HOWZAT

The agent introduced him to a new mentor, Eduardo Strabbioli. For the next three years, he commuted between London and Genoa. His wife said she was happy to support him, and they agreed to give it five years. “I would go over there every month for three or four days. He’d slap me round the head and hit me with a ruler. It was a new level of inspiration. I unlearnt all the bad habits and started to play properly.” Then his scarred mind rose up and tried to destroy him. He broke down completely. It was “a really bad year”.

“I got sectioned,” he says. “I spent eight months in psychiatric hospitals here and in America. There were four suicide attempts — two of them were ‘Look at me, look at me’, and two were ‘I’ve made my peace, I’m ready to go’.” His marriage ended not long after he came out of hospital. Happily, he still sees Eddie several times a week. He went back to the piano, practising in the Steinway Hall, Marylebone. One day, he ran into an acquaintance, Denis Blais, a groovy Canadian entrepreneur, and played for him. “He started crying, getting all emotional, and saying, ‘Where can I buy your CDs?’ ”

Thanks to Blais, he now has a CD coming out. It has a rock album/autobiographical title — Razor Blades, Little Pills and Big Pianos — but is, as Rhodes puts it, “hardcore classical”, with Bach’s fifth French Suite, Beethoven’s E Minor Sonata, Moszkowski’s Etincelles, the Bach-Siloti Prelude in B Minor and, perhaps the piece closest to his heart and mind, Busoni’s magnificent transcription of the Bach Chaconne in D Minor. He’s playing Queen Elizabeth Hall in February and the Roundhouse in May: “Awesome venue, man!”

Playing “hardcore classical” — as opposed to soft “crossover” pieces or interpolating soothing pop/rock or whatever — is an aspect of Rhodes’s conviction that this music needs no embroidery. It needs neither desperate marketing nor the white-tie-and-tails flummery of the traditional concert hall. What there is, and what matters, is the effectively endless piano repertoire. “People are always asking me why I don’t compose,” he says. “Why? I could spend 10 lifetimes playing what there is out there.”

His own mania for music convinces him that the work needs no explanation or justification. Directly exposed to music, sans flummery, who could fail to succumb? “For me, classical music needs a kick up the arse like it’s never needed before. It needs to be seen as fresh and invigorating and exciting, all the things that it is. Pianists up there with a white tie and tails, they’re up there with the audience down there; they never talk, never mingle with them. It’s very boring and so exclusive. People don’t want to dress up and head down to the Festival Hall and spend £40 on a ticket and buy a programme with notes they don’t understand by some guy who doesn’t give a stuff.”

Rhodes identifies closely with Nigel Kennedy — who is, naturally, the “greatest violinist ever” — in his attempts to demystify music-making. And he worships the pianist Glenn Gould — “absolutely unbelievable” — who seemed to play every piece, Bach especially, as if it had just come into the world, stripped of the accretions of centuries of conventional performances. He lives in a rented flat in Pimlico, where he practises; a cheap, electric piano makes earphones possible, so the neighbours can sleep. When not playing, he sits in Starbucks — “I love Starbucks!” — smokes, does stuff on his computer and watches DVD box sets, most recently of The Wire — “I love The Wire!”

A few days after our interview, I watch Rhodes play a recital. I am no music critic, but I know he’s got something, though, that night, it seemed to remain unformed. Somehow, the narrative of each piece was missing and I felt uninvolved. But listen yourself. This is a man who, perhaps more than any I have met, has earned your attention and his chance at success.

“If I’m honest with you,” he says, “this is what I have dreamt about since I was seven. Every night, I’d put on a CD and pretend it was me playing. I feel like a kid at Christmas. I’m excited as hell, I can’t wait. I swear to God, if I won the lottery on Saturday I’d do exactly what I do every day — I'd play the piano and watch my TV shows.”

James Rhodes plays at the QEH, SE1, on February 6, and the Roundhouse, NW1, on May 13; Razor Blades,

Little Pills and Big Pianos is out on February 2 on Signum; www.jamesrhodespianist.com

www.bryanappleyard.com

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