Last Chance Texaco

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 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.

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 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.