Last Chance Texaco : Chronicles of an American Troubadour
Author(s): Rickie Lee Jones
Have you met Ms. Jones?
One night in 1979, a woman in a red beret skyrocketed to fame after a performance on Saturday Night Live. The song was “Chuck E’s in Love,” and the singer, Rickie Lee Jones. A vital part of the burgeoning Los Angeles jazz pop scene, she would soon be pronounced “Duchess of Coolsville” by TIME magazine.
Last Chance Texaco is the first no-holds-barred account of the life of one of rock’s hardest working women in her own words. With candour and lyricism, Rickie Lee Jones takes us on the journey of her exceptional life, including her nomadic childhood as the granddaughter of vaudevillian performers; her father’s abandonment of the family and her years as a teenage runaway; her beginnings at LA’s Troubadour club; her tumultuous relationship with Tom Waits and her battle with drugs; and her longevity as a woman in rock and roll.
These are never-before-told stories of the girl in the raspberry beret, a songwriter who would inspire American culture for decades.
Review(s):
“Men leave, fame fizzles, family breaks your heart . . . but Jones knows a good story and how to tell it."
“Winding and leisurely, as rich and colorful as Jones’s best lyrics. It’s a classically American picaresque tale. . . Jones paints a striking, distinctive self-portrait."
“This tender, fierce, intimate memoir is testament that Jones has lived a life as brave . . . and rich as her music — with love, heartbreak, addiction, and magic, sprinkled throughout.”
“Vividly cinematic. . . Sexy and moving and sad.”
“A jaw-dropping youth, and an addictive, funny, eccentric and perceptive memoir.”
“So remarkably beautifully written, showing [Rickie Lee’s] signature as a songwriter, too.”
“In this raw and roving life story, Jones depicts a child who recognized her humanity and worth even when others wouldn’t, and a woman whose confidence helped her rise above heroin addiction, music-industry sexism and the traumas of her youth . . . In a book about the past, Jones has no problem moving on. It’s a neat trick.”
“Candid, cosmic, so cool . . . An impassioned and cinematic trip through Jones’s eventful life. I shouldn’t be surprised that Jones manages to carry her originality, intimacy, and volcanic expressiveness into book form.”
“Terrific . . . The prose is rich and rhythmic, filled with lines that are pithy (‘Rickie Lee is a Frank Capra movie that had been overtaken by Stanley Kubrick’) and poetic (‘childhood traumas leave their dirty footprints on the fresh white snow of our happy-ever-afters’) . . . Jones is as fearless in prose as she is on stage. ”
“Well-crafted and intensely candid.”
O, The Oprah Magazine 55 of the Most Anticipated Books of 2021
ISBN: 9781443464628