Praise for Last Chance Texaco:
"A jaw-dropping youth, and an addictive, funny, eccentric and perceptive memoir." —Nick Hornby
“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.” —Jake Cline, Washington Post
“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.”— New York Times
“Vividly cinematic… Sexy and moving and sad.” —Bookforum
“She reads as a modern Huck Finn…A testament to the joys and the chaos of a life of travelling.” — New Yorker
“It’s the absolute best book about being an artist in the rock world that I’ve ever read.” — Bob Lefsetz, The Lefsetz Letter
“[Rickie Lee Jones] opened every door, and she never flinched…she’s a storyteller.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“Candid, cosmic, so cool… An impassioned and cinematic trip through Jones’s eventful life. Jones manages to carry her originality, intimacy, and volcanic expressiveness into book form.” —Boston Globe
“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." —Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“So remarkably beautifully written, showing [Rickie Lee’s] signature as a songwriter, too.” —Scott Simon, NPR
“One of the most compelling memoirs I’ve ever read… What really sucks you in, and lifts you up, is the dazzling magic of her prose.” —Please Kill Me
“Well-crafted and intensely candid.” —San Diego Union-Tribune
“A crackling debut memoir… Wise and gorgeous, this story is as poetic as the songs that made Jones famous.” —Publishers Weekly (starred)
“In gorgeous prose interspersed with her lyrics, this is as distinctive as she is, a rich, bracing, and candid memoir dancing with the love of language.” —Booklist (starred review)
“What makes this a most inspiring memoir is her absorbing storytelling, facility with language (no surprise there) and her fealty to integrity – commerce be damned." —Michael Simmons, MOJO
“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.” —O Magazine
“Men leave, fame fizzles, family breaks your heart…but Jones knows a good story and how to tell it.” —Kirkus (starred review)
"Fans will enjoy this buoyant coming-of-age narrative by one of music’s most idiosyncratic performers." —Library Journal
Praise for Rickie Lee Jones:
“Rickie Lee Jones has been pushing down musical boundaries for over four decades with her hauntingly beautiful voice and fearless experimentation.” —NPR
“[Her] music has healing properties: the beauty of its melodies and the wisdom of its words soothe the soul and remind us what a peculiar treasure Jones is.” —Boston Globe
“Intimate and real . . . she feels like an old, confiding friend—plaintive and genuinely heartbreaking.” —Mother Jones
“One of the most intriguing, idiosyncratic vocalists of our time.” —USA Today
“A singular talent.” —Daily Mirror (UK)
“There has always been something defiant about Rickie Lee Jones . . . [with] a voice from a dream, elusive yet familiar, transcendent, a messenger from another place.” —Independent (UK)
“A standout international performer.” —The Australian
★ 2021-01-14
A memoir from the veteran singer and songwriter whose long career has involved plenty of ups and downs.
Born in Chicago in 1954, Jones begins with vivid stories of her early childhood in Arizona, where her family moved in 1959. Throughout, she proves herself as engaging a storyteller on the page as in her songs. A peripatetic family life took her through countless schools. “Constant moving was my parents' version of running away,” she writes, “and this inclination was reinforced in me every year of my life.” She began hitchhiking early in her teens and was kicked out of high school, labeled “an undesirable element” by the reactionary vice principal, “the real life version of Dean Wormer of Animal House.” But California hippie culture awaited, and more good luck than bad considering her propensity for taking risks and numerous illicit substances—though the latter eventually bit back hard. “I was living a life enchanted by impossible connections, narrow escapes, and the perfect timing of curiously strong coincidences,” she writes, recounting the time she bumped into her cousin at a Jimi Hendrix concert. The great passions of her pop-star years—Lowell George, Dr. John, and, most of all, Tom Waits—still inspire dreamy prose arpeggios. "Now we were religions, we converted to each other, we inspired each other and we spoke in tongues,” she writes about Waits. “He growled, I cooed. He softened, I growled….We were jellyfish, floating from day to night.” Sadly, however, "the apex of my love life corresponds to the apex of my career success, and unfortunately my success corresponded with my drug use.” The high times petered out by 1983, when she quit drugs and “headed to France.” She chronicles her life since then, including marriage and motherhood, in just a few pages—a wise editorial choice.
Men leave, fame fizzles, family breaks your heart…but Jones knows a good story and how to tell it.
