Boys Keep Swinging by Jake Shears, Atria Books, $26
If you're a sporadic drag queen like me, the pink, purple, and silver glitter palette on the cover of Jake Shears' new memoir should be enough to draw you in. Once inside, there's a generous amount of juicy material about the kaleidoscopic life of this creative founding member of the glam pop group Scissor Sisters. The book is written very much in the way Shears has led his life: brashly honest, well-honed, bubbly, dazzled by celebrity, and infused with plenty of eyebrow-raising tidbits.
In three sections, "Youth," "New York," and "Scissor Sisters," Shears spills the details about his gay coming-of-age in Mesa, Arizona, as Jason Sellards, a born showman who adored older women, dreamt about men, lied his way through kindergarten, and loved telling tall tales. He matured during the pre-Internet days where getting creative with the International Male catalog became a masturbatory necessity, and his discovery of bands like the Violent Femmes and Siouxsie and the Banshees kept his youth and yearning for alternative music afloat.
College life at Southern California's Occidental College was more freeing and less bullying than high school as Shears became enraptured by drag queens and nightclubs. These anecdotes form the perfect lead-in to his more formative musical years in New York City. The memoir's middle portion is awash in sexual escapades and late nights at bars like the Cock, as Shears prowls the big city and spends sweltering summers in a place that stunk like "dead seaweed in a sour-cream ocean."
With a swirling cast of supporting characters, the anecdotes and sordid stories flow like lava. Once Shears began writing songs and embracing his place on stage and in front of a crowd, he had truly found his calling.
The closing section details the formation of the Scissor Sisters; the evolution of their bestselling breakout track, the bouncy, upbeat "I Don't Feel Like Dancing"; what Shears felt were the band's "shortcomings" as they grew in popularity; and events both positive and negative that contributed to the band's current indefinite hiatus.
Unfortunately, the book stops before more dirt on the band's current status is unearthed. Perhaps Shears wished to conclude things on a good note rather than harp on the negative aspects of the band's conflicts and irreconcilable differences.
There is still plenty of fun to be had within these pages. The stories alone are enough to keep readers up at night. For an update on Shears and his performance career, he has joined the cast of the Tony-winning musical "Kinky Boots," with Kirstin Maldonado, in his Broadway stage debut, assuming the role of the failing shoe factory owner Charlie Price.