Rock bottom came during a spell in a psychiatric hospital, when he outwitted the guards watching over him 24/7, sneaked a television aerial cable into his en-suite bathroom, created a noose (“not too different from tying a double Windsor”) and tried to hang himself by jumping from the toilet seat. At numerous points in his life James Rhodes was so set on self-destruction that survival to the age of 40 seemed improbable, to say the least. James writes to believers who know suffering, who've faced trials, and who ultimately desire a deep relationship with God.Matt is the author of Take Heart To Live Is Christ, to Die Is Gain Mingling of Souls The Explicit Gospel Bible study (LifeWay, 2012), and The Apostles.I t’s something of a miracle that this book exists at all. The book of James speaks to the realities of a living faith in Jesusthe kind of roll-up-your-sleeves and get-your-hands-dirty discipleship that is borne out of an authentic relationship with the risen Lord.The NT mentions three men by the name of James.Translation of the Bible into English, performed under the patronage of the King of England Jacob I and released in 1611. He took the leading part in the council at Jerusalem, and was highly respected by the whole Church (Acts 15:13). Paul, for example, reported to James and Peter at Jerusalem (Galatians 1:18, 19).
![]() His teachers thought he was being a wimp (“little Rhodes needs to toughen up”). Initially enthusiastic, James became withdrawn and resistant – a changed personality. The first time Lee asked the boy to stay behind after class he gave him a box of matches to play with – an ominously dangerous gift.Other presents followed, then an invitation to join the after-school boxing club. They took a shine to each other. The gym teacher at the prep school in St John’s Wood where Rhodes went at the age of five was a man called Peter Lee. But privilege is no protection against paedophiles, or wasn’t then. Make homemade cheese sauce for mac and cheeseIt was only after a former head of his prep school read an interview he had given, and made a statement confirming her suspicions at the time, that Lee was tracked down, to Margate, where he was working as a part-time boxing coach with boys under 10. Even then the police were slow to act and acquaintances slow to understand (“Well, James, you were the most beautiful child,” one family friend said). But Rhodes writes warmly of his mother (there’s no mention of his father) and, bullied into silence and scorched by shame as he was, he took 30 years to speak out about what he’d endured. What scared him was having to stay to help Mr Lee “clear up the equipment”, which meant being held down on a gym mat behind a closed door and raped.It seems astonishing that no adult noticed what was going on, especially when the boy was found sobbing, with blood on his legs, begging to be let off gym. “I’m a bit of an asshole,” he says.James Rhodes in 2010. It’s an angry book and much of the anger is directed at himself, for being shallow, needy and narcissistic. Even with plenty to live for – a son, a new partner, supportive friends, rich patrons, a burgeoning second career as a concert pianist after five years in the City – he has an astonishing capacity to fuck up. This was child rape, “the Everest of trauma”, leading to “multiple surgeries, scars (inside and out), tics, OCD, depression, suicidal ideation, vigorous self-harm, alcoholism, drug addiction” and much besides. Child abuse doesn’t cover it, he says. Book Of James Free At AThey include Bach (“treated like shit” and “chronically abused” after being orphaned), Beethoven (born into a family “riddled with alcoholism, domestic violence, abuse and cruelty”), Ravel (“fucked by the trauma of serving as a truck driver during the first world war”) and Chopin (whose Fantaisie in F Minor came out of his “dysfunctional, fucked-up, turd of a relationship” with George Sand). Top of his list is the Bach-Busoni Chaconne, which he first heard on a cassette tape as a child and which “acted like a force field” against distress.The mini-biogs of his chosen composers (“mental, depraved, genius bastards”) are as revealing as his musical choices. Each chapter begins with a tribute to a piece of music that’s been important to him, which can be accessed free at a website he has set up. Having saved his own life, he now wants to save classical music. Rhodes writes passionately (another “ass” there) of his desire to bring classical music to younger, cooler audiences, and berates the enemies who stand in his way. This is the book’s other strand: along with the unravellings, there’s Ravel. What he went through as a child was extreme, and extremity is the keynote we’re locked inside his head for long periods and it’s a manic place to be. And at the piano, remembering more than 100,000 notes in a recital, he is both grounded and lost, oblivious yet in control.Rhodes writes at full volume, with many a “fuck” and “literally” to help along his musical discussions the prose is more Russell Brand than Alfred Brendel. As a child, he learned to dissociate – to leave his body on the gym floor and float away. But without music, he wouldn’t have made it through. Without the damage Rhodes suffered in childhood, his journey from promising talent to professional pianist and musical ambassador might have been smoother. ![]()
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