The music of Brazilian rock superstar Rita Lee Jones has been part of my life for as long as I can remember, starting when her iconic song “Ovelha Negra” exploded on Brazilian radio in the mid-1970s up to practically the present day, even though I still haven’t heard her 2012 release Reza (“Oração”). I have attended her shows over the years (including her last performance in NYC in 2003), and her music has been part of the soundtrack of my life alongside all the other musicians or bands I have admired over the years.
When I learned that she had released an autobiography, I was a bit curious, but I didn’t make a point of reading it right away. However, my kind mother bought it for me as a Christmas gift, and I couldn’t resist opening the tome to discover what it was about.
As with any rock biography, readers tend to want the author to get straight to the stories behind the music, but since this is also her own story, we spend a few pages getting to know Lee’s childhood and her relationship with her parents, two sisters, and extended family in a large house in São Paulo. I was really surprised to learn that she had a fairly stable family life – she went to Communion with her family and led a pretty normal life, except for the horrific story in which Lee was raped with a screwdriver at the age of seven – and that the perpetrator was never caught.
When we reach the 60s, things get juicy as she describes her years with Os Mutantes and her relationship with the Tropicalist movement started by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. We also get to know the ugly side of the band and how she was abruptly expelled once the Brandão brothers decided to take the band in a progressive direction inspired by Yes, and then we follow her entire career with details about the recording of all the albums she made until her retirement, when she decided to stop touring and dedicate herself to her family and a more peaceful lifestyle.
The book is highly personal, and she does not shy away from the darkest moments of her life, including her infamous arrest in 1976 for drug possession while pregnant with her first child Beto Lee, her addictions, and especially the self-destructive behavior that nearly destroyed her relationship with her husband and long-time songwriting partner Roberto de Carvalho. She is brutally honest about her disdain for the Mutantes reunion and also for her detractors – especially the late rock critic Ezequiel Neves, who openly hated her and published his venom in the press with impunity, even spreading rumors about her health.
It is a very good read – it is not yet available in English, but it certainly deserves to be translated, even if it only reaches a small audience of her hardcore fans who haven’t had the chance to learn Portuguese, as suggested by the English lyrics of “Baby” by Caetano Veloso – which she recorded with Os Mutantes, by the way.
ERNEST BARTELDES
Freelance Writer
https://ebarteldes.wordpress.com