The Last Living Slut: Born in Iran, Bred Backstage [Hardcover]

Roxana Shirazi (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 1, 2010

The outrageous, yet surprisingly moving, memoir of a girl who fled the Iranian Revolution—and found her salvation in the deliriously sexy life of a rock-'n'-roll groupie.

Honest, provocative, and vividly written, The Last Living Slut is the memoir of Roxana Shirazi, who was raised traditionally in Tehran. After her family spirits her to the West in flight from the Iranian Revolution, Shirazi is led far astray by the sound—and the sex appeal—of rock and roll. Caught between her sexual appetites, passion for music (and musicians), and fear of being a bad seed, Shirazi bares her soul to offer a raw account of her life as an eager-to-please rock groupie. With appearances by members of Guns N' Roses, Mötley Crüe, Velvet Revolver, and many more, The Last Living Slut is a moving memoir of growing up in the political turbulence of Tehran; an unflinching portrayal of teenage cultural dislocation in London; a backstage romp that makes Pamela Des Barres's I'm with the Band read like a nun's diary; and a white-knuckled tale of jilted love and brutal revenge.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Aghast readers may lose track of Shirazi's rock star conquests, but her shocking sexual exploits are chronicled in such can't-look-away prose that it's impossible to close this X-rated book until the last bad boy has been put to bed. While the author's explicit descriptions of backstage orgies, threesomes, and random hookups might make even the most world-wise readers blush, memoirs like this are rarely written with such edgy prose. Shirazi, who fled the Iranian revolution, barely hints at trauma caused by early sexual and physical abuse. But when it comes to accounts of rock stars' sexual proclivities, she doesn't hold back. Even as she pursues a Master's degree in English, Shirazi trysts with members, or hangers-on, of Guns N' Roses, Mötley Crüe, and assorted has-beens of the '80s hair-band scene still clinging to their former glory. But when the author allows herself to fall in love, her memoir takes a turn that proves disastrous in myriad ways, rubbing much of the sexy veneer off of her shenanigans. Though ultimately, no matter how readers judge her salacious life, no one can deny that she has a raw talent with words. Photos.
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From Booklist

After Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran, Shirazi’s family immigrated to London. Bullied by her classmates and beaten by her stepfather, she fell hard for rock ’n’ roll and embarked on a splintered existence that saw her studying at university while attending rock concerts with the express purpose of bedding musicians, among them members of Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver. Shirazi makes no bones about her passion for operating in “full sleaze mode” and of the pleasure she took in outfitting herself in stilettos and corsets. What tripped her up was her attempt to extract love and reassurance from her sexcapades. An abortion and a bad breakup left her in desperate straits; out to wield some power, she slept with two feuding members of the same band, causing a bartender to accuse her, in all seriousness, of being the “Yoko Ono for Hookers N’ Blow.” Shirazi gave up the life when she realized that even supposedly liberated rockers employ a sexual double standard. Far raunchier and better written than Pamela Des Barres’ classic I’m with the Band (1987). --Joanne Wilkinson

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Igniter; 1 edition (June 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061931357
• ISBN-13: 978-0061931352
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.1 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #563,261 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Roxana Shirazi ran in the dusty dusky Persian alleys of pre-revolutionary Tehran, watchful of the Shah's secret police and the soldiers, and engaged in sexual games with her boy and girl neighbours. She read the Qur'an at school like a good child, still doing naughty things with boys and girls during the war. She was sent to England at the age of 10, got called paki and the 'N' word a lot, lost herself in books and more books, started writing poetry and journalistic articles and started leading a double life as academic and a life in rock n roll debauchery with rock bands. Too wild for rock stars, she found this supposed utopian rock n roll world too limiting for her wild spirit. After an abortion, a suicide attempt and many falling in loves she now tries to stop her heart from falling in love and prefers to volunteer for animal right groups and hopefully try and stop the torture of cats and dogs in China for their fur.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put it down! June 1, 2010

By Samantha

Format:Hardcover

A friend of mine received an advance review copy of this book and passed it to me when she was done. I was curious but wasn't expecting to like this book nearly as much as I did. Be warned - it's not for the faint of heart. Shirazi is explicit and frank about the sexual abuse she endured as a child, and she details her sexual exploits with the bands she's slept with in very vivid detail. Some of it is sexy, some of it is at times too much - but I guarantee you won't be able to look away. Even at the darkest points in the story, this book is impossible to stop reading. It is an honest story by an author who is unafraid to present herself exactly as she is. Her childhood in Iran is described well and that history explains why she went in search of freedom and sexual liberation in the rock and roll world once she was exposed to it. But she found that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. She realized that the only freedom she could count on was to be who she is. She doesn't have all of the answers, and the book doesn't offer a nice, simple happy ending - and for that I liked it even more. She has found peace with herself and that's all anyone can want. All in all highly recommended!

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than expected! June 1, 2010

By Krista Lauder

Format:Hardcover

Although the title made me wary, I was pleasantly surprised after reading this book. When I heard this was another groupie tell-all, I already envisioned what the story was going to be about, but I decided to give it a shot anyways. The tale is explicit, but has a completely different vibe than other rocker stories. Her story is very dark and emotionally compelling. Actually, the first half has nothing to do with rock and roll. Instead, she talks about her journal to sexual maturity, from her childhood in Iran to escaping to London, and all of the difficulties and heartbreak she experienced. She chronicles her whole life, from childhood to groupie-status, sharing her most explicit stories about her sexcapades with various rockers (all of which she names!). Maybe not a story for the more conservative types, but nevertheless a great read-- actually found myself unable to put it down. Not to mention the language is poetic and flowing, making the story easy to read and follow. Don't be scared off by the title-- give it a chance, you will be pleasantly surprised!

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars More sad than sexy. October 2, 2010

By L. Ozbey

Format:Hardcover

I just finished this book, and it was a quick and easy read compared to what I normally read. As a child of the 80's metal hair bands myself--and a huge music fan, I was curious. I have personally been invited backstage for many concerts during that era (I looked like a tart when I was 16) scouted by road managers asking 'do you want to meet the band?' . Only to immediately protest that I was only a fan, and that I had to be at school in the morning--the moment I'd get backstage. Great White, twisted sister, iron maiden, judas priest...met them all at the height of their popularity. Yet, while my appearance stated otherwise...I would never have dreamed of sleeping with anyone in the bands I met. Therefore, I felt like reading this book would present the other side of the coin. What would life for me have been like if I had? Roxanna was someone not unlike myself, and yet she was on the dark side. I thought this was her memoir of a misspent youth chasing rockstars in their glory days. What a let down. This is about very recent history...of a woman willing to degrade herself in every conceivable way for washed up rockstars whose light faded decades ago. Her defiant 'slut and proud' mantra was not at all convincing, but rather hollow and sad. She was desperate for love, affection and attention,which it seems she has still not achieved to this date. I loved reading about her childhood in Tehran, and her relationship with her family....but little of her relationship with her family was explored in her 'slut' years. Did they know how promiscuous she was? Her bi-sexuality and multiple sex partner (often at the same time). Well...they sure know now! How did they feel about it? Her younger siblings?... She explained she lived a double-life, but then suddenly she was telling her mom about her pregnancy from a lowlife rocker and impending abortion. Other than a sentence about her mom complaining that the men she dated being beneath her, there was no other feedback. There was an opportunity there to bring the story from her beginnings in Tehran, the molestations, the groupie life and then Mum into a full loop. I also take issue with her protection of this hypocritical politician who was a slime bucket, while freely throwing the names of the band members. Seems hypocritical on her part to me.

I didn't love it. I didn't hate it. It was a page turner...but it ultimately disappointed me with it's lack of sincerity and sad message. Read more ›

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating book...but not for the reasons you might expect August 25, 2010

By Jim

Format:Hardcover

Roxana Shirazi's memoir "The Last Living Slut" is most certainly a page-turner, filled as it is with unflinching, graphic first-person accounts of backstage, back-room and tour-bus depravity. If the dirt, name-naming and shock value are what you're coming in for, you won't be disappointed. Not by a long shot.

That said, what made it most fascinating to me wasn't the classic "holy trinity" of sex, drugs and rock n' roll promised by the jacket copy. Sure, you get plenty of that. More than you'd expect, and in the sort of lurid detail that would make sailors blush. But it's what's happening below the surface that really grabbed my attention. Namely, the fact that the actual structural tone of the narrative took on wildly different textures depending on the events being recalled.

To wit: when the book begins, we're given a generous dose of Shirazi's background...From her early childhood under the Shah, to the strict Muslim doctrines imposed by the Ayatollah, to her her eventual emigration abroad. It's a very intriguing peek into a world we rarely see: what it's like to grow up and mature as a young lady in a country where doing exactly that can cause you to be demonized. And these passages of her (mostly) idyllic, and fondly-recalled childhood are rendered with a prose style I can only describe as being the equivalent of soft-focus film: flowing, lyrical, reverent, and gauzy enough around the edges so as to effectively obscure certain less-than-savory details.

But then a fascinating thing happens once her coming-of-age hits, the velvet rope is drawn back, and the juicy bits start to come hard and fast (puns most definitely intended). The actual narrative voice itself changes. The structural texture of the words, sentences and paragraphs themselves coarsen dramatically.... Gone are the lilting, rose-colored passages depicting her bucolic youth in Tehran; they're instead replaced by short, sharp, almost abrasive passages where a lot of grit gets thrown at you, and there's neither time nor room to duck. Events are described harshly, and in an unflinching, matter-of-fact tone that bears not even a passing resemblance to the almost-soothing tone of the opening chapters. And the contrast is glaring. Whereas Shirazi once spent an entire paragraph describing how a cool swim felt on her naked adolescent skin, by the time we swing into the meat of the story, entire evenings crammed full of breathtakingly Donysian debauchery seem to scream by in no more than a few sentences. And they leave a raw spot where they scraped past.

The reader is left considering two possibilities:

A) This shift in narrative voice (the texture of which paralleling, as it does, the actual context of the events described) is an intentional literary trick. One designed to lull the reader into a soft comfort before dragging them by the nostrils into the charnel house, where things are decidedly less smooth on the sense. And if this is the case, it's a very neat, and in no small way effective trick at that.

Or...

B) Shirazi was not conscious of the marked shift in voice...Meaning her deeper personal feelings about the events being discussed spike through the gloss of the actual words themselves despite her writing skill, revealing a fascinating between-the-lines subtext she might not have consciously intended to convey.

If the LATTER is what's happening, and the jarring contrast was not deliberate? Then it's an incredibly revealing development. Because while it's very tempting to cheer for the author as she embraces the power of her sexuality, and flips the script on the parade of bad-boy rock stars who THINK they're using her when the inverse is actually true? The resentment, anger and bitterness that seems to be simmering just under the surface hints at her truer feelings. The ones she seems to want to conceal beneath an unapologetic, devil-may-care sex-machine exterior that insists the power exchange was more even than most would assume from the outset.

And that's not to say that female sexual empowerment is a negative by any stretch of the imagination. Taboos, hang-ups, misinformation and artificial guilt have long been hindrances to personal development in BOTH genders when it comes to embracing honesty in sexuality. It's just that there are more than a few clues that might have a bit of "protesting too loudly" happening in this individual's case. This, even as she cinches up her corset, teases her hair, paints on her sixth fire-engine-red coat of lipstick in the last hour and insists that she has suffered no ill effects from her unabashed hedonism.

(Of course, a distant third-place possibility is that the jerky, disjointed, sandpaper-raw feel of many of the "backstage" sections of the book were NECESSARILY full of holes, due to too much recreational substance use, and too little sleep on the part of the narrator. I'd challenge anyone to maintain a smooth narrative through-line if even HALF of what happened...actually happened.)

Either way, this book is really not to be missed. Shirazi has a raw (yet still oddly polished) way with words no matter what hat she happens to be wearing, and the subject matter (both extremes of it) is nothing short of absorbing. It's a breezy read that somehow still feels substantial, an entertaining story that has no business being entertaining, and a no-holds-barred festival of sinful wickedness that still manages to come off as completely sanguine. The only thing that kept this from being a full-on five-star review for me is that I wished that some of the "rougher" sections had been written with the same structural care as the initial passages; though, obviously, the fact that they weren't is what's most haunted me.

I suppose like the book and its author, I'm also given to the odd bout with dichotomy. Read more ›