Press

June 2025

"Welcome to Fabulous Angeles: The Rock 'n' Roll Adventures of a Wayward Westside Teen is a memoir of Los Angeles during the 1970s that embraces music, celebrities, and mayhem. It does more than tell a story—Richard A. Lefkowitz embraces the times with a voice that will draw future generations into a “you are here” experience of a bygone era when it wasn’t impossible to share weed with a star:

Moxie heard a noise and peered through the peephole. “Check out this fox.” I slid over to view a ravishing beauty with blond hair flowing over her shoulders. Moxie pulled on the knob. Like a figure popping out of a jack-in-the-box, a preppy dude who’d accompanied the woman sprang to life. I thought, my God, David Bowie. My gaze settled on the sexy girl, but I’d misidentified the man with the rolled-up sleeves. Her escort? Michael Philip Jagger.

"Los Angeles culture and personal experience entwine in a memoir that is vivid and personal. Lefkowitz traverses the city’s counterculture and the process of coming of age with equal vividness, drawing readers into explosive realizations and interactions whether he’s dealing with friends, family, or the greater culture and world of Southern California:

"From loves and loss to careening up the canyons of the city in “erratic directions,” Welcome to Fabulous Angeles imparts a rare feeling of freestyling through the forces of new adulthood with shifting purposes and perspectives.

"Lefkowitz captures this milieu and juxtaposes it with his personal life challenges, “riding conversational waves,” “toasting the moment,” and building new relationships and pathways that forge into adulthood with as much subtlety as a hammer.

"Libraries looking for memoirs of California’s 1970s era which are steeped in music, culture, and coming-of-age experiences will relish how vividly Welcome to Fabulous Angeles captures and contrasts both a sense of the times and a new adult’s growth processes.

"From stormy relationships that simmer into better choices and lessons about life to music-and-girl infused experiences that portend new beginning, Welcome to Fabulous Angeles is a memoir filled with excitement and personal experience that will delight any reader seeking to better know 1970s Los Angeles’s many influences."

—Midwest Book Review

June 10, 2025

Welcome to Fabulous Los Angeles was recently reviewed by BookPleasures.com:

"Lefkowitz tells this story in a way that’s super relatable and emotionally charged. . . .He shares the fun, mistakes, and regrets of youth in a way that feels honest without being preachy . . . a memoir that feels personal and universal. . . . Welcome to Fabulous Los Angeles offers a front-row view of a loud, messy, exhilarating time in American culture—and it reflects on what it really means to grow up and look back. . . . This memoir is ... for anyone who enjoys heartfelt coming-of-age stories packed with a strong sense of time and place!"
—BookPleasures.com

For an in-depth interview with BookPleasures.com, click here.