Rickie Lee Jones

I really enjoyed reading Rickie Lee Jones‘ autobiography, Last Chance Texaco: Chronicles of a Troubadour.

It’s as idiosyncratic, off-centre, expressive and polished as her best musical work. It swings wildly in style from ancedotal – almost casual – reporting of some pretty terrible events for a young teenager to verbatim conversations at some of her most life-critical moments. The dialogue when she tells Tom Waits of her heroin use is heart- and gut-wrenching. As a narrator she often show more wavers between portraying herself as a deeply knowing, self-aware, purposeful artist and a naive, awkward hippy who got lucky. Often both.

She doesn’t mind dropping names and there are some delicious anecdotes involving names you will know. I found the whole thing engaging and easy to read – it’s very well edited, evoking her musical style with its jazz base laced with all kinds of pop, blues, rap, folk inflections.

She’s both self-deprecating and arrogant – she causes a mini-riot in Germany when she misunderstands the audience and defends it with “Well, what I was supposed to do?” She often misunderstands people, and defends the hurt she causes with her status as an original, independent artist. It’s not always a good defence.

She also delights in her success, at every level, and revels in a “See? I told you” attitude that will probably annoy some people and inspire others.

Most of her insights are deeply personal with a few interesting comments about the business and the times (women in music industry, album before live debut, video, keeping image control). One place where those insights merge is near the end when she’s in Australia for the Lou Reed-curated Vivid and the Melbourne Festival in 2010 and she sees on TV a clip of the stadium at the Cox Plate singing her song Horses.

For her, it’s the realisation that her music has a life of its own, in this case a song she wrote for her newborn daughter in 1988 becoming a sporting anthem in another country many years later. And she loves it. (Daryl doesn’t get a namecheck, and it’s not mentioned that his version was also a chart hit here, nor that the music freaked out the actual horses on the day, but hey …)

My only caveat with this book would be that if you don’t already like Rickie Lee Jones, this book probably won’t change your mind. But if you know her stuff and you like her style (my hand’s up), you’ll really enjoy it. show less

The author, a unique voice in American music, transcends a rough childhood and a heroin habit, and writes a memoir as lyrical as her poetic songs of street life and its denizens. She grows up amid fractured parents and siblings, and the turning point is when Rickie emancipates herself and takes to the road as a fourteen year old runaway in a stolen car. Time and time again, she is saved by sympathetic strangers, by a kind policeman, by her mother, and by Tom Waits, Lowell George, and Dr. show more John, the unholy trio of her life. Rickie's dramatic and unlikely rise to sudden stardom does not destroy her, and the reader will be convinced of her heroism in surviving and coming out the other side with wisdom and grace. The book is filled with poignant photos and song lyrics.

Quotes: "Music, in hippie culture, was like payment for food or a place to crash."

"My Beatles-inspired technique was to own what men seemed entitled to and take for granted."

"There was only one chair left for women musicians at the big table, whereas the boys-only room had plenty of empty chairs."

"I was aware before I even made a record of the danger of being used up too fast."

"Musicians rarely enjoy playing hometowns where we are forever trying to prove something." show less

I've never listened to Rickie Lee Jones's music, so, what drew me in with this book? Her celebrity friends and lovers? Finding out about her life and music more?

Neither. It's her writing that drew me in. Check this out:

When I was twenty-three years old I drove around L.A. with Tom Waits. We’d cruise along Highway 1 in his new 1963 Thunderbird. With my blonde hair flying out the window and both of us sweating in the summer sun, the alcohol seeped from our pores and the sex smell still show more soaked our clothes and our hair. We liked our smell. We did not bathe as often as we might have. We were in love and I for one was not interested in washing any of that off. By the end of summer we were exchanging song ideas. We were also exchanging something deeper. Each other.

There's something beautiful about somebody writing in a near-dream state. It's open and fun and you connect with somebody writing about what it's like to be a young adult on the cusp of losing your childhood more than you feel comfortable with, while wanting your independence.

Still, there's a lot of stories from Jones's adolescense, and this book travels chronologically.

Coming home from visiting Good Shepherd, my mother sometimes whipped out a warning out of nowhere. “Don’t you ever be like your sister. Do you hear me? Don’t you grow up to be like Janet.” Every time she said this to me I was devastated. I was nothing like my sister. I was me. Didn’t she even know me? It was a seed of doubt inadvertently planted by my mother. I began to wonder if I was adopted, and so began the year known as, “Was I adopted?” Each week I’d ask a family member, “Seriously, was I adopted?” Finally Danny said, “Yes, you were adopted. Go away.” Nothing they could say could make me stop doubting my place in our family.

Another paragraph:

To say my mother was unpredictable is to say that the ocean is salty. It was a given, but you went in there anyway, hoping to float on top of the waves.

Some of the best stories are from Jones's girlhood, when she writes about everything mundane to deeply traumatical.

Sugarfoot was my pet cat but also my surrogate mama and best friend. For the last five years I came to pet her quietly when life was too hard to bear. When she was thirsty she drank out of the next-door neighbor’s pool. He did not like our cat drinking from his pool. My mother found Sugarfoot dead while I was at school one day. I came home and she said, “I think your cat is sick. She may be dead Rickie. She’s lying there in the garden.” I did not believe her. Not Sugarfoot! Not dead! I had to see for myself.

There was Sugarfoot lying in the garden where she always liked to sleep, but when I bent over to pick her up she was stiff and her fur was covered with green vomit. I picked her up gently, wiped off the vomit, and rocking her body in my arms, I cried. God, not again, don’t take her from me too. It wasn’t God who had done this, it was the next-door neighbor, a man who saw us every day with our wheelchaired teenager, struggling to have some kind of normal life. A man who passed our broken-hearted house every day, he poisoned Sugarfoot. A monster lived next door. I still don’t know how he managed it, but Danny dug the hole. He had always buried our pets and the continuity of this burial task was important to all of us. We buried Sugarfoot in the garden, right where she died. I sat there with her as long as I could, singing and crying.

Her later years, finding music via The Beatles, getting involved with Dr. John, starting to write her own music, getting into the music business, making an album, meeting and getting romantically entangled with Tom Waits, are interesting, but to me not as interesting as her initial years.

Sadly, my interest in the book waned after the initial strides that Jones took. The rhythm of the book took a far less strong path after a third and I wish she'd have maintained it.

For me, again, somebody who's not heard Jones's music, it's not a strong story, but the start is interesting, almost touching on Faulkner. If you're looking for a much stronger writer where it comes to music, I suggest you try Patti Smith or Lester Bangs. show less

Last Chance Texaco from Rickie Lee Jones is an insightful and entertaining read, though I admit to being a big fan so might be a little biased. That said, I think anyone interested in music and/or autobiography will enjoy this book.

There is, of course, all of the stories we would expect. People in the music industry, places and events that we might have heard a little about. In that respect Jones delivers what should please readers primarily interested in those aspects of her life. I was show more more impressed, and found every bit as interesting, the story of her youth and childhood.

In many autobiographies (and memoirs to an extent) we get some childhood stories the person feels either helps explain who they are presenting themselves to be or are especially unusual. Here we get to watch her grow up, we see her grapple with moves, fitting in, finding herself (perhaps more than once). This is the part of the book where most people can find things to relate to. I moved a lot, I rebelled early and often, I walked a fine line between introvert and wanting to be accepted. I appreciated that a fair portion of the book let me know how Jones grew up, even down to the pranks like ringing doorbells and running away, or at least planning to run away.

The voice throughout is almost conversational, which I find appealing in a memoir or autobiography. It feels like she is sitting across from me and telling me her life story (I should be so lucky!). This has been a ray of sunshine during an otherwise dark period of time and I can't thank her enough for it.

I highly recommend this to not only music fans and fans of Jones but also to those who simply enjoy reading biography and autobiography. This is as much a slice of history of the period as it is the story of a phenomenal artist's life (did I mention I am a big fan?).

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less