Ry Cooder
Los Angeles Stories

THE REVIEW

Hi Ry, I heard that in the Rolling Stones magazine's ranking of the best guitarists, you were placed in eighth (8th) place. Big deal.

Not bad for a self-taught musician who plays with an old Fender Stratocaster from the '60s. So, out of curiosity, I picked up your book. Damn, I abandoned reading it with 20 pages to go. To tell you the truth, it had already started to annoy me halfway through; I forced myself to continue, but then I gave up.

The stories are all disconnected from each other, even though the protagonists always have some relation to the music scene, which you know very well. However, the dialogues are poor and the emotions from the protagonists never come through.
I continued in the hope of finding a visual narrative path of the area between Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Marina del Rey, and Venice, which I know very well, by the way. Instead, I only discovered desolation. A pity, because all the ingredients were there, at your disposal.
You even made John Lee Hooker appear, who orders at the bar "One bourbon one scotch one beer". Nice appearance, which lasted only a few pages. As he came, he went, inexplicably.

The music magazines were praising your book. A monument to the turbulent lives of musicians. What monument? Forget about it and keep playing; it's better.