Saturday, April 11, 2009

(Part 25) Thank Your Lucky Stars

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9, 2008





The record came out "All I Want Is My Baby/Each And Every Day" preceded by a lot of promotion. I'll give Andrew Oldham and Decca UK their due they pumped the record hard, but that made it worse for me personally, because I had no faith in it. I felt like "Oh no! You're not goin' to put that out are you?" When I was doing "I'm So Lonely" at least I believed in the record, but this was entirely different. All of a sudden I was doing interview after interview and I didn't even like the record. I was torn between the hype and the fear that it would bomb which it did. I kept trying to get to see Andrew, but it was no use he was not talking to me.

I started making up things about myself to deflect the interest in me, but it just seemed to make things worse. I took to wearing one "black glove" as a goof and it got famous. I did a story with a London news paper on "the Glove" which it became known as and people took it seriously. Somewhere in this time frame I was lucky enough to meet with Brian Jones of The Stones and we liked each other right off. He came by my place one afternoon and we talked about a lot of things. Brian was an intelligent and extremely sensitive person who was not at all taken by his fame. He had a passion for animals which he conveyed to me while we smoked some hash. We just spent that day hanging out for the most part.

A year later by some quirk of the universe, Brian's picture ended up as the cover photo for the Chris lucey album "Songs Of Protest And Anti Protest" which I wrote and recorded when I went back to America in 1965. I never spoke to Brian again, but I always remembered the day we spent together and consider myself lucky to have had that time with him. It is those kinds of moments from the past that I will hold on to for the rest of my life. They are the things that made it all worthwhile in the long run.



As the publicity increased I was introduced to a very popular club in London called "The Ad lib Club" where everyone who was anyone went at night. It was the "In Place" in 1964 and I was like the "American Pop Prop" along with P J Proby so it was easy to mingle with just about everyone. I used to sit at these little tables that lined the walls of the place and drink Matuse wine with the Beatles. Every time John Lennon saw me he'd say, "Eh, here comes The Glove. Hey Jameson whot's wrong with yer hand mon, do ya ave a diseese aye?" I think he got a big kick outta doing that, because he did it a lot. It was a real trip sitting there with The Beatles at 19 years old, because I'd always been a huge Beatles fan. So now here I was in London sitting right there with them and having John make jokes about my glove.

I was getting the star treatment alright, but underneath the outward appearances I was just plain worried about having to go on British television and lip sync the record. In my gut I knew it was gonna be bad, but when it actually happened it was worse. I tried everything I could think of to get those people to reconsider what they were doing. I told them, "Let's do the other side. "Each And Every Day" it's a better record." "No, we are not going to do that it's gonna be fine blah, blah, blah." It was not fine. It was a disaster. Have you ever been around people when they've convinced themselves of something even though they're wrong? Well that's the way this was. For whatever reason, and to this day I still don't know why, everybody was just locked into Andrew's track record and believed if Andrew said it was good, it was good.

The day finally came and I told Peter that I hated the goddamn song and wished that I'd never heard it or recorded it. Even he was trying to tell me it would be alright and I remember trying to believe it myself at that point. I mean what the hell was I supposed to do? I was gonna be mouthing this thing on live TV whether I wanted to or not so I tried to get with the program and give it my best shot. The trouble with a pre recorded dud is that it's still a dud even if you give it your best shot. I remember the announcer on "Thank Your Lucky Stars" or "Ready Steady Go" saying, "And our next guest, all the way from America is Bobby Jameson singing his hit record "All I Want Is My Baby."

As the music started I was directed by someone to move out on the floor into camera range and walk slowly through the set they had, while lip syncing the record. Good Luck! I had no idea which way they wanted me to go so I kept looking at the guy who was directing me and forgetting the words of the song while I watched him. I still didn't have the song down so I didn't remember where to come in at when it was time. I just kept screwing it up and knew it as it was happening. I had never been in that position before. I always knew where the song was, but not this time, this wasn't my song and it wasn't me. It was forced and I could hear it as I tried desperately to find my place. I sleep walked my way through the rest of the song and felt humiliated way down deep inside. I don't recall anything after that. Not leaving or speaking to anyone, it is just a total blank.

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