Last Chance Texaco: Mojo magazine’s Book of the Year

Have you met Ms. Jones? One weekend night on prime time television, a then-unknown singer and vital part of the burgeoning Los Angeles jazz pop scene skyrocketed to fame overnight after a now iconic performance on Saturday Night Live. The year was 1979, the song ‘Chuck E’s in Love,’ and the singer, donning her trademark red beret, was the soon to be pronounced ‘Duchess of Coolsville’ (Time), Rickie Lee Jones.

Last Chance Texaco is the first-ever 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: from her nomadic childhood as the granddaughter of vaudevillian performers to her father’s abandonment of the family and her years as a teenage runaway, from her beginnings at LA’s Troubadour club to her tumultuous relationship with Tom Waits, her battle with drugs, motherhood as a touring artist and longevity as a woman in rock and roll.

These are never-before-told stories of the girl in the raspberry beret, a songwriter and performer who has been a major influence on contemporary popular culture.