{"product_id":"sing-backwards-and-weep-9781474615501","title":"Sing Backwards and Weep","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe most honest and unsparing grunge memoir ever committed to the page by one of the greatest alternative rock stars of the past thirty years\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRaw, ravaged and personal - \u003cb\u003ea stoned cold classic\u003c\/b\u003e -- Ian Rankin\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSing Backwards and Weep\u003c\/i\u003e is \u003cb\u003epowerfully written and brutally, frighteningly honest.\u003c\/b\u003e First thought that came to my mind was, 'Mark Lanegan gives the term 'bad boy' a whole new meaning.' \u003cb\u003eThese are gritty, wild tales of hardcore drugs, sex, and grunge. \u003c\/b\u003eBut this is also the story of a soulful artist who refused the darkness when it tried to swallow him whole. And who found redemption through grace and the power of his unique and brilliant music. Finally, the song becomes truth. And the truth becomes song -- Lucinda Williams\u003cbr\u003eA \u003cb\u003emesmerising \u003c\/b\u003etrip to the dark side that in places is so gloriously bleak it achieves a kind of Grand Guignol comedy. \u003cb\u003eWritten in blood, with true intensity, it becomes an instant classic of the genre\u003c\/b\u003e -- Kevin Barry\u003cbr\u003eA dark tale of dysfunctional normality and diseased reality. At war with the world and himself,\u003cb\u003e Mark Lanegan writes like he sings, from the pained heart of a damaged soul with brutal honesty\u003c\/b\u003e -- Bobby Gillespie\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eOne of the rawest and most honest music autobiographies I've ever read\u003c\/b\u003e -- Stuart Braithwaite\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe frontman of the Screaming Trees gives a bloody, brawling, dope-fueled tour of his personal battlefields\u003c\/b\u003e By any reckoning, Lanegan should be long dead alongside beloved friends like Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, Kristen Pfaff of Hole, and Layne Stanley of Alice in Chains. By either miracle or stamina, the author is still alive to offer\u003cb\u003e a blisteringly raw self-portrait of life \u003c\/b\u003enot just as an excessively self-indulgent rock star, but also a victim of his own hubris . . . This isn't just a warts-and-all admission; it's \u003cb\u003ea blackout- and overdose-rich confessional\u003c\/b\u003e marked by guilt and shame. \u003cb\u003eIt's also not a redemption song, but like any other train wreck, it's impossible to look away. A stunning tally of the sacrifices that sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll demand of its mortal instruments\u003c\/b\u003e * Kirkus *\u003cbr\u003eMany rock memoirs come with a third act in which the artist achieves sobriety and disavows their former life. Not so Lanegan, who delivers grand guignol scenes of heroin-fuelled violence, degradation and self-abuse while recalling his Screaming Tree days, with little in the way of regrets. \u003cb\u003eRare in its rawness and bracing honesty.\u003c\/b\u003e * The Guardian, 10 of the Best Music Biographies *\u003cbr\u003eThe most brutally honest rock memoir imaginable -- Daily Telegraph\u003cbr\u003eNot for the faint-hearted -- 9\/10, Classic Rock\u003cbr\u003eAn \u003cb\u003eastonishingly frank, heartbreaking and tremendously brave\u003c\/b\u003e book -- Record Collector\u003cbr\u003eDark yet borderline-hilarious cavalcade of horror and mayhem -- Big Issue\u003cbr\u003eThe book\u003cb\u003e reads like a debauched Bukowski novel\u003c\/b\u003e, as Lanegan drifts from sin to sin, cursing those who held him back from music, drugs, and hookups, and recounting grisly tales about his famous friends -- Rolling Stone\u003cbr\u003eThis is a frank, astonishing and often horrifying recollection from someone who has certainly lived a life, and who has now decided to share a part of it . . . \u003cb\u003efar from your usual Rockstar Memoir\u003c\/b\u003e -- Si Forster * Echoes and Dust *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eOne of the most unflinching memoirs in the history of music writing \u003c\/b\u003e. . . it is a survivor's tale, and a brilliantly written one at that * Kerrang *\u003cbr\u003e[Sing Backwards and Weep] makes for \u003cb\u003ea harrowing epic, a thriller if I ever read one\u003c\/b\u003e . . . the lyricist's flair he applies to its best passages elevates the book from the level of hachneyed retreads . . . he's able to dial himself up in moments of rage, sink us chin-deep into his sorrow at the loss of good friends . . . and crank the tension into a tightly wound ball when the dope-sickness sets in and the chase for a fix is on * Bookanista *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA harrowing but often hilarious chronicle of addiction and regret \u003c\/b\u003e. . . packed full of surprises . . . [Lanegan's] eye-popping memoir explores hell's many sub-basements, and lived to produce good writing -- Kitty Empire * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003eRare in its rawness and candour, the book is a brutal chronicle of addiction -- Fiona Sturges * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003e[A] deeply sensitive book -- Guardian\u003cbr\u003eA brutally honest, harrowing yet utterly compulsive read * The Quietus *\u003cbr\u003efrank about his youthful search for \"decadence, depravity, anything, everything\" and refuses to flinch from the guilt he still carries around the death of his friend Kurt Cobain * NME *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eIt's a depiction of addiction and self-loathing so bleak that your fingernails come away its pages caked in dirt.\u003c\/b\u003e In it Lanegan lays his track-marked past bare, cycling endlessly between his roles as powerless victim, talented screw up and toxic enabler from page to stinking page * Clash *\u003cbr\u003eunflinchingly tells the musician's hardscrabble story from his early days in backwater Ellensburg, Washington as he drifts from a teen gambler and porn fiend to petty criminal * Spin *\u003cbr\u003eA chronicle of depravity and drugs,\u003cb\u003e laced with dark humour and crackling with - well, not exactly joie de vivre, but certainly the will to live.\u003c\/b\u003e The story of the rock star who descends into substance-abuse hell but survives to tell the tale has been told a thousand times, but \u003cb\u003eLanegan relates his experiences with irresistible swagger and honesty\u003c\/b\u003e * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003eA bejewelled document of excess and redemption * Mirror *\u003cbr\u003eThe book is a triumph. * New Statesman *\u003cbr\u003eThis is a narrative packed with surprises [...] but there is room in this heavy, heavy book for quite astonishing turns of kismet. * The Observer *\u003cbr\u003eA visceral, unforgettable memoir. * The New European *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSing Backwards and Weep \u003c\/i\u003eis an \u003cb\u003eunflinching \u003c\/b\u003etrawl - or would be, were it not marginally leavened by \u003cb\u003estraight-shooting yet eloquent language, gallows humour and his sweet, boyish excitement\u003c\/b\u003e at the breifest of encounters with musical heroes such as Waylon Jennings and Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh * Scotland on Sunday *\u003cbr\u003eThe usual offering is that dreaded soufflé of bullshit known as the rock memoir - the airy embellishment of glory days that inevitably collapses under the weight of its own conceit. But Lanegan's \u003ci\u003eSing Backwards and Weep\u003c\/i\u003e is a rock memoir only insofar as its author happens to have sung rock n' roll in seminal bands while developing close friendships with some of the genre's most dearly departed * Vice *\u003cbr\u003eRare in its rawness and candour, the book is a brutal chronicle of addiction [...] despite the tragedies, an arch humour characterises a lot of the writing * The Guardian *\u003cbr\u003egripping memoir * Sunday Express *\u003cbr\u003eThis is a narrative packed with surprises [...] but there is room in this heavy, heavy book for quite astonishing turns of kismet. * The Observer *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA rock autobiography as raw as it gets. \u003c\/b\u003eCome for the magnificent rant about Liam Gallagher, stay for the bleak and gripping account of addiction and loss * The i *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSing Backwards and Weep\u003c\/i\u003e is a painstakingly unflinching account of a troubled life further troubled by the excesses of rock 'n' roll. \u003cb\u003eIt is among the very best memoirs I have read, by a musician or anyone else\u003c\/b\u003e * The Australian *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSing Backwards and Weep\u003c\/i\u003e is \u003cb\u003ethe only rock autobiography you need investigate.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003eLike some nicotine-stained amalgam of Tom Waits and Kurt Cobain\u003c\/b\u003e, Mark Lanegan gives another meaning to \"warts and all\" as he recounts his near obliteration during the Seattle grunge boom of the 1990s, of which he is one of the few survivors. \u003cb\u003eA brazen and bleakly comic saga about the needle and the damage done. \u003c\/b\u003e * Irish Independent *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSing Backwards and Weep \u003c\/i\u003e- by turns mordant, entertaining and bleak - is both a portrait of a damaged man and a chronicle of a now legendary music scene * TLS *\u003cbr\u003eSing Backwards and Weep is \u003cb\u003ethe only rock autobiography you need investigate\u003c\/b\u003e. Like \u003cb\u003esome nicotine-stained amalgam of Tom Waits and Kurt Cobain\u003c\/b\u003e, Mark Lanegan gives another meaning to \"warts and all\" as he recounts his near obliteration during the Seattle grunge boom of the 1990s, of which he is one of the few survivors. A \u003cb\u003ebrazen and bleakly comic \u003c\/b\u003esaga about the needle and the damage done. * Irish Indepdendent Summer Reads *","brand":"Orion Publishing Co","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49408903512407,"sku":"9781474615501","price":10.44,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781474615501.jpg?v=1730504635","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/sing-backwards-and-weep-9781474615501","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}