(part 113) PILLS

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I tried hard to see past where I was, weeks after the altercation with Cohen, but it was no good. It was just another time where money, or more succinctly, not having any, was the major problem in my life.

I had never had any money and now here I was again without a penny. I felt once more like a second class citizen who couldn't pay his rent. The problem had dogged me all my life and had never improved at all.

No matter how many records I made, or songs I wrote, I never made more than a hundred dollars a week, and even that was impossible for me to keep going. I grew up with nothing and I still had nothing.

As a kid, part of my dream was to become a star, and make a lot of money, and buy my mother a nice house. In reality, I barely spoke to my mother and couldn't buy shit. In my eyes I was a complete failure. I had given it my best shot, and it had gone nowhere. By 1972 I was well known as a loser, with a penchant for trouble, and overall I was seen as a bad bet.

I sat on the couch at Gavin's and there was nobody else around. I drank a beer and popped a couple of pills, while looking through notebooks of hand-written lyrics. I had tried for years to create things of value, both musically and lyrically, and although I'd improved, whatever I did always ended up the same way. Bottom line, I was just as far from my goals as I'd ever been, maybe further.

As I sat there reading and thinking, I looked over at four bottles of pills I had on the coffee table. My bed was that couch, so it wasn't unusual for the pill bottles to be there. They were all new prescriptions, given to me by Dr. Ferguson at Edgemont Hospital.

There were four bottles. Thirty pills per bottle. 10 milligram vallium, chloral hydrate, elavil, and triavil. In total, a hundred and twenty pills. I looked at the bottles for a long time, and picked each one up and read the label. The doctor's name, my name, the contents, and what they were used for.

I lit a cigarette and walked over to the sliding glass doors and stared out at the city. I could make out various landmarks here and there, and knew where everything was on Sunset Blvd. below.

I recalled the events in my life for the past eight years, and how they had all turned out. The opportunities and the failures littered the Strip from one end to the other.

I could see the Continental Hotel roof from where I stood, and remembered how it felt looking down at the ground from the eleventh story ledge. I remembered the sheriff's officers pulling me over the wall, and how I'd felt as the they dragged me to safety.

It was like a movie in my head, replaying over and over in vivid detail. The not knowing what I would have done if left to make my own decision that day. But now, at this very moment, I knew for the first time what my decision would have been. I knew that I had wanted to die, and I now believed that it had been the right decision but had not been carried out.

As I stood at the window, I vowed that this time would be different, and that I would succeed in killing myself. "I don't want to do this anymore," I said out loud, "it feels like shit." A sense of excitement ran through me as I realized I had just made the ultimate decision once again.

I walked back over to the coffee table in front of the couch and sat down. I went through the pages of hand-written lyrics again, and selected four of them, which I laid out on the table in a nice neat row. I picked up the four pill bottles and emptied their contents into a pile in front of me. "Man," I said, "that's a lot of pills."

I stood up and walked into the kitchen and got the biggest glass I could find and filled it with vodka and water. I walked back into the living room and sat down staring at the pile of pills on the coffee table in front of me. I asked myself what I was doing and said, "I'm going to kill myself."

I heard the sound of my own voice saying, "I'm going to kill myself." I asked if that's what I really wanted to do and said, "Yes! "I'm tired of being alive and feeling like shit all the time. I'm tired of watching everything go wrong. Everything always goes wrong."

I looked down at the pile again, and started picking up pills and putting them in my mouth. A few at a time, and then take a drink and swallow them. Pick up some more, put them in my mouth, and take another drink, etc.

I started thinking how Goddamn hard it was to take this many pills and get them all down. I just kept at it. Pick some up and shove um into my mouth, take a drink and swallow. Over and over and over, until the pile was gone.

I stood up and walked around a bit, thinking about what I had just done. Doing it was different than thinking about it. Now I'd really done it, and all of a sudden I wondered if I'd made a mistake. I began to panic, but then said out loud, "No, it's OK! I meant to do this. It's OK! I did it on purpose."

I calmed right down, and walked over to the big sliding glass doors again that opened onto a long wooden deck along the back of the house that overlooked the Sunset Strip. I took one last look at my city. The city that had beat me to death, literally.

I started talking out loud. I said, "God, I took enough pills to kill me. You know it and I know it." It wasn't unusual for me to talk to God. I'd been doing it for a long time. I had believed at one time that He had been with me, back when I'd first started with Tony Alamo.

I had always felt peculiar as a child, as if I were destined for something out of the ordinary. I had believed God picked me for something, and that what I did with music was part of it. But as the years passed, I watched my belief shatter too many times in calamity after calamity.

Now in the living room at Gavin's, I continued talking to God. I was angry. I felt as though He'd abandoned me, and this was my moment of challenging Him. My own decision of personal crucifixion.

"If I die I guess it doesn't matter. If I don't, it will be because you won't let me die. It will mean there is something you want me to do. It's now in your hands, I quit." With that, I walked back to the couch and sat down. I felt the warmth of the sunlight on the back of my head and shoulders.

I looked at the pages I had placed on the table. I picked up the pill bottles and lined them up in a little row like tin soldiers and stared at them for awhile. I arranged everything the way I wanted and then leaned back into the couch and waited. I recall just before blacking out that I felt like I was enveloped by a wave of peace.

(part 112) THE BOTTOM: WHERE I BELONGED...

Herbie Cohen

The Troubadour was never the same for me after that night with Danny. Every time I went in there, I remembered vividly the look on his face as he quietly walked by me and out of my life. I still went there, because it was close enough to walk to, but I never felt comfortable again.

One night I ran into Herbie Cohen there, and went over to say hello to him. I'd never gone anywhere socially with Herb, except when I met him years earlier at his house with Zappa, so it was kind of unusual to encounter him in that setting.

We stood in a corner of the bar, and talked a little about music and the business. I asked him if anything was going on as far as my stuff was concerned and he said, "No."

I'd been writing songs for Arizona Music, which he and his brother were running, for about five months, and couldn't really understand why nothing had been accomplished, other than me putting a lot of finished music into it which I asked him about.

He seemed irritated by my question, and told me to back off a little. He acted like I was his office boy, and I wasn't willing to accept the way he was treating me, so I told him so.

Herbie had a reputation as a New York street fighter, which I was aware of, but I had a reputation as a Los Angeles street fighter and bar brawler, and I don't think he thought much of it at the time.

He acted as if I were a Hollywood pussie who couldn't fight, and that's how he treated me. This of course played directly into my constant problems with various record business executives and producers throughout the past. It had become a major sticking point in my personality, and I was not willing to take any shit from the likes of Herbie Cohen.

It didn't occur to me at that moment that Herbie and his brother were the ones paying me each week, so I said something to him that really pissed him off. It was nothing overt like, "Fuck off" or "Fuck you," just something that for whatever reason pissed him off.

Out of nowhere, Herbie turned on me. He tried to kick me in the balls while I stood in front of him. I was surprised by this, and knew instinctively that he'd attempted, but failed, to do some real damage to me.

I turned my body sideways, and grabbed my beer bottle off the bar by the neck. I held it up at shoulder level hissing, "What the fuck are you doin' Herbie? Why'd you try to kick me in the balls?"

Knowing he had blown his surprise attack, Cohen looked at me with that "let's get it on" look that I'd seen plenty of times before. "Come on Herbie," I said, "You wanna fuck with me?" I waved the beer bottle in his face, and watched his eyes follow it in my hand.

By this time Herbie's original opinion of me had shifted, and it was obvious by the concerned look on his face. That old "crazy fuckin Jameson" shit came over me, and I was ready to go to war. "Come on Cohen, you fuckin' punk ass mother fucker. I'll kill ya you son of a bitch."

Herbie glared at me in anger and I glared back. We stood there a moment, and then he just turned away and walked out the door. I don't remember what I did, probably stayed there and got drunk.

Whatever happened that night had far reaching consequences in my life. The end result was that the Cohen Brothers quit paying me my weekly salary and I began to panic.

I went to their office in Hollywood, but Herbie wouldn't talk to me. Martin said there was nothing he could do, because Herbie told him not to pay me. I left, feeling like my world was again crumbling, and that old feeling of "now what do I do" swept over me like a tidal wave.

One day everything was fine, and a day later everything was fucked up. I hadn't started the fight with Herbie, but I must have gotten to him in a way that he was unwilling to excuse or forget, because his form of revenge was swift and deadly in my world.

As usual, I had no money saved, and nothing else going on. I retreated to Gavin's house, or some other place, and got loaded. I always got loaded when I didn't know what to do.

The weeks went by, and I sank deeper and deeper into an abyss of fear and depression. I couldn't pay my rent and even though Gavin and Ron didn't pressure me, I felt bad that I couldn't cover my own end.

I'd sit at the piano and play songs, and write new ones, but no matter how hard I tried, I felt like life, my life, was not worth continuing. I was dog tired of the endless problems and always being broke. I was tired of always being in the position to have to kiss someone's ass or watch my world collapse.

It was 1972, and I had been doing this kind of bullshit since 1964, and nothing ever seemed to change. I'd get up for a while, and then go straight to the bottom again, as if that were my natural place to reside. At the bottom. "Maybe it was," I thought, "Maybe I just needed to accept it. Accept that the bottom was where I belonged."

(part 111) A NIGHT AT THE TROUBADOUR: DANNY WHITTEN

Danny Whitten


Danny Whitten

I met with Herbie and Martin Cohen at their offices on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, as scheduled, a couple of weeks later. We talked about publishing and how many available songs I had at the time.

I asked them, "How many do you want?" They kind of snickered at me and said, "No seriously, how many unpublished tunes do you have available?" I told them I wasn't being cute, that I meant what I said. "I write so many songs that it's hard to keep track of how many, but if you give me a minimum number I can come up with it, whatever it is."

This dance went on for a while, and I finally convinced them I could fill up a publishing company by myself. In other words I could create an entire catalogue of finished, ready to record songs, in less than a year.

We came to an agreement that it would be my publishing company, Arizona Music, and they would administrate it, whatever that meant. For this arrangement, I agreed not to write any songs for anyone else for a year, unless the Cohens refused the song after hearing it. Then I could put that song somewhere else.

They agreed to pay me $100 a week for the first year, and then we'd see how it was going after that. I agreed to this arrangement, because I was broke, and because I thought they would get some of the songs placed. I also believed they could get me signed to a new label deal, because they had some power in the business.

After signing this agreement with the Cohen Brothers, I started getting a weekly salary. I felt pretty good about what was happening. I moved into Gavin's house for $250 a month, and got to sleep on the couch in the living room, while Gavin and Ron Radkovitch both had a bedroom downstairs.

It was a lot of money for me to pay back then, but it was a nice house and they treated me like one of them, so all and all it was the right thing to do at the time. I spent my time writing songs, making tapes, and partying with Ron and Gavin, and everything was going along pretty well, or so I thought...

I started going down to the Troubadour Club at night, which was located about a mile and a half from the house at the corner of Santa Monica Blvd. and Doheny Drive. I'd go down there for a couple of beers and hang out to see who was playing.

One night in 1972 they were having a hoot night at the Troubadour, you know, a time when anybody could get up and play. I ran into Danny Whitten, Billy Talbot, and Ralph Molina there. Danny said he was going to play a solo set.

He told me he was straight, and I asked him how he felt about playing sober? "Hey, I'm alright." he said, "I feel good." I eye balled him for a moment and said, "I don't know Danny. Playin' straight when you're used to playing loaded is a real bitch." "No really man, I feel good. I'll be alright," he said.

I tried unsuccessfully a few more times to get him not to try it, but he insisted that he was OK, and looking forward to it. When his turn came up a while later, Billy, Ralph, and I think Bruce Hines, all got his gear up on stage so he could play.

I stood there wishing he would't do it because I knew how important it was to him, and if it didn't come off good he would be crushed. He was a sensitive dude and I had known him for a lot of years. I was afraid for him because once you look out from a stage sober, at faces, it's a lot different than just playing for a couple of friends in an apartment.

Anyway, Danny was determined to go on and he did. He sat on a wooden chair, as I remember, and said a few things about being there and wanting to play and then began. I watched him as he started and he seemed to have it together, but then all at once it began to fall apart, and I knew what was happening in his head at that moment.

I'd been there before myself and it sucks! You just go blank, and it's like you don't know what you're doing, and the panic of public humiliation comes down on you like a landslide.

I stared at the floor in misery for Danny, as he said he was sorry and left the stage. I knew in the deepest part of my heart what this must have done to him. He left that night and barely said anything to me, and I remember his face and how he looked the last time I ever saw him.

Later in 1972, I heard that he had overdosed after Neil Young fired him, and it broke my heart some more. Danny was 29 years old. I remember teaching him his first guitar chords in 1964 on Franklin Ave. in Hollywood, when we all lived together...

(part 110) ST. IVES DRIVE

Frank Zappa and Herbie Cohen

I woke up this morning in tears, because the pain in my head is so bad. In the last few months I have been in agony. This morning I looked at my life and saw only hopelessness and misery. After a couple of hours, I wrote this trying to continue the story. (from 2009)

I have had difficulty in remembering, in context, the sequence of events in their correct order. Forgive me if I make mistakes. This is something of a double edged sword, in that I don't want to do it, but feel compelled to finish what I have started.

Because the two songs, "Junkie Jesus" and "Jesus Was An Outlaw Too," were in the movie "Clay Pigeon," as background music, I went to ASCAP, and signed with them. I got a $1500 advance, the only money I've ever received from either ASCAP or BMI in my life.

It helped at the time, believe me, because as usual I was broke. I felt as though it was a sign that things were going to get better, and I looked to the future with positive anticipation.

Months later, following the Jesse Ed Davis and Randy Newman session, I'd been hanging out with Gavin Murrell, and his roommate Ron Radkovitch, at their house in the hills. Gavin too, was convinced that things were looking up for me, and for himself as well, because of his work on the film "Clay Pigeon."

During that time, I met with Herbie Cohen and his brother Martin, who had represented Frank Zappa. I'd met Hebie Cohen before, with Frank, so it was a not a meeting without some prior context. Herbie was aware of the songs I recorded with Davis and Newman, and the movie, and he wanted to hear what else I had written that was unpublished,

I invited him up to Gavin's house, on St. Ives Drive, in West Hollywood, which overlooked the Sunset Strip near Doheny Drive. It was a nice place with large windows all along the back of the house, that opened onto a deck that looked out on a panoramic view of the entire city.

As usual, I had a lot of new songs. Some were fully finished and others partially completed. I played some things live for Cohen, and then played him a rough demo tape of other songs I'd recorded in Gavin's living room, both on piano and guitar.

Herbie seemed impressed with what he heard, but was an understated guy. It was hard for me to get an emotional read on his reaction. I guess the best way to put it is, that if he didn't say anything bad about the stuff I played him, it was good. Herbie said he would talk to his brother Martin and we'd all get together again at their office in a week or so, which we did.

After Herbie left, I asked Gavin what he thought. Gavin said in his opinion it had gone very well. Playing music for someone is different than just talking with them. When you create something, and then play it for someone, you kind of want to get an emotional response from them, to guage their reaction, but with Herbie this didn't happen.

As I said, Cohen was real low key. Gavin on the other hand was an onlooker, so he viewed the situation from a far less emotional stand point than I did. He was convinced it was positive, so I opted for Gavin's opinion on the matter.

After some general research I found that this song was written and recorded in 1972 on St. Ives Drive at Gavin Murrel's house, and was one of the songs played for Herbie Cohen. It says 1981 in the opening credit, but should say 1972.

(part 109) JESSE ED DAVIS ARRANGEMENTS AND GUITAR

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Jesse Ed Davis playing with Conway Twitty in 1965 Photo supplied by Jason Odd Australia

It's hard to know when I've finished writing about something. In the case of Jesse Ed Davis and my working with him, it seems as though more should be said.

The subject matter of "Junkie Jesus" and "Jesus Was An Outlaw Too" was where I went to, lyrically, following "Holy Holy Holy" and my failed attempt at making a truly unique second album for Verve in 1968. "Working" was in a way, as I have said, a form of capitulation to those who held the purse strings.

It was the failure of "Working," and the catastrophes that followed, that caused me to write even more graphic lyrics once I ended up in Ohio. My intent to create one of a kind lyrics was a deep driving force within me that can only be partly explained through the finished recordings that Jesse and I created.

I can tell you that during this session, Kirby Johnson, who was a hell of a good guy, kept coming over the talk back mic from the control room, offering suggestions to Ed Davis about how and what to play at any given time.

Jesse listened to this a couple of times, with a look of frustration on his face, and finally just said to Kirby, "Hey man you wanna come out here and play the guitar?" Kirby answered back, "No!" Jesse's response, "Well then shut the fuck up, will ya?"

I started laughing and Kirby damn near crawled under the board in the control room. Gavin Murrell took it all in as if it were just part of the day's work. He sat in a chair saying nothing with a big grin on his face while Jesse, me, and the other two players continued on working.

It was always clear to me that Jesse Ed Davis knew where he was going and how to get there. The guys playing with him knew it too. I did not play on the tracks at all on this session, there was no need. I would have slowed down the process that occurred between the three of them.

Jesse wanted me to concentrate on the vocals, and that was it. His crew built me the platform, musically, from which I could speak in the form of my vocal. His enthusiasm for what he and I were doing was undaunted and complete.

It remains a highlight to this day in my life of recording music with great players. I have the luxury of that experience to keep forever.

These two tracks are important, not because of my involvement so much, but because Jesse Ed Davis arranged and played on them both. In the history of great guitarists, Jesse Ed Davis, an american treasure, is among the finest.

Bobby Jameson

The video below is a recently found 3rd song from the session with Jesse Ed Davis and myself. It was located in 2011. It is a work track with my vocal and Jesse doing overdubs to his own guitar tracks. Jimmy Karstein, drums, and Bob Glaub, bass, are isolated out in this track.

(part 108) JESSE ED DAVIS, RANDY NEWMAN, AND BOBBY JAMESON SESSION 1970-71

Randy Newman

The fact that Jesse Ed Davis was an American Indian (Kiowa) was a big deal to me, because I'd grown up, in part, in Arizona, and was forced to work for my Mormon step father on the San Carlos Indian Reservation, north of Phoenix, when I was 15 years old.

I never forgot the absolute disgust I had for my step father and his associates, and the way they treated the Apache, Navajo, Zuni, and Hopi Indians. I worked in the alfalfa fields around Phoenix in 1960 for him loading hay trucks with Apache, Mexican, and poor white laborers.

I did this work under the threat of being made a ward of the court of the State of Arizona by Francis Farr; he was my mother's third husband. I remember telling Jesse that I believed the United States had committed serious crimes against American Indians, and that I was ashamed at having been forced to work for people who may have helped do that.

Similarly, Jesse's disgust with the white man's religion, Chistianity, and the way it was used to systematically destroy American Indian lives, culture, and language throughout American History, was the connection we shared in common while recording "Jesus Was An Outlaw Too" and "Junkie Jesus."

The fact that I'd taken the sanctity of this subject, and turned it inside out, and made it into music and lyrics was a serious and important concept for both of us while constructing the recordings. It was more than just making a record. It was a statement of deep and righteous anger and sentiment, directed at the untouchable subject and the subject's benefactors at large.

He, as well as I, took pride in the creation of what some deem a sacrilege, but in our way of thinking was a contrary statement of strength aimed at hypocrisy, bigotry, and genocide by the status quo over a couple of hundred years. It was also a continuation of my use of opposites within a single context, as I had tried to do In the second Verve album.

In the original session there were three songs recorded. The third song, which I have a partially completed version of, "Mary Please Forgive Me," was in the same vein as the other two songs, but not nearly as well constructed. Hopefully in time I will make this version available along side the other two. I have already posted the original version, which was written and recorded in Ohio a few posts earlier. (part 100)

What I have written here is my version of what transpired in 1970-71 between Jesse Ed Davis and myself. I am not seeking agreement or approval from anyone regarding my own experience here, or my recollection of it some 38 years later.

When Randy Newman came in to do the piano overdub on "Jesus Was An Outlaw Too" he started laughing when he heard my vocal track and the lyrics. He was sitting at the piano with ear phones on, and looked up at me as I approached him asking, "Did you write this?" "Yeah." I said, not knowing whether he approved or disapproved.

"This is great," he said, "Great stuff." I was relieved and gratified, because Newman was a hell of a writer and his approval meant a lot to me at the time and still does. You don't have to agree with what I wrote to be able to acknowledge that it was well written and original, so I never knew one way or the other whether Randy approved or not of the subject matter, but he did acknowledge his approval of my work in general. On his way out Newman said, "If you got anymore stuff like that you want me to play on. let me know, that was fun."

When I first heard about Jesse, I was told his name was Jesse Edwin Davis, so that's how I greeted him, which he immediately corrected. "Ed," he said, "Ed Davis." I got that this was important to him right off, so it became a running gag that afternoon in the studio to occasionally refer to him as "Edwin," which he hated but tolerated from me those short few hours in 1970-71.

The guitar overdubs, and guitar work in general by Ed Davis on these recordings is, in my opinion, some of his finest work. Until I popped up with them after 35 years or so, only a hand full of people ever knew about these songs, or that Jesse had worked on them with me.



The songs can be vaguely heard in the movie "Clay Pigeon" MGM (1971) as background music in a couple of dance scenes, but otherwise went completely unnoticed for 35 years until I put them up on my myspace site.