My guest today is living his dream. An internationally acclaimed concert pianist and successful recording artist. But read his account of his life and it resembles a nightmare. When hes away from the piano, james rhodes is still haunted by the violent sexual abuse he suffered for years, from the age of six. Hes written about how it drove him to drink, take drugs, self harm and spent time in a psychiatric hospital. And how he was saved by music. Only discovering in his 30s that he could really play the piano. And in his latest book, he recounts what his successful life really feels like. And its almost unbearable and distressing to hear. How can he live with the pain of the past . James rhodes, welcome to hardtalk. Nice to be here. Thank you. Quite a dramatic introduction. Quite a dramatic book. Yeah, possibly. And you intended it to be so. No, i never intended, the whole drama thing, i had enough of. Sometimes it can be quite sensationalist to talk about certain topics. And for me, what i really wanted to do is just tell the truth. To just be transparent. So much of our lives today seems to consist of perfectly curated Instagram Selfies and pretending everythings a certain way, that we somehow have all the rules and we know how to live perfectly well, and when actually the reality, certainly for me and i think for many, is very different. Actually, life is quite challenging and it can be quite messy, and its ok to admit it, its ok to say that. To talk about it, to be open about it. And you have been very open about it. But the descriptions seem 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, its probably not unfair i think, when you put it like that i feel more depressed now than when i came in. Actually, i think it is unfair. I wouldnt say almost any time. There are more and more moments when i feel quite comfortable with my place in the world. But there are a surprisingly large number of moments when i do feel very tormented. The thing is, i dont think im alone in that. I really think that many of us wake up a lot of mornings with that idea of god, ive had too much to think last night, ijust had those voices, that inner critic, that dialogue all the time going on and todays going to be awful, theyre going to discover your fraud, that imposter syndrome thing that you look at yourself in the mirror and you think, oh god, im a disaster. I feel destroyed. And i dont think thats that uncommon. But i hope its notjust me. But it seems quite extreme with you. Its extreme with me because of where it could lead, potentially. Because of where youve been in the past. Exactly. Because i have a history of being in various psychiatric wards and suicide attempts, and i am, i suppose understandably, nervous about going back there. So, when i have a bad day and when things seem to be spiralling out of control, my big fear is that im not too long away from ending up how i was a few years ago. You chart in your book about essentially being on tour, and we can hear, from a concert last year, when you were playing chopin and i suppose this is the dayjob. Yes. Its awful, watching that. Its like hearing your own voice on an answering machine. I suppose no one watching this knows what an answering machine is. You all have voicemail now. Do you remember when you were kids and you would hear your own voice and go oh, god, what do you think . Probably the same as when you see yourself on tv or a journalist and they read all articles they have written, not all the time, but its just slightly uncomfortable sometimes. But when you were actually playing it. Thats my happy place. Thats the best. Timejust disappears. Thats why its so important to find something that you love, something that is, ideally, creative. The big problem that ive fallen for, too, and we all have, is that we are not designed to live the way we are living. In 2018. Were just not built for it. We look outside of ourselves all of the time to try and fix whats happening on the inside and, without sounding too much like deepak chopra, its not working. I dont think it works. To get self esteem from how many retweets we get on twitter and how many facebook friends we like, or if we get the shiny new iphone before anyone else, its not the point. The point is to find something, that awful word, mindfulness, but the point is that we go inside, rather than outside and thats what music does for me and art for some people, or writing, of photography, or painting. You are talking generally about, as far as you are concerned, it is clear from what you have written, is always music. It is always music. Music saved you. Yes. The reason that you need saving is because of what happened to you when you were six. Yes and no. Personally, yes, but honestly, i mean, look around. I think we all need saving. We all experience trauma. Theres no question about that. For some, its parents getting divorced, its poverty or disease, or its a pet dying or maybe further down the scale, theres rape and there is rape and theres violence. And you cant quantify trauma. Thats the point. But for you, that trauma was extreme. It was at 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 surgery to try to repair the damage physically. The emotional stuff, its still there. It doesnt take a Rocket Scientist to figure out that if you take a six year old and you do that to him for four or five years, its going to result in some pretty severe issues as an adult. And it was a teacher who did it to you. Yes, a junior teacher at school. And it was the 80s. Which isnt an excuse, but nothing happened. The interesting thing about this country, england, the uk, even though this is the world, people in other countries will hear this and not quite believe it but i promise you, it is true. Still today in 2018, in any clerical set up such as a school, a treacher 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 dont need to say anything and they will not have broken any laws. You do not have mandatory reporting. In the uk, they have a duty. No, we do not. One of the only countries in the world that does not have mandatory reporting and if they reported that the school or the police, they have no protection. You bring that up, because the teachers at that school knew . Thats a hard question to answer. Yes is the short answer to that. I was found by a teacher with blood on my face and running down my legs and hysterical and, as you would be. I changed overnight. And that was witnessed also by teachers. One of the teachers in her Police Evidence statement, there is no issue that they had permission to talk about that but she told me she went to the headteacher and said something has happened here, and it is not right. The headteacher said, as they did in the 80s, little rhodes needs to toughen up, and nothing was done. She explained she only came forward after you had done an interview about it. Exactly. You have done your research, havent you . There was a big interview in the sunday times, a couple of pages, and i said this had happened to me when i was at school, and she got in touch with me. I read this interview, i knew it was, i had my suspicions, i was quite naive and innocent, i didnt know it was sexual in nature but something had happened, i thought it was physical, not sexual, because it was both. She went to the police give a statement and they tracked the guy down. Theres a lot of very angry people in the world. Sometimes that comes out on social media. Sometimes below the article is when people write comments. Occasionally people Say Something like, you only talk about this because you want to sell a few albums or you want a bit of sympathy. And i always tell them this story. I talked about this for the first time in this interview in 2000. As a direct result of that, the police found this guy and you know what he was doing when he was arrested . He was an old man, a part time boxing coach for boys aged under ten and when people accuse me of talking about this to get sympathy or to sell albums or tickets or whatever, if i hadnt spoken, this guy would still be doing this, and he could be teaching your grandson, your son, god forbid, your nephew. Would you rather that were happening . He, actually, there was a police investigation, he was charged by the cps, a trial date was set and he died before it got the trial. How did you feel about the fact that he knew, eventually, what he had done to you . Nothing. No feeling . God, it sounds so melodramatic but that part of me is dead. There is no feeling now. What about your family . You said that you changed overnight. I can only talk about myself. I talk about it in the book. It is my story, it is not my familys story. All i would say is that again, it was the 80s, 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 doesnt mean that it has stopped, it is still an epidemic all around the world. But people are aware of it now. We need to talk more about that. You mention in your book, instrumental. It was almost worst of what i happened as a kid. I had to get the Supreme Court to give me permission to publish it. It took 2 million in legal fees. They tried to ban the book and they were after a gagging order that would stop me from speaking or writing in any medium anywhere in the world about any aspect of my past. We should explain it was your then ex wife who was concerned about your son. Ostensibly, yes, her belief was that i was doing this intentionally to inflict psychological harm on my own child by talking about my past. The Supreme Court intervened and they change the law, in effect, to stop this happening again. You talk then, in a way, when that book came out about how people are in denial, whether it is family, teachers. Two people in my family, no one else, one of them has barely mentioned it and the only other one who is mentioned it is my mum. Its like it doesnt exist. The culture of silence which is what allows abuse of any kind to thrive, oh, we do not talk about this stuff, how could you write a book . The shame, the secrecy. Sexual abuse is predicated on shame, that shame will stop you from talking. That is why i promised myself that if i ever had a microphone, even a small one, i would talk about it. Its not the only thing i would talk about. I will talk about lovely things, about bach or chopin, and books are love letter to music, to my son, about many other wonderful things but they are also about this terrible thing, one of the big scourges of our society. There were many years when you you didnt talk because you moved on from the abuse. You went through school. It was in your late teens that you started during, drugs, everything. Early teens, well before then. And self harming and everything else. But sadly, you cannot outrun these things. It is another reason that 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 know that sounds very melodramatic, but you have to talk. Not necessarily to your family or friends, maybe to a good therapist or a doctor or the samaritans, you are amazing, and there are organisations you can call, but you have to talk about this stuff, otherwise it is like a cancer when it is inside you. When your mother spoke to you eventually, what did she say . She was very supportive, and still is, and very loving and very kind. Shes a wonderful woman. The thing is, when you have a child. All paedophiles say the same thing, in effect, 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, yourfamily will. Whatever it is that they use to keep you quite. When you are five, six, seven years old, your brain is not fully wired yet, it is still plastic, it changes the way you think and act. It is almost worse than the physical act. Every time youre around that person and other people are there, you have to act normally, you say, yes, so, you shake their hands and you smile and you become complicit in the crime that they have carried out. You become partners, like you have robbed the bank together and you protecting them and every time that happens, that bond, even though it sounds crazy, the bond gets stronger and stronger. It is no wonder that we have people speaking out now 20, 30, 40 years later which is why things like statutes of limitation is when sexual abuse crimes are so ridiculous because it can take 30 years before you have the courage, the strength, to speak out. There are many remarkable things about your life. All of our lives. We all have stories. In your particular life, you got your life back on track. You had a successfuljob in financial publications. The only thing im embarrassed about in the book is that i worked in finance and you had a son. And you stopped the piano. I stopped from 18 28. I only did it from the age of 14. I did an Amy Whitehouse in reverse. I did all the drugs, and at 28, ijust went, life is too short, i quit myjob and said that im going to be a concert pianist. Everyone looked at me like i was completely crazy. But they are not laughing now because i did it. To me, that is a wonderful thing. How many people, ive lost count of the number of people who said i always wanted to be an actor, or whatever, and it is so easy to get trapped in these jobs that we dont like, marriages that have become a little bit shabby because we have a mortgage together and we have to pay the bills. And i think, you know what . You get one shot. I walked away from all that and now im doing what, since i was a little kid, i wanted to do, which is to play in concert halls around the world. You talk about what it means to you, that music saved you. Around that same time, you had a son growing up. And it was when he hit the same age. They dont tell you this. I wish they had. I am not sure how i would have prepared for it but i found out that it is very common that, if you were raped or abused when you were a child and you also have a child, when that child becomes age that you were when the abuse started, it is very likely that your entire world will implode, and thats what happened to me. On a biological level i could not do the maths, i could not see this perfect miracle child, four years old, five years old, this absolute god given miracle and see, well, i was that size when this was done to me. And not only that, but the terror of what have i done . I have brought into a world will 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. And not because of him. He was perfect. The greatest thing in my life and as any parent will attest, it is the most overwhelming feeling of love and it only ever gets bigger. Just when you think it cant get bigger, it gets bigger. It is amazing, the capacity to love your child. It is everything. At that time, i try to run away from it because i had not dealt with it. I dont know how i could have dealt with it but i had not talked about it. It is like when a train stops but the carriages behind it havent stopped and they crash into the back of it, and that is what happened with me. And it took a long time to deal with that. And to recoverfrom it. And one of the messages from your book, if there is one, is that you dont ever really recover. It is what it is. It is a daily reprieve. It is a thing in self help books, the idea that you can find happiness if you do the simple things or you can suddenly find peace of mind if you follow these little guides. The pursuit of happiness, its in the constitution in america. And i dont think we should be pursuing happiness. I really dont. It is fleeting. It is lovely when it comes. But we are not designed to be happy. Just because we are not happy doesnt mean that we are unhappy. There is a giant scale in between being happy and being unhappy and it can go further down into depression and anxiety, but the message in the book, if there is one, 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 do not belong. And sometimes, just getting out of bed and getting the kids ready for school, getting on the subway to go to work, getting home, putting the kids to bed, eating and going to sleep is a heroic act. And nobody says, well done, dude, you made it through the day like an adult, but for many, it is an extraordinary thing to achieve when your head is saying all the time, throw yourself under the tube, your life is meaningless, no one would care anyway, life is too difficult, life is too much. Just to survive and to endure, is a pretty heroic thing. Coming back to the music, when you had come out of hospital and you were putting your life back together again, it was this combination of writing, talking and playing that saw your career soar. I had no career before. I met my manager in a coffee shop purely by chance. In 2009, i released my first album. Which is crazy because concert pianists start at two, three years old. And here i was in my late 30s, mid 30s, im not that old i did it all the wrong way round. I have been on 35 different kinds of medication. I have seen insane numbers of psychiatrists and psychologists. I have tried so many different things. The only consistent thing that has worked his music. You know how it has worked . That is a magic trick. I know that when i was seven and the world was like a god dam war zone and i found a cassette tape with a piece of music by bach and in that moment everything changed. Thank god it was not a bible or id be talking aboutjesus right now but for me it was music and everything changed. And you have bach now on your t shirt. Lets hear you playing him. Sure, why not . Is there an answer to the question of why bach . Why oxygen, why water . The crazy thing about that piece, everyone will know that piece. Everyone watching this programme, every single one of you as long as you have two hands would be able to play that piece of bach within six weeks, even if you had never touched the piano before. I can see that look on your face. I wrote a book which in a stroke of marketing genius we called how to play the piano and it shows you how to play that piece, it has a copy of the score. You dont need a proper piano. That piano cost £150,000. You can get a £30 keyboard and spend 40 minutes a day, six weeks later, you are playing bach. What a thing. Everything has an app where if we cannot do it within three minutes, we give up. To find 40 minutes a day for that, it is amazing. James rhodes, on that note, this has been hardtalk, thank you very much. Hello there. The coldest snap of this winter season is likely to continue for the rest of this week, and there is more snow in the forecast. Most of the country has seen some forecast. Most of the country has seen some snow, forecast. Most of the country has seen some snow, falling in the form of showers, but some parts of Eastern England are likely to top further, more snow is forecast, and more travel obstruction as a result. The wind chill has his wind speeds starting to increase. The source of this freezing icy air has been coming from siberia across Northern Europe into fish in towards our showers to micro shores, crusty eastern areas, being pushed westward as well. During the start of wednesday, it looks like most of the showers again will be confined to the eastern coastal areas, particularly northeast of england, it will be a very cold start to wednesday, with temperatures below freezing my across the board. And amber warning remains freezing my across the board. And amberwarning remains in freezing my across the board. And amber warning remains in place, for northrup democrat northeast england, they could see up to 15 cm of snow. Some areas could see more, particularly of the high ground. Significant disruptions for the central belt. England. For the south, fewer showers abound, more in the way of sunshine, but it will be a very cold air, today is looking to be the coldest of the week, and if you factor in the winds as well, minus five degrees to 10 celsius. So bitterly cold. Looking to the south as we head towards thursday, this big area of low pressure, being named storm, emma, full of moisture as it bumps into the cold air across the united kingdom, leading to snow initially across the southwest of england towards wales as we head into the course of thursday. Therell be further heavy snow showers across the eastern side of the country, in particular northeast england and eastern scotland. So to amber warnings thursday afternoon, one across the northeast and this new one across the southwest, itll be heavy, long dead prolonged, and disruptive. Factoring in the wins, were looking at gale force southeasterly winds, making it feel very cold indeed. Quick snapshot in a friday, showers continuing across the northeast of the country, this banda slowed the snow will slowly move its way up north, heavy falls will likely lead to some disruptions. This is newsday on the bbc. Im rico hizon in singapore. The headlines. 400,000 civilians remain trapped in eastern ghouta, as plans to suspend fighting for a humanitarian pause fail on the first day. A blow to team trump, as the president s son in law and senior adviser, jared kushner, has his White House Security clearance downgraded. Im Sharanjit Leyl in london. Also in the programme america cuts aid to cambodia accusing its long term leader, hun sen, of anti democratic behaviour. And stepping out from past shadows. A hong kong actors search for his long lost british father
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