In his memoir, The History of Bones, the musician, actor and painter John Lurie demonstrates that he can be, among other things, petty, defensive, self-aggrandizing, self-pitying, gratuitously provocative and regularly obscene. Not at all unrelatedly, The History of Bones is a fantastic read.
Like his friend the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, about whom he has much to say, Lurie helped build the downtown New York art scene of the 1980s. In The History of Bones, he charts how he got there following his semi-delinquent childhood in Worcester, Mass. ("When Ted Kennedy came to speak at our high school shortly after Chappaquiddick, I was locked in the principal's office by myself because they were terrified of what I might do or say"). In the midst of his thrill seeking and drug taking, Lurie got his first saxophone, and his love of and facility with the instrument led to the Lounge Lizards, the storied New York jazz band that he cofounded in 1979 with his brother, Evan.
Lurie's habit of pulling pranks and making flip comments for laughs had a way of coming back to bite him--a reliable source of his book's abundant humor. His recap of wrangling a live eel in his bathroom so that it could be photographed for an album cover is a comic set piece. And Lurie is an ace storyteller with perfect pitch; a typical chapter opener: "Martin Meissonnier lost most of his money because Fela Kuti, his eighteen wives, and his enormous band roasted an entire goat in their hotel room."
Although Lurie drops some names, most land on pillows, and he can be endearingly disarming with understatement ("Perhaps I have not managed my career so well"). He surely traffics in some hyperbole, but The History of Bones contains dozens of what seem like unguarded moments, as when Lurie recounts his spiritual pursuits, his tussles with drug addiction and his ambivalent relationship to fame, especially when he achieves it outside the musical realm: "I am suddenly the hot new independent film star. This is very strange. Do I want this? One is supposed to want this." Readers will leave Lurie's book, which carries them through the 1980s, with the impression that they have been keeping company with a kvetchy but wildly entertaining uncle who's bent on proving that things were better in the old days. Going by The History of Bones, they probably were. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer
Shelf Talker: In his compulsively entertaining memoir, the musician, actor and painter John Lurie recalls his life in New York's thriving downtown art scene in the 1980s.