THE HISTORY OF BONES

The artist, director, musician, composer, and founder of the Lounge Lizards assesses his life and work.

"My hope is, as with all my work, that this book will be something people find uplifting," writes Lurie—but by the time he titled this memoir, he likely realized that it had become a compendium of the bones he has to pick with the army of people who have wronged him. The story begins well, as the author wryly details his youth in Worcester and his early years in New York City. He was a major player in the artistically charged, drug-addled 1980s downtown scene, where all the painters had bands and all the musicians made movies. It is around this point that, despite many avowals—"I have been kind to some people who, years later, when I was in trouble, were heinous to me"—the author sheds the kid gloves. Halfway through, “The World’s Longest Footnote” introduces his beef that he is being "disappeared" from the story of his friend Jean-Michel Basquiat and identifies his nemesis, Jim Jarmusch. Though he didn't mean to “slag Jim off,” he writes, “I feel like I have to hurry up and get this book published before Jim Jarmusch gets hold of it and puts it out as his own memoir.” From there, Lurie delves into the pitfalls of the touring musician (“I really do remember every bad gig we ever did, and nine out of ten times it was caused by not being able to hear ourselves onstage”), the nightmare of mixing albums, and the difficulties of acting. Of Willem Dafoe: “He never complained, which is something that is completely beyond me.” On Page 306, he issues a warning to readers: “if this shit bugs you, you may skip to the next chapter.” He wisely cuts off the story sometime in the 1990s. Thankfully, the author’s self-aware humor makes the bone-picking bearable.

Overlong and sometimes overbearing but will appeal to Lurie fans and students of the 1980s downtown NYC scene.