James Rhodes

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0:30Hello and welcome to This Cultural Life, the series in which leading artistic figures choose the most significant influences and experiences that have inspired their own creativity. I'm John Wilson and my guest in this episode is the concert pianist James Rhodes, a relative latecomer as a professional musician. In 2010, he became the first core classical pianist to be signed to the world's biggest rock music label, Warner Brothers. But his adult life story is also one involving mental illness, addiction and suicidal despair in the wake of violent sexual abuse that he suffered as a child. James Rhodes has presented television documentaries about classical music and written five books, including his international bestselling memoir, Instrumental.

1:12He's recorded nine albums, including his most recent one, which features work by Bach, Chopin, Brahms and other composers, and he's called Mania. James Rhodes, welcome to This Cultural Life. Thank you for having me. You're here with us today sitting at the piano. How much time do you spend at the keyboard generally every day? Too much. I mean, never more than four hours unless I'm recording. My rule of thumb is that if you have to practice for more than four hours a day, you're doing something wrong. But if you're really practicing, you get quite fussy and you get a lot more done, obviously. Are you one of those people that has to get up in the morning and go straight to the keyboard?

1:49Or do you assign four hours in the day? No, I kind of drag myself terrified to the keyboard before anything else. And before I know it, I've done my four hours and then I can relax. Terrified. So it still holds some anxiety just even before you put your fingers on the keys still. Well, dude, I mean, you walk out on stage in front of two and a half thousand people who've shelled out 50 quid to come and hear you. It's like, yes, of course, Brian. You've got to get it right. You've got to get it right. But also not just for that, but this music has carried me since I was a child. Like, I owe it. The minimum is to give my absolute best.

2:27You are a renowned and successful pianist, but of course your personal story of surviving appalling childhood abuse is probably as well known as your playing, James. To what extent has music helped you recover? It's a big question. Believe me, the last thing I want to be is the kind of poster boy for child abuse. But if you want to make changes in certain things, I think you have to talk about certain things that are not necessarily kind of easy to talk about. As far as music is concerned, I think the only way I can answer that is it's my oxygen. So for me, a world without music, I mean, it's inconceivable.

3:08It's like a world without the sky. It makes zero sense to me.

3:19On This Cultural Life, my guests talk about their formative influences and experiences. And your first choice is a piece of music which is so important to you. It's the Bach Chacon from the partita No. 2 for violin. Although you initially heard a version which had been transcribed for piano and you heard it when you were seven years old. Before we talk about this life-changing piece of music, though, James, we need to hear about what was going on in your life around this time. And you've written very movingly about how your childhood effectively stopped at the age of five years old, soon after you started attending a very expensive prep school very near to your house in North London.

4:00How did the abuse start? That's an interesting way of putting it, your childhood stopped. I suppose it did, didn't it? I mean, this was very, very early 80s, where things like grooming, we didn't know. Nobody really knew. There was this kind of ignorance around all of that. And so when my gym teacher would ask me to stay behind and he'd give me a little presence, And, you know, these people are very good at identifying the sensitive, fragile, insecure, malleable kids. And then one day it all kind of he felt, I suppose, that I had his trust enough to lock me inside that kind of storage room. And that's when the abuse started.

4:53And it went on for years and it was increasingly violent to the point where I needed three back operations just to try and repair the damage that had been done. So, yeah, childhood stopped. Put on hold, perhaps. I think a few decades later it's been possible, luckily, to find some of that kind of childhood optimism. It was the most appalling physical violence that you endured over that time. You were being repeatedly raped by this teacher. Yes. Why did the other teachers not suspect what was going on? They did. I mean, one of them found me with blood coming down my legs and on my face and hysterical after a gym class or a boxing class.

5:49And she went to the headteacher and said, something's not right. And in kind of quite typical 1980s style, the headteacher said, oh, he needs to toughen up and forget it. And nothing was done. And this teacher, she was my favorite teacher. She was so sweet. she wrote to me actually many many years later apologizing and to answer your question i'll i'll tell you what she told me which was that you know she was so innocent it never occurred to her that an adult would rape a child it just didn't enter her mind she thought maybe there was some physical violence but but again you know it it's not an excuse but it was the 80s i would like actually you know what that's not true i was going to say i would like to think that now if the same thing happened, actions would be taken.

6:38But actually, I don't think that is true. There is and remains, sadly, this kind of culture of denial or secrecy or shame that does actually stop people reporting. And I presume at the age of five, six, seven, you must have been living in a state of constant terror, presumably too scared to tell anybody yourself about what was going on. Yeah, I was in constant terror. I didn't sleep a lot. I had all the textbook symptoms of children who were being abused, like tics and wetting the bed and various kind of OCD behaviors, flicking light switches, tapping out rhythms. I mean, I was a walking kind of example of what to look for for a trained professional.

7:25And again, nothing was done. Those are the subconscious signals of crying for help, aren't they? There are a lot of them. Even, I mean, I had rashes on my skin and eczema and things that like somehow find my body trying to find a way to shout about what was happening. And I became kind of complicit with this guy. What happens with, I'm going to talk about me, what happened in my case was that he gained my trust. He convinced me not to say anything. and every time I was around him in public with other people and I acted kind of like everything was fine and I shook his hand and I said yes sir and I smiled and you become slightly more bonded and it becomes even harder to talk and in the end you become what I felt was kind of partners in crime with this guy which is a terrible weight to bear as a seven-year-old, as an eight-year-old and I think that's in a way almost does more damage than the physical stuff in my case, because you become complicit in your own abuse.

8:29Amidst all of this horror, you heard the Bach Chaconne. Yeah. Where and where? I found a cassette tape. I don't know who the pianist was, but this piece of music was on it. And it was just, it was a before and after moment.

9:00It's so hard still to put into words, but I think because it's music and there were no lyrics, it goes underneath words, and it just kind of tunnelled in to that part of me that I felt had just been extinguished. And for the first time I felt, you know what, the world is actually a pretty decent place.

9:35It changed everything. From that moment, I became obsessed with music. And it's not an easy piece. And it is the transcription of the violin... Which is much better. It was originally written for violin, but the piano is a far greater instrument than the violin. Transcribed by Busoni. By Busoni. It's like 16 minutes long, and the opening is quite dark. It starts very stern.

10:13That's the theme and it just builds and builds. Almost funereal. It is, exactly. and the beautiful thing is he built it as a kind of monument to his wife who died suddenly and Bach was away on business the love of his life died and by the time he'd rushed back she'd already been buried so he didn't get a chance to say goodbye there are so many moments where you think it's going to end and then it carries on there are these kind of false endings he can't quite let it go without saying just one more thing there's always just one more thing

11:05There's so many misperceptions of this guy. People think he's dry, unromantic, academic. I mean, this guy with 21 children, like a Baroque Mick Jagger. Half of them died in childbirth or infancy. Love of his life died. His parents died. He was orphaned by the age of 10. He had the shit kicked out of him when he was a kid. He was bullied senseless and just surrounded, drenched in grief, this man. And, of course, he had music to express that. None of those biographical details you would have known when you first heard this piece. No, of course not. So what appealed in the years of... You were seven years old when you were...

11:40Yeah, but that's the magic of this music.

11:55It's like a magical formula. It's a language that you're born fluent in. Everyone. It's innate. And so somehow it was like a key that just unlocked something. And that led to this kind of absolute obsession with classical music. And not just classical music. I'm slightly embarrassed to say also kind of wham, box fizz. Like it was just music full stop. And then Queen, which is kind of a saving grace and Bowie. And music is music. I've always hated this idea that we segregate kind of classical music as if it's some kind of high art. And whatever music floats your boat is music. Whose cassette was this?

12:32This was just lying around at home. Did you listen to classical music as a family? Was it playing anyway? Was it something you were familiar with? No, no. So this was just a chance you put this cassette in. Thank God. Can you imagine if it was a Bible or something? No, this was it. I suppose, you know, in many ways, it's like a kid finding a football. And this is the most beautiful thing of all, is because I became so obsessed with not just this piece, but all of this music, and I would listen to it. It became like proof that the world was an okay place. It became a way to be isolated and alone, but with company.

13:07It created my own little world. And every night I would listen to music and I would pretend it was me playing. And if it was a live recording, even better because there would be applause and I would pretend it's me accepting the applause bowering on stage. And now, fast forward, 35 years, whatever, I am actually on those stages playing the same pianos as some of these pianists who I worshipped as a kid. It's just, I don't quite know how it happened. It just absolutely blows my mind. About a decade ago in your memoir, Instrumental, you wrote about the Bach Chaconne, and you said, it set me up for life, and without it, I would have died years ago.

13:47What did you mean by that? I think that's absolutely true. And actually, ironically, it's another transcription. Oh, this is a nice story. I was in several psychiatric hospitals, but one of them was quite straight. You weren't allowed music. You weren't allowed... It was very... The little iPod or Mini had just been invented and someone smuggled me in this tiny little thing. And this was written by a guy called Marcello and he wrote this oboe concerto. And Bach loved it so much, he made a transcription for the keyboard. And I had never heard this piece before. And I was in this hospital and I was drugged up to the gills to the point there was drool coming out of my mouth.

14:30I was almost walking into walls. And I had attempted suicide by this point, at least twice. And I heard this piece, and it had the same effect as the Chaconne, in that it kind of absolutely made me feel, if something like this exists in the world, it can't all be bad. And what I love about this piece is that there's a heartbeat running through it, and there's a melody that's so beautiful. It's like a, it divides. It starts with one note and then two and then four and then eight. I'll just play the beginning so you get the idea.

15:40It's such a luxury to have a style in my God bless the BBC. Oh my God. But you see it. So I'm under the covers listening to that in secret because otherwise I'll be punished. And it was like I was a kid again.

16:06Back to the Bar Chaconne. What is your relationship with that piece now? And how different is it to when you heard it at seven years old? It changes all the time. This is the miracle of classical music. This is why so many musicians re-record the same pieces. It has an entire universe within it. It tells a story. and the wonderful thing is that we get to make up the storyline in our own heads. And you were introduced to this at a time when you were undergoing such appalling treatment, physical abuse. The teacher responsible, Peter Lee, was arrested and he was charged many years later when you first revealed publicly what had happened to you as a child.

16:47And you know what he was doing when he was arrested? He was a part-time boxing coach for under 10-year-olds. and people say, oh, you shouldn't talk about this stuff. And you say to one of the parents of those kids he was coaching that I should keep quiet about this stuff. Yeah, and he died waiting to go on trial in the end. So justice was never done. How did that leave you feeling? I mean, justice is never done, even if he'd gone to prison. I don't, you know, it's such a misconception that somehow if someone's caught and go, that's justice. It's like people who say, oh, don't worry, time heals all wounds.

17:23No, it doesn't. Shut up. It just doesn't. Or, you know, you should forgive him and it will do you good. No, I don't buy that for a minute. So it doesn't make any difference? It wouldn't have made any difference if he had served? No, not to me. I mean, it's too late. It was not a great experience writing that book. And it was not a cathartic thing. It caused me actually a lot of pain writing it. But one of the lovely things about this book is that it gave me a bit of a microphone and I moved to Spain. And it gave me enough of a microphone. When I moved to Spain, I could see that there were stories every week about child abuse in schools, in the church, in football clubs.

18:05And I wrote an open letter to the prime minister. And long story short, I went to their version of 10 Downing Street, which is called Moncloa. We sat down. and three and a half years later they introduced what's known as the Rhodes Law which is a child protection law that makes Spain now, according to the United Nations, the number one country in the world for child protection. It changes so many things from how often the victims testify to the statute of limitations to a duty to report to having coordinated in every school in the country. It's an amazing thing and that came about purely as a result of talking about this stuff in this book and everyone says even in my family it's like there is this culture of oh we shouldn't talk about it it's somehow it's shameful or embarrassing and personally i think that's just because we do not want to acknowledge what we're capable of doing to our most vulnerable but you can find positivity i can now yeah yeah i can now and thank god because i mean i honestly i'm going to turn 50 in a couple of months.

19:11And I didn't, I really genuinely didn't expect to hit that landmark.

19:28Your next choice, James Rhodes, is Colin Stone, your piano teacher at Harrow School. How much piano teaching had you had up to this point? None, basically nothing. I mean, I was knocking around tunes on a piano much younger, but never with a proper teacher. And then at 14, I found Colin Stone at Harrow. I had so much passion for the piano and for certain pieces. And I gave them these kind of godlike statuses. They were so unfathomably complex. And you could read music at this point? I could read music kind of more or less. Who had taught you? Me, just in a locked practice room. And then Colin came along.

20:08And it was lovely because some of the lessons would be at his house. And I would smoke cigarettes in his garden. And I would talk about Horowitz and Glenn Gould and my hero pianist. And he would reciprocate with the enthusiasm. And then we would sit down and he would show me how to take pieces that I thought were just unplayable and actually get my fingers to do what was necessary. He pushed you? He pushed me and he was kind and he was patient. But by the time that you started to be taught by Colin Stone, you're 13, 14 years old. I'm 14 when I met him. Hitting puberty? Yes. What sort of state were you in as a young man at that time?

20:51I was drunk most of the time. Since the age of 9 or 10, I'd started smoking. And my great obsessions at school were alcohol, smoking and piano. And they were all roots away from the abuse that you'd suffered. I suppose. I mean, I think, you know, most kids are obsessed with music, aren't they? Most kids go through a phase where they enjoy a cheeky cigarette or, you know, I think... Not many kids try to emulate Horowitz and Glenn Gould. Oh, wouldn't the world be great if they did? No, wouldn't it be so much better? But no, I don't know. You know what? I would listen to these recordings. And it's another thing.

21:36You listen to Horowitz play live. They're fistfuls of wrong notes at times. And yet the passion. And how was Colin Stone teaching you? What was his particular technique that made him so different? Bless him. He did the absolute best he could. But I was kind of unteachable. I'll be honest with you. I wanted to not just run before I could walk. I wanted to sprint like Usain Bolt. I would like turn up to class with these scores of like Rachmaninoff concertos and be like, dude, come on, we've got to learn this. And he would just go, oh no. I think he realised that I was largely unteachable, but he would kind of indulge me and he would be patient and he would help the most he can.

22:17Could he see potential? 100%. Could he see or was he encouraging you to think about a career in music? Yeah, and what happened, sadly, was that, in effect, I was offered a scholarship to music college, which was my, I mean, my dream. Can you imagine, oh, how different things would have been to have three or four years, like, to learn all the Beethoven sonatas and the concertos and just be around music? And my dad, in his infinite wisdom, decided that that was not a good thing to do. He just said, no, not allowed to do that. Well, you have to get a proper degree. Yeah, basically, and a proper job.

22:55It was all very manipulative and not particularly pleasant. And so I stopped playing the piano for 10 years. Before that, were you playing for your parents? Were they aware of your ability? Yeah, we had a piano at home. And they couldn't see that that might be a real opportunity for you? No, it was worse than that. No, God, no. I mean, I would buy, I remember buying a cassette tape of Ashkenazi playing the Brahms piano concertos. And I remember my dad going, why would you waste your pocket money on things? But again, I understand it because how many kids are like, I want to be an actress or I want to be a football star.

23:33And when you think of the percentage who are going to make it, I understand that with all of his experience and with all of his history, I've done a lot of therapy. You can tell, right? He did the best he could with the information he had, which is, you know what? Music college is an enormous risk. you were a late starter, you're not very good. Like, there's no way you're going to get a job. Do a proper degree. And then if you really want to, maybe you could do a postgrad in music or something like that. So this opportunity was denied. Yes. And then you stopped playing the piano. For 10 years.

24:04What a teenager, right? I was like, fine, I'm just not going to touch the piano again. Not a note? No, nothing. And then when I was 28, I thought, you know what? I'd been working in the city. I was miserable. I mean... What were you doing in the city? It was a finance company. and it was purely to make money, there was absolutely zero redeeming features at all. It was just this, to the point, it's not a very pleasant thing to say, but I actually lost control of my bowels on the tube more than once going to work with the stress and the horror of it all. But I thought, okay, I'm going to do what normal people do.

24:42So I'm going to get a job, I'm going to get married, I'm going to have a kid. And I did all of those things. And I thought, I'm not good enough to be a professional pianist. So I'm going to do the next best thing. And I'm going to become an agent. I'm going to live vicariously. So the greatest pianist alive still is, by the way, back then. It's called Grigory Sokolov. And I figured out who his agent was. And he lives in Verona in Italy. And I wrote to him and I sent him a big box of champagne. And I said, Franco, teach me everything. I want to be an agent. And he said, OK. And I went to Verona and he had a piano.

25:17and he got me kind of drunk on spaghetti that he'd made. And he said, do you play? And I said, well, yeah, I played when I was a kid, but I hadn't played for years. And he said, oh, play something. And this is the first time you've touched a keyboard for 10 years. Yeah, but it is a bit like a bike. I mean, it's not, but it is. I played something. I can't even remember what. And he was like, no, James, you're not going to become an agent. You're going to study with my friend, Eduardo Strabioli, who's a teacher. He said, I don't know if you're going to make it as a pianist, but you're not going to become an agent you've got to study with him and you never know maybe something can happen so i met eduardo who was this like aggressive violent genius one wrong note and there'd be like something being hurled towards me from the corner of the room like him shouting at me and and i would go every month for like three or four days and i would study with him i would go back to london i'd quit my job and i would practice practice practice and it all came back and it came but it came back like so much better i mean he showed because i had the discipline of an adult now i wasn't like this excited kid anymore and man i've never worked so hard in my life took four or five years and how were you coping psychologically at this point but that's the issue i would have thought things would be going great what happens and what no one tells you if you were sexually abused when you were a child and you then have your own child when that kid turns the age you were when the abuse started your world has a 95 chance of absolutely falling apart it's like and i i i fell apart i had a massive breakdown and i didn't know why i was cutting myself with razor blades i was planning how to kill myself i was so depressed that i could barely move and I spent nine months in in various psychiatric wards some of them locked some of them not suicide attempts and um and no piano therapy no god no no piano and I got out in 2007 when I was 32 lost my marriage perhaps understandably and only then I started playing the piano again and I really had nothing.

27:36I was living in a tiny basement flat, lost access to my child for a short period of time, which is possibly the most painful thing that can happen to anyone and kind of had to start with nothing. In 2009, you released your debut album, which was called Razorblaze, Little Pills, Big Pianos, which obviously references some of the struggles that you've been going through but the album would never have happened without an amazing chance meeting with the man who was to become your manager how did you meet denny blay denny and i we met in a queue at a coffee shop to be honest with you i was still on quite a lot of medication because i'd recently come out of a psychiatric hospital and i didn't have many inhibitions let's And I started talking to this guy in the queue and I had some music scores with me because I would go to Steinway Hall to practice at that point.