welcome to hardtalk. i'm sarah montague. my guest today is living his dream — he is an internationally acclaimed concert pianist and successful recording artist, but read his account of his life and it resembles a nightmare. when he is away from the piano, james rhodes is still haunted by the violent sexual abuse he suffered from years from the age of six. he has written about how it drove him to drink, take drugs, self harm, and spend time in a psychiatric hospital — and how he was saved by music, only rediscovering in his 30s that he could really play the piano. but in this latest book, he recounts what his successful life really feels like, and it is almost unbearable and distressing to hear. how can he live with the pain of the past? james rhodes, welcome to hardtalk. it is nice to be here, thank you. quite a dramatic introduction, i have to say. quite a dramatic book. yeah, possibly. and you intended it to be. no, i never intended it. the whole drama thing, i've had quite enough of. sometimes it can be quite sensational to talk about certain topics, and to me, what i really wanted to do was just tell the truth and be transparent. and so, so much of our lives today seems to entail kind of perfectly curated instagram selfies and pretending everything is a certain way, and that we somehow have all the rules and we know how to live perfectly well, and actually, i think the reality, certainly for me and i think for a lot of us, is very different, that actually life is quite challenging and it can be quite messy, and it is ok to kind of, admit is the wrong word but it is ok to say that, to talk about it, to be open about it. and you have been very open about it in your book, but the descriptions seemed that almost any time that you are away from the piano, on your own, you are almost in a state of constant torment. is that unfair? do you know, it is probably not unfair. i think when you put it like that, god, ifeel more depressed now than when i came in. no, actually, i think it is unfair, i would not say almost any time. there are more and more moments that i feel quite comfortable with my place in the world, but there are a surprising number, large number of moments where i do feel very tormented but i think, the thing is, i don't think i'm alone in that. i really think that many of us wake up a lot of mornings with that idea of god, i have had too much to think last night and ijust had those voices and all that dialogue going on, today is going to be awful. you look at yourself in the mirror and you just think oh god, i'm a disaster. i feel destroyed, i don't think that is uncommon. but it is quite extreme for you. it is extreme with me only because of where it lead potentially, only because of... because of where you have been in the past? exactly, because i have a history of being in various locked psychiatric wards and suicide attempts and am, i suppose, understandably nervous about going back there. so when i have a bad day and things seem to be spiralling out of control, my fear is that i am not too long away from ending up back where i was a few years ago. and we can hear from a concert last year, when you were playing chopin, and i suppose this is the dayjob. yes. playing chopin it is awful, watching that. it is like hearing your own voice on an answering machine. no one watching this will know what an answering machine is, we all have voice mail now, but do you remember when you were a kid hearing your own voice and you would go, oh god? why, what do you think? probably the same thing as what you think when you see yourself on tv or whatjournalists think when they're reading articles they've written, it is just slightly uncomfortable. but when you are actually playing? oh, that's my happy place. that is the best point. timejust disappears and that is why i think it's important to find something that you love, something that is ideally created. the big problem that i have fallen for and i think we all have it, is that we are not designed to live the way we are living in 2018, we are just not built for it. we look outside of ourselves all the time to try and fix what is happening on the inside, and without sounding too much like deepak chopra, it is not working. i do not think it works to get self—esteem from how many retweets we get on twitter or how many facebook friends we like, or if we get the shiny new iphone before anyone else. that is not the point, the point is try to find something, that awful word mindfulness, but the point is we go inside, rather than outside. that is what music does to me, what art does to some people, or painting. it is always music. it is music that saved you, but the cause, the reason you need saving is because what happened to you when you were six? yes and no, personally yes. look around you, i think we kind of all need saving. we have all experienced trauma, i think there is no question about that, whether it is parents divorced, disease, people dying. you cannot quantify trauma, that is the point, it is part of the human condition. for you, it was extreme. it was the age of six when you were very violently raped. yes, for a long time, for many years, to the point where it ended up with spinal surgeries to try and repair all the damage — physically, the emotional stuff is still there. i mean, obviously, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out if you take a six—year—old and you do that to him for four or five years, it is going to result in some pretty issues. —— severe issues. and it was a teacher who did it to you? yeah, a gym teacher at school and it was the ‘80s, which is not an excuse, but nothing happened. do you want to know something about this country, england, the uk, where we are shooting this? even though it is watched all around the world. people in other countries hearing this will not quite believe this, but i promise you it is true. still in 2018, in any clerical setting, such as a school, a teacher could walk into a classroom and see another teacher raping a six—year—old girl or boy and they could shut the door and walk away, and they don't need to say anything, and they won't have broken any laws. that is the point, we do not have mandatory reporting. for the uk, they do have a duty to report. no, they do not. that is the point. we are one of the only countries in the world that does not have mandatory reporting and if they do report to the school or the police, they have no protection like whistleblower status or anything like that. you bring that up because — did the teachers at that school know? that is a hard question to answer. yes is the short answer to that. i was found by a teacher with blood on my face and coming down my legs and hysterical, and... i mean, as you would be. and i changed overnight and that was witnessed also by teachers and one of the teachers in her police evidence statement, she said — there is no issue, i have permission to talk about that because she told me i can — but she went to the head teacher and said something is happening here and it's not right, and the head teacher said, as they did in the ‘80s, little rhodes needs to toughen up and nothing was done, nothing was done. and we should explain that she only came forward after you had done an interview about it. exactly. 0h, you've done your research. i did an interview where i mentioned it. it was a big interview in the sunday times. it was a couple of sentences where i said, this happened to me when i was at school. she got in touch with me and said i read this interview, i know who it was and i had my suspicions. i was quite naive, i was quite innocent. i did not realise it was sexual in nature, but i realised something was happening, and i thought it was physical, not sexual. of course, it was both. she went to the police, she gave a statement, they tracked the guy down. here's the thing. sometimes...there‘ a lot of very angry people, i think, in the world. sometimes that comes out on social media, it comes out below the articles when people are writing comments. very occasionally, people will say something like, you only talk about this because you want to sell a few albums and you want sympathy. i always tell them this story. i talked about this for the first time in 2000, in this interview, and as a direct result of that the police found this guy and do you know what he was doing at the time that he was arrested? he was an old man, he was a part—time boxing coach for boys under ten. so when people accuse me of talking about this to get sympathy or sell albums or tickets or whatever, or books, isay, if i had not spoken, this guy would still be doing it. he could be teaching your son, your grandson, god forbid, your nephew. would you rather that were happening? so... he actually, there was a police investigation. yeah, he was charged. the cps brought charges. there was a trial date set and he died before it got to trial, you know, justice turns slowly. how do you he feel about the fact, though, that he knew eventually what he had done to you, the damage? nothing, there's nothing. no feeling? no, ithink... god, it sounds so melodramatic, but that part of me is dead. there is no feeling there. we're talking about your teachers, but what about your family, because you say you changed overnight? again, i can only really talk about myself. in the book, in the memoir i wrote, instrumental, where i talk about it, talk about me, because it is my story, not my family's story. all i will say is, again, it was the ‘80s, it was a different time. people were very naive then. now, if any of those signs were going on in a kid, we would be all over it. it doesn't mean that it's stopped, as we know, it's still an epidemic all around the world, but people are aware of it more now. we need to talk more about it. there was something else. you mentioned it took quite a few years to come out. this was almost worse than what happened when i was a kid, if you can believe that. but yeah, you are right. i had to get the supreme court to give me permission to publish it. it took 18 months, $2 million in legal fees because they tried to ban the book. not only ban the book but they wanted a gagging order that would stop me from speaking or writing in any medium anywhere in the world about any aspect of my past. and we should explain it was your then ex—wife who was concerned about your son. well, ostensibly, yes. her belief was that i was doing this intentionally to inflict psychological harm on my own child by talking about my own past, which defies belief, but... well, eventually, the supreme court ruled... they intervened and they changed the law in effect to stop this happening again because the precedent was so terrifying. but you talked when the book came out about how people are in denial, whether it is your family, the teachers... i think two people in my family have read the book, one of them has barely mentioned it and the other one has kind of mentioned it and the only other one who's mentioned it is my mum. it's like it doesn't exist, the culture of silence, which is what allows abuse of any kind to thrive, it's like, we do not talk about this stuff, how could you write a book? and the shame, the secrecy — sexual abuse is predicated on shame, that it'll stop you talking. and that is why i promised myself that if i ever had a microphone, even a small one, i would talk about it. it's not the only thing i talk about. i will talk until i'm blue in the face about bach, chopin, about really lovely things. and the book is a love letter to music, and a love letter to my son. but it's also about this terrible thing, that is really one of the scourges of our society. but there were, of course, many years when you didn't talk, because you moved on from the abuse. tried to. and then it was in your late teens that you started to drink? everything. well before 18. and self harming, and everything else. and the truth is, you can't outrun, sadly you can't outrun these things. it's the other reason i talk, because my own experience and that of thousands of people who have got in touch with me since the book came out, is that it is talk or die. i mean i know that sounds very melodramatic but you have to talk, not necessarily to your family, not necessarily to your friends, maybe to a good therapist or a doctor or the samaritans, who are amazing, or there are organisations you can call, but you have to talk about this stuff. otherwise, it's like a cancer inside you. you said your mother had spoken to you, what did she say? she was very supportive and still is and very loving and kind. she is a wonderful woman. the thing is, when you have a child, all paedophiles say the same thing. they all say, you cannot talk about this. if you talk about this, you cannot imagine the horrific things that will rain down on you. you will go to prison i will go to prison, you will be killed, your family will be killed. whatever is used to keep you quiet. and when you're five or six or seven, your brain is not fully wired, it's still plastic, it changes the way you think and act. it's almost worse than the physicall act itself. every time you're around that person, you have to act normally, you say yes, sir or hi, dad and shake their hands. you become complicit in the crime they have carried out. it's like you have robbed the bank together and you're protecting him and every single time that happens, that bond, it sounds crazy, but that bond gets stronger and stronger so it's no wonder that we have people speaking out now 20 years, 30 years, a0 years later, which is why things like the statute of limitations on sexual abuse crimes is so ridiculous. often it can take 30 years before you have the courage and strength to speak out. there are many remarkable things about your life... all of our lives. we all have stories. but in your particular life, which is what we're talking about, you got your life back on track effectively. you had a successfuljob at a financial publication. i worked in the city, the only thing i am embarrassed about in the book, working in finance. you got married and had a son. you stopped the piano. i didn't play from 18 to 28. i only really started properly at 1a. i did everything in reverse. it was like amy whitehouse in reverse. i did all the drugs and stopped and finally when i was 28, i thought life is too short, i quit myjob, said i'm going to be a concert pianist. such a cliche. everyone looked at me like i was crazy. and they're not laughing now because i did it. to me, that's a wonderful thing. i've lost count of the number of people who said to me, "i know i could write a book," or, "i always wanted to be an actor." we get trapped in these jobs that we don't like, marriages that are kind of convenient but a little bit shabby because we have a mortgage together or we have to pay the bills and i think, you know what? you get one shot. i walked away from all of that and now i'm doing what since i was a little kid i wanted to do, which was play in concert halls around the world. you talk about what it means to you, music as safety. around that same time, you were having a son growing up who then hit the same age. they don't tell you this. i wish they had. i'm not sure how i would have prepared for it but i realised afterwards that it is very common if you were raped or abused as a child and you also have a child, when that child turns the age you were when the abuse started, it's very likely that your entire world will implode. that's what happened to me. on a biological level, i could not do the maths. i couldn't see this perfect miracle child who was four, five years old, this absolute god—given miracle, and see that i was that size when this was done to me and not only that, the terror of, what have i done? i brought this kid into a world where these awful things happen. what was the effect on you? everything fell apart. i was aggressively self—harming, i was suicidal, i ended up spending nine months in various secure wards. i hasten to add, not because of him. he is still perfect and the greatest thing in my life and as any father would attest, it is the most overwhelming feeling of love and it only ever gets bigger. they don't tell you that. just when you think it can't get any bigger, it does, it's amazing the capacity to love your child. it's everything. but at that time, it bought up a lot of unresolved things. i tried to run away from it because i hadn't dealt with it. i don't know how i could have dealt with it. it's like when a train stops but the carriages behind it haven't stopped and they crash into the back of it, that's what happened with me and it took a long time to deal with that. it took a lot to recover from it but in a way, that is one of the messages in your book, it is that you don't ever really recover. it is what it is. it's a daily reprieve. that's why i'm so deeply suspicious of self—help books, the idea you can find happiness in six weeks if you do these simple things, orfind peace of mind in a year if you follow these little guides. the pursuit of happiness, it's in the constitution in america. i don't think we should be pursuing happiness, i really don't. i think happiness is fleeting. it's lovely when it comes but we are not designed to be happy. even most of the time, i would say. just because we are not happy does not mean we are unhappy. there's a giant scale in between. it can go further down into depression and anxiety but the message in the book, if there is one, it is that life is kind of messy and imperfect and all of us feel alone in a crowd sometimes. all of us feel slightly like we don't belong. sometimes, just getting out of bed, getting the kids ready for school, getting on the subway to go to work, getting home, putting the kids to bed, eating something and going to sleep is an heroic act. no—one says, well done, you made it through the day like an adult! a lot of us, it's an extraordinary thing to achieve when your head is saying, throw yourself under the tube, life is meaningless, no—one will care, life is too much. just to survive and do it is heroic. for you, we come back to the music. yes, please. you had come out of hospital and you are putting your life back together again. it is this combination of writing, talking and playing that saw your career soar? yeah, i had no career before. i got out of hospital and met my manager purely by chance at a coffee shop and in 2009, i released my first album which is crazy because concert pianists, you start at two or three years old, six hours of practice a day and i was in my late 30s. . . mid—30s, i'm not that old, and i did it all the wrong way around. but music is the one consistent thing. i'd been on 35 different medications, i'd seen the same number of psychiatrists and psychologists, i tried so many different things. the only consistent thing that has worked is music. do you know how it works? that is the magic thing. what i do know is that when i was seven and the world was like a warzone, i found an old cassette tape with a piece of music by bach and in that moment, everything changed. thank goodness it wasnt‘ a the bible. everything would be different but to me, it was bach and everything was changed. you are sitting here with bach emblazoned on your t—shirt. let's see you playing. sure, why not. is there an answer to the question why bach? it's like why oxygen, why water? is there an answer to the question why bach? it's like why oxygen, why water? want to know the cool thing about that piece? everyone wanted to see that piece. everyone watching this programme, everyone watching, if you have to hands, you would be able to play that piece by bach in six weeks. you are looking at me like that. in a stroke of marketing genius, we called the book how to play the piano. it shows you how to do it. you don't need a proper piano. that one cost £150,000, if you can believe it. you get a £30 keyboard. you spend a0 minutes a day, sundays off — six weeks later, you are playing bach. imagine in an age where everything has an app, if we can't do it within three minutes we give up — to find a0 minutes a day, it is amazing. james rhodes, on that note, thank you very much for coming on hardtalk. thank you. hello once again, thanks very much indeed forjoining me. it's time we updated you on the weather prospects for the whole of the british isles and this will take us right through the next few days on into the weekend. hmm, tuesday, a bit of a mixed bag to say the least, wet in the south, snow further north but once the snow cleared it ended up being a really glorious afternoon and a spectacular one across the isle of lewis. if you thought that's a bit ancient history, that's the band of weather that brought us the rain on tuesday, here's the next great event looming with intent in the western side of the british isles. ahead of it it's quite important to tell you with these clear skies the temperatures will have dipped away. once we start bringing the weather elements together, we've got the cold weather in place, in comes the moisture from the atlantic so no great surprise if i tell you that after a bright enough start for central and eastern parts, in comes this weather front from the atlantic and because we're pushing all that moisture into that cold air, anywhere really from the north midlands and north of wales northwards, that's where we're going to see significant snowfall, especially but not exclusively on the higher ground. you'll see here, north—west highlands, 7—12 centimetres, even on the southern uplands, getting over beattock summit perhaps on the m7a, you could be looking at several centimetres of snow. top end of the pennines as well and even a wee bit further south there's just the chance that as that weather front keeps journeying ever further eastwards and it comes up over salisbury plain, the chilterns, i wouldn't be surprised if you told me you saw something wintry about proceedeings there. i don't think it's going to amount to a whole can of beans in the south but they will be significant depths further north. 5—8 will cover it for many, a wee bit milder out to the west, ten or 11 here perhaps. that weather system eventually pushes through. low pressure still dominating the scene in many parts of the british isles for thursday. quite a few isobars on that chart so the wind will be a noticeable feature of the day on thursday. but having said that, you know what, in many areas it's going to be a decent day. in eastern scotland and much of england and wales, dry, fine and sunny and temperatures in double figures across the south. there will be more showers in western scotland and northern ireland as well. as we go from thursday pushing towards the end of the week, see this ridge of high pressure just beginning to build in here, trying to dominate the scene, at least across the southern half of the british isles. but for northern ireland, for the north and west of scotland, there's still the chance of some showers but in the south there's some dry weather and a bit of warmth. this is newsday. i'm rico hizon in singapore. the headlines: american spy agencies tell congress that russia is still meddling in us politics, posing a threat to the mid—term elections. the us ambassador calls for more pressure on the myanmar leadership to acknowledge the suffering of the rohingya muslims. this council must hold the military accountable for their actions and pressure aung san suu kyi to acknowledge these horrific acts are taking place in her country. i'm sharanjit leyl, in london. also in the programme: headwinds at the winter olympics in pyeongchang. some events have been postponed due to high windspeeds. and how long should you wait before getting married ? we meet one couple in australia who had to wait aa years to be

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