Going Crazy: (Left Foot, Right Foot, Breathe)

By Tim James

Going Crazy (Left foot, right foot, breathe) is a candid look at the inner workings of professional songwriting. It is also an honest, vulnerable memoir about overcoming life's trials and tribulations. James has lived an inspiring story of going from a small-town country boy to living and thriving in the big city of Los Angeles, then back again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tim James
• Release date: Jan 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9798989081516

Tim James

Tim James is a certified Cape Wine Master and freelance wine journalist. He is the regional consultant on South Africa for The World Atlas of Wine and a taster and associate editor on the annual Platter Guide to South African Wine. In addition to his weekly column for the Mail & Guardian, his work also appears regularly in The World of Fine Wine and online at www.grape.co.za.

Book preview

Preface

I’m a straight shooter, so i’ll shoot you straight. This is my first attempt at writing a book. I’m a songwriter and when I started this project, it was intended to be a cathartic exercise and I never really thought it would see the light of day in regard to being published. However, like many other facets of life, our plans are not necessarily the plans that come to fruition. I felt inspired to start this book after playing a show at the world-famous bluebird café in nashville, after a young lady (who happened to be a motivational speaking agent), came up to me and said my story was absoutely fascinating, a thought that had never really occurred to me. The idea of going from small town tennessee boy to los angeles and back, and in the process becoming an award-winning songwriter amazed her. Though I initially shrugged it off, one night I simply started typing. I believe the old adage that work begets work and the more I wrote, the more I wrote. I didn’t wake up each moring and start writing my thoughts, but in the dark of night, I found myself wanting to continue telling my story. Seven years later, it has become a reality. It’s a little bit frightening putting your thoughts out there for the world to criticize and I’m sure there will be plenty of people that will label me as weak yet tough, hardheaded yet soft, kind yet mean as a damn snake. I can’t do much about that and as a writer of any kind, I think we are compelled to tell our truth as we see it. I do not fancy myself as someone who holds the key to anything other than a couple of very elementary characteristics-resilience and honesty. As you will hopefully read, I have, (in the words of abraham lincoln) been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdon, and that of all about me seemed insufficient for the day. I am well aware of the fact that some of the despair I endured was of my own making and I live with that. I also believe the hurt and pain of the past are there to remind us not to repeat our mistakes and then expect something different, as that would be some form of insanity. I hope that if you actually take the time to read this, you would be encouraged to chase your dreams. To dust yourself off when you are kicked to the ground. To believe that life is a hell of a journey and we are all blessed to be taking it. And to never give up. I hope you laugh and cry and think and feel. If you do, in some way, I have accomplished more than I ever dreamed possible.

Dying

I already know the songs I want played. My Way by Sinatra; Fantasy by Earth, Wind and Fire; and the traditional version of the hymn, It Is Well with My Soul.

Although it is customary here in the South to have an open casket, I sure as hell don’t want that. Vain as I am, why would I want people to see my greasy comb-over that the funeral home spent two minutes on, my wrinkled face with some cheap foundation makeup on it, and me lying there as hard as woodpecker lips?

It’s always been odd to me that Southerners make a point of walking by an open casket and saying, Doesn’t he look good?

And it’s downright crazy that people respond with, He sure does, bless his heart, because the truth is we look fragile, and skinny, and well, dead. I’ve never seen a good-looking dead person.

I want fried chicken and vegetables in the snack room, and I want beer served. And I don’t mean Budweiser or Natural Light. I want some good IPAs and other micro-brewed varieties.

I don’t want one of those rolling videos that goes on for hours showing a few still shots of me as a younger man and then two hundred of me being pushed in a freaking wheelchair around a nursing home, waving to the camera. I want to be remembered for being young and vibrant, athletic and handsome, cool, kind, and funny. I want pictures of me in my twenties, when I was eating steroids like chiclets and had hair that would make John Stamos jealous. I want my kids to get up and say something about my legacy, whatever that might be, and then I want people to laugh and hug and tell some stories. The good ones. That’s how I want my funeral service to be.

It’s odd that I think about it, but I do. I run and work out and eat salads with grilled chicken. As far as I know, I’m nowhere near any approach to death. I’m a healthy 55-year-old man with no medical issues. But I think about plane crashes and deep vein thrombosis, cancer. How the hell can a fat person eating Twinkies and drinking Coke outlive a guy who eats right, drinks apple cider vinegar, and exercises?

Yes, I think about dying; more than I should. Maybe it’s because I’ve cheated death more than once. That doesn’t sound like much, but that’s because more than likely, it never happened to you. I don’t mean getting a high fever or having to go to the hospital for pneumonia. I’m not talking about having to go the Urgent Care for a broken arm. I mean seeing the freaking light and hearing THE VOICE, then hearing your own voice, screaming, Oh hell no!!, scratching and clawing, ’dying’ to get back to life, because you’ve got living left to do. Each time it happened to me, I remember thinking, I wanna go back.

Writing

I write the songs that make the whole world sing. I write the songs of love and special things. I write the songs that make the young girls cry. I write the songs, I write the songs. That’s the chorus to I Write the Songs, a #1 hit for Barry Manilow, written by Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys. Love Barry or hate him, the song itself is a true representation of a songwriter. The tagline, I am music and I write the songs is about as true as it gets for me.

I spend most of my days making shit up. No joke. I’m a professional songwriter. I either sit in a room with one of my friends, or on some occasions, a stranger, trying to make something rhyme with love for the 100 millionth time. The Temptations did it, Henley and Frey did it, Lennon and McCartney did it, so why can’t I? There are a thousand obvious answers to that question, but let’s proceed.

It is both rewarding and frustrating, being a professional in the music industry. I have had #1 songs, Song of the Year nominations, and even a Grammy win. But lately I’ve been spending more time sitting in the recliner, staring at the walls.

I’ve never been accused of being bipolar or schizophrenic, manic depressive, or having any sort of mental illness. I’ve never felt particularly crazy. But lately it often feels like I’m losing it. Hence the title, GOING CRAZY. What does that even mean? Hell if I know. I made it up.

Confession: I frequently stare at nothing, thinking and wondering, pondering, dreaming, drifting, napping. I daydream about parasailing in Hawaii; sitting in the front row at The Comedy Store in Hollywood, watching Richard Pryor; playing basketball at Beamon Park and the Hollywood YMCA against George Clooney, before he became Clooney. I think of one-night-stands and sordid affairs, romantic love, guys I’ve hit in the mouth, guys who have hit me in the mouth. I think about my dad and mom, my youth, and the future. I think about good times and regrets.

Trust me, I know every cliché line about making peace with the past, how I’d never be where I am if I hadn’t followed that path. But I left broken hearts and black eyes scattered on the road behind me, all in the name of a good time. Well, maybe they WERE actually lessons that DID lead me to where I am today. Some of those good times were really, really wild and fun, and some were downright insane.

Sometimes, as I’m sitting in the recliner staring at the ceiling fan, I can still feel the burn of Jack Daniels I was drinking at my friend Johnny Bond’s house, as we watched the Tyson/Holyfield fight. Other times, I can smell the salty air in Marina Del Rey and feel the sand underneath my feet on a Saturday morning run. I see beer bottles on coffee tables and people in parachute pants on Melrose Blvd. Motocross bikes and Grandma’s house. My first love. My first dog. I wanna drink it all in and taste the past.

Learning

Today I heard the song In My Life by The Beatles. In the words of John Lennon, the song was a remembrance of friends and lovers of the past. I too remember places and things from the past. But more importantly I remember people from my past. And in this crazy life of mine, I’ve loved them all. Well, most of them.

Today I pulled a muscle in hot yoga class. It was hot; hotter than two rats cracking in a wool sock hot. I’ve always viewed exercise as my savior. Instead of going to the bar during the week, I go to the gym. And sometimes the bar… after the gym. These days, when some injury occurs that years ago I would not even have noticed, I am now damn near out of commission for days. At one point I pulled a muscle in my pectoral area, and convinced myself I had heart issues.

It’s not like I’m a hypochondriac; I’m not looking for anything to be wrong. I just think about life and the real consequences we may face. What is the hereafter like? Will we actually meet our maker? Will Jeffrey Dahmer be there, and if so, what will he eat? Will I go in a car wreck, or will cancer get me? What if the dryer catches on fire during the night? All reasonable yet weird questions that weigh on my mind. I certainly never thought about such things when I was a boy.

The sixties were a cool time to be a boy, and I was all-boy. By the time I was ten I had been to the hospital four times for head injuries. I seemed to have a penchant for them. You could have looked up reckless in the dictionary and there would have been a glossy portrait of me.

By the time I was in middle school we had moved three times. When I was twelve, we lived on a small farm in rural Rutherford County, Tennessee. My dad had an eighth-grade education and was one of ten children raised in poverty, so he knew the value of steady work. He moved us to the farm so we could tend the garden and feed the hogs, all 110 of them.

There were no alarm clocks waking us up in the morning. You knew your ass better be up and ready to work by 5:30AM or there’d be a price to pay. My dad was raised up hard and did not tolerate a smart mouth or laziness. I had both. However, my two brothers and I would rise and put on our work clothes and march our butts to the barn. We did this every single day because pigs do not take a day off. They gotta eat. And crap. And eat.

At the time, the toils of the morning seemed like more than a kid could bear, but when I look back now, those were some of the best days of my life. I remember the smell of bacon (didn’t have to go far to get that) frying in the iron skillet, and the taste of fresh biscuits with homemade strawberry jelly, like it was yesterday. I also remember my dad and I walking the dusty trail to the barn, talking about girls, and Pete Rose, and God. Sometimes I wanna go back.

I rode the bus to and from school. Mr. Mayfield was the driver and he, like most other men in that day, had little tolerance for horseplay. So one day, when Donnie Johnson bet me a dollar I wouldn’t moon the car behind us on the drive home, I dropped trow. Unfortunately for me, the driver of the car was Julie Comer’s mother, and when Julie got off the bus at the next stop, her mom ran to the bus screaming like she’d never seen a kid’s ass before. I sat quietly in the back row with my head down, but when I looked up I saw Mr. Mayfield and Donnie having a conversation. It wasn’t until the next morning when I was called to the principal’s office that I realized Donnie had ratted me out.

Mr. Haile retrieved the well-worn paddle from behind his desk and told me to hold onto the corner. He was a big man—once a football player and now the football coach—strong as an ox. He gave me three licks and I fought off tears until I told him I was sorry for my mistake and made it to the bathroom stall. I sat there and whimpered for a minute until I felt the anger from being ratted out come over me like a wave.

I vowed to get Donnie back, and when some money was stolen from a purse on the bus a couple of weeks later, I told Mr. Mayfield I’d seen Donnie take it. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about whether or not he was guilty; I only cared about him getting his butt busted like I did.

I wasn’t wired like other kids. I don’t know how many times I heard my mother tell me about the verse in the bible where God says, Vengeance is mine. But, is it?

Bullying

Well I won’t back down. No I won’t back down. You can stand me up at the gates of hell but I won’t back down. The song I Won’t Back Down has always resonated with me. I didn’t want to be pushed around and yet to some degree, it was simply in my nature. I don’t think Petty could have hit the nail on the head any better when he penned that tune. And it still applies today. For instance, when my cousin says, He’s trying to make American great again, as he takes a swig of a Natural Light in his MAGA t-shirt, and follows that with, and no matter what he says or tweets, his heart is in the right place…, I am beyond perplexed.

Isn’t what you say a direct reflection of what’s in your heart? Maybe we should all speak kinder and act more like Jesus Christ and practice his lessons about ‘the least of these’. Like working with orphans and widows, and simply being kind. I say this with my pen because I don’t want to engage in verbal confrontation with the hard-core religious sector. As my dad would say, I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.

They say you can’t be born with hatred in your heart or with racism in your soul, but I have come to believe we are hardwired a certain way. I think Charles Manson was a genetic mistake; born with some sort of messed up wiring. I also think Mother Teresa was genetically wired with unwavering kindness in her heart. I was born with a giving heart and a performer’s soul. I also have a need for competition, with a little bit of a wild streak.

My parents were church-going, teetotaling, bible-toting Christians, and well, I am not. They did not just talk the talk; they walked the walk to the best of their ability. Mom was so non-confrontational, which stemmed from her deep desire to be kind, that anything emotionally disruptive or negative got swept under the rug for fear of an argument. My parents abstained from alcohol, and I have come to believe that the things you force your kids to abstain from are the things they want to do most.

I often wonder which parts of our behavior can be attributed to DNA and which parts are response to our environment. My ex-wife’s parents are a sober alcoholic who got clean in the last fifteen years, and one who partakes daily of ganja. Although their children were around weed, booze, and drugs from a young age, those same children grew into adults who choose to abstain on almost every occasion.

As a result of a strict Methodist upbringing, I was pretty non confrontational as well… until just before the Christmas break of eighth grade. Although I was wiry, strong, and