Page 29 - James Caan - The Real Deal

2 · Growing Up Fast

but to me it was just more of the same. It was still his business,
not mine. It wasn’t my dream, it was his, and deep down I was
starting to understand that I would never feel the same way about
it as he did. It’s no coincidence that now, when I invest in a
business, I actually invest in the person leading that business. If
they don’t have that dream, if I don’t feel their passion, then it
doesn’t matter to me how good their financial forecast is.
I had always looked up to my father and admired him as much as
I loved him, but his insistence about the business made my need to
rebel even stronger. I just wanted to escape, and for the time being
that meant spending as much time with my mates as possible.
In the spring of 1977 I was becoming desperate for indepen-
dence, and like most teenagers I just didn’t want to be told what
to do. Sneaking out was like getting one over on my dad, and so
I started to go out even more. Even on school nights. One night I
went out to a club called Room at the Top in Ilford with a friend
I had met called Bernie. He was a year or two older than my other
friends and had already left school, so he was up for going out any
night of the week. He was quickly becoming my best friend, and
we’d had such a good night that we didn’t want to go home right
away. We stopped off for a takeaway, and that meant I didn’t get
home until 3.30 a.m. I crept up the drive, opened the side gate and
stole up to the back door to get the key from under the mat. Only
the door wouldn’t open. It was bolted from the inside.
At that moment I knew instantly what had happened: my father
must have got up, maybe for a glass of water, seen that the door
was unbolted and realised that one of us had gone out. I also knew
that my bedroom was the first place he would have checked for an
empty bed. Not only was I locked out, but there was no doubt that
it had been my father who had deliberately locked me out. I was
pretty scared.
I tried the downstairs windows, but this was early spring and
they were all closed. I couldn’t think of a way to get in without

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