(part 186) BREACH OF FRIENDSHIP AND BILLBOARD MAGAZINE

I knew DP well enough to know he wasn't going to accept my position without an argument. He wanted to manage me, period, and he fully expected my cooperation in return for his part in getting RCA to buy my songs and release a single.

I knew, too, that he considered us friends, and that my refusal to do what he wanted, in his mind, would be a breach of that friendship. He would take it to mean I had shit on him, but in reality it just wasn't in the cards. I hadn't talked to him in years.

On the other hand, I was sober and clean, and couldn't see myself being managed by a cocaine dealer, and was well aware that being clean and sober was of little, if any, importance to DP.

In his mind, he probably thought it was temporary, and that I'd get back to my old ways eventually, with his help. Because of this fear, I wanted to stay as far away from him and my old life as I could get, and this was the key reason for my decision.

Each of us had a real position to protect, and that meant there was going to be something else said and done about this further up the line.

When my girlfriend and I got back to her parents' house in New Jersey, I explained to her father and mother what had happened and how I was dealing with it. To say the least, they were impressed with my explanation of the facts and subsequent decision about DP.

I also said that RCA would not commit to any real promotion of Stay With Me, and that if we wanted the record to have a chance, we had to promote it ourselves. "RCA is in a wait and see mode," I said, "and that's not good."

Her father asked me what I thought needed to be done, and I said that running a couple of ads in Billboard Magazine would help. He agreed that it sounded reasonable, and told me to let him know how much it would cost once I got back to L.A. and found out.

After a few more days in New Jersey my girlfriend, her sister, and I headed home to Los Angeles and West Hollywood. All through the flight, I thought about Billboard Magazine and how an ad ought to look and what it ought to say.

A few days later I went to the offices of Billboard. They were located in the 9000 building on Sunset Blvd., some four or five blocks from my apartment.

AImost immediately, I ran into Bill Wardlow, and he was pretty damn happy to see me alive and looking so well. He'd been with Billboard when Tony Alamo had run the Bobby Jameson ad campaign in 1964, so we reminisced about it for a time.

While we were doing that, another Billboard executive entered the office after hearing I was there. Before I could say anything, he began yelling that I still owed the magazine $14,000 for the unpaid bill from the 60's.

Wardlow interrupted him and said emphatically that Tony Alamo and Gordon Gessler were on the hook for that amount, and it had never been an issue that I owed the money to the magazine.

None the less this guy kept ranting. He said he was going to call RCA and let them know who I really was--the crazy guy who jumped off buildings, and that they shouldn't have me as an artist on their label. I do not recall this guy's name, but I guarantee you he was pissed off at me.

After Bill got the guy out of his office, I gathered my senses, and asked him about the cost of running some ads. Wardlow apologized for the guy's outburst, and said if I ran it as an artist ad, paid for it out of my own pocket, I'd get a price break.

This broke down to somewhere between $1,600 and $1,800 for a three color full page. I told him I wanted a black page with red lettering, something that jumped out when you saw it. He agreed that it would have a definite impact and liked the idea.

After a bit more talk, I left Wardlow's office. The guys outburst at me had been another one of those unexpected land mines that had blown up in my face.

Even though I was trying to do the things necessary to make a go of my life, it was now becoming obvious to me that some people just didn't believe it or care. It was another jolt, just like the DP thing had been, and came without warning.

As I walked along Sunset Blvd., back to my apartment on Doheny, I wondered how many others would there be that just felt I shouldn't be given a chance.

My past, all the way back to 1964, had just been thrown in my face by a total stranger, and my career, in his opinion, was a threat to RCA's integrity if, in fact, I was an artist of theirs.

I always knew there were people who didn't like me, but in truth I was shocked by that asshole's attack on me at Billboard. Thank God Bill Wardlow had been there or I would have been thrown out of the place and never allowed to return.

That's what the guy had kept saying to me, "You don't have the right to be here. You didn't even have the right to walk in here." Whew! What a bummer the whole thing was!

(part 185) MONEY...GOING EAST...AND DP

Even though money was coming in, it was also going out. The dollars I received from RCA, $16,000, was devoted to recording costs. The money from my girlfriend's father went to pay the salaries of his two daughters, at a cost of $1,000 a month for each of them.

That was $24,000 a year, which left $6,000 from the $30,000 he invested. I mention this for those who might think I was sitting on a pile of money.

We also rented a small office for RPJ Music and Step Three Productions in Hollywood, but the girls rarely went there, so it just cost money without serving much of a purpose.

Most of the work was done in my apartment and in the studio, the rest was for show. Because their father put up the money, I never complained about the cost of the office or the girls.

We were paying rent on three apartments in West Hollywood, at that point, and had to pay a music lawyer to go over the the RCA contract.

All in all, we were spending a lot of money on a regular basis, so whatever I got was spent on what I outlined here. The whole thing started with me and $15,000, and a desire to record some of my songs and pay my rent. It had now grown into something far different and far more costly.

As we flew back to the east coast at the end of 1977, I couldn't help feeling perplexed about the amount of responsibility in my life. There were too many things going on at once, and my emotional state was always susceptible to stress.

Now I was going to play family guy, business person, recording artist, and shut down DP as well. I had to stay sober, keep on believing the outcome would be positive, and a hundred other things having to do with interpersonal relationships between me and everybody else.

Part of my brain was handling it all, but another part was surveying the area for booby-traps and land mines. I'd seen too much in the past to just accept that everything was going to be fine.

Call it what you will, but I was still the kid from the streets banging up against the odds, in my mind, and I knew how things looked when they started to turn south.

Another concern of mine had to do with the promotion of "Stay With Me" and RCA's commitment to that process. Without promotion, the record would fail.

I'd been coming to the conclusion, in my own mind, that running a couple of ads in Billboard Magazine would help. This was something I planned to take up with my girlfriend's father and the label while in New York.

My reluctance in having to confront DP grew as the time drew closer to it actually happening. I went over it a hundred times in my head, but knew it wasn't going to work out to his satisfaction.

There was going to be a backlash, but I didn't know what it would be or how bad it would get. And at some point soon I was going to have to tell my girlfriend's father about DP, and try to explain how the mess came about in the first place.

I also knew I'd have to make a real commitment, and convince him I had no intentions of doing business with a cocaine dealer.

Finally the day came, and my girlfriend and I headed for New York city in her father's car. Our first stop was at RCA, where I got my picture taken, and we met some of the promo people.

Then it was on to a hotel where we contacted DP and arranged to meet with him that evening. I went over what I was going to say to him, one last time with my girlfriend, and prepared for the night ahead.

When we arrived at his place, we were greeted by DP and his lady friend, an aging, but extremely attractive actress. It was actually her apartment, I found out later, and by the looks of it it cost a bundle.

They were all smiles as we went through the necessary introductions, and DP gave me a big hug and said, "It's good to see you, Bobby, you look great." I thanked him and said it was all the clean living I'd been doing.

As we got to talking, I found out that DP's lady was friends with the president of RCA, Bob Summer, and figured DP had made his way to him through her.

What I didn't know was, if it was sex, drugs, love, or a combination of those things. What I did know was that DP was actually talking to the president, either directly, or through her.

When we finally got to the heart of the matter, I told DP that I was sober and clean, and had been that way for nearly two years, and was a lot different than I'd been when he last saw me. DP said that was good, but that I was still the old Bobby, too, and smiled.

"That's true in one way," I said, "but in other ways I'm completely different." I explained how my girlfriend's father had given me the money to record my songs, and that he was sober too, and that I could not see him and DP working together in a million years.

I said I'd had to make a choice about what I was going to do, and that I'd made it. I told him I planned to carry on with my girlfriend's father, and that because of it, I wouldn't be letting him, DP, manage me.

I said I was prepared to give him 10% of the money RCA paid for the songs, and that was it.

The song below is Rock-n-Roll Hotel and was recorded in the second group of songs referred to in the last couple posts.

(part 184) THE RETURN OF DP

Seemingly out of nowhere, I got a telephone call from DP. You remember him, the cocaine dealer from Nashville I wrote about. He said his call was to let me know that it had been him who had gotten RCA to buy my four songs and release "Stay With Me" as a single.

He went on to say he wanted to manage me, and that he expected me to accept this notion as payment for his help with RCA. I remember the feeling I had when I first heard this.

I was literally stunned by his remarks and the confusion this caused. It tore into my unsuspecting emotional state like a chain saw. The questions it raised about my beliefs and the rebuilding of my life nearly leveled me on the spot.

It was the last thing on earth I expected to hear that day, and after getting off the phone, I had to think long and hard about what this might mean to my fragile new world.

To try and fit DP, and his lifestyle, into my world at that point was as far from where I thought I was headed as I could imagine. There was no reasonable way to talk about him and my girlfriend's father in the same breath, let alone put them together in business.

Think of it! A middle aged, middle class Catholic from New Jersey, who was in AA, paired up with a younger cocaine dealer from Nashville, and the two of them investing in and managing Bobby Jameson.

Yeah sure! I knew this was a non-starter from the moment I heard it. What I didn't know was how much truth there was to DP's claim about RCA.

Once more, the weird-ass luck of Bobby Jameson was staging a come-back in my current life. I'd thought that kind of shit was finally behind me, but suddenly realized it might not be.

Out of the blue, the possible tearing of the fabric I was weaving, was now front and center, and threatened the very foundation of what I was doing. The God awful pushing and pulling of the past had descended like a black curtain on my semi-peaceful world.

I immediately told my girlfriend about DP, and explained how he fit into my past life, and what he wanted to do in the current one. My new life was her new life as well, so I felt the need to tell her about the looming crisis.

I assured her I wasn't about to let a cocaine dealer from my past manage me, whether he had played a part in RCA's decision to get involved with me or not.

We agreed I should speak to DP further, and offer him 10% of what RCA had paid me for the four songs, if, in fact, his claim was true.

I had seen cocaine get into the heads of music people a lot, before I got clean and sober, so in the back of my mind something told me that DP had probably made his way inside RCA using cocaine as the pass key.

If he had someone at RCA that he was supplying with that shit, then he probably had more leverage than I wanted to admit. If this were true, "Where the hell was God in all of this, and where did that leave me?"

Later in December of 1977, me, my girlfriend, and her sister would fly back to New Jersey for Christmas with their family, and that would be when I could to see to the business with RCA.

I talked to DP on the phone, and told him I'd meet with him when I came to New York, and we'd get things worked out in person, which he agreed to. I kept it as positive as I could, so he wouldn't know how I really felt about his involvement.

Because of the amount of money my girlfriend's father had invested in me, I decided to keep the problem with DP under wraps until I knew for sure how it was really going to go.

By then, "Stay With Me" was beginning to attract attention around the country on various radio stations, some of which could be heard in New Jersey, where my girlfriend's parents lived.

They were very excited to hear the song on local radio, knowing they had something to do with getting it there.

Imagine how they must have felt, being straight laced people on the east coast, hearing their daughter's boy friend, from California, singing a song on the radio that was written about her, and that they'd paid for.

As the weeks passed, I continued writing and going in the studio to record until the time came to go back east for Christmas.

It was the end of 1977 and a lot had happened, and a lot was about to happen. I was excited about going to New Jersey and New York City, but extremely uncomfortable knowing I was going to meet with DP face to face.

I had already decided I was going to tell him he couldn't manage me, and I knew how he was going to react. It was going to be a showdown, and DP was gonna be pissed.

(part 183) MONEY FROM RCA

click to enlarge
Original RCA promotion photo taken in New York City at Rockefeller Center in 1978.

RCA gave me $16,000 for the four songs Ben and I produced. That was $4,000 a song, so there was a bit of profit in that number.

I don't know why I didn't ask for more, but I assume at the time, it seemed reasonable to me. I know I was trying hard to be honest about my costs, so I probably figured out what I'd spent and added a little to arrive at that amount.

Remember! This was 1977 and you could still go into a quality studio, with good players, and create something for a reasonable amount of money.

The good thing about quality musicians is they get the job done, so even though they cost more their work is accomplished with efficiency, which saves you money.

We had the songs, the players, and the studio, so when we started we worked, and didn't waste studio time thinking about what we were going to do, we knew going in.

Everybody was clear on their job, and because Ben was used to me, and the band was used to Ben, there was no real friction about what was expected. In the long run this proved to be a financial plus.

Once I got the money from RCA, I decided I should go back in the studio and cut more sides, hoping to end up with an album.

RCA didn't want an album, they wanted a single release to test how things might go, and then we'd see. I on the other hand kept thinking album, believing if I recorded it they'd buy it when they heard it.

Once I was successful at selling the first four songs, and recouping the money my girlfriend's father had given me, everybody decided I really did know what I was doing.

This was both good and bad, but back then it all looked good. My girlfriend's father then decided he wanted to invest more money in my project, partly due to my success, but also because his daughters needed a job.

In his mind, it made sense for them to work for me in a small company that he would finance. I didn't object, so RPJ Music and Step Three Productions were created to publish and produce my music. Step three came for the twelve steps...as in AA...

The next check I received from him was for $30,000 to use as I saw fit. It was now looking like everything I touched turned to gold, which was a dangerous place for me to start inhabiting.

The more responsibility I got, the more pressure I felt to do the right thing, whatever that was. I'd gone from nothing to a whole lot in a year and a half and wasn't sure of what to make of it.

My answer was to concentrate on going back in the studio and record. This gave me a focus and sense of purpose, which I held on to for balance.

As long as I knew where I was headed, I could keep busy doing the things that would get me there. I kept trying to refocus my mind on accepting the success I was having, but the more of it I encountered, the more worried I became about how to incorporate it into my ever changing life.

I'd been rocketed from a lowly halfway house beginning to the surreal world of West Hollywood's music business hype overnight. It started looking as if whatever I thought I needed would suddenly appear out of nowhere.

As good as this might sound, I wasn't very well equipped to handle it. I was still too used to things going wrong, and failure, to suddenly switch to the opposite effect gracefully.

As I plodded along, RCA decided to release Stay With Me/Long Hard Road as a single, with Stay With Me as the A-side. It was not my choice, but I had no power over what they decided.

I used my full name, Robert Parker Jameson instead of Bobby Jameson, because I wanted to disconnect from the past and what I perceived as my failures.



For whatever reason, my dealings with the label were almost exclusively with the new and then current president of the company, Bob Summer.

He'd been the force behind RCA's decision to buy my recordings, and this in the long run, would cause trouble with his A and R reps, who felt their position had been circumvented by him. The reality of inner company politics is nothing but poison.

(A & R stands for Artist and Repertoire).



This is one of the songs we recorded when we went back into the studio after RCA bought the first four songs.

(part 182) RCA BUYS 4 SONGS

I said there were four songs cut initially. This is the fourth song, I've Seen It All Before. After completing the sessions I began working on getting the songs on a label.

I had done nothing about that until I finished recording, so it meant starting from scratch. It wasn't like there were people lined up to hear the songs.

My plan was, continue believing that there is a label who wants my music and will release it. With this in mind, I made demo tapes and began circulating them to different companies, one of which was RCA Victor.

Because most of what I did was in the dream machine inside my own head, sending the songs to RCA made complete sense to me. You know, like Dreamworks. Dream it into reality!

RCA was a company I admired, for what ever reason, probably because they were Elvis Presley's label, so I sent them a demo tape.

Art, in my way of thinking, always starts as a dream, whether that dream was three seconds ago or thirty years ago. What comes out in the long run started as a dream, or vision, in someone's mind and heart.

My theory was, why not get a label the same way? Why not ask myself what label I wanted to be on, and then send them a tape, with the full expectation that they'd say "OK!" So that's what I did.

It wasn't all that long after I sent out the demos that I got a letter back from RCA saying they were interested in the recordings, and what did I want in the way of money.

Well as you can imagine I got pretty damn excited and called everybody I knew to tell them. My girlfriend and her sister went completely out of their minds when they got the news, and couldn't get to the phone fast enough to tell the rest of their family back east.

Everybody thought I was a genius at that point, and kept telling me that over and and over. I had to be careful, because inside my head, that kind of praise was dangerous if I took it too seriously.

Remember! My problem was me, and me and good news was as volatile as me and bad news. Going up too high, or going down too low, was the danger area, so I had to keep tabs on what I was thinking when the praise rolled in.

It is far clearer now, than it was back then, that the array of musicians we used were top of the line. Collectively, they had recorded with Boz Skaggs, Steely Dan, Toto, and Seals And Crofts, to name a few. But sometimes using the best money can buy is counter productive.

When people are too good, it is hard to get them to see outside of their own version of what they're doing. Overplaying can become a significant problem, as well as believing that what you've played is good enough simply because you played it.

Because I had some money to spend on high quality players, to some extent I missed an opportunity to use lesser known people, who may have delivered something extra, in the way of emotion, not necessarily found in the playing of the very successful.

In other words "heart" may be lost to some degree, because of ego, when you think you can do no wrong, but don't misunderstand the point I am making here.

I'm glad I got the chance to use these musicians on the recordings, but I was also aware at the time that it was nearly impossible to get these guys to try anything other than what they decided was the way it should be played.

If I had the original recording that I made of Growing Pains Of Time, and played the studio version, and then the original version, you'd know immediately what I'm talking about.

Even though I love the studio version of that song, I liked my version better, because it was raw and powerful, while the studio version is a bit too over produced and slick.

I fault myself for this more than faulting anyone else. It was my responsibility to convey what I wanted, and I failed to do that to some extent.

It is too easy to just say, "We are our own worse critics," and leave it at that. What I am talking about is real. The songs could have been better than they are if I could have conveyed my vision more clearly than I did.

The problem, as I alluded to before, was that I was newly sober and my capacity to be more demanding of what I wanted was stifled by me.

If I was to record now I would have no problem, or less of a problem, fighting to get it right no matter who was playing. There is something very important to be said for knowing exactly what you want and being willing to fight for it.

If my vision of what the songs were supposed to sound like was indeed valid, which I believe it was, then to not achieve that was a failure, whatever the cause.

Every time I hear a song of mine not being the way it was intended when I wrote it, I know in my gut it could have been better.

If I ever get to record again and get it right, and nobody likes it then, that will be fine. But if I do get it right and people go ape shit over it, then my point will be proven.

I just want that opportunity again, because previously I failed, and the failure came as a result of letting things slide at the time of recording, which I now consider a weakness of mine in the past.

(part 181) KEEP WORKING AND DON'T GET ANGRY

demo version

Making records in 1977 with Ben Benay and the group of people he assembled for the project was a first for me. Not only was I sober, but responsible for the whole damn thing, including paying everybody.

The sessions were produced and arranged by me and Ben, and were for the most part recorded in studio B at Wally Heider's in Hollywood. As we continued making progress in the studio, I had begin to think about what I was going to do with the recordings once they were finished.

There was no record label involved, and I doubt if anyone even knew or cared that I was recording again, outside of the people who worked on the sessions.

I spent time alone, and concentrated my thoughts on seeing the songs finished and on a label. I pictured myself hearing them on the radio and thought about how good that would feel. Although none of it was true at the time, I held fast to my vision as if it were reality.

The intensity of my goals, the responsibility for creating the finished product, staying sober, and dealing with my girlfriend and her family was incredibly stressful. I was only in my second year of sobriety, so all that I was doing took somewhat of a toll on me.

I worked overtime at trying to keep my emotional balanced and not to let things get to me. In AA it had always been something of a hard and fast rule that getting angry could get you drunk.

Being who I was, this thought made me particularly anxious, because I had a temper. For a long time I'd managed to keep it in check, but the day finally came when I completely lost it.

One afternoon in Westwood, I came apart over something that had gone wrong. I literally went ape shit. I hadn't gotten that mad in over a year, so when it happened I was completely programed by that rule to go get loaded.

I wandered around the streets of Westwood in a state of desperation, waiting to rush into a liquor store and buy a bottle of booze. But after nearly three hours of this shit, anticipating the worst, I finally said to myself, "I don't want to get drunk, this is a bunch of bullshit."

I had learned an important lesson that day; The only thing that will get you loaded is deciding to get loaded, and then blaming it on something that happened. "What a crock of shit," I thought, "I almost talked myself into it, because of that lame rule."

As a result of the experience I made up a new rule of my own called the "No matter what" rule, which means "No matter what happens I won't get loaded!"

I figured if there was anything anywhere, in the entire universe, that could get me loaded I would be headed toward it, so the rule was designed to eliminate that possibility before it ever happened, because in my life something always happened.

From then on there was nothing either too good or too bad that could happen that would get me loaded. No matter what, I wouldn't get loaded over it. I applied this to my life a day at a time, and it has never failed me.

Ben Benay was a tremendous help to me in translating my ideas to the other musicians in the studio. He and I would get together in private and talk about what I was trying to achieve with each song. He in turn would work this into the band's psyche when we were recording.

Because I was newly sober, and felt too timid at times to tell these guys I didn't like something they were doing, Ben became the go between. He could get them back into the song, when they tended to drift away or over improvise.

One of my real regrets about these sessions, is that I was not forceful enough at getting across to anybody, the exact sound I wanted on certain songs, but all in all they came out pretty well under the circumstances.

Initially, we cut four basic tracks, and then added my vocals. When that was completed we got various players back in the studio to do overdubs or add solos and fill-ins.

We would then add backup vocals and begin the process of mixing down the various components we had on tape. This was where each of the songs was made as clear as we could get them at that point.

The last thing was a final mix down and mastering, if nothing else was needed in the way of changes or additions, then we'd settle on the completed product.

Again, one of my major regrets, is that during the final mix we were still using oversize monitors for playback, which I have said before, does not give an honest representation of the sound.

When recorded music is played back on what most people listen to, which is something smaller and tighter, like a car speaker, the base tends to override the midrange and high end, because it was mixed on huge speakers in the studio which only sound good in there. That sound is not accurately translated to more basic sound systems.

I failed to apply my own experience with this during mix down, and let that detail get away from me.

The other aspect I am not satisfied with is the lack of open space in some of the songs. For example, Growin Pains Of Time, in my original demo, had far less instrumentation so each part stood out more. The studio version is somewhat over produced.

Space, with no instrumentation, gives music a depth and width that it doesn't have when cluttered with unnecessary noise. When every hole is filled with sound it is like a room filled with too much furniture.


studio version