Last Chance Texaco: Mojo magazine's Book of the Year Paperback – April 7, 2022

What an entertaining read. I don't care if you own all of her albums or one album this book is a great read. I love her writing style, the words flow like lyrics from one of her songs. Ms. Jones has lived a fascinating life and has never been afraid to take chances, personally or professionally. I loved this book and I'll be back for a reread eventually.

Gift

Dang not what I expected at all. It was way better than I expected. Rickie tells the story of her life being brutally honest about it. I really like her story because it speaks honestly of the adversity and the hard path she travelled to get where she is.

The best prose I've read & listened to in years. Compelling & well constructed and artfully executed. Brilliant & fantastic read.

I'll confess up front that I wasn't a big fan of RLJ's music when she was at her peak of success. Her sex appeal was undeniable, but musically I was on a different track. I also haven't bought this book - it was given to me by a friend who read it and thought I'd enjoy it.They were right. Not only did I like it, I loved it. Not only is it an intriguing personal memoir, it's also a defacto chronicle of an entire generation experiencing the greatest cultural shifts in modern history.As a memoir, it's beautifully written, often poetic in its imagery, without ever getting pretentious or lapsing into purple prose. It starts with Rickie's colorful family history, a collection of attractive but semi-tragic figures with roots in vaudeville and the barren soil of poverty.From this strange clan sprang a strong-willed sprig of a girl who started her school years as an outcast, constantly moving like gypsies with her dysfunctional but loving family, until she finally blossomed in adolescence and began focusing on her musical talents - a process complicated by her deeply imprinted insecurity and impetuous wanderlust.Still in her pubescent years, Rickie was a front runner and a runaway, an untamed kitten on a reckless quest to find herself, fueled by acid and a daring self-confidence. Her transition from devil-may-care thirteen-year-old to successful young adult artist was a madcap adventure that would be hard to survive in today's dangerous times. And her freewheeling individuality would be a hard sell today, when tattoos and pink hair are badges of conformity and there are barely three flavors of music.Sadly, like her troubled bohemian forebearers, Rickie Lee never fully escaped the insecurity of her upbringing. There are subtle echoes of it in her literary voice, even as she recants the glorious triumphs of her career. But it's never self-pitying, rather evidence of her ongoing struggle to reconcile her unique persona with the world.Never have I read anything which more completely captures the experience of growing up in the boomer era, including the explosive impact of the Liverpool invasion, the hippie years and the sexy 70s. It's almost a bonus that we also get a behind-the-scenes look of her attempts to break into the music industry, glimpses of her love life and her regretful addiction.Thankfully it all pulls together and wraps on a positive note. A very satisfying read from beginning to end.

Thank God for critics, for they have unanimously agreed this is an outstanding memoir. unfortunate sites like amazon give any old passerby the opportunity to throw ignorance at her ( "I saw her in concert and hated her arrogance so i would hate the book if i read it. " i actually read that one. People who have not even read the book get to rate it.This book has an almost fiction quality to it. Her fantastic life is at times so unfortunate, so exhilarating, her story is planned to unveil, a little for everyone, from her days as a hippie hitch hiker to her rise as a rock star and her down and out days as a jazz singer when she met - and was muse to some of the coolest folks in town. She reminds us that the boys. are just as influenced by the girls, girls just don't get the credit.This work ... is layered. Like her music it opens a little more each time you read it. It is .. an American family who lived in a new house every year, whose dad hoped to find a pot of gold in some new back yard, and whose mother kept the family together by sheer seething will power. The collective story is as important as the one because there is not one without the other. It should be one of the defining American stories, period. As a autobiography of a great musician, it reads like no other.