|
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fragments of human soul, 30 Dec 2001
By A Customer
From the early 1980s, up until his death in 1996, Jeffrey Lee Pierce was lead singer and guiding force behind 'The Gun Club.'This book collects most of his lyrics, an account of his life in the band, one substantial short story and a few odd pieces of fiction. On their own, the lyrics won't win any major poetry prizes, however the words of Jeffrey Lee Pierce tapped into a sad, wounded part of the human soul. I recall my first time, hearing the line from 'Idiot Waltz' on the final 'Gun Club' album, 'Lucky Jim':
"It was foolish to be alive.
It was foolish in a foolish time." and then the chorus: "Turn on the headlights for the idiot waltz
Turn on the lights, watch us fall." Elsewhere, he offers salvation and small mercys to the assorted freaks and misfits that populate his songs. In 'Port of Souls': "Now easy street
can sure get you laid
doesn't matter what you've done
and you get paid." The history of the 'Gun Club' reads like a series of disjointed snapshots, beginning with the early shows at a Chinese restaurant in Hollywood. Ending in 1995 in Osaka, Japan. In between - a riot in Athens, Greece. Playing 'Thunderhead' on a portuguese childrens tv show. Learning, from William Burroughs, how to fire old western guns and rescuing the old man's cats, when they slipped out of the house at night. One piece of fiction in this book shows that, had he lived, Jeffrey Lee Pierce could have been a fine writer. His prose resonates the same haunted quality of his songs. 'Young Kyoko', tells the story of a doomed romance between a young Japanese woman and a dying middle-aged man. Jeffrey Lee Pierce died aged 37, but as this autobiography shows, he packed an awful lot of living into the little time that he had. In his writing he found a way to express the underlying sadness of the human condition.
|
