by James Rhodes
Everyone got very excited, we all talked about the tours afterwards, the huge CD sales, the O2 Arena and magazine covers. And all the time, Denis, always awesome, always careful, always realistic, was saying (not just to me but also to Warners) ‘What if it doesn’t happen?’, ‘What’s plan B?’ and, to me, ‘Are you sure you’re ready for this if it happens?’ They, and I, assured him I was and that it was a done deal. To the point that they announced it on their website, I told all my family and friends, and I could think of nothing else.
And of course, the director and producer of the show came to meet me at Steinway a few days before the show was due to happen and they told us they had decided to have less of a focus on classical music this year and go with another genre.
My ego was furious. And I was so ashamed, having told so many friends (who invariably didn’t care a bit). But thank God. The thought of having to handle that level of exposure back in 2010 terrifies me.
I would never have made it, and would likely have ended up falling apart, talking to myself and twitching.
Denis and I regrouped, carried on doing what we were doing. I showed up at the piano every day as usual having learned to ignore apparent good news, not listen to hype and conjecture, simply focus on what’s in front of me and doing the best job I can do.
He and I were still the entire team despite the odd accusation that we had a massive group of PR people on board. The truth was much more fun – Denis and me, cigarettes, endless coffees and my kitchen table. Of course we had some help along the way from some amazing people – Glynis Henderson at GHP, Simon Millward at Albion Media (Signum’s PR company), John Kelleher and Conrad Withey from Warners, but ultimately it was, and still is, me and Denis hanging out, mouthing off, coming up with new ideas, figuring out our way and praying that things are going to work out for the best. Small is beautiful.
He and I saw that the whole music industry had been falling down for a while, that kids weren’t paying money for things any more and the days of sitting back and counting on massive profits for minimal work were over. We were totally committed to trying new things, doing things differently.
We must have been doing something right, because the head of the British Phonographic Industry set up a meeting with us to ask me to be a spokesperson for them, railing against music piracy. Which is just about the stupidest thing I ever heard. And I told them so. Why the fuck would people not steal music when the whole industry had fucked them up the ass for decades and was too lazy to do its job?
Because the labels were asking them nicely not to? I told them that once they could find a way to give the fans a reason to pay for music, then they would. Willingly and happily. The labels just needed to up their game considerably and not feel entitled to a free ride any more, and there was no way I was going to stand up and say that they deserved to be treated with respect when they’re charging £15 for a CD and had been shafting their artists and audiences senseless for decades.
Which made me realise this: the whole Variety Show thing, along with some of the more vitriolic press, simply confirmed that I didn’t fit into the established classical world and I didn’t fit into the crossover classical world. Instead I was shuffling along in my own little space, convinced I was doing something good and worthy, but having to accept that it was going to take a while to get onto solid ground and build things up.
Here too is the importance of good management. Denis is often more of a nurse/shrink/big brother than a manager. There are certain things I fear, and feel that were I to tweet them, talk about them in interviews or make them public, my career would probably dive-bomb into obscurity. There are things I cannot tell my lover, family, friends or even shrink. But Denis knows all of it. Our relationship is at the point, and has been for a long time, where I feel and act as if he is simply an extension of myself and so there’s no need to hide anything he is always there, always dependable, a given.
There is the professional stuff he does, which I guess is the main point of a manager. I look around at my piano world today and see a forthcoming series on Channel 4; concerts all around the world from the Sydney Opera House to America, London to Barbados; a live DVD; five albums; even my own line of shoes (shut up – they’re called Jimmy Shoes, at least until we get sued, and they are awesome; designed by Tracey Neuls, a fan who wanted me to wear something comfortable and high quality on stage, they don’t disappoint, and will be available online and in store by the time you read this); an income that many music college graduates couldn’t dream of earning; a royalty percentage that is the highest I’ve ever heard of in the music sector; and all of that is down to him. He scours contracts, hammers the phone, pushes politely yet persistently in meetings, thinks of the bigger picture all the time, has a plan and a vision and sticks to it no matter what. He is a likeable Donald Trump in business and even more talented in a world where I, left to my own devices, would do pretty much anything for free simply because it involves getting to play music.
But then there is the stuff that keeps me alive, often smiling, able to sleep calmly most nights. He has gone through a world of shit in his lifetime. A hideous upbringing, violence, trauma, pain, heartache and serious strife. And he has emerged whole, wise and with that particular flavour of kindness and compassion that can only ever come from shared pain. There are no office hours. It is a 24/7 relationship where I can come to his house at 4 a.m. sobbing, share a cigarette backstage before important gigs, send him a deluge of needy, worried texts about money, concerts, reviews, girls, physical and mental health, and know he will provide a moment of grace, of calmness and serenity that will tide me over.
There is a reason that Lang Lang’s people took my concert promoter out for lunch and drilled her about what we were doing and how we were doing it. Ditto why, just after Razor Blades came out, Michael Lang, the head of Deutsche Grammophon (once the most prestigious classical music label in the world) called Denis to tell us to hold off signing with anyone, get a bit more experience and then perhaps they might consider signing me up in a few months or a couple of years.
‘Years?’ Denis laughed. ‘Michael, have you been reading the papers? Why would we wait for you that long – you probably won’t have a job by next year.’ And if Michael had given us just one valid reason we might have considered it. But Denis knew, as did I, that the only way forward, the only realistic shot we had at reaching our goal, was to try doing things in a new way and avoid the established classical industry as much as possible.
It’s funny, because fundamentally he and I are just two slightly deranged schmucks who seem to have found a really, really cool way to play and present the most incredible music ever written. And also lovely because when we met, Denis had no clue about classical music. Now he listens to it all of the time, treats the giant pieces I’ve introduced him to as his babies and has fallen in love with a whole new world. He is my target audience. Someone who kind of wants to know more about classical music, doesn’t really know where to start, and doesn’t want to hang around weirdos and old people to find out more about it.
Denis has got me into venues and situations I could never have even dreamt of. He and the team at GHP have got decent concert fees for some tattooed loser who wears jeans and swears too much and plays the piano perhaps as well as a bunch of music college undergraduates but certainly no better, and put their faith, money and energy into him, even when it looked like nothing would happen.
It feels harder in the UK sometimes, as there seems to be less desire to try things that at first glance seem inaccessible or requiring time and effort. But in 2011 I toured Australia and it really absolutely confirmed that there was something we were doing that could have an impact. We sold out two shows in Melbourne and had to add a third, I got on the news (for the right reason), played in Canberra, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, got Bullets and Lullabies into the top twenty rock charts, consistently played to audiences aged in their early twenties who had never been to a piano recital before, and I spent a couple of
weeks eating banana bread, having surprising massages (don’t even ask what happens at the end over there) and noticing that there was a huge, welcoming response to classical music from people who would not have normally given two fucks.
Geoffrey Rush came to one of my Melbourne gigs. We shared a cigarette afterwards and I remember asking myself what the fuck I’d done to get to be this lucky. Especially because the day after I did a segment for ABC news with David Helfgott, whom Rush had played so brilliantly in the film Shine. Helfgott had listened to the live radio broadcast of one of the Melbourne concerts and loved it. He was, is, an amazing man. Troubled, manic, scary, brilliant and unique. And a great warning about where I could end up emotionally if I don’t keep my shit together.
Denis had also been listening to the Melbourne gig back home in London where he had literally crawled back under the covers as he heard me cracking jokes about the Holocaust, AIDS and dwarf porn to a lovely Australian audience live on ABC radio. I blame the jet lag. And I love the Aussies even more for being so welcoming and openhearted.
Once I got back, I realised perhaps Warner Bros wasn’t the right way forward. Having failed to get the Royal Variety gig, there was no plan B and they kinda just gave up on me. I have huge respect for the guys there and they put so much time and effort in, but the fit wasn’t quite right for the both of us. I had been signed to the world’s largest rock label, but couldn’t profit from it only because you can’t make orange juice out of lemons no matter how much time and money you spend trying. If we had found a way to make it work I’d have stayed in a heartbeat, but somehow playing Beethoven when they were used to plugging and selling Green Day and Linkin Park was a stretch too far, no matter how noble or sincere the intentions. So we amicably parted ways.
I wanted to do a live album and went back to Signum for that. Steve Long, the boss at Signum, could not have been kinder or more supportive. We did two performances at a Brighton theatre that became album number four – ‘Jimmy’ (the name my friends call me).
What was lovely was that rather than simply having the music on the finished album, I wanted to keep all the introductions and chatting on there too. It was, in effect, an exact replica of the concert I did, complete with the odd wrong note, plenty of chatting, laughter, and, I hope, the unique energy of a live performance that is so hard to capture in a recording studio. God, that sounds pretentious. But you get the idea. With the talking included I believe it’s a genuinely real, honest live album and, for classical at least, the first of its kind. And the fact that it is also the first classical album to have a ‘parental advisory’ sticker on it makes me, in a slightly puerile way, a little bit proud.
It was released at the very end of 2011, and 2012 and ’13 were two of the biggest years of my life, both personally and professionally.
TRACK SEVENTEEN
Schubert, Sonata No. 20, D959, Second Movement
Alexander Lonquich, Piano
(if you can find his recording anywhere. Otherwise Severin von Eckardstein nails it with appropriate madness)
In 1994, EMI released what was for me the greatest disc of Schubert’s piano music ever made. A young pianist called Alexander Lonquich was at the keyboard. Born in Trier, Germany, but residing in Italy, Lonquich was EMI’s shining star.
Bear in mind that this was a time when classical music had serious money. This was EMI in its heyday, with huge marketing spend and a loyal and large fan base. The main work on the CD was Schubert’s immense A major Sonata, D959. As is the case with Beethoven, Schubert’s last three sonatas (of which this is the second) are his crowning achievement. They are ethereal, mesmerising, astonishing and immortal. Schubert’s madness has never been more clear in the bipolar slow movement where any pretence at tonality and structure flies out of the window, and the genius of the last movement of this piece is such that I can (and have) listened to it hundreds of times, not once being anything other than enraptured. It is, in my opinion, the greatest thing he ever wrote.
Hundreds of pianists have recorded this work, but Lonquich is in an entirely different league. He manages to do the impossible and make it seem that, even in its most insane moments, there is space between every note. The music floats into your ears and simply takes over your mind. I know it sounds pretentious and distinctly un-British, but I first listened to it after a piano lesson in Verona, sitting at a cafe in the sunshine, drinking the finest coffee known to man, and openly wept at the genius on display. It was a genuine reminder of everything that is great about the world.
Lonquich’s sound, his staggering technique, his ability to make the entire sonata seep into every cell of your body and make you stare open-mouthed in wonderment is the rarest of feats. It is a disc I come back to again and again and again.
As an aside, because it’s interesting to me, at a time of money, marketing, loyal fans and with the impressive weight of EMI behind him, according to a good friend and ex-flatmate of his who is also in the business, Lonquich’s album, his superbly recorded, bar-raising reinvention of Schubert has, to date, sold just over seventy units. Seven zero.
THE THRILLS AND SPILLS OF 2012 began with Channel 4. They came to us via the production company that had done the Sky Arts series and suggested a one-off documentary looking at music and mental health. Which was perfect. All too often someone in my position is asked to front a programme for one of the major TV channels and ends up doing something that runs totally counter to their ideals and ideas. But they do it because, well, it’s Channel 4, or the BBC or ITV or whatever. In this case I was lucky enough to find the perfect fit on my first shot. I’d done the Sky Arts series and the BBC4 documentary about Chopin so was used to filming, loved the whole process, and Denis and I had always dreamed of being on terrestrial TV. When I worked in the City, we used that awful phrase ‘channel to market’ all the time. And as far as classical was concerned, the biggest channel to market was terrestrial TV. It was the fastest and most effective way to get core classical music into people’s lives and living rooms. It’s what the major labels had always moaned about wanting because it was such a powerful medium, but could never seem to find the right people to do it.
We were due to start filming in July of 2012. The idea was for me to go into a secure, locked psychiatric ward (this time as a guest), meet some of their most vulnerable patients and talk about their histories, and then I was to find a piece of piano music I felt would resonate with them and play it just to them on a giant Steinway concert grand. It was, for me, a testament to the power of music and its ability to cut through even the heaviest medication and perhaps shine a little glimmer of light on an otherwise fucked situation.
Now I know that music heals. I know that it saved my life, kept me safe, gave me hope when there was none elsewhere. And the thought of capturing that, in some small way, on TV was an amazing opportunity for me. Alas a few days before filming started, my relationship fell apart, and this time it felt like it was for good.
It had been coming for a while. Both Hattie and I, despite sharing a seemingly bottomless pit of love, were on different pages. She wanted marriage and kids, I didn’t feel brave enough to go down the road again after what had happened to me the first time. She had certain past traumas that had left her fragile in ways that made it hard for her to feel secure and confident, and I didn’t make it any easier for her with my constant controlling and dickish behaviour. Ultimately we decided that we should end things, and in early June she moved out.
And the tragic thing is that the moment she did, I knew it was a huge mistake. Look, the easiest thing in the world is to cut and run. From anything, not just relationships. It neatly avoids taking responsibility for things, learning lessons that have to be learned at some point, reinforces blame and, in my case at least, ensured I would simply repeat the same shit with someone else.
I went off to the hospital, a couple of hours outside London, and started filming while she collected her things and emptied our flat. All of which meant I was stuck in a mental ho
spital, with a film crew, wanting to die, alone and afraid and miserable. Which made for good TV at the very least. I was there for a couple of weeks, meeting these astonishing patients, hearing stories that defied belief, many of which couldn’t for legal reasons make the final edit. It had been very hard getting into the hospital in the first place – such is our culture that many of the staff thought we were an undercover Panorama crew or similar, ostensibly there to make a doc about the patients and music, but in reality there to expose their awful practices and show the world how dreadfully the patients were treated and how low the standard of care was.
Which was nuts, because the staff were, to a (wo)man, incredible. The patients had all been sectioned, had spent many, many years in hospital, many of them decades. They had violent backgrounds, severe self-harm issues, shatteringly awful histories and symptoms. And as the days went on I started to get more and more wobbly. The smells of the hospital, the medication times on the boards, the carpets, the air of desperation, sadness and everything else that comprises mental hospitals brought all of my stuff back, and the one person I wanted to call had moved out and moved on.
The crew were terrific, we did everything we needed to do, the patients were at once humbling and inspiring, and the time I spent there seemed to provide the director with enough material to make a 47-minute film.
I left and got the train back to London very late on a Sunday night. It was pissing with rain. I walked through my front door to an empty flat, Hattie’s keys gently laid on the table, everything neat and tidy and soulless and quiet. I just sat there and cried, feeling very sorry for myself. And I felt that awful, creeping and all too familiar chill of destruction and depression knocking at the door.
