by James Rhodes
I was, for the first time in a long time, in a really good place both emotionally and physically. A kind, beautiful girlfriend, a dedicated, genius manager, concerts and music at the centre of my world, slowly increasing odds that the career of my dreams could actually happen. And a growing sense of acceptance that Jack was in another country coupled with the hope that he and I could still maintain some kind of relationship.
TRACK SIXTEEN
Schumann, ‘Geister Variations’ for Piano
Jean-Marc Luisada, Piano
Composers and mental illness go hand in hand like Catholics and guilt, or America and obesity. Schumann was one of several who suffered from severe depression, throwing himself into the Rhine and then, having not managed to kill himself, sectioning himself voluntarily and dying alone and afraid in an asylum.
Days before he tried to kill himself he wrote his ‘Geister (Ghost) Variations’, so called because he said that ghosts had dictated the opening theme to him. Yep. Slightly unhinged.
There is not a more private, enclosed, intense, concentrated piano composition that I can think of. Rarely rising above a forte, the theme is a chorale that slowly, gently develops into something far beyond words. Here is Schumann’s schizophrenic, depressed, lost world laid bare at our feet.
AMONGST ALL THE PRESS THAT was starting to happen at that time, I did an interview in the Sunday Times. In it I mentioned the sexual abuse that had happened at school – it was a short paragraph in a double-page piece. The head of the junior school from back then saw it and got in touch with me (Facebook is good for some things, apparently). She told me she’d known that some kind of abuse was happening (even if, in her naivety, she hadn’t thought it was sexual), that she used to find me sobbing, blood on my legs, begging not to go back to gym class. She’d gone to the head of the school who’d said, in true 1980s style, ‘Little Rhodes needs to toughen up. Ignore it.’ Which she did. She told me that she quit her job and became a prison chaplain. And then years later read my interview and got in touch to see if she could put things right. Twenty-five years too fucking late, but hey ho. Slightly angry about that still.
She made a police statement (the one I included earlier in this book). I went back to the police with my manager once they’d received it and we tried again. He may have mentioned press coverage and record label lawyers. And sure enough they found the guy. He was in his seventies. And working in Margate. As a part-time boxing coach for boys under ten.
After lengthy interviews, they arrested him and charged him with ten counts of buggery and indecent assault.
And so when some people let me know that I’m only talking about the abuse that happened as a means of selling albums or getting sympathy (it happens), I always tell them that story and ask them if they’d rather I’d kept quiet about the sexual abuse and that guy was still coaching their eight-year-old nephew/son/grandson. Dicks.
The last I heard from the Met police was that he had had a stroke and was deemed unfit to stand trial. He died shortly after I got that news. Many of the books I’ve read and support groups I’ve been to talk about forgiveness. They suggest writing letters to those who have hurt us, especially if they are no longer alive, outlining the impact of their actions on ourselves and on those we love. And in many ways that is what this book is. It is my letter to you, Peter Lee, as you rot in your filthy grave, letting you know that you haven’t yet won. Our secret is no longer a secret, a bond we share, a private, intimate connection to you of any kind. No part of anything you did to me was harmless, enjoyable or loving, despite what you said. It was simply an abhorrent, penetrative violation of innocence and trust.
I can but hope that people like Mr Lee, people who actively pursue and engage in their sexual desire for children see, really see, the damage it does. That passing it off or justifying it as mutual and acceptable, an expression of love, is as far from the truth as it is possible to get.
Forgiveness is a glorious concept. It’s something I aspire to even if it’s at times seemingly nothing more than an impossible, if desirable, fantasy. There have been too many incidents of abuse in my life. I am committed to sharing the parts of it that I’m able to cope with without totally imploding. And that’s good enough for me. It has to be. There are other people from my past who know more and should have known better and they will have to make their peace with that just as I am trying to. Maybe one day I will forgive Mr Lee. That’s much likelier to happen if I find a way to forgive myself. But the truth, for me at any rate, is that the sexual abuse of children rarely, if ever, ends in forgiveness. It leads only to self-blame, visceral, self-directed rage and shame.
The sexual abuse of children.
Some people read that phrase and feel appalled, some feel titillated, some feel angry, some turned on. It’s interesting to see that just by writing that phrase I want to disappear for a while and do something destructive, distractive, anything to avoid these feelings. Thirty years later I’m still right there, pinned down and in pain and feeling like it was all my fault. Just because I’ve written a few words about it. The inherent power of this shit to fuck you up with nothing more than a sideways sneer is terrifying.
When the Jimmy Savile case reared its ugly head I was asked to write a piece for the Daily Telegraph about it. Somehow by this time I’d managed to find a voice and some kind of status in the media that allowed me to talk about things like this in the hope of adding, in some small way, to the changes that are already happening since more people started talking about it. The full article is in the Appendix to this book, and writing it spun me out for a few weeks afterwards because, well, it’s giving oxygen to something that really wants to just curl away in the darkness and gnaw away at my insides.
But shining a light on topics like this is hugely important. And getting hundreds of supportive and grateful messages from people who had also gone through similar experiences was an indicator to me that it needs to be talked about even more.
*
Denis and I had made a small start on my musical career. An album, a bit of press, a few concerts. We had some good ideas, and we were lucky enough to have GHP, the touring company that looked after Stomp since the beginning, get involved, helping secure both classical and non-classical venues. It was enough to keep me busy, but despite being on a more even keel, there were still regular moments each day filled with panic – fear of failure, of an almost empty concert diary, the horror that I had committed everything to becoming a concert pianist and it could, at any minute, fall apart and end up in abject failure. The thing is that I used to feel the exact same way when I worked in the City, served burgers in Burger King, showed up to any job. I am preconditioned and hard-wired to fear the worst, believe every negative voice in my head and expect terrible things to happen. That’s just the way it is. On the plus side it keeps me alert, hungry, working hard. On the negative, well, I’m mental, stressed, heinously jealous of others’ success.
We also went back to the studio with my little motley crew of engineers and producers to record album number two, Now Would All Freudians Please Stand Aside. This was from one of my favourite Glenn Gould quotes. Gould, that musical freak who couldn’t have given less of a fuck what people thought of him or his playing. He played Bach like no one before or after could ever hope to, graced the cover of Time, had his performances put on the Voyager spacecraft as an example to alien life forms of just how awesome the human race can be, and died of a massive stroke in 1982, no doubt helped along by his epic addiction to prescription drugs. He retired from performing in public at a stupidly young age because he felt the audience was always hostile, waiting for him to screw up. He dedicated the rest of his life to the recording studio, believing (rightly as it turned out) that there was a huge future in recording and massive advances being made in the technology behind it. He worshipped the security of the recording studio and how safe it felt, and after recording five albums I still absolutely agree with him. Some of the most rewarding, distracting, immersive hours
I’ve spent have been in the studio.
Gould was also a certified nutjob. He wore thick overcoats, hats and scarves in the middle of summer, poured boiling water over his hands and forearms before playing, took pills like they were gum drops, called his friends (and strangers) at three in the morning and talked at them even while they slept, played the stock market, hated company, was the closest thing classical has ever had to a rock star. He was also movie-star hot when he was younger. And he played the piano like a god. I’m pretty certain that one of his two seminal Goldberg albums has graced more lists of ‘desert island discs’ than any other classical recording.
For Freudians I decided to do another mixed recital programme. I’ve never been a huge fan of dedicating an entire album to a single composer, especially when trying to reach a fresh audience. Choice is always good, and Bach, Beethoven, Chopin are my holy trinity. Having Mike Hatch working his magic with sound and microphones, and the genius producer John West (sadly no longer with us thanks to the great fuck that is cancer), made it easier than I deserved. The guys behind the music never get enough credit, and these chaps were absolute experts at polishing my distinctly dodgy attempts into something halfway decent.
Freudians remains the favourite of my recordings and the one I’m most proud of, perhaps because it contains two of music’s greatest masterpieces, Beethoven’s Op. 109 Sonata and Bach’s Sixth Partita.
And we also chose to put a few interviews on the album with me talking about the pieces and the recording process, hopefully without the indulgent wankiness that is so easy to slip into when talking about (LA accent) ‘my creative process’.
Here’s the thing about careers. We have become so enamoured of and used to the whole ‘overnight success’ thing promoted by X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent and their ilk that it’s easy to feel that success isn’t happening fast enough. God knows there were – still are – times when I wish things were moving quicker in my career. And then I look at successful friends of mine whom I admire – Benedict Cumberbatch was doing bit parts in Heartbeat and too many unnoticed theatre productions for over a decade before Sherlock; Derren Brown was slogging his way through close-up magic in Bristol nightclubs for much longer than that before his career exploded.
I have an in-built terror that good things will slip away. That unless I control things and drive them and micromanage and obsess and worry and push and chase, they will not happen. And there is nothing so destructive to a career as that. It may bring about short-term gain but it is not sustainable – you come across as a giant cock, and no one wants to work with you.
The hardest lesson I’ve learned is to relax and simply enjoy what is happening today, trusting that if I’m doing the right thing then the right things will happen in their own time. To the point where I’m now very wary of overnight success. I don’t think it lasts and, a bit like relationships, there may be a very intense, passionate affair with amazing sex and obscene doses of brain chemicals involved, but chances are it ain’t going to be sustained. But taking things slowly, relaxing into it, learning as you go along, enjoying the journey – all of these things build a foundation that can last a lifetime.
I got an inkling of this when I signed to Warner Bros Records. Freudians had been released and had had good reviews, I’d been playing around London and in the big festivals – Cheltenham, Hay, Latitude writing for the Telegraph about everything from Formula One (the greatest sport in the world) to Twitter to Beethoven, and generally plugging away at things. I was introduced to Stephen Fry around this time, too.
We’d met through my benefactor, sponsor and supporter Sir David Tang. He had called me up to invite me to a concert and asked me to meet him in the bar at Claridge’s Hotel for a drink beforehand. He told me Stephen Fry was coming too and would be there. So off I toddle and of course I’m an hour early as per usual. And sitting in the bar is Fry drinking a martini. He seems startled when I introduce myself until I tell him I’m a friend of Sir David’s and am coming to the concert with them and he relaxes a bit and invites me to join him. I ask him what he’s been up to, which is unlike me as I usually just start talking about myself, and he tells me he’s just finished a series on endangered species and has been in New Zealand or Zanzibar or somewhere. And I, being nervous, a bit of a dick, attention-hungry, say to him: ‘Dude, who the fuck cares about some web-footed fucking platypus in the arse end of nowhere? Why not focus on helping those closer to home, or real human beings who are starving, fucked, miserable and alone? Jesus. Give me a fucking break.’ He just looked at me, slightly astonished, and tried to answer me. We got into a huge argument within a minute of meeting one another, me refusing to back down and feeling all smug and self-important, him being as civil as was possible under the circumstances. And we kept our distance from then on for the rest of the evening and, feeling embarrassed and slightly ashamed, I took the easier option of thinking he was a bit of a wanker, told him so, and did my best to ignore him.
And then I get home and as I walk through the door I get a text: ‘James it was so wonderful meeting you – you are such a lovely man. Ditch the cynicism – it doesn’t suit you and life will be so much easier without it, lots of love, Stephen xxx.’
What a dude. There are a tiny handful of people in my life who are able, consistently, to meet my crazy with kindness. He is one of them.
So he and I became buddies and started hanging out some. And he came to one of my concerts at the Proud Galleries in Camden. It was all north London chic with cool paintings, exposed brick, Cutler and Gross glasses and immaculately trimmed beards. They’d brought in a lovely Steinway and I played well enough. Stupidly I also chose to play some Alkan as I knew he was one of Fry’s favourite composers and I wanted his approval (I still do). Alkan was a giant cunt. The guy wrote almost impossibly difficult music. And yet I got through it, more thanks to adrenaline than talent, and it all went down pretty well. Stephen then tweeted that I had kicked ‘monumental ass’, and somewhere in west London, unknown to me, Conrad Withey, one of the big guns at Warner Bros UK saw his tweet and started listening to my records.
Within a few months Denis and I had been approached to sign a deal with Warners on their rock label. This was, at the time, a really big thing. They have a substantial and highly regarded classical label, Warner Classics & Jazz, but the idea of being on the rock label while sticking to core classical music was amazing to me. Finally we could start chipping away at the ghettoisation of classical music, get some proper marketing behind us (I mean these guys had Muse and Metallica on their books, for fuck’s sake) and really start to make progress.
We went into the studio to record album number three, Bullets and Lullabies. The concept was two discs, one fast, one slow; one to wake up to and one to pass out to. Denis had spent a few years working as a DJ and he loved the idea of making a kind of classical set list that created a sort of storyline comprised of multiple pieces. What was so cool for me was recording little-known and absolutely amazing composers like Alkan, Blumenfeld and Moszkowski alongside Chopin and Beethoven. I really thought this was it – the big break everyone talks about. The album sounded great, the artwork looked brilliant (thanks to the stupendous talent of Dave Brown of Mighty Boosh fame), I was getting invites to the Q Awards and sent free clothing and I very quickly fell into the whole trap of being a giant fame-hungry tosser and believing all the egotistical bullshit about being special.
A few months after the album was released we were approached by Sky Arts who wanted to make a series about classical music but without the habitual stuffiness. The head of Warners had liaised with them and it seemed like a great way to move further into the realm of television. It led to seven episodes of a show called Piano Man – each one focusing on a particular theme, either one big piece of music or a group of shorter connected pieces, again with introductions, me chatting about the pieces, with awesome on-screen, MTV-style graphics, and yet playing resolutely core classical repertoire, no voice-overs during the performance, abso
lute focus on the music itself. The production company who made it was Fresh One, Jamie Oliver’s company, and it was the start of a hugely productive and enjoyable relationship with a terrific team of people. Having been around a little bit longer now, I can see just how lucky I was to work with a company so hands-on and supportive from the start – I love them hard.
Alas the bosses of both Warner Bros and Sky Arts seemed to think the other would take responsibility for the promotion of the show (no one wants to spend money unless they have to) and a bit like a retarded game of chicken, neither one budged first. Denis was in that initial meeting and begged them to work together to help make this show count. He reiterated that this was classical music and not rock, and because of that they were going to have to throw everything they could at it to make it work. It was a big ask, especially from Warners, who were more accustomed to working with hugely successful bands and a genre of music that was in less need of resurrection than classical.
It was huge fun to film, even if only sixty-three people ended up seeing it, and it gave me a glimpse of what could be achieved with this kind of music, a great director and a decent budget. The whole team somehow managed to take a style of music few people were interested in and show it off in a way that stripped away the bullshit and retained what was important – the music itself. And to be fair, Piano Man seems to have made it round the globe pretty successfully – I’m still getting incredibly kind messages in various exotic languages about it. And, if you’re curious, it’s available on Amazon at a steal.
And then Warners sat me and Denis down and told us that they had got me onto the Royal Variety Show, where literally fifteen million people were going to watch me play live in front of the Queen, and my head exploded. No wonder they weren’t so keen to spend a lot of money pushing the Sky Arts show – this would do the job for them, and then some.