A written history of Bobby Jameson and his search through the past.
Working my way back through the jungle of drug addiction and booze. My family life as a kid was the breeding ground for addicts. No self worth, no help, and one chance to get out alive. Music was the horse I rode out on...and the music business was the horse I rode into hell. Pronounced dead twice from drug over doses, I lived to tell how the pursuit of fame is as deadly as any narcotic I have ever used.
The sheriff's department was concerned because I was now highly agitated. They decided they had to do something before I jumped, or fell by accident, because I was moving around so much on the ledge.
One officer was talking to me from behind the retaining wall at my back, assuring me they had taken care of the asshole in the window, with the camera, who'd gotten me so fired up.
I was trying to answer him, and look over my left shoulder at his face, which I saw was filled with fear and concern. He kept trying to get me to give up and reconsider my options.
I told him there were none. "That's why I'm out here," I said. He asked me, "Why, exactly are you out there?" I told him, "I been ripped off too many times by the record business. I've had enough of lying assholes."
He said, "There's gotta be a better way of dealing with the problem than the one you've chosen here." I said, "I chose this way as a last resort after 7 years of getting fucked over. I don't want to keep getting ripped off, so I made up my mind to kill myself."
He asked, "Don't you have friends who will help you?" "I don't have any friends," I said, "I don't know if I ever had a real friend in my whole life." The back and forth conversation continued between the officer and me.
Two other officers had made their way up to the retaining wall behind me, but stayed out of sight on the other side, where the officer talking to me was. I didn't see these two officers. They crawled up to the wall on their stomachs.
As I continued focusing my attention on the first officer, the other two popped up in back of me, and reached out over the wall and grabbed hold of me in a split second. They were not going to let go, and I felt myself being drug up over the wall to the concrete landing where they all were.
It happened so fast that there was no way for me to escape from their grip. I never knew, and still don't, if I would have jumped in the end, because the intervention was completed before that final choice was made.
I can't remember a lot after that, except I ended up in a psychiatric ward at a place called Edgemont Hospital, way out on the eastern end of Hollywood Blvd., out toward Glendale, where I'd once gone to high school in 1962 and 63.
I spent nearly 3 hours on the ledge of the Continental Hyatt House, and still remember to this day what it looked like and felt like. I wonder at times, like now, as I write this, if I would have ended it all?
I wasn't writing songs on the 11th story ledge of the Continental Hotel in 1971, I was writing my obituary. I gazed out over the concrete below. There was no stardom. No clever words left in me on that day. Just a sickening need to kill off the memories of what had gone wrong. The smiley faced kid with a guitar and a song for every occasion had been transformed into a full fledged addict alcoholic with a death wish.
Looking out from the ledge I began noticing people on the decks of their homes dotting the hills behind the hotel. This small part of the world now had it's gaze fixed on me hovering there above the Sunset Strip. I was the freak show of the day for those who lived in the area.
Don't get me wrong. I was was the one who decided to do what I was doing, but there was something odd about watching them watching me as I sat perched like a bird on the hotel ledge. I wondered if they wanted me to jump? I expect it was a combination of both. You know, wanting to see it, but not wanting to see it at the same time.
Hell, I didn't fully understand it myself. Part of me wanted to just quit fucking around and do it, and another part of me was saying, "Now wait a second." I was pushed back and forth between these two conflicting forces. I wanted to stop feeling what I was feeling alright, but I was also sitting 11 stories up looking down at the pavement below.
By this time, the L.A. Sheriff's Department had taken control of the hotel and Sunset Blvd., and shut off public access to me. The news media surrounded the hotel, and a helicopter circled above me, moving in lazy turns, looking for the best shot I guess.
One story below me, the L.A. Fire Rescue Team contemplated throwing a rope around my dangling legs, on the theory they could pull me down to the floor they were on. They decided it was too risky, contemplating they might lose me in such an attempt. This discussion had been captured on television news footage from inside the hotel room with the Fire Department and later shown on TV.
The incredible level of psychic pain and confusion I was in kept me doggedly clinging to the ledge for safety, while at the same time I was ham strung by my own determination to end my life. It is one thing to think you've decided to jump off a building: it is a whole other thing to actually be there looking down, and do it.
I cried as I thought about Diane and how she had thrown herself from the 6th story window of her apartment. I cried for my father, who had gassed himself to death in his own car in his garage. I was amazed at the level of their conviction to carry out those acts as they had, and that I was now facing on that day in 1971.
Right about then I was startled by a voice of someone yelling at me from my right. I turned and saw a guy hanging halfway out his hotel room window, with a camera in his hand. "Go ahead man," he yelled, "I got you covered all the way down. Go ahead," he shouted again, with a big smile waving his camera.
This guy was about 15 or 20 feet from me with half his body out the window. I stared at him dazed, realizing he wanted me to jump so he could take my picture. He was egging me on. All of a sudden a force behind him, pulled his ass out of the window and back into his room.
I could hear loud yelling coming from the window. It was the L.A. Sheriff's Department. They had kicked in his door and arrested him. I began yelling and crying hysterically at the window where he had been, and screamed, "Yeah, fuck you you asshole. Go fuck yourself." I became highly agitated, and moved my body to the very edge. "You wanna see me jump you asshole? You wanna see me die? Ok man, you fuckin' asshole I'll jump, fuck it."
I stood on the sidewalk waiting for the light to change. I was on Sunset Blvd. in front of the Park Sunset Hotel, directly across the street from the Continental Hotel. The Continental was nicked named the "Rock N Roll Hotel" because so many 60's and 70's bands had stayed there. It would later become known as the Continental Riot House.
As I waited for the light, rapid fire thoughts of Diane Linkletter's and my father's suicides raced through my head. I looked over at the old Ciro's nightclub, to the left of the Continental's west side, where I'd once performed to a packed house in 1964.
I have little or no recollection of leaving Cleveland and arriving back in L.A. in 1970, or how it was that I ended up at the Park Sunset Hotel, where I snorted coke and drank myself into a suicidal stupor of depression and rage. I saw my life as a series of unending failures and disasters by 1971, and had convinced myself of the hopelessness of my situation.
I'd spent way too many days going over each record deal I'd been involved in since 1964, starting with Tony Alamo, and progressing on to my last deal with GRT and the "Working" album, in 1969-70. I had made and released 8 singles and 3 albums, writing most of the songs.
I calculated that by 1971 I'd managed to make next to nothing for all of those records and seven years of my life. As I drank and snorted myself into oblivion, I'd decided somewhere in that darkness to throw myself off the ledge of the Continental Hotel.
The light turned green and I walked across Sunset to the Continental's front door and lobby. I remember watching my feet as I walked, with machine-like precision, toward the hotel. I entered through the front door, crossed the lobby, and headed for the elevators. I got on and pushed the button, acting as if I were a guest going to my room.
I did not hesitate or have second thoughts. I was like a mechanical man, built to do one thing and one thing only. The elevator stopped at the 11th floor and the doors opened. I walked out into the hall and saw a door saying "exit." I opened it and stepped out onto a concrete landing.
There was a short wall with a pipe railing around the top. That was all that separated the landing from the 11th story ledge at the back of the hotel. I looked north from the landing up into the hills dotted with houses and trees. I stood there for a moment, then swung one leg across the railing followed by the other.
I was standing 11 floors up on a concrete ledge that was 10 to 12 inches from the wall to the outer edge. In front of me was nothing but air, behind me the 3 foot stucco wall with the pipe rail around the top. All of a sudden, the door I'd come through swung open, and a guy with a uniform shirt appeared. He looked at me as if confused by what he saw, and said, "Hey, you're not supposed to be out...."
He stopped in mid-sentence. I stared at him, glassy eyed and desperate. Then he disappeared, and I knew it was just a matter of time- before the whole place would be crawling with cops. I sat down on the edge of the ledge, with my legs dangling over, and stared at the concrete driveway 11 floors below.
My thoughts raced, and my emotions blew up like a bomb inside my head, as tears raced out of my eyes like a river. I watched them fall to the ground below. I listened to the sounds I made, as I sat there totally alone and in absolute pain, sobbing like a broken child. "If only somebody had paid me, if only I'd met one honest person in the music business, if only, if only," I thought, "If only."
This is a song written by me and John Rhys in 1970 at the first Rastus band house in Chardon, Ohio...It was recorded in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin the same year. Music John Rhys Eddins. Lyrics Bobby Jameson. John Rhys guitar. Vocal Bobby Jameson.
This is another song recorded in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin in 1970 by me and John Rhys. I wrote the music and lyrics for this and it is John and I playing.
You may wonder why I am posting this particular picture, which is from London in 1964. This is what I looked like then, but it is also what I looked like in Cleveland in 64 when I was there with a number 1 record. As you may recall, I said I had shaved my head before I left Los Angeles in 1970.
When I got to Ohio my hair was growing out. As I came out of my fog, I thought back to the past when I had been a successful artist, but in 1970 I was nobody but a has been. As my hair grew back I tried to recapture how I had been six years earlier.
I called it the Bobby Sherman look. I thought if I could appear as I was when I'd had a hit record, it would imply something other than what I feared, which was it was over. I had come to Cleveland with a lot of scar tissue from the previous six years, and the most recent of catastrophes, the three suicides.
I can't tell my story unless I convey to you what was happening below the surface to me during this time in Cleveland with the band Rastus. I didn't stay in Ohio, so there must have been a reason I left eventually, and that is what I'm working toward, as I continue to write.
I had no plan. I was the same Bobby Jameson who didn't know where to go, or where I belonged. I'd gone to Ohio by the same means as I had gone to London in 1964. I was trying to get away from Tony Alamo in L.A., so I went to London. I was trying to get away from the tragedy in L.A. in 1970, so I went to Ohio.
In both cases, I was offered an opportunity to leave a place by another person, without really knowing what I would encounter when I got to the new place. In the case of London, in 64, it was a letter from Andrew Loog Oldham. In the case of Cleveland, it was an invitation from John Rhys in 1970.
Because I wanted to get away from where I was, I went to other places. I had no real idea, or knowledge, at the time, about what would, or wouldn't transpire once I got to the new place. This was true in spades regarding Cleveland. I was there for nearly a year, and went from fellow musician/songwriter, to Jim Cantale's helper, carrying and setting up the band equipment, before and after their gigs.
There was nothing wrong with the job, except it wasn't my job. It became my job, as a result of time spent with Rastus in Ohio. The part of me who was a musician, singer, and songwriter was beginning to resent where and what I'd become, from where and what I was when I'd started some six years earlier.
I was no longer pursuing my own destiny, but that of others, who had similar dreams and ambitions to mine. Over time, this began to weigh on my heart and mind deep down inside me. I had rejected this reality for as long as I could, but it was only a matter of time before Bobby Jameson would come blasting out of his sleep and begin to assert himself on the world.
I lived in 3 different houses in Cleveland when I was there. I posted a picture of the first house. The second was Angelo Crimi's mother's house in Cleveland, and the third was the new band house back in Chardon. Getting punched in the mouth by the lead singer of the band happened at the third house, and is where the old/new Bobby Jameson began to fully reemerge.
It was in the kitchen of that house, where I'd been up all night on uppers, that I wrote the lyrics to "Junkie Jesus." It was my way of saying "Hey Man, look what I can do." I always wrote, when I didn't know how to accept my lot in life, whatever it may have been at the time.
("JUNKIE JESUS" lyrics)
JESUS SAID TO MARY MY CONNECTION GOT LOST I BEEN HANGIN ROUND HERE WAITIN FOR A FIX ON THE CROSS MARRY COULD YOU GET ME JUST A LINE OF COCAINE ANYTHING TO GET ME OFF CAUSE HONEY I'M GOING INSANE DADDY DIG THE NAILS IN MY HANDS AND MY FEET JUDAS WAS A NARC AND TURNED ME IN TO THE HEAT
WELL MARY SAID TO JESUS YOU'RE A MAIN LININ FOOL I'M TRYIN TO SCORE YOU SOMETHIN HONEY BUT PEOPLE AIN'T COOL EVER SINCE YOU GOT BUSTED EVERYBODY'S TERRIFIED THEY SAY THEY DON'T KNOW THE JUNKIE WHO GOT CRUCIFIED DADDY DIG THE NAILS IN MY HANDS AND MY FEET JUDAS WAS A NARC AND TURNED ME IN TO THE HEAT
WELL JESUS SAID TO MARRY MY CONNECTION IS HERE IT'S BETTER LATE THAN NEVER WITH A FIX FOR ME DEAR I'M TIRED OF THESE NAILS I HOPE THAT DEATH WILL COME SOON BUT TILL IT DOES BE AN ANGEL MARY AND HEAT UP THE SPOON DADDY DIG THE NAILS IN MY HANDS AND MY FEET JUDAS WAS A NARC AND TURNED ME INTO THE HEAT
WELL MARY SMILED AT JESUS WHILE SHE OPENED HIS VEIN WITH A NEEDLE WHILE HE MURMURED FATHER AM I INSANE IS THIS HEAVEN IS IT HELL OR AM I JUST LOST FOREVER AS THE JUNKIE SON OF GOD ON A CROSS DADDY DIG THE NAILS IN MY HANDS AND MY FEET JUDAS WAS A NARC AND TURNED ME INTO THE HEAT Bobby Jameson 1970
"Junkie Jesus" was one of those signature moments for me, when I created something I didn't think anyone but me could have created. It was my way of saying, "This is me Goddamn it. Can't you see what I can do?" As important a moment as this was for me, at the time it was also a wedge driven between me and everybody else in Ohio.
It was an angry, frustrated writing of power and independence, asserted by me, as a marker that I was turning away from Rastus and Ohio, and back to Bobby Jameson and L.A. The picture I posted here is my beginning in 1964. The lyrics to "Junkie Jesus" was where I was headed in 1970-71.
The fact that I cannot post a single picture of myself, because there are none, with anyone in Ohio, in 1970, is another telling point about this episode of my life. There may be a picture of me with Rastus, or with John, or Jim Cantale somewhere, but I don't have it, and no one else has come up with one yet.
I have pictures of the band, of John, and Jim, and even the house, but strangely absent is a single picture of me in Ohio for almost a year of my life. If you think about it, that says a whole lot about me in Ohio. I don't say this to make anyone feel bad, I just noticed it myself. There aren't any pictures of me being there, even though I was there......
Although there are no pictures of me in Ohio, there are songs that I wrote and recorded there, and in Wisconsin in 1970. "Junkie Jesus" was written in Ohio, but recorded in Los Angeles sometime later. "Mary Please Forgive Me," the first of three songs similar in subject to "Junkie Jesus," was recorded in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin in 1970, along with two other songs written in Ohio.
This recording is a live piece featuring myself and Hummingbird in 1970. John engineered it and played piano. I wrote it and John and I arranged and produced it. Until a short time ago I didn't even know this existed.
This is pre "Junkie Jesus" and one of my many lost masters until now. I am extremely grateful to John Rhys Eddins for making this available to me after all these years.
"Mary Please Forgive Me" was recorded live at the closing of Sonad Studios in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, in 1970, along with two other songs I will post.
Hummingbird consisted of myself vocals and guitar, John Rhys piano, vocals, and recording engineer, Gerald Smith on lead guitar, vocals, and slide guitar overdub. Percussion was a microphone inside John's guitar case.
This is the cover of the second Rastus album which contains 2 songs that I helped write, Lucey Bluebird, B. Jameson, V.Walkus and G. Sopuch. The second is Big City Let Down Blues, J. Rhys and B. Jameson. They were arranged by Rastus, and engineered by John Rhys. This band, if you are not familiar with them is similar to Chicago and Blood Sweat And Tears.
The members of the band are Dave Miles keyboard and vocals, Marc Spirou trumpet/ valve trombone/ conga and vocals, Don Nagy bass, Mike "the frist" Geraci tenor and baritone sax, and background vocals, Vic Waukus tenor and alto sax, George Sopuch guitar, John Taylor trombone, Dave "Smokey" Smelko drums and background vocals. Manager Angelo Crimi, and the main roadie "Dude" James Cantale supported by Tony and Robin. Collectively all these people saved my life in 1970, and I have the deepest feelings for all of them.
Angelo Crimi Manager
Rastus, John Rhys, and James Cantale at Sonad Studios
In the beginning I was glad to be out of L.A. and to be anywhere but where I'd been. But being Bobby Jameson still left me with all the problems I'd become used to. I was me. There was no getting around it, and that had become my main problem in life, being me.
I had strong opinions, and was not smart enough to keep my mouth shut at times when it would have made sense to do so. Because I had been on GRT Records, as was Rastus, I had negative opinions about the label, and would express them around the guys in the band. Sometimes being right is not the best way to approach others whose dreams are still in tact.
I was not sensitive enough about the feelings of those around me, who still believed that they were on their way to fulfilling their dreams, which meant GRT Records would treat them right. I knew that was not to be the case. At one point I was mouthing off after one of their gigs, while getting off the band bus, and Marc Spirou, who was a very decent guy, got fed up with my never ending trashing of GRT and punched me in the mouth out of frustration.
He knocked me to the ground and I was stunned, and then angry that he had hit me. Looking back on it now, knowing how important his belief in GRT was at the time, I don't blame him a bit for nailing me, I had pushed it too far. This of course at the time, set me in motion like a mad man, and I grabbed a kitchen knife and went out to the barn, telling anyone who could hear me, that I would be waiting for Marc to meet me. He was smart enough to just let me chill out.
John Rhys Eddins
This is a song I wrote for Rastus in 1970 while I was in Ohio. This song is unfinished and never made the second Rastus album, I thought it might be interesting to post it so you could get an idea of what I was doing there, at least in part.
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