by Bobby Womack
Coke was my escape, and to up the protection I started wearing dark glasses. I wanted to be able to see out, but didn’t want anyone looking in. If they did, they would have seen a boy half-scared to death.
I took coke with me everywhere I went and I stayed fucked up. I chopped out fat lines like there was no tomorrow. It didn’t matter then what people did or said to me. I went to Chicago to perform and after every song the audience wouldn’t applaud. They would just sit there. The DJ on the bill asked them to give it up for Womack. Nope, they wouldn’t. Fuck it. I got my cocaine to give me a lift.
I turned Pickett on to it, too. I don’t know why I did that. He saw me once and said, ‘Bobby, why you putting that powder up your nose, man?’ I told him it was how I coped. I said, with cocaine, ‘I can write, I don’t fear no man, I don’t fear nothing, I don’t even feel nothing.’ Pickett laughed at that. Told me I was weird. A weird motherfucker.
We tried it together. This might have been in Memphis when we were up writing some of those songs. We were up for three days straight and Pickett turned to me and said, ‘Bobby, I ain’t going to sleep, I ain’t tired, I ain’t hungry. And all we are doing is writing hits. Let’s go and get a whole bunch more of this shit.’
I really believed I was giving him something good because it was something that worked for me, but then I heard about him getting busted for coke possession in the early 1990s and then I didn’t feel so good.
So I did blow for 20 years of my life. Two decades of snow. People would tell me I would be better off without it. What the fuck did they know? They weren’t living on the end of all that hate.
To add to the paranoia – and this brought me all the way down – my brothers were reluctant to be around. They knew the threats were out there against me. They didn’t know what to do, but without them I was totally alone, all by myself, and, because my father and mother had been against the marriage, there was no family in my corner. My mother had said, ‘I don’t think you should marry that woman, you don’t know nothing about that woman. That’s Mrs Cooke, that’s Sam’s wife.’
I said I was getting married anyway. I had thought I wanted to be a man – this made it so I would have to become one fast.
This guy Gene was my dealer. He was laying coke on me every day. I was spending $700 a week with Gene on coke. Barbara took care of the bill. He would bring it up to the house. I would tell Gene I didn’t want it no more. He said, ‘Nah, man. Here take it.’ Then I’d pour it out on to the glass coffee table in the lounge, chop out half a dozen killer lines on that smoked-glass top and snort most of it before he was at the bottom of the drive.
Barbara was always pushing me to record Gene. I told her the guy couldn’t sing. He had no voice, not that I’d heard anyway. She was adamant. All his life he’d been a dope dealer, but he’d got close to some entertainers, and now he thought he was one.
I took Gene to some of my shows. I even wrote a song. Jesus, that was a fucking low. Called it ‘You Got My Nose Wide Open’. I must have looked like the biggest joke in the world. I tried to sell the guy as a singer to a couple of record labels, but they weren’t buying.
‘Bobby, this kid has nothing,’ was the drift. ‘He may as well be throwing up.’ Finally, they found out what the catch was with me and Gene. Gene supplied the tonic.
I was using the coke and drinking to hide behind what was really happening in my life, but somehow I was still writing songs. Some good, some not so good, but Barbara did me one favour. I had come up with one tune called something like ‘Oh How I Miss My Baby’. I don’t know what got me on to writing that, but Barbara saw it and asked straight, ‘Are you unhappy here?’
‘I’m not unhappy.’
‘Then why would you be singing about “Oh How I Miss You”? Who do you miss, Bob?’
I didn’t know. Maybe I had Ernestine in mind, but I think I was just trying something out. Trying out some emotions, ones that I hadn’t yet experienced. So I didn’t know how to answer Barbara.
Barbara told me that if I really saw myself as a writer I had to be true. I shouldn’t make up stuff about missing someone if I wasn’t missing someone. Write about love if you’re in love and hate if you hate. ‘Be true to your art, don’t make it up,’ she said.
‘There are a lot of people who miss their baby and I am just trying to let them know that I understand how they feel.’ But I knew it would sound fake.
‘You can’t let them know you understand how they feel unless you’ve been there. Have you been there, Bob?’
From that time on, I made a commitment to myself that I would only write about what I had experienced. I gave Barbara credit for that. ‘Write about what it is and what you seen,’ she said. And I did.
We made a good couple like that. The age gap sometimes got in the way because she had been around, was much more worldly, and she was always aggravated by what she saw as my boyish ways. I wouldn’t ever make a scene, always had a quiet ‘Excuse me?’ when Barbara would use ‘Hey, you!’
She thought I was naive, and if somebody did something to put one over on me I would generally put up with it. Back then, anyway. Barbara wouldn’t. She would shout the house down until she had everyone doing it her way.
Also, Sam cast a long shadow. His presence hung over that marriage. No matter how we looked at it, we had got married right after Sam’s death and because of Sam’s death. While he was alive, we’d barely exchanged two words. The marriage and everything else only came up after Sam’s death. That only added fuel to any fiery arguments. And we had a few.
‘Why are you here?’ she’d shout.
‘Because of Sam.’
‘Sam? Hey, I want a man to love me, not my husband.’
‘I never loved you, I loved Sam. I only married you so I could protect you and these kids. I loved Sam.’
Barbara couldn’t believe it, but I told her, ‘Don’t play dumb on me. I never loved you like that. I loved everything that was part of Sam and you guys were. I just felt sorry for you.’
That brought a deathly silence. And then she exploded: ‘What did you say?’
The way I looked at it, it seemed like we never loved each other. Barbara just said, ‘Let’s get married,’ and we did. I had nothing else to do, I had no job. I had nothing going. I tried to explain it to her. I said, ‘I didn’t do this to hurt Sam, I did it because I thought Sam would appreciate me standing in the way of anything that could go wrong with the family. It’s like taking up a fight for your brother.’
That made her angry; that I was there for Sam, not her.
One night we were with a couple, Jim and his girl, Pinky. We were hanging at their place, having a drink. Suddenly, Barbara turned and asked if I was hip.
It was totally out of the blue, but I figured I was so I told her, ‘Yeah, I’m hip, babe.’
She asked again, ‘No, really, are you hip?’
‘Sure, baby. I’m hip.’ I wondered where this was going.
‘I hope so, sport.’
Then she laid it out for me. She wanted to go with this guy Jim. She said, ‘I want you to switch and be with his girlfriend.’
I’m surprised. Was I that hip? She thought I was scared. I told her I wasn’t. Disappointed, though. ‘Oh, baby,’ I thought, ‘we were going to be husband and wife, not part of a swinging party.’ What I said was, ‘I just done nothing like that.’
‘Well, let’s just try it one time.’
So I lay there with this girl Pinky and we’re trying to get it on, working some moves, but I couldn’t get nothing going. The more she worked on me the more my dick stayed hidden. It had disappeared. It just wasn’t happening and across the room I could see this guy on my wife and I couldn’t handle it.
Pinky didn’t help matters when she announced to the party, ‘I think Bobby is too square. His joint, it don’t matter what I’m doing to him, it ain’t there any more.’
I told them I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t handle it, I guess, and upped and walked. I headed straight f
or home, but I wasn’t in the place two minutes when Barbara came flying in behind me.
‘I love you,’ she said. ‘I was just fucking that guy.’
What was I supposed to think? That was all right then?
Barbara was still slipping me that $50 a week – she was taking care of me all right. I was totally under the thumb; she had me on a lead, like a dog. Her idea was to build a club where I could sing every week, like my own private venue and gig, but I told her I gotta make it on my own.
Then a cheque popped through the post, about $30,000. It was my first piece of money from royalties and all the other shit I had been doing. I finally got some money of my own and I wanted Barbara to have it, show that I could provide for her and her daughters, Linda and Tracey, to contribute and put something back. I wanted to be the man of the house.
Before I could bank the cheque, Barbara went to Chicago. While she was away another letter dropped on the doormat, but this wasn’t royalties. This one was addressed to my wife. It was a bluff envelope, kind of legal looking. I opened it. Wished I hadn’t. I saw from the paperwork it was related to an apartment in LA and some furnishings for it. The person the apartment had been set up for was the dealer, Gene. A cosy fuck pad.
My eyes fired red. I was furious. More than furious, I was hurt. I’d been made a fool of. Fucking Gene. Got me fucked up and then made a play for my wife. I broke down crying. Then I called Gene and told him not to come back up there with any dope or I’d jump on him.
So the thing boiled down. I sat there. I was totally fucking angry. Then I got Barbara on the horn. I told her straight, ‘You hurt me for the last time, baby. I’m leaving.’ We rowed on the phone. We rowed about the girl she got me with, Pinky. We rowed about the drugs I was on. We rowed ’cos I didn’t know where I was going with my music, where that was at. I was all screwed up.
She said, ‘I love you, I was just fucking him.’
I’d heard that before. I thought, ‘You should be fucking me. That’s the best part.’ What I said was, ‘Hey, I am really through with you.’ It ended when I slammed the phone down on her.
But hanging up had only ended that argument. I had my marriage to screw up. Barbara had already done her part, what came next was my side of the deal.
Linda, Barbara’s kid, had heard the row, probably seen the whole damn thing unravelling over the years. I sat there with the phone on my lap and she offered me some sympathy. Then she reminded me that it was her and me that was always supposed to be together: she had a point there.
From the moment I was under Sam’s wing, Barbara had said me and Linda would make a fine couple. She would tell Sam, ‘Save Bobby for Linda.’ But Barbara didn’t think it would fall like it did. I’ve blanked out most of what happened that night. After the row with Barbara, I told Linda not to worry about it and went to bed. I lay there thinking about that apartment that Barbara had rented Gene. How many other guys had she been with? What had she been doing while I was down in Memphis?
While I thought about that, the bedroom door opened. It was Linda. She slipped under the covers and got right up next to me. Linda was just a teenager. I swear I told her to go, but I didn’t say it loud enough. Linda had my attention. What I recall is Linda’s speech. It went like this: ‘I thought Mom was saving you for me, but she took you and look what she made out of you. You’re doing drugs and you drink.’
We could relate, we were young – even though I was married, I was still only in my early twenties. And the age gap between me and Linda was less than the one with Barbara. Both of us kids really.
‘You don’t even know what you are doing any more,’ Linda added. ‘You were always so young and innocent and look at you now, she’s hurting you. She shouldn’t do that.’
I told Linda that what we were doing was worse. She told me again that we were supposed to be together and that Barbara was too old for me.
‘She doesn’t want you. She’s ruining you.’
At the same time as she told me this she gave me an erection.
I said we got to do this and forget it. Barbara will kill me. We made love. Maybe I got into it because I figured it would hurt Barbara – hit her back, with her daughter. Twenty minutes and it was over. So was my marriage, effectively. And when it was, Linda told me, she’d be there for me. ‘You don’t deserve this unhappiness.’
When Barbara got back from Chicago, things appeared normal on the surface. Nothing was mentioned, all brushed under the carpet, but things had changed. A lot. Linda started to treat her mom differently. Every time Barbara and I were together, Linda would walk in on us, interrupt us no matter was going on. It was like Linda was out to challenge her mom. Become her rival in love.
I continued to creep into Linda’s room at night. I was supposed to be writing songs in the middle of the night, but really I was sleeping with my stepdaughter while her mother slept. It wasn’t pretty. I was totally fucked up. I mean, everything was going wrong.
I got caught with my pants down, literally. That’s when Barbara put the gun on me. Had it right up against my temple and told me to get the fuck out of the house.
I was shaking, I couldn’t put my pants on before I got shot – grazed. I hid in the garage and then ran on to the street in my shorts and flagged down the cops.
The cops took me back up to the house and took the gun off Barbara. She hadn’t calmed down, but she didn’t try to shoot anyone this time around. She told me flatly, ‘I want you out this house.’ She didn’t get an argument.
I moved out. We divorced in 1970.
CHAPTER 12
FIRE AND RAIN
After splitting with Ray Charles in 1968, I was on my own, fending for myself. I didn’t have my brothers around me so I became a solo artist. I signed on at Minit Records. The first hit, ‘What Is This’, came along pretty quickly.
Then, after dumping all my best tunes on Pickett, I cut the covers ‘Fly Me To The Moon’, ‘California Dreamin” and ‘I Left My Heart In San Francisco’, the first two hitting big again in 1968. Then came the R&B hits ‘It’s Gonna Rain’, ‘How I Miss You Baby’ and ‘More Than I Can Stand’ over the next couple of years.
Around this time, we had a little trouble out on the road, in Savannah, Georgia. I had put a band together and was constantly out touring, drumming up audiences to make those hits. We’d had a little problem with the equipment at one club – it wasn’t there. There was some talk of cancelling, but a guy in the audience had other ideas. He had come into the club with a pistol and started shooting. Winged someone and they were lying in the aisle, bleeding. He then jammed a piece of metal in the door so no one could get out and started firing up into the ceiling, putting a couple of slugs in an old chandelier. Man, I was scared to death.
The crowd went quiet. You could have heard a pin drop. My guitarist ran off stage and locked himself in the john. I must have looked like a joke up there on stage – so I didn’t stay. I ran right after my guitar player and knocked on that bathroom door, trying to get in, and waited for the law to arrive.
I liked to hang out, play some tunes. Musicians knew that and I’d get a call – see if I wanted to jam, rustle up some licks.
One day in 1970, I got a phone call. By the end of the same long day, the caller’s life was ended, but the world had gained a beautiful song. Her name was Janis Joplin and the tune was ‘Mercedes Benz’.
Janis called and told me she was recording her new album, Pearl. She had a request. ‘Everybody tells me they have recorded at least one of your songs. I just want to say I’ve recorded one. Can you bring me a song?’
At first, I thought the phone call was a wind-up. I didn’t know Janis, had never met her, and I wasn’t heavily into her music. So I said, ‘Janis Joplin, sure. And I’m John Kennedy.’
She had trouble convincing me after that. She got the album’s producer, Paul Rothchild, to pick up the phone. Paul told me it really was Janis and she wanted a song from me. He made his pitch: ‘She cannot do this album unless you give her a s
ong.’
I was persuaded and I told them I’d be right down.
Janis was a prankster and when I rolled up she was sitting there with a straw hat and fiddling with a little bell. She shook her hand and it sounded. Ding, ding, ding. I wondered what that was for, but she was straight to business. ‘Hey, Bobby. Have you got some songs for me?’
I had a whole bag full. One of them was a song called ‘Trust Me’. She said, ‘See this bell?’ She rang it again. ‘Play your songs, and every time I don’t like something I will ring it.’ OK, that was what the bell was for.
I started off with ‘Trust Me’. I played it through, got to the hook and watched her hang. The bell stayed silent. When I got to the end, she was out of her chair. ‘I love it, I love it, that’s the song. Bobby, we got one.’
Man, I thought, it was going to be easy. I could clean up. ‘Got any more?’ she asked, but every other song I played after that the bell would come out and go ding, ding, ding. I must have sat playing for a couple of hours, going through nearly all my tunes, some by my brothers and a whole bunch that people had sent me to record. She would make me sing about half the verse of the next song and then she rang that bell like a town crier.
‘Hey, don’t you get it? I’m not going to cut any more of your songs. I only want to do one.’
‘Fuck it,’ I thought. ‘She’s getting ready to fuck with me.’
She asked if I wanted to stick around and play on the album. I didn’t mind, I wasn’t doing nothing else.
We showed ‘Trust Me’ to her outfit, The Full Tilt Boogie Band, cut it and wrapped it up.
