Rickie Lee Jones [The Chameleon]

By: Julian Chavez | December 21, 2009 | Ten by Ten

Rickie Lee Jones is a Grammy-award winning singer and songwriter whose career began in the late 1970s when she became an overnight sensation after performing as an unknown on Saturday Night Live. In an acclaimed career that has spanned three decades, Jones has released 14 albums and has collaborated with numerous artists including Leo Kottke, Lyle Lovett and Dr. John. Her latest CD released in November, Balm in Gilead, includes 10 new songs with collaborations with Ben Harper and Alison Krauss, among others.

What is the most important lesson you’ve ever learned?
That you cannot really do anything wrong in art; it is simply your expression. If you have a goal, well, you can miss your goal, but you should not have a goal in art. You have to stay … little … and just make the thing for the thing’s sake. We love the pictures we draw don’t we? Then someone else looks at it and has ideas, judges, says stuff. Then we don’t like our drawing anymore. I try to cut myself off from the process after the drawing is made. Although I do confess I am very pleased when others like it and see it as I saw it or see even more than I did. 

Who is your favorite contemporary artist and why?
I guess I like Radiohead — emotion, incredible creativity, beauty — they are exotic to me, from some other country that I cannot fathom.

What characteristics constitute intelligence?
Compassion, innate survival and the ability to make associations that others do not seem to notice and being able to convey these ideas.

How would you describe the current state of American politics?
Over.

What do you think is the biggest threat to world peace?
We are the biggest threat. Our apathy, our materialism and our acceptance of the biggest gets — it’s the mentality of running the world. Bullies destroy our ecosystem, won’t let us have health care, ruin our electoral process, destroy our Constitution, pervert the meanings of laws — and we let them! And there is this idea that if we were on the other side, they would do the same. I mean, our government is a corrupted idea, and we are a mess. 

What is your definition of success?
To be content at the end of your day, to feel your place here mattered, to help, that you were helped — all those things that mean you are a part of something, someone.

What do you consider your greatest professional achievement?
I like that I debuted at Carnegie Hall. I like that I am still working 30 years later. So, I guess the fact that I am still working is my greatest professional achievement. Also some high school kids in Illinois voted me the greatest musical contributor of … the 1990s. I think that was pretty great.

Which five people do you most admire and why?
I love Mohammad Ali for his great heart, his wonderful heart that gave him courage to not only take on the greatest heavy weight championship but to take on racism, head on, with such gallant and serious humor. I think he is the greatest living American bar none. 

President Kennedy signified the youth and the new world. He moved in powerful directions, legislating civil rights, for instance. But there was something about his spirit and the time. When he was killed, it truly was like our king was taken. We have never been the same.

Shirley Temple is the undeletable spirit of childhood. She is so radiant and sweet, talented and also, a look into the window of her times: those old films, her dancing and singing, what it meant then coming out of vaudeville. I love her a lot. 

Katherine Hepburn is a symbol to me of what kind of woman a person can be. She obviously has a lot of heart and a lot of control over her persona and her career. She is not messy, and yet, whoops, she actually is rather messy. She was involved in a very messy affair, cared for a very ill actor, yet does not let this stop her work nor does she ever put her work before her personal life. She really is a nice map for me — at least that’s how I see her.  She is one of the people I wish I had reached out to and met.

Ursula Le Guin wrote the Earthsea compilation. She is a novelist, but like all great writers, there is this wisdom in her prose. I read Earthsea at a time in my life when I lived in France, felt very lost and had some demons of my own to embrace. She wrote a story about a young wizard who goes to a wizard school (sound familiar?). It’s a really passionate story of magic, of shadow worlds, of calling with all your heart through a spell, taking you to the other side — like a prayer or a song. Her incantations and the island of the great elders of magic from the book just resonated with me. Le Guin is a hero. I don’t agree with her politics, but she is living a long life, wrote a book that matters and has obviously been imitated and picked up by other writers.

What is the best advice you’ve ever received?
My dad once told me, “Your job is to take them to the point of the tear and back off. You let them cry. You don’t do any crying. If you cry, they can’t. So, when I sing, I remember that. I deliver them to where they are going and then keep singing. 

How would you define love?
I just would not do that. 

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