, saying he had to leave because of pressing business in the states. He has not spoken to me since that day.

I was notified by messenger that I still had the use of the flat, because of a lease, but that it would run out in a matter of weeks. As if things weren't going bad enough, Peter Caine's girlfriend Susi, came over to London with Lois Johnston out of the blue. It seems Susi came to London to tell Peter that he could either stay in England forever with me, or go back to America with her. "It was one or the other," Peter told me. He said he had no choice but to go back with her, and within a week they were gone as well.

I was now in London alone, and was 19 years old with no one to turn to except myself. I had been at the top of the pile a few months before, but now found myself struggling to make sense out of what was going on. When I least expected it, Lois showed up at my door. In case you don't know or don't recall who Lois is, she was the ex wife of the man Tony Alamo had conned into guaranteeing payment for the Billboard Magazine ads. I'd been living with her in L.A. before I came to London. Anyway here she was, standing at the door looking like a million bucks, but I had mixed feelings about her showing up.

Why? Because she had come from the U.S. with Susi over a week before and this was the first I'd seen of her. It seems, according to her, that she had been a guest of Victor Lownes who ran the Playboy Club in London. So here she was coming over to visit with me. I told her I wasn't too happy about playing second fiddle to that guy and asked her "why she even bothered to come at all?"

Her reply was almost life threatening at the time. I was already feeling like an abandoned child, because everyone had left, when Lois lit in to me saying "I was a failure and that everybody knew it except me, and that she had decided that if no one was going to tell me then she would." Her words hit me in the face like a hammer and I told her to "Shut up!"

She just kept going, and going, and going, like a mother scolding a child. I lost it! I slapped her across the face and said, "Get the fuck out and leave me alone!" She refused to leave and I slapped her again. I had never hit a women in my life, but I hit her. I was not prepared to handle the verbal attack on me, and hitting her was all I could come up with to make her stop.

There is no justification for what I did. I am telling you what happened. It is for the reader to decide how I should be viewed in light of this information. Lois finally withdrew and I sank into a state of depression like I had never known. I was totally alone and had no idea of what to do.