WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 2008

(part 62) "PARTLY FACT AND PARTLY FICTION"


After the release of "COLOR HIM IN" in 1967, I started dating DEANA MARTIN, the daughter of DEAN MARTIN. I used to spend a lot of time at the Martin house and it was just another one of the many contradictions about my life. I spent so much time on the streets of Hollywood and West Hollywood that I became known as "The Mayor Of Sunset Strip" a position later given to RODNEY BINGENHEIMER and then KIM FOWLEY. I was having trouble at times fitting into all the different personalities that were forming in my life. I met TERRY MELCHER at the Martin house, he was dating GINA MARTIN the older sister of Deana and we did not much like each other.

Terry considered me another run of the mill singer song writer and I considered him a no talent son of DORIS DAY, who took credit for producing BRIAN WILSON'S work and the same with THE BYRDS. BRIAN WILSON produced THE BEACH BOYS and THE BYRDS produced THE BYRDS. Terry Melcher took the credit, because he could, and I let him know that's what I thought. At some point in 1967 I began to realize that "COLOR HIM IN" was not the resounding hit I had hoped for. Verve Records seemed to have fallen off on pushing the record and as usual L A RADIO was giving me 0 airplay. I bitterly complained about this, but to no avail so I turned my attentions toward the streets again and immersed myself in the culture of street demonstrations against the war and police brutality.

One would have thought that as much press as I was getting on the streets, LA Radio would have embraced me, but they did not, ever. My reputation with the inside crowd in Hollywood's music business sucked and still does today. I didn't much kiss enough ass, but I showed up at places like the Martin house so people like Terry Melcher and others were irritated by me and my ability to infringe on their ranks. It was like a high school click of special cases and they kept asking each other "who the fuck is this JAMESON guy?"

I was cutting some demo's one time for SCREEN GEMS MUSIC, something STEVE CLARK set up, and the son of LESTER SILL who was head of Screen Gems at the time, JOEL SILL was the producer. It was just a demo session and the players were JERRY SCHEFF, BEN BENAY, TOXI FRENCH and people like that really good players, but this asshole Joel Sill kept interrupting every take to tell us how to play. Finally I'd had enough and told him to "shut the fuck up Sill and quit fucking with us." Sill got back on the the talk back mic from the control room and started talking down to me and that did it. I threw down my guitar yanked off my ear phones and went after him, he vacated the area.

This was part of the ever growing personality of "quit taking shit from assholes" that I was becoming. The other musicians liked what I did but knew they couldn't do it. None of them liked Joel Sill, but they had to tolerate him, so they could keep on working. I on the other hand had taken more than my share of bullshit from ego maniacs and was now willing to take them on just about anywhere and anytime, I'm sure this did not help my cause. I was drinking all the time, dropping pills and taking LSD. I was volatile and mouthy and would fight damn near anybody who gave me a reason. I looked like a cross between, Jesus Christ and Wild Bill Hickock, so there was always some dumb son of a bitch who would say something stupid to me like "Who the hell are you supposed to be?"

The reason for telling you these things is to keep reporting the changes in circumstance and personality that were occurring in my life. The context of what I was doing, where I was doing it and some of the people involved, is important to keep up with because each new thing and person played some role in what transpired. I was like a ping pong ball bouncing off each new situation and person I encountered. I never got settled into anything before it would change again and I would have to start over. If you look back at what I have already related it is obvious that no set of conditions, persons or circumstances lasted very long.

The only thing I could count on staying constant was change. I was getting arrested during street demonstrations and then getting out so I could show up at the Martin house. It didn't make any sense, my life was a pin ball machine. I was torn between the luxury of Deana's life and the hard edge of the streets. I was torn between the Terry Melcher's and Joel Sills and my own need to create music that stood for something. Everything always seemed to be at odds with itself. I could not get all the pieces to work at the same time, even though the pieces were there.

I was barely 21 and was a total maverick amongst maverick's. I am not blowing my own horn in making that statement, maybe it would be more accurate to say I was an outcast amongst maverick's. AL RUDDY once said to me, "If I knew what to do with you Bobby, I'd do it, but I don't." I thought that was a pretty honest remark, Al produced "THE GODFATHER", for 20th Century Fox in the old days. The more I defined myself the less defined I was in the eyes of those who had the power. They knew me but kept their distance, as Kris Kristofferson once wrote, "he's a walking contradiction partly fact and partly fiction."