Boys Keep Swinging: A Memoir

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I have a memory of Jane Pauley on the Today show introducing a segment about how some scientists thought it was possible that you could get AIDS from a toilet seat. The two whole weeks we lived together were like breaking a favorite toy to inspect its insides and see how it worked. Chris had stood there smiling with his camera in hand, waiting for me as I exited the side of the stage. I was now on the lookout for adult women to connect with, mostly just friends’ moms in their kitchens, who were amused that I wanted to talk to them rather than play with their kid.

Turns out this was because he and his uncle had painted a whole house with lead paint when my dad was eight. The lines of his rugged complexion, the result of years in the desert without sunscreen, pointed to a perpetual scowl. Jake Shears is so damn honest about everything, and it makes for an insightful read that leaves little to compare it to. I assumed my mother’s giant stomach had exploded in some public place, followed by a balloon drop, confetti cannons, and people celebrating in the streets. Taking the two-hour ferry ride from the mainland, gliding over the calm ocean, was like being in a placid purgatory.For some reason, I find musicians more interesting than actors, and have read a fair number of memoirs by artists I know peripherally: Jewel, Keith Richards, Posh Spice. Or Windi told me that if I got hair spray in my face, my eyes would turn blue and I’d die in a matter of minutes. He had done well for us, and if there were any stresses of not having enough money, I wasn’t aware of it.

Whatever money was spent on our leisure, it was accompanied by his own elbow grease and ambitious imagination. Boys Keep Swinging is his story, and it’s a brilliant one that begins with his childhood in Mesa, Arizona, and eventually leads us to New York City—“the place that people went and fucking did something. In the bestselling tradition of Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, Patti Smith's Just Kids, and Carrie Brownstein's Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, the lead singer of the multiplatinum-selling band Scissor Sisters explores his evolution as a young artist: coming of age in the Pacific Northwest and Arizona, his entry into New York City's electrifying, ever-changing music scene, and the Scissor Sisters' rise as they reached international fame in the early 2000s. After we said our final goodbye from the stage, I trod up the stairs back to the dressing room where Chris took my arm and said, “David Bowie watched the show. Maybe that was why when I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, the first thing I could think of was a “hairdresser.

I picked up Jake Shears’ memoir Boys Keep Swinging because I was a fan of his glam-rock/disco band the Scissor Sisters, who have been M. New businesses seemed exciting only until the last of the grand-opening balloons popped, the dust wearing the sheen of the signs to scratched plastic. He seized opportunity by the balls and made things happen, dancing on bartops to make some extra cash and struggling to fucking do something—to leave his mark on the world while grappling with an almost crippling self-loathing.

I was frequently on the floor of my room, flat on my stomach, surrounded by countless He-Man figures and castles.In 1943, the Rosemead airport, east of Los Angeles, was the perfect spot to get a job, small but active enough where he could be close to the planes and begin learning how to fly. So, although I have never danced on a bar in my underwear or performed in drag, I found once again that we were more similar than different. Shears (a stage name, which I didn't know before) relays a relatively normal childhood marred by family difficulties, bullying, homophobia, and strange friendships, eventually getting to his wilder years in Seattle and New York where he never had a penny to his name and spent all his time at weird bars with even weirder people. I'm fairly uncomplicated in that what you see is what you get, plus I lack the ability (or the tolerance) to pretend to feel differently than I do. Especially during a scary time for gay people and seeing how that affected his coming out process and coming of age.

Its amazing how what you see presented in the media is far from the reality of the Mental and Physical challenges being faced by Jake and those around him. When I Google the first line of the epilogue (“Writing about your life is panning your imagination for shiny bits”), it looks like it was quoted in a few reviews.Shears drops many names but even if you didn't know the characters involved you would still be able to "know" them through Shears' words. Best-known as the frontman of the Scissor Sisters, Shears became a global star when the band took off with the release of their self-titled 2004 album thanks to hits such as Take Your Mama and Filthy/Gorgeous. Before becoming lead singer in the fabulous Scissor Sisters, Jake Shears was Jason Sellards, just a kid with an unfathomable imagination and a love of He-Man dolls. One of those guys, Bill Clark, had done a job up in Alaska, and his plane disappeared there months before he was to be married to Freida Jean Rector. Boys Keep Swinging does a great job of capturing the highs and lows of rock stardom, as well as providing a moving coming-of-age story.