June 20, 2023 • 63 mins
Rickie Lee Jones hit it big with her debut album in 1979. The following year she won the Grammy for Best New Artist, and over the course of the next four decades, she released numerous albums that pulled inspiration from jazz, rock, electronic music, and even musical-theater.
In late April, Rickie released her latest album, Pieces Of Treasure, where she sings songs from the American songbook with a jazz slant. Producer Russ Titelman, who produced Rickie’s first two albums, reunited with her on her latest and helped inspire Rickie to find comfort in a lower register. The result is an oftentimes sultry meditation on aging and survival.
On today’s episode Bruce Headlam talks to Rickie Lee Jones about her decades-long fight to sing jazz even though she is often viewed as an outsider. She also tells stories about leaving home as a young teenager, and the abuse she endured while trying to survive on her own. And she plays songs from her career including one she wrote after seeing John Lennon appear in a dream. And just a note before we get started – this episode contains descriptions of sexual abuse, and might not be appropriate for all listeners.
You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Rickie Lee Jones songs HERE.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Ricky Lee Jones hit it big with her debut
album in seventy nine. The following year, she won the
Grammy Award for Best New Artist, and over the course
of the next four decades, released numerous albums that pulled
inspiration from jazz, rock, electronic music, and even musical theater.
(00:38):
In late April, Ricky released her latest album, Pieces of Treasure,
where she sings songs in the American songbook with a
jazz slant producer and legendary an arman. Russ Titelman, who
produced Ricky's first two albums, reunited with her on her
latest and helped inspire Ricky to find a comfort in
her lower vocal register. The result is an oftentimes sultry
(01:01):
meditation on aging and survival. On today's episode, Bruce HEADLM
talks to Ricky Ley Jones about her decades long fight
to sing jazz, even though she's often viewed as an outsider.
She also tells stories about leaving home as a young
teenager and the abuse she endured while trying to survive
on her own. She played songs from her career, including
(01:24):
one she wrote after seeing John Lennon appear to her
in a dream, and just a note before we get started.
This episode contains descriptions of sexual abuse and might not
be appropriate for all listeners. This is broken record liner
notes for the digital age. I'm justin Ritchman. Here's Bruce
(01:46):
Hedlam with Ricky Lee Jones.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I've always thought of you as someone who and I
thought of this particularly on the new record. You're someone
who is acting in the song in a strength. Did
you always think of yourself as that one?
Speaker 3 (02:00):
I've just found the words to say that. But I've
always put the song on and been inside of it,
and I know everything about everybody in it. So if
I sing something cool, I know where she's sitting, what
she's wearing, where she bought it, everybody at the bar.
I see it all. And I think that's what an
(02:22):
actor does. They try to create everything about their character.
But it happens to me instantaneously. I have a rich imagination,
I guess, and when I sing, the tree instantly grows.
And I started thinking this year, I'm acting songs, and
there's a little difference between singing a song and acting.
(02:47):
Being a song actor, it suggests i'mhow that I'm not
a real singer, which of course I am. A serious singer,
but I think I'm acting, I'm being the song.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
It's closer to singers from previous generations. We're like that,
like Peggy Lee or Julie London. Yes, people like that
seem to kind of inhabit songs become the characters and songs.
They were singers, not primarily songwriters, although Peggy Lee did
write some songs. But you you write them, so people think, oh,
they must be confessions. They're yeah, pouring your soul out. Yeah,
(03:22):
and you don't really pour your soul out.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
I like to write stories, and in this story might
be some poignant, unresolved tear drop or something. That's the
best way to show it in this way, as any
writer does, you know, put their own emotion because that's
the only palette we have right into what they write.
(03:48):
And that thing again of the singer songwriter versus the
singer how people see them, because after Bob Dylan and
Joni Mitchell, it became crucial to be a songwriter. If
you weren't a songwriter, then you're not really authentic. If
you didn't write that song, then why even singing it?
(04:08):
Kind of aut itude, which I of course disagree with.
To me, the interpreter, the singer, the bard is who matters. Yes, yes,
I'm glad you wrote the song. But if there's no
one to sing it, what does it matter? So Peggy
Lee or me or anybody who loves a song and
(04:30):
loves to sing and loves hear other people, you know,
whether it's a choir or whatever, loves singing. That's what
I like most. When I had the ear of the
press the way I did in the early eighties, I
talk about Linda Ronstaff, for instance, who was not as
(04:52):
in style now for a minute, because she wasn't punk
rock and she didn't write songs. But I was like, bet,
she's a great singer. And whatever comes into fashion, and
I'm glad new things come into fashion. But you can't
discard the meaning of a singer, I think.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Because when you came out, you don't sound like Joni Mitchell,
but you looked a bit like Jomie Mitchell, so much
like her, so everybody's, oh, she's influenced by Joni Mitchell.
And then I'm reading your book and it's like Jimmy Hendrix.
It's West Side Story, which is a big thing for you. Yeah,
and there's a very I won't give it away. There's
(05:33):
a very lovely scene with that guy. I'll say his name,
Tom Waite's the only time I'm going.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
To say it.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Where you're outside of a bar and someone says a
line and someone else yeah, and then you all sing it.
He gets the line wrong, I think too. But it's
this beautiful scene.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Because and it's real, It really happened.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
And people grew up, you know, back then, like people
would have records. They might have the Beatles, but then
their parents would have South Pacific or Camelot or something,
a sound of everybody had sound of music. Back then.
You said you tended towards Laura Nero. What did you
get from her? What was it that drew you?
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Well?
Speaker 3 (06:14):
I got that thing of these strange and I still
haven't learned her songs. But these kinds of chords, right,
and hers are much darker, but and they probably show
(06:37):
up passing in Leonard Bernstein. So that's what she had.
She had inversions that were magical to me, and I
wanted to know them. She also happened to see her
on public television at the same time I heard of
so to see her is something else entirely. She looked
(06:58):
like a terribly mentally ill person who could hardly sit
there to perform this song. And as a teenager, I
really identified with that part. Felt pretty barely together myself.
So I liked that there was somebody there who dared
to show herself as she was.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
And she was also very theatrical, Yes that's a better word.
She was creating scenes with her people know, wedding bell Blues,
that's one of her big songs, But it creates a
big it does.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
It's like a show number, something like the one about Tomcat.
Goodbye is like its own piece of theater from top
to bottom. So it's a little bit of Gershwin's, a
little bit of organbezz and then a lot of motown soul.
And she's made her own kind of music. I'm not
(07:55):
gonna say brand, but she's made her own and you know,
I think what I love is the sound of her voice.
But that that she did that probably was a map
for me that I could also make my own room
of my own imaginary people.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
What do you think are your songs that do that
the best? What rooms do you go? I got that one?
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Yeah, the things from Pirates, I would say, And.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
He's got walk crazy act turns him into a car.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Two and pretty girls go by. Nothing here to do anymore,
so he sits on the stoop all day.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
I does something is waiting for Countfinger. Louis picks up
Eddy in the alley.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
He likes to come here with them buzz from that town.
Everybody there looks like Frankie Valley and they're fluently blonde
from her leg to a cigarette. And Louis told Eddie
fix him up, but he ain't come back in now
this rhyme Frankie Valley. I was originally trying to rhyme
(09:23):
Eddie Briggotti because Eddie Briggotty is from the Young Rascals,
and I loved the Young Rascals and especially you know
his How can I be sure there's not? And I
like the idea that nobody's written about Eddie Briggotty, but
I couldn't find anything to rhyme with Gotti. More people
would know who Frankie Valley was. It's a very one
(09:45):
of my funny lines. I have a few funny lines,
but I always feel like it goes right by people.
They're they're enchanted by the service. Start, what are you
talking about? Now? Where everybody looks like Frankie Valley.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
And then.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
More trouble than it's worth?
Speaker 4 (10:09):
What trouble in his word? Oh wold to tell him where.
Speaker 6 (10:21):
You Oh wowld So that's one I think, tell him.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Where you are?
Speaker 3 (10:36):
And then that one goes there, and there's another verse
about the girl.
Speaker 7 (10:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
So those are the two boys Eddie and and oh
and so those characters were inspired by my friend Salbernardi's
childhood friends in Lodi, New Jersey. He had this one guy,
so he had count fingered Louis. But the other one
(11:05):
was the guy was one crazy all right that when
he got nervous, it started spitting all around. So I
brought his characters in. And then so zero quits cool.
She lost her job again and her boyfriend beat her
up and he won't let her in. She's walking by
(11:30):
this joint in her black and blue dress.
Speaker 8 (11:33):
She looks a little welbones out of you, says, don't
tell me, Leving guess.
Speaker 7 (11:41):
It's more trouble in his word, she's moore trouble in
his word.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Oh why? And then.
Speaker 9 (12:02):
Fast and west this way.
Speaker 8 (12:10):
When you've got all these ideas, you'd never to.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Any one.
Speaker 8 (12:25):
There are these magnet's pulling j left, living every story.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Only once.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
So in that part, remember when you're in a movie
and the newspapers go by and they're spinning by it.
This is the exciting time.
Speaker 10 (12:45):
That's what that was.
Speaker 6 (12:51):
Up.
Speaker 8 (12:52):
Hey, yeah, we'll liveving it.
Speaker 9 (12:55):
Up, welling up, we'll.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
It up, well.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
Up, ye will livevyvinge up.
Speaker 9 (13:19):
Welving it up? Yeah, well, liveving it up? Yeah, well,
living up.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Up. And then I think it was probably really inspired
by my friendship with Lunetti found nor reason.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
Then in there carried her over the bridges.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
And fluttering pages. They didn't care, this terminal where dreams
led so many tickets through and strange looking faces, and
see somebody there.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
They knew.
Speaker 11 (14:14):
You could meet me tomorrow when all of the lights
aide blooming. Feel a little lonely, a little sad, a
little mean, But remember this place, Sada's Hotel.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
You could do anything you want.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
You could never tell.
Speaker 11 (14:38):
It's not trouble in its word, but trouble than its word.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Whoa wow, I won't you tell me where you are?
Speaker 3 (15:12):
That? Yeah, so I'd say more than any song I've written.
That song answers hers right, or a song about her
characters living in the darker part of the city. This
one sets them free to go somewhere else. Always I
(15:36):
don't always, but for a long time I've felt it's
a conversation we have when we're lucky enough to be
writers of songs that people here and sing. We're all
talking to one another and responding to one another. It's
just a lie to pretend that you live in a
vacuum and everything comes out of your own head. And
(15:57):
if you're not being honest about it, then your thief
and and you're stealing stuff. So we must learn from
one another, and it has to be okay to say
learning from somebody else. And then I made up my
own thing. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
You know, one of the things about that song you
just played, you're constantly changing tempos. You know, you've stopped
the whole band in the middle, and then it starts
back up again. Where does that come from? Is that
from musicals as well?
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Yeah? Maybe so. I've always liked things that changed directions
and changed and they did it in the pop stuff
for a while, right, Crosby stills a nish. It was exciting,
but probably musical theater does it first?
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Can you tell me about Away from the sky that.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Was inspired by the death of John Lennon. I dream
I had about John Lennon. I feel pretty strong today,
so I can probably talk about it. But sometimes if
I just talk about sad stuff, it's overwhelming. But not
that long after he died, I dreamed of him. I've
(17:05):
never been there, but on a British or riding his
bike with a stocking cap. And then like the three beards,
in the back of him was Yokoa and in back
of her was shown each one is in the little
bike and there was a pier. And as he turned
to go on to the pier, he looked at me.
(17:27):
Gentleman is looking at me, and he sang this, Let's see.
There was a crooked man who lived on a crooked shore.
But now he'll never have to go away anymore.
Speaker 8 (17:47):
Away from the sky. Ahway from the sky.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
And turned onto the pier and they followed him. Really
when I woke up, because sometimes those things dissolve instantly,
I don't know why, but that part never made it
into the recording, I saved the real party saying for
myself and I made up a song based on a
(18:16):
Dylan Thomas short story called After the Fair. You know
the thing on the record is my demo. So I'm
just going boom boomed, as minimal as it can be.
And then, and because I was probably half writing it
as I recorded. For all that it cost him, he
(18:41):
never did complain. The chicken headed man. They're feathering the rain,
but the last bassist tie.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
Everybody's gone.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
The horses are painted with the waiting.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Of the lawn. Go from the rodeo.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
God, from the tundraug girl, it's after the fair.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
That's when I see you.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
There she sleeps in the canvas. The fat man hollers,
O tender is the night I feel bleeding out of you.
(20:02):
So come into my trailer. We can toast a little bread.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
Now.
Speaker 5 (20:09):
Look, you left a hole oil laid on my bed.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
He said. But you keep what you can keep. And
when you dive into the deep this year, after Froz
and you, that's where saved youse.
Speaker 10 (20:53):
Away from the sky, Oh.
Speaker 5 (21:05):
Away from the sky, Oh, away from the sky, Away
(21:30):
from the sky.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
But everybody's gone.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Now.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
It's after the fair. The horses are waiting in the middle.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Of the So you turn the.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Care yourself on. When the lights closed down, you can
watch the ponies round through the middle of town.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
That you go, little girl, there you.
Speaker 6 (22:19):
Go, gone from the tongue run.
Speaker 5 (22:25):
Now it's after the fences.
Speaker 7 (22:34):
When over the fences again and the vacuum and the hole.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
And the plans up in.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
The air, that's where I.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Can hear your best.
Speaker 5 (23:09):
But away from the sky, Away from the sky, Oh,
(23:39):
from the sky.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
Away from the skyes.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
That was Ricky Lee Jones performing her song away from
the Sky. We have to take a quick break and
we'll be back with more from Bruce Headlam and Ricky
Lee Jones. We're back with more from Ricky Lee Jones.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
It's interesting because I reread your your autobiography and now
you moved so much when you.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Were a kid.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yes, it seemed that you were always having to reintroduce
your or introduce yourself.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Although you always did it, it seemed to fill you
with terror, the idea that he.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Yes, and that terror of people basic mistrust and expectation
that at some point don't do their worst. Stayed with me.
The playground seems to be ever with us, I could
say with me, But it does seem like that that
scenario is playing out over and over again of a
(25:15):
bully kids who want to follow the bully, just so
they don't get picked on. A couple kids who are
one's different or one's as poor, or it's always the
same dynamic of who's on top and who's underneath. And
I think the fact that I was a little different,
(25:36):
though I didn't think so, but I think I must
have been gave me someone to be so that I
wasn't anonymous, because I guess more than I hated being
picked on, I hated being invisible. So I accepted that,
but I really never understood why I'd look in the
(25:57):
mirror and go, aren't I pretty? Why don't they like me?
And it's still a mystery to me, really.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yes, even later in your book, you're very critical of
what was sort of late stage hippies. So the people
you hung around with, it seemed that when you were traveling,
and you started traveling, I think at fourteen and just
checking hiking, and you know, you lived in a cave
(26:26):
for a while. There were other people in the cave too,
but I was still a cave, you know. It seemed that,
you know, particularly a lot of the menu met were
very the usury. They're very predatory, and they were the hippies.
They were they talked a good game, but a lot
of them were very abusive.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Well, I was really young, and I believed what I read,
my impressions of what it would be like to be
a grown up in that world, to be an active
member of their idea of what life should be like.
But those people were just greasers a little bit older, right,
(27:14):
They were just the tough kids at school in nineteen
sixty two, or whoever they were. I saw them as
magically appearing with long hair like Christ. And so, you know,
I was definitely needed a place to stay and needed
something to eat, and the cost of that was my body,
(27:35):
and you know, that was very hard. Sometimes I just
wanted to be able to rest and not have to
struggle with some guide. Would he relent and not try
to put his dick in me? Or would that be
the cost of having a night of food. I have
(27:58):
never actually said that so starkly and truly, because it
was so hard and a little kid, you know, and
then getting up the next day if you lucky, if
it's the next day and they don't want you there anymore.
And I think every single guy I met, I thought,
well he married me? Is he the one who loved me,
(28:23):
every one of them, and so that was lots of disappointments.
But I've, you know, have many years to think about it,
and I was really just a very little kid in
a woman's body, in a costume that looked like old
enough for them. I think some of them would have
(28:45):
withdrawn if they knew my two age, but most of
them know. I think it was kind of cool, right
to be attracted to a young teenager. They still sell
that image a lot of school girl like hit Me
Baby One More.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Time Britney spears.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yeah, she sold that image as well. So as long
as we let that image be sold and you know
that stuff is going on in reality, I.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Do want to talk about a nice guy. Yes, that's
your producer on this project, Russ Titelman, who was one
of your first producers. Yeah, my first, your first. He
was your first.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
I had two producers, Lenny Warrenker and Russ Titleman, and
I'd seen Lenny. I didn't know from producers, but I
saw Lenny's name on the back of a Randy Newman record.
It's about two years maybe before I got signed.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Most people would have wanted to meet Randy Newman. No,
you went into the small type.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
That's right. I've always known that's the way in. You
can't go for the big, big thing because everybody wants
to meet Randy. But if you find I was an
infamous getter in Backstage Girl, and I'd watched the secret
way that nobody was going and just slip in that way.
(30:08):
So that was the same philosophy of how to get in.
So anyway his name, and so we sent tapes around
to three or four people. He got one of them
and and I was exactly right. He was the way,
and I pushed, you know, when the record companies went
(30:32):
to sign me, this little I think it was called
Portrait or something. This little company made the best offer,
and we went back to Warner Brothers, my lawyer, a
big shot working for free. We talked him and I'm
going to be a big shot and said, you know,
she wants to go with Lindy. So if you'll meet
(30:53):
the offer. I don't know if that's okay to tell that,
but if you'll meet the offer, it we'll come with you.
And that happened exactly as it was meant to. So
Lenny sent the tape to Russ because they were partners
in production. Russ was working with George Harris in England,
and he tells this story a lot now now that
(31:14):
we're reunited. So when he heard Company, he called Lenny
and said, this girl is a singer. She's like roberta Flock,
which is a pretty big compliment. And Lenny said, I
really noticed I was listening to the songs, so they
were perfect. Him addressing the songs, we got to put
(31:37):
an accordion on the bridge because the Italians are there,
and him addressing the singer, you got to go sing
that line again. So it was good.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
It's hard to imagine now just what a incredible period
that was for you. You'd only been writing songs for
a couple of years. Yes, you were living in La I.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Was homeless in the months before I was signed. I
just tumbled into having nowhere to go.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
What was it like, suddenly the these record companies are
bidding for you.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Yeah, it felt as if it was always supposed to
be that way.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Did you always think that growing up that this was
going to happen.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
No, But I always felt that I was going somewhere special.
I always felt like I was always talking to the
invisible world and God's cameras right about here. Is how
you got it is look up today. So it's hard
to explain what I always thought, but I feel a
(32:38):
constant connection to something that almost has no words but
is ever present in here. But I can't say that
I did you know? My life was troubled and going nowhere.
I didn't have any skills, I'd quit high school, but
I had this. When I sang, it was all that
(33:00):
I am. Anything I sang was totally emotional. And then
I got this job as a singing way too, and
everybody else was so much louder than me. I thought,
I'm gonna have to learn how to sing louder or
I'm never gonna get a job. So I taught myself.
(33:23):
But there was a book, and I put my hands
on my chest and found a way to put that
sound in the bones and practice. And that was the first,
you know, because always thought it was a great singer,
But the fact was I could be a great singer,
but it wasn't. So I taught myself to be a
(33:43):
better singer. As soon as I did that, within a year,
it presented itself to me. It was just life presented
itself to me.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Did you not know you wanted to be a singer
before that. What made you finally focus on that?
Speaker 3 (34:00):
You know, since I was sixteen, I'd been practicing, you know,
sweet Juty blue Eyes and singing and play with my
girlfriend Julian, playing everywhere. But when I was on my
own and got to La, it seemed like that will
never happen there. It's a town full of people trying
to do it. And you're so weird. You're not like
(34:22):
Joni Mitchell. You can't sing like Joe Bias. You're so weird,
right because you're different, and so somebody will come. They
might not all, but somebody will come because you're different.
They'll like that about you. And I had this natural
thing for jazz. My father sang jazz and his father
(34:46):
was a vaudevillion And I began to you know, what
I know how to do is my funny Valentine. And
so I started singing the jazz ballads in Venice when
and nobody was doing it. So that felt powerful. I
have something that's just mine and I did it really well,
and the local snooty musician and suddenly were like, we
(35:11):
like you come and sit in with us again. So
I started to feel like I had a possibility and
an identity, and then in a short time I had
my own Friday night gig at a bar, and then
a short time later I was making a demo for
a record company. So once I set aside doubt and
(35:34):
my mother said, I said, Mom, I'm going to go
to school and be a stenographer. I've only got to
go eighteen months and I'll have a job. She said,
but I thought you wanted to be a singer, imagine,
And I said I did, but I just can't see
how that would ever happen. And she said, don't you
(35:56):
give up on your dreams.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Interesting because your mother had had a very tough life,
very tough. She'd been an orphan. Yeah, your father lost
his mother very young.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
As well, so they're both that in common.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
And she seemed to live a very controlled life and
either keep she had to keep things. She kept things
together for other people. It's interesting that she was the
one who said to you, I thought you wanted to
be a sending.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
No, it was almost divine, like the other voice said,
we got to speak through Betty right now, or she's
going to give up. Don't give up on your dreams. Yeah,
it was unexpected and so heartfelt that I thought, my
mother is invested in me trying with all my might
to make a dream come true, And it almost seemed
(36:47):
like it was more she wanted me to try, But
I thought, maybe she thinks I can do it too.
She's not here, she didn't see what's happening, but she
believes me.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
When you got into the studio for the first time,
you played with bands, and you had fabulous players I did.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
You had Steve gadd Andy, Newmark, Willie Week, the incredible
Victor Feldman who was in Miles Davis's band, and did
all that's Teelee Dan work. So one of the things
about when you were with the top tier players is
they're very kind. It's the other ones that's jabbulut. But
(37:27):
the best players are very kind and they love making music.
And so I couldn't write it, but I could sing
it all. So I sang all the horn parts, and
somebody wrote them down and they played them and they
were exactly how I thought they would sound in my head.
But the other aspects of recording, like Chucky's in Love
(37:48):
and stuff, as it manifested into the physical world, it
wasn't at all what I only ever heard my voice
and me. So the producers endeavored to bring to reality
whatever feeling they thought I had, and their own, you know,
(38:09):
how to make a good record. I think their choices
were always much cleaner, tamer, precise. Then I might have gone.
And I'm glad, you know, and I've known people like
this about me best I think then the more raggedy stuff.
But they took me out gently and my guitar playing
(38:34):
and put in.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
So what was that like? That incredible year? You're signed,
you make this record with these amazing players, You're on
Saturday Night Live, you argue with them on Saturday Night Live,
which I thought was pretty gutsy. They wanted you to
do one song you wanted to do Coolsville.
Speaker 10 (38:56):
I did.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yeah, I remember seeing that Saturday Night Live. Everybody does.
It was a you were suddenly huge. Yeah, and you
had a check for fifty thous that's right. Was what
was the first thing you bought with that?
Speaker 3 (39:13):
Probably? You know, dinner? First of all, I had nowhere
to put it. I didn't have a bank account, so
when I got that check, I still had to borrow
some money from Lenny because I didn't have a cash
and really I didn't know how anything worked. And know
how to have a bank account or how to tip
or so what was that like? You know, it's almost
(39:35):
like the whole life was holding his breath so for
for a little while, everything was just shimmering and still
and right, that's what it was, like, I think, But.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
You beat the second album curse I did?
Speaker 3 (39:55):
I meant to too that, you're like, I was well
aware of it. I had met Bet Middler at a dinner.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Was this before your record?
Speaker 3 (40:06):
Yeah, before the first record? So because you thought, she said,
let me tell you what's going to happen. You're gonna
put this one out and if it doesn't do horrible,
they'll pick up your second one, and not to your
third record. Will you have any kind of acclaimer success?
And that was kind of what happened to most people.
And that was I thought, nah, we'll see. I think
(40:27):
my first record's probably gonna do pretty good. So when
we had the big success, so big, bigger than anything.
Hard to find a woman who had had that kind
of success coming out the gate, though you know, they
probably weren't telling it up in the sixties in exactly
(40:48):
the same way, but it was. It was a very
big thing, and it was a crossover kind of thing,
and culturally, I got to expand the idea. You know,
I was a singer songwriter, but I wasn't a fochy
And these things sound small now, but they were big
making people accept that it works. It'll make everybody money,
(41:09):
and it's different than what was before. So I know
I can't match this record in any way. I'm not
the same person. I'm not as happy, and those are
a lot of beautiful, happy songs, and I'm not on
this side of the mountain anymore. So from the other
side of the mountain, I will draw the picture of
(41:33):
what I see fiercely, and I won't give one eyelash
to the idea of a song that you'll play on
the radio. And so a little bit of it is defiance,
and that's okay. You can't help but not respond to
what's happening. You know, if that hadn't happened, what would
(41:57):
I have written?
Speaker 4 (41:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
But so what I wrote was what was happening to me.
And I think that the incredible thing that happens with
the recording is it captures more than in the song itself.
It captures your intention and it captures your spirit That's
the inexplicable thing about a great record is it has spirit,
(42:21):
and people put it on the list of their important records.
I personally think the first record is important, but I
don't exactly know why Pirates matters more. I'm guessing people
who put it on their favorite lists don't know it's
the SECA record, so they don't know it's overcoming expectations.
(42:43):
But I like it. It's dreamy. It's remarkable in its
musicality and sophistication for a girl who had no education.
But I like a song I can sing, like I
was saying, I like a melody that you remember. I
don't know if anybody can sing the traces of the
(43:04):
Western slopes, you know. So I don't mean to insult myself,
but I'm glad that it hit with people. But then
the curse probably came some years later. I took a
long time to make the third record. It was nineteen
eighty four, I think, so I had gone in and
(43:26):
out of heroin addiction, and a couple of times I
had drunk on stage, not many, but the times I did.
There was a big, full length photograph in a newspaper,
and the promoters. The promoters Union exiled me from many stages.
(43:50):
Guys did much worse, but I think that there was
an expectation of proper, pristine behavior from me because of
the quality.
Speaker 9 (44:01):
Of the work.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
We don't like our girls to behave badly, and they
want to think of of a woman. It's a tragic,
falling figure. And so many people want to disrespect to
anybody instead of loving, forgiving, spreading that goodwill. So I
was in a really defensive posture when I did the magazine.
(44:25):
I was off drugs and I wanted everybody to know it,
and I did a cover looking really off drugs.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
And everybody's very healthy, very.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Healthy, and I was super healthy. But I spent some
time in France and I was leaning towards a more
classical kind of music. Now I'd heard Eric Sati and
it was expanding in another way. So these are weird.
(44:55):
This was the one album I wrote that I wanted
to do theater with it, So this was the direction
I would have liked to have grown in some version
of my life, to write theater and act. But at
that point I seemed to be just collapsing emotionally. The
(45:19):
broken love affairs, the trail of dead, and the very
beginning of living with Tom Waits for the rest of
my life because nobody would stop asking me about him.
In every interview. Aside from that, it was kind of emotional.
It's like, but aren't I a musician? You have no
respect or interest in the person who's sitting in front
(45:41):
of you. Now, if you want to talk to Tom, the
phone over there, call him, But why do you want
to talk to me about that? So you know, there
were years where I was resentful and angry and tell
them if they mention it, they'll be escorted out, and
all these things till finally, I don't know, in the
(46:04):
last ten years I went, isn't that wonderful? We have
lived together all our lives, that brief time, that beautiful
time that was so remarkable to audiences and so enchanting.
We looked like we belong together that song, and they
(46:25):
won't let it go? Isn't that wonderful? And would have
liked to have had some peace with him, but that
did not and would never happen, And that was all
that turned out to be just as hard as living
with the questions, you know, twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
But now I'm mean living with the unresolved yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
And also the pain of this breakup was really hard.
But to be reminded by every passing stranger who comes
to talk, especially in Europe, they really want to know,
poke at it all the time.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
And did you think that your persona became the kind
of spurned woman or is that the role people put
you in?
Speaker 3 (47:14):
And bet you yeah, yes, spurned woman, that would be
an assumption that. But then when he became very popular,
when that then it was more like we want to
touch you because you're part of the purple of Tom Waits,
the purple cloth. So at that point is where that
(47:36):
would probably happen.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
No offense to Tom Waits. He's never been as popular
as you were, though, oh so.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
Much more, sells so many more tickets, you know, I
see him as more popular than Bob Dylan. You know,
there are so many people copying his style. I'm just
like in awe, how did how did that happens? That's
what I saw. You didn't see that.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Never had an album that was as big as your
first couple albums.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
But I think some cultural thing. I remember the guy
in nine inch Nails talking of about him when my
daughter was so probably ninety five or ninety six, and
that was when he seemed to take on this other
alternative world status of a golden god. And I was
one of the women who had touched him. And that
(48:27):
was the hardest part. That was the hardest time in
the nineties when people were like, we don't know Avrind,
but you were Tom Waits's girlfriend, and that we want
to talk about. Whereas before we love your music and
you talk to us about your broken heart. But now
I go, look, it's part of the legend of human beings.
(48:50):
And when we're gone, we'll still be there together. We're
one of the lovers. Isn't that wonderful? Come on, you
gotta love that.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
We'll be back after another quick break with more from
Bruce Hudlam and Ricky Lee Jones. We're back with the
rest of Bruce Headlam's conversation with Ricky Lee Jones.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Can we talk about a couple of your songs? Well,
you mentioned Company, that that was the song that was
that Russ that liked Company? Or was that that was
Reuss Russ? What did he tell you he heard in.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
That He said that Lenny sent this cassette to him,
which was the demo I made at Warner Brothers, you know,
to entice him to co produce, because I like, I said,
I went with Warner Brothers if Lenny would produce me.
So he said he you know, heard the first couple
of songs, Chuck is in Love, my dad's song the
(49:46):
Moon Is Made of Gold, one that didn't get on
the record called the Real Things Back in Town. And
then Company, which I wrote with my the only co
writer I think I've really had, which who is Alfred Johnson.
He and I wrote that song one night together. The
story of writing Company was so I had a job
(50:09):
working for this gangster named Rocky Miller. Rocky was a
real gangster, and he'd show me his money in his
sock and he wore garters stays, I guess they're calling,
I think, And he's a real creep. And he'd make
me sit on his lap. He'd call me into the
office and say come over here, and I don't want
(50:31):
to come over there. He said, come here, I'll fire you.
And so I'd sit on his lap like an angry teenager,
which is all you can do in nineteen seventy eight.
And that was the terrible part of the job. But
the great part was that I had access to a
(50:52):
typewriter all day long. And when I had a typewriter,
another kind of you know, it was like another kind
of lyric came out. And so I sat there and
wrote the lyrics to young Blood and Company and the
beginnings of something else. So I have my little notebook
(51:13):
and files full of lyric ideas. And I met Alfred
on the beach in Venice. He was playing some little
feet maybe I was standing there listening to him, and
I'll sing.
Speaker 4 (51:26):
A little bit.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
Ah madam singing with him, and he looked at me
kind of and he said, and so I said, do
you know any lower nero? And little stars floated out
of his eyes. And then he invited me over to
his house, and I said okay, and I got in
(51:49):
between him and his friend and we drove a mile
down to Culver City, and then we went into his house,
which just like I stayed now in this motel right
by where his house was. And as we walked in
the door, there were dismembered dolls everywhere, and dolls hanging
from things and heads here, and right away I went,
(52:14):
oh cool. And it was like I passed the test
with them, because you had to decide right away, Are
you dead or is this some kind of goofy art installation?
And there were two men, you know so, but I
was pretty sure he was a kind of odd musician,
(52:34):
and right away we had this powerful language together. And
then a few weeks later we wrote Company together, which
was kind of like having a love affair. By the
end of the night we were done, but we wrote
every single bar entwined together. And it's a beautiful odd lyric.
(53:01):
You know, when I reach across the galaxy, I'll miss
your company, And in that way it was a little
different than a regular.
Speaker 4 (53:10):
You're leaving me song.
Speaker 3 (53:12):
That's one of the only straight ahead lyrics I wrote
about you and what you're doing and how I feel.
Normally I would have made up some guy somebody's name
and how she feels.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
She has an old fashioned quality, though it has a book.
Speaker 3 (53:29):
Quality for that. At that time, we you know, we
were writing thinking maybe we'd get these songs to famous people.
Chucky's in Love was kind of aimed at Bette Midler,
and Company was aimed at Frank Sinatra. And when I
got signed, I told Moe Austin, who was a good
friend when I was there, and Lenny, would you take
(53:52):
this to Frank because they'd fly over to the desert
for these meetings, you know. So they said, we're taking
it to Frank and then they didn't tell me when.
So what happened? Is he going to do it? And
they said, you don't want him to do it, said
he can't hit those notes anymore. I don't know if
I just say this on the air, But the other
(54:14):
one said, and anyway, he went to publishing for anything
he does, so I don't know if you want him,
he won't even consider doing it unless he has the publishing.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (54:22):
Yeah, well that's what they said.
Speaker 2 (54:25):
Okay, because I guess he had his own writers anybody.
Speaker 3 (54:27):
You know, it's it's greed. Yes, But when you're that powerful,
if he records the song, the world will hear it. Yes,
So what is a publisher anyway? They're the guy who's
supposed to bring the song to the world, and they
should get their half of the penny if they do
(54:47):
that job. We Folky's bought our own publishing. But also
it didn't make our songs anybody, So you know, everybody
had said you must keep your publishing as you age.
It's going to be the only way you keep making money.
And of course they were right, but I probably, you know,
with Alfred's permission, would have given up the public sing
(55:09):
on that if Frank, I mean that at least it
seems from here.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
That I might have that. Were you always a fan
of Frank?
Speaker 3 (55:16):
Yes, oh, yes, yes always. My father was a singer.
The timber and style of him is like the Mills
Brothers and Frank Sinatra, and my mom had a you know,
schoolgirl crush on him, so he, more than any other singer,
felt like he was telling my story when he sang
(55:38):
any woman, anybody, until I heard the Beatles, whose collective
harmony was otherworldly to me. But those were my two
main guardian angels initially. Then you know, expanded.
Speaker 2 (55:54):
Throughout your career. You've done cover records, you tend not
to mix them with originals. Yeah, you've done rebel, Rebel
you did for no One. So tell me about this album,
how it came about? Yes, why the songs? And is
there a story you're telling with these songs.
Speaker 3 (56:12):
There's not a story I'm telling with them. They were
picked because I could sing them well and I wanted
people to know I was a jazz singer. But there
was a journalist a couple of weeks. This is important
to me because I hadn't really gotten this feedback. So
clearly there was a journalist a couple of weeks ago
(56:33):
who said, I saw you in Cleveland in nineteen seventy nine,
and you opened with Chuck's in Love and we were going,
what is she got to do now? And then you
introduced us to Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday and Saramon
and I was like, there, it is what I waited
(56:56):
all my life to hear, and heard it here there.
So that's as important that long ago, in the long
ago history. I was singing it peers or love it,
but the jazz world said, you are not allowed in here,
you cannot enter.
Speaker 2 (57:21):
Did you feel that you bet? You early in your.
Speaker 3 (57:23):
Career, and I've figured out I think partially you know,
because there are unusual First of all, women are are
the last person allowed in the room. Singers and women singers.
But if you didn't only sing jazz, you can't come in.
(57:45):
If you sang a pop song, you can't come in.
You have to have exclusively devoted yourself to this one
discipline or you can't come in. I called the jazz
station and long beached in your disgustard? Would you play
Rickney Jones highly Hi Lo said no, we don't play
Rickin Jones. Okay said, like on the wall behind it,
(58:08):
we don't.
Speaker 2 (58:09):
I regularly do your picture with a big excid Yeah.
Speaker 3 (58:12):
And you know it hurt. It always hurts to people go, yeah,
we've decided what you are no matter what you do.
So I did jazzy songs with some pop in him.
I was mixed it up a little bit and after
pop pop, which got a really weird reviews. You know,
(58:38):
it was my fortieth birthday and one of the great
bebop players, Joe Henderson, had played on two songs. He
came to the party and at a moment took me
aside and said, I just wanted to tell you that
I was sorry to see that you didn't make another record,
(58:59):
because I really thought you were onto something. And it
was a revelation because this is from a musician and
you're listening to critics. Stop it. So it took a
long time, and for whatever reason, I found myself thinking
about res titleman, and I need to be in the
(59:23):
loving care of a real producer who not only knows
what they're doing, but loves the sound of my voice.
And I looked him up. I was thinking we would
maybe work on some of my new material, but he said,
I want to do a jazz I want to do
a jazz record. You have not done the American Songbook.
(59:46):
That's what we're going to do. And so I said, okay,
and we began to exchange ideas. But what happened was
I knew in the last two years that my voice
has begun to change a little because of aging, not
(01:00:06):
a lot, and I don't smoke it to take good
care of but it was thinning here and tired there.
And jazz is the most demanding, I think, because you
can in other things. You can yell, you put that
up in the back of the throat and hit anything.
But if you're going to do quiet stuff, what seemed
(01:00:28):
to happen when I started, is this this other quiettitude
that was a little bit, you know, saucy and sensual.
She just stepped right up to the microphone and she
just what she was doing.
Speaker 4 (01:00:45):
Like, who is this?
Speaker 3 (01:00:48):
I love her voice, it's got a lower thing. But
right away I heard the command that I prayed i'd
have and didn't expect, and there it was, so we
made an extraordinary record that's kind of magic. We went
full circle back to the time we left off our
(01:01:10):
professional relationship at Pirates. It's not like Pirates, but something
in the power of what happens when we work together
was there. I think it stands well next to any
beloved vocal work from the fifties or sixties here so
because there's a feeling of sensual love and humor and
(01:01:37):
all the things that you can get if you survive.
I'm sixty nine this year. If you survive, you can
bring all this stuff to your life and then bring
it to the sound of your voice into music. And
I think that's what's there, is humor and the love
of life and the idea that we're singing, you know
(01:02:00):
now for ourselves anymore. We're not going to be here
to you know, and maybe I will, but I'm singing
now for others and reaching out right.
Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
That's a great place to stop. Thank you so much.
That was just wonderful.
Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
Thanks to Ricky Lee Jones for playing and reminiscing about
her career with Bruce Headland. You can hear all of
our favorite Ricky Lee Jones songs on a playlist at
broken Record podcast dot com. You can subscribe to our
YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast,
where you can find all of our new episodes. Broken
(01:02:37):
Record is produced with help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrell,
Ben Taliday, Nisha Venkutt, Jordan McMillan, and Eric sam Our.
Editor is Sophie Crane. Broken Record is a production of
Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin,
consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast
(01:02:58):
subscription service that offers bonus content and uninterrupted ad free
listening for only four ninety nine a month. Look for
Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts subscriptions, and if you like
this show, remember to share, rate, and review us on
your podcast stat or the musics by Canna Beats. I'm
Justin Richman.
Pushkin. Ricky Lee Jones hit it big with her debut
album in seventy nine. The following year, she won the
Grammy Award for Best New Artist, and over the course
of the next four decades, released numerous albums that pulled
inspiration from jazz, rock, electronic music, and even musical theater.
(00:38):
In late April, Ricky released her latest album, Pieces of Treasure,
where she sings songs in the American songbook with a
jazz slant producer and legendary an arman. Russ Titelman, who
produced Ricky's first two albums, reunited with her on her
latest and helped inspire Ricky to find a comfort in
her lower vocal register. The result is an oftentimes sultry
(01:01):
meditation on aging and survival. On today's episode, Bruce HEADLM
talks to Ricky Ley Jones about her decades long fight
to sing jazz, even though she's often viewed as an outsider.
She also tells stories about leaving home as a young
teenager and the abuse she endured while trying to survive
on her own. She played songs from her career, including
(01:24):
one she wrote after seeing John Lennon appear to her
in a dream, and just a note before we get started.
This episode contains descriptions of sexual abuse and might not
be appropriate for all listeners. This is broken record liner
notes for the digital age. I'm justin Ritchman. Here's Bruce
(01:46):
Hedlam with Ricky Lee Jones.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I've always thought of you as someone who and I
thought of this particularly on the new record. You're someone
who is acting in the song in a strength. Did
you always think of yourself as that one?
Speaker 3 (02:00):
I've just found the words to say that. But I've
always put the song on and been inside of it,
and I know everything about everybody in it. So if
I sing something cool, I know where she's sitting, what
she's wearing, where she bought it, everybody at the bar.
I see it all. And I think that's what an
(02:22):
actor does. They try to create everything about their character.
But it happens to me instantaneously. I have a rich imagination,
I guess, and when I sing, the tree instantly grows.
And I started thinking this year, I'm acting songs, and
there's a little difference between singing a song and acting.
(02:47):
Being a song actor, it suggests i'mhow that I'm not
a real singer, which of course I am. A serious singer,
but I think I'm acting, I'm being the song.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
It's closer to singers from previous generations. We're like that,
like Peggy Lee or Julie London. Yes, people like that
seem to kind of inhabit songs become the characters and songs.
They were singers, not primarily songwriters, although Peggy Lee did
write some songs. But you you write them, so people think, oh,
they must be confessions. They're yeah, pouring your soul out. Yeah,
(03:22):
and you don't really pour your soul out.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
I like to write stories, and in this story might
be some poignant, unresolved tear drop or something. That's the
best way to show it in this way, as any
writer does, you know, put their own emotion because that's
the only palette we have right into what they write.
(03:48):
And that thing again of the singer songwriter versus the
singer how people see them, because after Bob Dylan and
Joni Mitchell, it became crucial to be a songwriter. If
you weren't a songwriter, then you're not really authentic. If
you didn't write that song, then why even singing it?
(04:08):
Kind of aut itude, which I of course disagree with.
To me, the interpreter, the singer, the bard is who matters. Yes, yes,
I'm glad you wrote the song. But if there's no
one to sing it, what does it matter? So Peggy
Lee or me or anybody who loves a song and
(04:30):
loves to sing and loves hear other people, you know,
whether it's a choir or whatever, loves singing. That's what
I like most. When I had the ear of the
press the way I did in the early eighties, I
talk about Linda Ronstaff, for instance, who was not as
(04:52):
in style now for a minute, because she wasn't punk
rock and she didn't write songs. But I was like, bet,
she's a great singer. And whatever comes into fashion, and
I'm glad new things come into fashion. But you can't
discard the meaning of a singer, I think.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Because when you came out, you don't sound like Joni Mitchell,
but you looked a bit like Jomie Mitchell, so much
like her, so everybody's, oh, she's influenced by Joni Mitchell.
And then I'm reading your book and it's like Jimmy Hendrix.
It's West Side Story, which is a big thing for you. Yeah,
and there's a very I won't give it away. There's
(05:33):
a very lovely scene with that guy. I'll say his name,
Tom Waite's the only time I'm going.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
To say it.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Where you're outside of a bar and someone says a
line and someone else yeah, and then you all sing it.
He gets the line wrong, I think too. But it's
this beautiful scene.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Because and it's real, It really happened.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
And people grew up, you know, back then, like people
would have records. They might have the Beatles, but then
their parents would have South Pacific or Camelot or something,
a sound of everybody had sound of music. Back then.
You said you tended towards Laura Nero. What did you
get from her? What was it that drew you?
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Well?
Speaker 3 (06:14):
I got that thing of these strange and I still
haven't learned her songs. But these kinds of chords, right,
and hers are much darker, but and they probably show
(06:37):
up passing in Leonard Bernstein. So that's what she had.
She had inversions that were magical to me, and I
wanted to know them. She also happened to see her
on public television at the same time I heard of
so to see her is something else entirely. She looked
(06:58):
like a terribly mentally ill person who could hardly sit
there to perform this song. And as a teenager, I
really identified with that part. Felt pretty barely together myself.
So I liked that there was somebody there who dared
to show herself as she was.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
And she was also very theatrical, Yes that's a better word.
She was creating scenes with her people know, wedding bell Blues,
that's one of her big songs, But it creates a
big it does.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
It's like a show number, something like the one about Tomcat.
Goodbye is like its own piece of theater from top
to bottom. So it's a little bit of Gershwin's, a
little bit of organbezz and then a lot of motown soul.
And she's made her own kind of music. I'm not
(07:55):
gonna say brand, but she's made her own and you know,
I think what I love is the sound of her voice.
But that that she did that probably was a map
for me that I could also make my own room
of my own imaginary people.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
What do you think are your songs that do that
the best? What rooms do you go? I got that one?
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Yeah, the things from Pirates, I would say, And.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
He's got walk crazy act turns him into a car.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Two and pretty girls go by. Nothing here to do anymore,
so he sits on the stoop all day.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
I does something is waiting for Countfinger. Louis picks up
Eddy in the alley.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
He likes to come here with them buzz from that town.
Everybody there looks like Frankie Valley and they're fluently blonde
from her leg to a cigarette. And Louis told Eddie
fix him up, but he ain't come back in now
this rhyme Frankie Valley. I was originally trying to rhyme
(09:23):
Eddie Briggotti because Eddie Briggotty is from the Young Rascals,
and I loved the Young Rascals and especially you know
his How can I be sure there's not? And I
like the idea that nobody's written about Eddie Briggotty, but
I couldn't find anything to rhyme with Gotti. More people
would know who Frankie Valley was. It's a very one
(09:45):
of my funny lines. I have a few funny lines,
but I always feel like it goes right by people.
They're they're enchanted by the service. Start, what are you
talking about? Now? Where everybody looks like Frankie Valley.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
And then.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
More trouble than it's worth?
Speaker 4 (10:09):
What trouble in his word? Oh wold to tell him where.
Speaker 6 (10:21):
You Oh wowld So that's one I think, tell him.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Where you are?
Speaker 3 (10:36):
And then that one goes there, and there's another verse
about the girl.
Speaker 7 (10:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
So those are the two boys Eddie and and oh
and so those characters were inspired by my friend Salbernardi's
childhood friends in Lodi, New Jersey. He had this one guy,
so he had count fingered Louis. But the other one
(11:05):
was the guy was one crazy all right that when
he got nervous, it started spitting all around. So I
brought his characters in. And then so zero quits cool.
She lost her job again and her boyfriend beat her
up and he won't let her in. She's walking by
(11:30):
this joint in her black and blue dress.
Speaker 8 (11:33):
She looks a little welbones out of you, says, don't
tell me, Leving guess.
Speaker 7 (11:41):
It's more trouble in his word, she's moore trouble in
his word.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Oh why? And then.
Speaker 9 (12:02):
Fast and west this way.
Speaker 8 (12:10):
When you've got all these ideas, you'd never to.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Any one.
Speaker 8 (12:25):
There are these magnet's pulling j left, living every story.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Only once.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
So in that part, remember when you're in a movie
and the newspapers go by and they're spinning by it.
This is the exciting time.
Speaker 10 (12:45):
That's what that was.
Speaker 6 (12:51):
Up.
Speaker 8 (12:52):
Hey, yeah, we'll liveving it.
Speaker 9 (12:55):
Up, welling up, we'll.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
It up, well.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
Up, ye will livevyvinge up.
Speaker 9 (13:19):
Welving it up? Yeah, well, liveving it up? Yeah, well,
living up.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Up. And then I think it was probably really inspired
by my friendship with Lunetti found nor reason.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
Then in there carried her over the bridges.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
And fluttering pages. They didn't care, this terminal where dreams
led so many tickets through and strange looking faces, and
see somebody there.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
They knew.
Speaker 11 (14:14):
You could meet me tomorrow when all of the lights
aide blooming. Feel a little lonely, a little sad, a
little mean, But remember this place, Sada's Hotel.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
You could do anything you want.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
You could never tell.
Speaker 11 (14:38):
It's not trouble in its word, but trouble than its word.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Whoa wow, I won't you tell me where you are?
Speaker 3 (15:12):
That? Yeah, so I'd say more than any song I've written.
That song answers hers right, or a song about her
characters living in the darker part of the city. This
one sets them free to go somewhere else. Always I
(15:36):
don't always, but for a long time I've felt it's
a conversation we have when we're lucky enough to be
writers of songs that people here and sing. We're all
talking to one another and responding to one another. It's
just a lie to pretend that you live in a
vacuum and everything comes out of your own head. And
(15:57):
if you're not being honest about it, then your thief
and and you're stealing stuff. So we must learn from
one another, and it has to be okay to say
learning from somebody else. And then I made up my
own thing. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
You know, one of the things about that song you
just played, you're constantly changing tempos. You know, you've stopped
the whole band in the middle, and then it starts
back up again. Where does that come from? Is that
from musicals as well?
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Yeah? Maybe so. I've always liked things that changed directions
and changed and they did it in the pop stuff
for a while, right, Crosby stills a nish. It was exciting,
but probably musical theater does it first?
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Can you tell me about Away from the sky that.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Was inspired by the death of John Lennon. I dream
I had about John Lennon. I feel pretty strong today,
so I can probably talk about it. But sometimes if
I just talk about sad stuff, it's overwhelming. But not
that long after he died, I dreamed of him. I've
(17:05):
never been there, but on a British or riding his
bike with a stocking cap. And then like the three beards,
in the back of him was Yokoa and in back
of her was shown each one is in the little
bike and there was a pier. And as he turned
to go on to the pier, he looked at me.
(17:27):
Gentleman is looking at me, and he sang this, Let's see.
There was a crooked man who lived on a crooked shore.
But now he'll never have to go away anymore.
Speaker 8 (17:47):
Away from the sky. Ahway from the sky.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
And turned onto the pier and they followed him. Really
when I woke up, because sometimes those things dissolve instantly,
I don't know why, but that part never made it
into the recording, I saved the real party saying for
myself and I made up a song based on a
(18:16):
Dylan Thomas short story called After the Fair. You know
the thing on the record is my demo. So I'm
just going boom boomed, as minimal as it can be.
And then, and because I was probably half writing it
as I recorded. For all that it cost him, he
(18:41):
never did complain. The chicken headed man. They're feathering the rain,
but the last bassist tie.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
Everybody's gone.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
The horses are painted with the waiting.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Of the lawn. Go from the rodeo.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
God, from the tundraug girl, it's after the fair.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
That's when I see you.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
There she sleeps in the canvas. The fat man hollers,
O tender is the night I feel bleeding out of you.
(20:02):
So come into my trailer. We can toast a little bread.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
Now.
Speaker 5 (20:09):
Look, you left a hole oil laid on my bed.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
He said. But you keep what you can keep. And
when you dive into the deep this year, after Froz
and you, that's where saved youse.
Speaker 10 (20:53):
Away from the sky, Oh.
Speaker 5 (21:05):
Away from the sky, Oh, away from the sky, Away
(21:30):
from the sky.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
But everybody's gone.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Now.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
It's after the fair. The horses are waiting in the middle.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Of the So you turn the.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Care yourself on. When the lights closed down, you can
watch the ponies round through the middle of town.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
That you go, little girl, there you.
Speaker 6 (22:19):
Go, gone from the tongue run.
Speaker 5 (22:25):
Now it's after the fences.
Speaker 7 (22:34):
When over the fences again and the vacuum and the hole.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
And the plans up in.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
The air, that's where I.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Can hear your best.
Speaker 5 (23:09):
But away from the sky, Away from the sky, Oh,
(23:39):
from the sky.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
Away from the skyes.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
That was Ricky Lee Jones performing her song away from
the Sky. We have to take a quick break and
we'll be back with more from Bruce Headlam and Ricky
Lee Jones. We're back with more from Ricky Lee Jones.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
It's interesting because I reread your your autobiography and now
you moved so much when you.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Were a kid.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yes, it seemed that you were always having to reintroduce
your or introduce yourself.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Although you always did it, it seemed to fill you
with terror, the idea that he.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Yes, and that terror of people basic mistrust and expectation
that at some point don't do their worst. Stayed with me.
The playground seems to be ever with us, I could
say with me, But it does seem like that that
scenario is playing out over and over again of a
(25:15):
bully kids who want to follow the bully, just so
they don't get picked on. A couple kids who are
one's different or one's as poor, or it's always the
same dynamic of who's on top and who's underneath. And
I think the fact that I was a little different,
(25:36):
though I didn't think so, but I think I must
have been gave me someone to be so that I
wasn't anonymous, because I guess more than I hated being
picked on, I hated being invisible. So I accepted that,
but I really never understood why I'd look in the
(25:57):
mirror and go, aren't I pretty? Why don't they like me?
And it's still a mystery to me, really.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yes, even later in your book, you're very critical of
what was sort of late stage hippies. So the people
you hung around with, it seemed that when you were traveling,
and you started traveling, I think at fourteen and just
checking hiking, and you know, you lived in a cave
(26:26):
for a while. There were other people in the cave too,
but I was still a cave, you know. It seemed that,
you know, particularly a lot of the menu met were
very the usury. They're very predatory, and they were the hippies.
They were they talked a good game, but a lot
of them were very abusive.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Well, I was really young, and I believed what I read,
my impressions of what it would be like to be
a grown up in that world, to be an active
member of their idea of what life should be like.
But those people were just greasers a little bit older, right,
(27:14):
They were just the tough kids at school in nineteen
sixty two, or whoever they were. I saw them as
magically appearing with long hair like Christ. And so, you know,
I was definitely needed a place to stay and needed
something to eat, and the cost of that was my body,
(27:35):
and you know, that was very hard. Sometimes I just
wanted to be able to rest and not have to
struggle with some guide. Would he relent and not try
to put his dick in me? Or would that be
the cost of having a night of food. I have
(27:58):
never actually said that so starkly and truly, because it
was so hard and a little kid, you know, and
then getting up the next day if you lucky, if
it's the next day and they don't want you there anymore.
And I think every single guy I met, I thought,
well he married me? Is he the one who loved me,
(28:23):
every one of them, and so that was lots of disappointments.
But I've, you know, have many years to think about it,
and I was really just a very little kid in
a woman's body, in a costume that looked like old
enough for them. I think some of them would have
(28:45):
withdrawn if they knew my two age, but most of
them know. I think it was kind of cool, right
to be attracted to a young teenager. They still sell
that image a lot of school girl like hit Me
Baby One More.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Time Britney spears.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yeah, she sold that image as well. So as long
as we let that image be sold and you know
that stuff is going on in reality, I.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Do want to talk about a nice guy. Yes, that's
your producer on this project, Russ Titelman, who was one
of your first producers. Yeah, my first, your first. He
was your first.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
I had two producers, Lenny Warrenker and Russ Titleman, and
I'd seen Lenny. I didn't know from producers, but I
saw Lenny's name on the back of a Randy Newman record.
It's about two years maybe before I got signed.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Most people would have wanted to meet Randy Newman. No,
you went into the small type.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
That's right. I've always known that's the way in. You
can't go for the big, big thing because everybody wants
to meet Randy. But if you find I was an
infamous getter in Backstage Girl, and I'd watched the secret
way that nobody was going and just slip in that way.
(30:08):
So that was the same philosophy of how to get in.
So anyway his name, and so we sent tapes around
to three or four people. He got one of them
and and I was exactly right. He was the way,
and I pushed, you know, when the record companies went
(30:32):
to sign me, this little I think it was called
Portrait or something. This little company made the best offer,
and we went back to Warner Brothers, my lawyer, a
big shot working for free. We talked him and I'm
going to be a big shot and said, you know,
she wants to go with Lindy. So if you'll meet
(30:53):
the offer. I don't know if that's okay to tell that,
but if you'll meet the offer, it we'll come with you.
And that happened exactly as it was meant to. So
Lenny sent the tape to Russ because they were partners
in production. Russ was working with George Harris in England,
and he tells this story a lot now now that
(31:14):
we're reunited. So when he heard Company, he called Lenny
and said, this girl is a singer. She's like roberta Flock,
which is a pretty big compliment. And Lenny said, I
really noticed I was listening to the songs, so they
were perfect. Him addressing the songs, we got to put
(31:37):
an accordion on the bridge because the Italians are there,
and him addressing the singer, you got to go sing
that line again. So it was good.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
It's hard to imagine now just what a incredible period
that was for you. You'd only been writing songs for
a couple of years. Yes, you were living in La I.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Was homeless in the months before I was signed. I
just tumbled into having nowhere to go.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
What was it like, suddenly the these record companies are
bidding for you.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Yeah, it felt as if it was always supposed to
be that way.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Did you always think that growing up that this was
going to happen.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
No, But I always felt that I was going somewhere special.
I always felt like I was always talking to the
invisible world and God's cameras right about here. Is how
you got it is look up today. So it's hard
to explain what I always thought, but I feel a
(32:38):
constant connection to something that almost has no words but
is ever present in here. But I can't say that
I did you know? My life was troubled and going nowhere.
I didn't have any skills, I'd quit high school, but
I had this. When I sang, it was all that
(33:00):
I am. Anything I sang was totally emotional. And then
I got this job as a singing way too, and
everybody else was so much louder than me. I thought,
I'm gonna have to learn how to sing louder or
I'm never gonna get a job. So I taught myself.
(33:23):
But there was a book, and I put my hands
on my chest and found a way to put that
sound in the bones and practice. And that was the first,
you know, because always thought it was a great singer,
But the fact was I could be a great singer,
but it wasn't. So I taught myself to be a
(33:43):
better singer. As soon as I did that, within a year,
it presented itself to me. It was just life presented
itself to me.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Did you not know you wanted to be a singer
before that. What made you finally focus on that?
Speaker 3 (34:00):
You know, since I was sixteen, I'd been practicing, you know,
sweet Juty blue Eyes and singing and play with my
girlfriend Julian, playing everywhere. But when I was on my
own and got to La, it seemed like that will
never happen there. It's a town full of people trying
to do it. And you're so weird. You're not like
(34:22):
Joni Mitchell. You can't sing like Joe Bias. You're so weird,
right because you're different, and so somebody will come. They
might not all, but somebody will come because you're different.
They'll like that about you. And I had this natural
thing for jazz. My father sang jazz and his father
(34:46):
was a vaudevillion And I began to you know, what
I know how to do is my funny Valentine. And
so I started singing the jazz ballads in Venice when
and nobody was doing it. So that felt powerful. I
have something that's just mine and I did it really well,
and the local snooty musician and suddenly were like, we
(35:11):
like you come and sit in with us again. So
I started to feel like I had a possibility and
an identity, and then in a short time I had
my own Friday night gig at a bar, and then
a short time later I was making a demo for
a record company. So once I set aside doubt and
(35:34):
my mother said, I said, Mom, I'm going to go
to school and be a stenographer. I've only got to
go eighteen months and I'll have a job. She said,
but I thought you wanted to be a singer, imagine,
And I said I did, but I just can't see
how that would ever happen. And she said, don't you
(35:56):
give up on your dreams.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Interesting because your mother had had a very tough life,
very tough. She'd been an orphan. Yeah, your father lost
his mother very young.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
As well, so they're both that in common.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
And she seemed to live a very controlled life and
either keep she had to keep things. She kept things
together for other people. It's interesting that she was the
one who said to you, I thought you wanted to
be a sending.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
No, it was almost divine, like the other voice said,
we got to speak through Betty right now, or she's
going to give up. Don't give up on your dreams. Yeah,
it was unexpected and so heartfelt that I thought, my
mother is invested in me trying with all my might
to make a dream come true, And it almost seemed
(36:47):
like it was more she wanted me to try, But
I thought, maybe she thinks I can do it too.
She's not here, she didn't see what's happening, but she
believes me.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
When you got into the studio for the first time,
you played with bands, and you had fabulous players I did.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
You had Steve gadd Andy, Newmark, Willie Week, the incredible
Victor Feldman who was in Miles Davis's band, and did
all that's Teelee Dan work. So one of the things
about when you were with the top tier players is
they're very kind. It's the other ones that's jabbulut. But
(37:27):
the best players are very kind and they love making music.
And so I couldn't write it, but I could sing
it all. So I sang all the horn parts, and
somebody wrote them down and they played them and they
were exactly how I thought they would sound in my head.
But the other aspects of recording, like Chucky's in Love
(37:48):
and stuff, as it manifested into the physical world, it
wasn't at all what I only ever heard my voice
and me. So the producers endeavored to bring to reality
whatever feeling they thought I had, and their own, you know,
(38:09):
how to make a good record. I think their choices
were always much cleaner, tamer, precise. Then I might have gone.
And I'm glad, you know, and I've known people like
this about me best I think then the more raggedy stuff.
But they took me out gently and my guitar playing
(38:34):
and put in.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
So what was that like? That incredible year? You're signed,
you make this record with these amazing players, You're on
Saturday Night Live, you argue with them on Saturday Night Live,
which I thought was pretty gutsy. They wanted you to
do one song you wanted to do Coolsville.
Speaker 10 (38:56):
I did.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yeah, I remember seeing that Saturday Night Live. Everybody does.
It was a you were suddenly huge. Yeah, and you
had a check for fifty thous that's right. Was what
was the first thing you bought with that?
Speaker 3 (39:13):
Probably? You know, dinner? First of all, I had nowhere
to put it. I didn't have a bank account, so
when I got that check, I still had to borrow
some money from Lenny because I didn't have a cash
and really I didn't know how anything worked. And know
how to have a bank account or how to tip
or so what was that like? You know, it's almost
(39:35):
like the whole life was holding his breath so for
for a little while, everything was just shimmering and still
and right, that's what it was, like, I think, But.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
You beat the second album curse I did?
Speaker 3 (39:55):
I meant to too that, you're like, I was well
aware of it. I had met Bet Middler at a dinner.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Was this before your record?
Speaker 3 (40:06):
Yeah, before the first record? So because you thought, she said,
let me tell you what's going to happen. You're gonna
put this one out and if it doesn't do horrible,
they'll pick up your second one, and not to your
third record. Will you have any kind of acclaimer success?
And that was kind of what happened to most people.
And that was I thought, nah, we'll see. I think
(40:27):
my first record's probably gonna do pretty good. So when
we had the big success, so big, bigger than anything.
Hard to find a woman who had had that kind
of success coming out the gate, though you know, they
probably weren't telling it up in the sixties in exactly
(40:48):
the same way, but it was. It was a very
big thing, and it was a crossover kind of thing,
and culturally, I got to expand the idea. You know,
I was a singer songwriter, but I wasn't a fochy
And these things sound small now, but they were big
making people accept that it works. It'll make everybody money,
(41:09):
and it's different than what was before. So I know
I can't match this record in any way. I'm not
the same person. I'm not as happy, and those are
a lot of beautiful, happy songs, and I'm not on
this side of the mountain anymore. So from the other
side of the mountain, I will draw the picture of
(41:33):
what I see fiercely, and I won't give one eyelash
to the idea of a song that you'll play on
the radio. And so a little bit of it is defiance,
and that's okay. You can't help but not respond to
what's happening. You know, if that hadn't happened, what would
(41:57):
I have written?
Speaker 4 (41:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
But so what I wrote was what was happening to me.
And I think that the incredible thing that happens with
the recording is it captures more than in the song itself.
It captures your intention and it captures your spirit That's
the inexplicable thing about a great record is it has spirit,
(42:21):
and people put it on the list of their important records.
I personally think the first record is important, but I
don't exactly know why Pirates matters more. I'm guessing people
who put it on their favorite lists don't know it's
the SECA record, so they don't know it's overcoming expectations.
(42:43):
But I like it. It's dreamy. It's remarkable in its
musicality and sophistication for a girl who had no education.
But I like a song I can sing, like I
was saying, I like a melody that you remember. I
don't know if anybody can sing the traces of the
(43:04):
Western slopes, you know. So I don't mean to insult myself,
but I'm glad that it hit with people. But then
the curse probably came some years later. I took a
long time to make the third record. It was nineteen
eighty four, I think, so I had gone in and
(43:26):
out of heroin addiction, and a couple of times I
had drunk on stage, not many, but the times I did.
There was a big, full length photograph in a newspaper,
and the promoters. The promoters Union exiled me from many stages.
(43:50):
Guys did much worse, but I think that there was
an expectation of proper, pristine behavior from me because of
the quality.
Speaker 9 (44:01):
Of the work.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
We don't like our girls to behave badly, and they
want to think of of a woman. It's a tragic,
falling figure. And so many people want to disrespect to
anybody instead of loving, forgiving, spreading that goodwill. So I
was in a really defensive posture when I did the magazine.
(44:25):
I was off drugs and I wanted everybody to know it,
and I did a cover looking really off drugs.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
And everybody's very healthy, very.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Healthy, and I was super healthy. But I spent some
time in France and I was leaning towards a more
classical kind of music. Now I'd heard Eric Sati and
it was expanding in another way. So these are weird.
(44:55):
This was the one album I wrote that I wanted
to do theater with it, So this was the direction
I would have liked to have grown in some version
of my life, to write theater and act. But at
that point I seemed to be just collapsing emotionally. The
(45:19):
broken love affairs, the trail of dead, and the very
beginning of living with Tom Waits for the rest of
my life because nobody would stop asking me about him.
In every interview. Aside from that, it was kind of emotional.
It's like, but aren't I a musician? You have no
respect or interest in the person who's sitting in front
(45:41):
of you. Now, if you want to talk to Tom, the
phone over there, call him, But why do you want
to talk to me about that? So you know, there
were years where I was resentful and angry and tell
them if they mention it, they'll be escorted out, and
all these things till finally, I don't know, in the
(46:04):
last ten years I went, isn't that wonderful? We have
lived together all our lives, that brief time, that beautiful
time that was so remarkable to audiences and so enchanting.
We looked like we belong together that song, and they
(46:25):
won't let it go? Isn't that wonderful? And would have
liked to have had some peace with him, but that
did not and would never happen, And that was all
that turned out to be just as hard as living
with the questions, you know, twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
But now I'm mean living with the unresolved yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
And also the pain of this breakup was really hard.
But to be reminded by every passing stranger who comes
to talk, especially in Europe, they really want to know,
poke at it all the time.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
And did you think that your persona became the kind
of spurned woman or is that the role people put
you in?
Speaker 3 (47:14):
And bet you yeah, yes, spurned woman, that would be
an assumption that. But then when he became very popular,
when that then it was more like we want to
touch you because you're part of the purple of Tom Waits,
the purple cloth. So at that point is where that
(47:36):
would probably happen.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
No offense to Tom Waits. He's never been as popular
as you were, though, oh so.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
Much more, sells so many more tickets, you know, I
see him as more popular than Bob Dylan. You know,
there are so many people copying his style. I'm just
like in awe, how did how did that happens? That's
what I saw. You didn't see that.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Never had an album that was as big as your
first couple albums.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
But I think some cultural thing. I remember the guy
in nine inch Nails talking of about him when my
daughter was so probably ninety five or ninety six, and
that was when he seemed to take on this other
alternative world status of a golden god. And I was
one of the women who had touched him. And that
(48:27):
was the hardest part. That was the hardest time in
the nineties when people were like, we don't know Avrind,
but you were Tom Waits's girlfriend, and that we want
to talk about. Whereas before we love your music and
you talk to us about your broken heart. But now
I go, look, it's part of the legend of human beings.
(48:50):
And when we're gone, we'll still be there together. We're
one of the lovers. Isn't that wonderful? Come on, you
gotta love that.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
We'll be back after another quick break with more from
Bruce Hudlam and Ricky Lee Jones. We're back with the
rest of Bruce Headlam's conversation with Ricky Lee Jones.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Can we talk about a couple of your songs? Well,
you mentioned Company, that that was the song that was
that Russ that liked Company? Or was that that was
Reuss Russ? What did he tell you he heard in.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
That He said that Lenny sent this cassette to him,
which was the demo I made at Warner Brothers, you know,
to entice him to co produce, because I like, I said,
I went with Warner Brothers if Lenny would produce me.
So he said he you know, heard the first couple
of songs, Chuck is in Love, my dad's song the
(49:46):
Moon Is Made of Gold, one that didn't get on
the record called the Real Things Back in Town. And
then Company, which I wrote with my the only co
writer I think I've really had, which who is Alfred Johnson.
He and I wrote that song one night together. The
story of writing Company was so I had a job
(50:09):
working for this gangster named Rocky Miller. Rocky was a
real gangster, and he'd show me his money in his
sock and he wore garters stays, I guess they're calling,
I think, And he's a real creep. And he'd make
me sit on his lap. He'd call me into the
office and say come over here, and I don't want
(50:31):
to come over there. He said, come here, I'll fire you.
And so I'd sit on his lap like an angry teenager,
which is all you can do in nineteen seventy eight.
And that was the terrible part of the job. But
the great part was that I had access to a
(50:52):
typewriter all day long. And when I had a typewriter,
another kind of you know, it was like another kind
of lyric came out. And so I sat there and
wrote the lyrics to young Blood and Company and the
beginnings of something else. So I have my little notebook
(51:13):
and files full of lyric ideas. And I met Alfred
on the beach in Venice. He was playing some little
feet maybe I was standing there listening to him, and
I'll sing.
Speaker 4 (51:26):
A little bit.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
Ah madam singing with him, and he looked at me
kind of and he said, and so I said, do
you know any lower nero? And little stars floated out
of his eyes. And then he invited me over to
his house, and I said okay, and I got in
(51:49):
between him and his friend and we drove a mile
down to Culver City, and then we went into his house,
which just like I stayed now in this motel right
by where his house was. And as we walked in
the door, there were dismembered dolls everywhere, and dolls hanging
from things and heads here, and right away I went,
(52:14):
oh cool. And it was like I passed the test
with them, because you had to decide right away, Are
you dead or is this some kind of goofy art installation?
And there were two men, you know so, but I
was pretty sure he was a kind of odd musician,
(52:34):
and right away we had this powerful language together. And
then a few weeks later we wrote Company together, which
was kind of like having a love affair. By the
end of the night we were done, but we wrote
every single bar entwined together. And it's a beautiful odd lyric.
(53:01):
You know, when I reach across the galaxy, I'll miss
your company, And in that way it was a little
different than a regular.
Speaker 4 (53:10):
You're leaving me song.
Speaker 3 (53:12):
That's one of the only straight ahead lyrics I wrote
about you and what you're doing and how I feel.
Normally I would have made up some guy somebody's name
and how she feels.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
She has an old fashioned quality, though it has a book.
Speaker 3 (53:29):
Quality for that. At that time, we you know, we
were writing thinking maybe we'd get these songs to famous people.
Chucky's in Love was kind of aimed at Bette Midler,
and Company was aimed at Frank Sinatra. And when I
got signed, I told Moe Austin, who was a good
friend when I was there, and Lenny, would you take
(53:52):
this to Frank because they'd fly over to the desert
for these meetings, you know. So they said, we're taking
it to Frank and then they didn't tell me when.
So what happened? Is he going to do it? And
they said, you don't want him to do it, said
he can't hit those notes anymore. I don't know if
I just say this on the air, But the other
(54:14):
one said, and anyway, he went to publishing for anything
he does, so I don't know if you want him,
he won't even consider doing it unless he has the publishing.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (54:22):
Yeah, well that's what they said.
Speaker 2 (54:25):
Okay, because I guess he had his own writers anybody.
Speaker 3 (54:27):
You know, it's it's greed. Yes, But when you're that powerful,
if he records the song, the world will hear it. Yes,
So what is a publisher anyway? They're the guy who's
supposed to bring the song to the world, and they
should get their half of the penny if they do
(54:47):
that job. We Folky's bought our own publishing. But also
it didn't make our songs anybody, So you know, everybody
had said you must keep your publishing as you age.
It's going to be the only way you keep making money.
And of course they were right, but I probably, you know,
with Alfred's permission, would have given up the public sing
(55:09):
on that if Frank, I mean that at least it
seems from here.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
That I might have that. Were you always a fan
of Frank?
Speaker 3 (55:16):
Yes, oh, yes, yes always. My father was a singer.
The timber and style of him is like the Mills
Brothers and Frank Sinatra, and my mom had a you know,
schoolgirl crush on him, so he, more than any other singer,
felt like he was telling my story when he sang
(55:38):
any woman, anybody, until I heard the Beatles, whose collective
harmony was otherworldly to me. But those were my two
main guardian angels initially. Then you know, expanded.
Speaker 2 (55:54):
Throughout your career. You've done cover records, you tend not
to mix them with originals. Yeah, you've done rebel, Rebel
you did for no One. So tell me about this album,
how it came about? Yes, why the songs? And is
there a story you're telling with these songs.
Speaker 3 (56:12):
There's not a story I'm telling with them. They were
picked because I could sing them well and I wanted
people to know I was a jazz singer. But there
was a journalist a couple of weeks. This is important
to me because I hadn't really gotten this feedback. So
clearly there was a journalist a couple of weeks ago
(56:33):
who said, I saw you in Cleveland in nineteen seventy nine,
and you opened with Chuck's in Love and we were going,
what is she got to do now? And then you
introduced us to Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday and Saramon
and I was like, there, it is what I waited
(56:56):
all my life to hear, and heard it here there.
So that's as important that long ago, in the long
ago history. I was singing it peers or love it,
but the jazz world said, you are not allowed in here,
you cannot enter.
Speaker 2 (57:21):
Did you feel that you bet? You early in your.
Speaker 3 (57:23):
Career, and I've figured out I think partially you know,
because there are unusual First of all, women are are
the last person allowed in the room. Singers and women singers.
But if you didn't only sing jazz, you can't come in.
(57:45):
If you sang a pop song, you can't come in.
You have to have exclusively devoted yourself to this one
discipline or you can't come in. I called the jazz
station and long beached in your disgustard? Would you play
Rickney Jones highly Hi Lo said no, we don't play
Rickin Jones. Okay said, like on the wall behind it,
(58:08):
we don't.
Speaker 2 (58:09):
I regularly do your picture with a big excid Yeah.
Speaker 3 (58:12):
And you know it hurt. It always hurts to people go, yeah,
we've decided what you are no matter what you do.
So I did jazzy songs with some pop in him.
I was mixed it up a little bit and after
pop pop, which got a really weird reviews. You know,
(58:38):
it was my fortieth birthday and one of the great
bebop players, Joe Henderson, had played on two songs. He
came to the party and at a moment took me
aside and said, I just wanted to tell you that
I was sorry to see that you didn't make another record,
(58:59):
because I really thought you were onto something. And it
was a revelation because this is from a musician and
you're listening to critics. Stop it. So it took a
long time, and for whatever reason, I found myself thinking
about res titleman, and I need to be in the
(59:23):
loving care of a real producer who not only knows
what they're doing, but loves the sound of my voice.
And I looked him up. I was thinking we would
maybe work on some of my new material, but he said,
I want to do a jazz I want to do
a jazz record. You have not done the American Songbook.
(59:46):
That's what we're going to do. And so I said, okay,
and we began to exchange ideas. But what happened was
I knew in the last two years that my voice
has begun to change a little because of aging, not
(01:00:06):
a lot, and I don't smoke it to take good
care of but it was thinning here and tired there.
And jazz is the most demanding, I think, because you
can in other things. You can yell, you put that
up in the back of the throat and hit anything.
But if you're going to do quiet stuff, what seemed
(01:00:28):
to happen when I started, is this this other quiettitude
that was a little bit, you know, saucy and sensual.
She just stepped right up to the microphone and she
just what she was doing.
Speaker 4 (01:00:45):
Like, who is this?
Speaker 3 (01:00:48):
I love her voice, it's got a lower thing. But
right away I heard the command that I prayed i'd
have and didn't expect, and there it was, so we
made an extraordinary record that's kind of magic. We went
full circle back to the time we left off our
(01:01:10):
professional relationship at Pirates. It's not like Pirates, but something
in the power of what happens when we work together
was there. I think it stands well next to any
beloved vocal work from the fifties or sixties here so
because there's a feeling of sensual love and humor and
(01:01:37):
all the things that you can get if you survive.
I'm sixty nine this year. If you survive, you can
bring all this stuff to your life and then bring
it to the sound of your voice into music. And
I think that's what's there, is humor and the love
of life and the idea that we're singing, you know
(01:02:00):
now for ourselves anymore. We're not going to be here
to you know, and maybe I will, but I'm singing
now for others and reaching out right.
Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
That's a great place to stop. Thank you so much.
That was just wonderful.
Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
Thanks to Ricky Lee Jones for playing and reminiscing about
her career with Bruce Headland. You can hear all of
our favorite Ricky Lee Jones songs on a playlist at
broken Record podcast dot com. You can subscribe to our
YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast,
where you can find all of our new episodes. Broken
(01:02:37):
Record is produced with help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrell,
Ben Taliday, Nisha Venkutt, Jordan McMillan, and Eric sam Our.
Editor is Sophie Crane. Broken Record is a production of
Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin,
consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast
(01:02:58):
subscription service that offers bonus content and uninterrupted ad free
listening for only four ninety nine a month. Look for
Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts subscriptions, and if you like
this show, remember to share, rate, and review us on
your podcast stat or the musics by Canna Beats. I'm
Justin Richman.
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