It's
funny how your life becomes mythology to you. The pivotal places.
The mountains and the green parts near the rivers. We grow up
telling ourselves these stories, and then tell them to our children
and our friends, and they become our histories—our common
histories—the earth from which we understand our place;
the need for this cannot be overstated. Our children and friends
must hear our stories—over and over again. That is how
we know who we are. Because, in America, there is nothing that
lasts—no marker you can return to remember or imagine your
relatives and ancestors. Everything is disposable and everything
is disposed of.
The Tropicana, where Tom Waits and Rickie Lee Jones lived
and Marianne Faithful fell down by the pool—the headquarters
for 'punk' on the west coast—was torn down, without a moment's
hesitation. As was the drugstore on the corner of Crescent Heights
and Sunset, where Who Was It was discovered. I met Mickey Rourke
there before he made movies. He said, "Look, I've already
forgotten the name of it. Schwabbs." Who will remember
these things—these days and people who made us what we
are? In Paris, you can walk by any building and it can recite
to you every great moment that has slept on its steps or jumped
from its windows or argued across its tiny tables. You can feel
it reverberating from corner to corner. Things have been planned
here. History was made and, for all you know, is still being
made. You are a part.
But, in America, who knows if you're a part of anything. Maybe
you're just some piece of paper blowing by and we don't—any
of us—give a s**t about you and we will not remember you
unless you get your ass on T.V. right now. Now. It has
to happen Now. It doesn't matter what you say just say something.
This rage that has crushed the spirit of creation, here in America,
I think happens because greed has overtaken our culture. Culture,
actually is just a byword for what we have. We don't actually
have a culture because nothing is established.
Except as legend. As myth. It is actually being passed down
in the traditional way. The old Hebrew way. The Indian way.
By word of mouth. By story. By changing the story as it goes—each
person telling, adding and subtracting, the stories of what
has gone on or sorted through and retold or discarded. But I
know Tom and Chuck used to go out and steal black jockeys off
the lawns of rich people in Beverly Hills, with me looking out,
even while my record was number one, and Tom was already a legend
in Hollywood. And I know other stories, and you know stories,
and what we can do here is tell them, because there is no true
telling in the selling of an artist. You won't find any truth
in Spin or VH 1 or...because they’re selling it to you.
We
have to build our own ruins that no one can tear down, and tell
the stories to our children, and make sure they know what America
is. That it is not—and never was—politics, or religion,
or T.V. They are anomalies of our century. Religion has become
politics on T.V. That's what they'd like you to think America
is. But, don't you let them.
America
is the train Lincoln took to Springfield, and the highway my
mom drove on to go back to Chicago. And the churches and gas
stations and farms were only put there to wave to you. You were
never supposed to stop driving.
Yet, what part of the story do you decide to keep to yourself?
Should we sing these Woody Guthrie diaries? Or were they to
be spoken to himself—hammers hammering, bells ringing,
warning, warning, 'danger!'
These American self-created men, like Woody or Tom or I can't
think of anybody else, but I see them driving by sometimes. They
create a language for themselves and stick everybody in a car
and drive to where people can understand what they're saying.
We
feel fierce about these people. We want them to exist. We want
them for ourselves, not just on magazine covers, but we want
to live next door to them. We want them to be a part of the
best of ourselves.
And that is why we tell the best of ourselves over and over
again.
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Once
touted as the natural successor to Joni Mitchell, singer/songwriter
RICKIE LEE JONES proved no less idiosyncratic
or mercurial; like Mitchell, Jones experienced significant commercial
success at the outset of her career, but a restless creative spirit—combined
with a stubborn refusal to fit comfortably into any one musical
niche—sealed her ultimate destiny as that of a highly-regarded
cult heroine.
Jones was born on 8 November 1954 in Chicago, but the volatile
relationship between her mother and father resulted in an upbringing
that led her everywhere from Phoenix, Arizona to Olympia, Washington,
where an expulsion ended her school career. As a teen, Jones began
drinking heavily and, eventually, she left home and began drifting
up and down the West Coast before settling in Los Angeles in the
mid-1970s. There, she worked a series of waitressing jobs while
occasionally performing in area clubs, where she sang and honed
her unique, Beat-influenced spoken word monologues. She also began
a relationship with fellow boho Tom Waits.
Her first measure of success was as a songwriter: After her friend,
Ivan Ulz, sang Jones' composition "Easy Money" over
the phone to Lowell George, the ex-Little Feat frontman included
it on his album Thanks I'll Eat It Here. Then, in 1978, Jones'
four-song demo came to the attention of Warner Brothers executive
Lenny Waronker, who enlisted Russ Titleman to co-produce her self-titled
1979 debut LP. Spurred by the success of the jazz-flavored hit
single "Chuck E's in Love", Rickie Lee Jones became
a smash, both commercially and critically, earning praise for
Jones' elastic vocals, vivid wordplay and unique fusion of folk,
jazz and RandB.
With 1981's follow-up Pirates, she gave early notice that
her music would not sit still; employing longer and more complex
song structures, her lyrics tackled themes of evolution, change
and death. Two years later, she returned with Girl at Her Volcano,
an EP collection of live jazz standards and studio outtakes. With
1984's The Magazine, she made another left turn, teaming
with composer James Newton Howard for her most slick, synth-driven
outing to date.
Problems with alcohol, business difficulties, and the birth of
a daughter, effectively sidelined Jones for much of the decade;
she did not resurface until 1989's sterling Flying Cowboys,
produced by Steely Dan's Walter Becker and recorded with the aid
of the wonderful Scottish trio the Blue Nile. Don Was took over
the production reins for 1991's Pop Pop, on which Jones covered
ballads ranging in origin from Tin Pan Alley to the Haight-Ashbury
while backed by jazz players including Charlie Haden and Joe Henderson.
After 1993's Traffic From Paradise, she embarked on an
acoustic tour. Naked Songs, a document of those unplugged shows,
followed in 1995. Ghostyhead was released in 1997 and It's
Like This appeared three years later.
Copyright © Jason Ankeny
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