Memories From a Faded Era

September 17, 2007 - 10:23 — Dusty Wright

Catherine James has lived eight lives in 57 short years and her Dandelion: Memoir of a Free Spirit (St. Martin's Pres) devastates with emotional sabotages that seem so outrageous that you swear you must be reading fiction. I read the advance copy in one sitting, blown away by the poignancy and ease with which Miss James shares her years of perilous plight. The abuse she suffers at the hands of her Hollywood femme fatale mother Diana reads like Mommy Dearest meets Piper Laurie’s character in the movie adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie.

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www.amazon.com/Dandelion-Memoir-Catherine-James/dp/0312367813/ref=sr_1_1/102-6388245-8868120

"How she has survived what can only be described as the extraordinary life she writes about so candidly in her book is a testament to her strength."  -- Roger Daltrey

"Dandelion tells the courageous nine-lives tale of an exquisite beauty’s great escape from a turbulent childhood, free-fall into the revolutionary rock music scene, a child raising her own child amidst chaotic upheaval. Audacious and dauntless, Catherine James maintains her sweetness and vulnerability, even when facing down her demons. From the Hollywood heyday to swinging Mod London, to the streets of Greenwich Village and back again, she takes us to shadowy and brilliant places, introduces us to ghastly and illustrious characters, sprinkling heartfelt wisdom and insight on every page."   --  Pamela Des Barres

KIRKUS July 15th, 2007

James, Catherine

DANDELION: A 70’s Memoir

Abused child and lover of many a rock star puts her life down on paper. James first hit the music scene in the 1960s, when the Gods of Rock still blazed paths of wanton devastation across America before retiring to their well-appointed British castles for heroin and philosophy. She came from a Southern California kind of nowhere, raised by a speed-freak mother of uncommon brutality and a mostly absent, alcoholic father who later became the world’s ugliest transsexual (we learn this in a shocking flash-forward that opens the book). Sent to an orphanage at age 12, James managed to get out one weekend and make friends with 22-year-old Bob Dylan, who was playing a gig in Santa Monica. In 1964, still only 14 years old, she lit out for Greenwich Village. Being someone who makes things happen, she remade herself into a fabulous It girl, landing a screen test with Andy Warhol and partying with rock stars. Two years later, involved in a romance with the Moody Blues’ Denny Laine, she forged papers to get a passport and joined him in London, where she bore his child. More harrowing abuse, a whirlwind romance with Mick Jagger, infatuation with Jimmy Page and plenty of Performance-like decadence followed. Her later years were calmer, as she concentrated on raising son Damian Christian and finding odd employment as a model, a movie scenery painter and a stand-in for Diane Keaton, but she still found time to fall hard for Jackson Browne. James is no prose stylist, but she cuts to the quick with an admirable economy, treating the mundane passages of her life with the same sanguinity as the ones littered with the rich and famous. There’s plenty of pain here, but little wallowing. The rare celebrity-crammed memoir that would be worth reading even without the bold-faced names.
(Agent: Peter McGuigan/Foundry Literary & Media)