Dandelion

July 9, 2007
Like Pamela Des Barres (I’m with the Band
), James was a California It Girl and very young groupie of the early rock-and-rollers, and in this candid, workmanlike autobiography, she shares her accidental fame. James was the product of beautiful, well-connected Beverly Hills parents who divorced: the father became a transvestite, coming out to James when she was a young adult at Musso & Frank’s in Hollywood, as depicted in a wild opening chapter; the mother, Diana, went through a succession of husbands and eventually relinquished caretaking of her daughter to the state. Having dated Bob Dylan by age 13, James ran away from the Visa Del Mar orphanage to New York and hung out at Andy Warhol’s Factory. She met Denny Laine of the Moody Blues, who became an abusive husband and father of her child while she was still in her teens. She shopped on Kings Road in Chelsea and partied with members of the Beatles, the Who and the Rolling Stones, among others. When the marriage didn’t work, she took her son back to California and romanced Jackson Browne. Somehow James makes do with a little help from her friends, finding modeling work, doubling for Diane Keaton and going back to school. Ever cheery, never self-pitying, her memoir is by turns insipid and sweet.