Mark Lanegan's singular body of work encompasses dozens of albums both solo and collaborative and his memoir Sing Backwards and Weep was a Sunday Times bestseller and Rough Trade Book of the Year. He died aged 56 in 2022.
Raw, ravaged and personal - a stoned cold classic -- Ian
Rankin
Sing Backwards and Weep is powerfully written and
brutally, frighteningly honest. First thought that came to my
mind was, 'Mark Lanegan gives the term 'bad boy' a whole new
meaning.' These are gritty, wild tales of hardcore drugs, sex,
and grunge. But 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
A mesmerising trip to the dark side that in places is so
gloriously bleak it achieves a kind of Grand Guignol comedy.
Written in blood, with true intensity, it becomes an instant
classic of the genre -- Kevin Barry
A dark tale of dysfunctional normality and diseased reality. At war
with the world and himself, Mark Lanegan writes like he sings,
from the pained heart of a damaged soul with brutal honesty --
Bobby Gillespie
One of the rawest and most honest music autobiographies I've
ever read -- Stuart Braithwaite
The frontman of the Screaming Trees gives a bloody, brawling,
dope-fueled tour of his personal battlefields 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 a blisteringly raw self-portrait of life not
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 a blackout- and overdose-rich confessional marked by
guilt and shame. It'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 * Kirkus *
Many 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. Rare in its rawness and
bracing honesty. * The Guardian, 10 of the Best Music
Biographies *
The most brutally honest rock memoir imaginable -- Daily
Telegraph
Not for the faint-hearted -- 9/10, Classic Rock
An astonishingly frank, heartbreaking and tremendously brave
book -- Record Collector
Dark yet borderline-hilarious cavalcade of horror and mayhem -- Big
Issue
The book reads like a debauched Bukowski novel, 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
This 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 . . . far from your usual Rockstar Memoir
-- Si Forster * Echoes and Dust *
One of the most unflinching memoirs in the history of music
writing . . . it is a survivor's tale, and a brilliantly
written one at that * Kerrang *
[Sing Backwards and Weep] makes for a harrowing epic, a thriller
if I ever read one . . . 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
*
A harrowing but often hilarious chronicle of addiction and
regret . . . packed full of surprises . . . [Lanegan's]
eye-popping memoir explores hell's many sub-basements, and lived to
produce good writing -- Kitty Empire * Guardian *
Rare in its rawness and candour, the book is a brutal chronicle of
addiction -- Fiona Sturges * Guardian *
[A] deeply sensitive book -- Guardian
A brutally honest, harrowing yet utterly compulsive read * The
Quietus *
frank 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 *
It's a depiction of addiction and self-loathing so bleak that
your fingernails come away its pages caked in dirt. 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 *
unflinchingly 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 *
A chronicle of depravity and drugs, laced with dark humour and
crackling with - well, not exactly joie de vivre, but certainly the
will to live. 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 Lanegan relates his experiences with
irresistible swagger and honesty * Financial Times *
A bejewelled document of excess and redemption * Mirror *
The book is a triumph. * New Statesman *
This is a narrative packed with surprises [...] but there is room
in this heavy, heavy book for quite astonishing turns of kismet. *
The Observer *
A visceral, unforgettable memoir. * The New European *
Sing Backwards and Weep is an unflinching trawl - or
would be, were it not marginally leavened by straight-shooting
yet eloquent language, gallows humour and his sweet, boyish
excitement at the breifest of encounters with musical heroes
such as Waylon Jennings and Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh * Scotland on
Sunday *
The usual offering is that dreaded souffle 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
Sing Backwards and Weep 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 *
Rare 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 *
gripping memoir * Sunday Express *
This is a narrative packed with surprises [...] but there is room
in this heavy, heavy book for quite astonishing turns of kismet. *
The Observer *
A rock autobiography as raw as it gets. Come for the
magnificent rant about Liam Gallagher, stay for the bleak and
gripping account of addiction and loss * The i *
Sing Backwards and Weep is a painstakingly unflinching
account of a troubled life further troubled by the excesses of rock
'n' roll. It is among the very best memoirs I have read, by a
musician or anyone else * The Australian *
Sing Backwards and Weep is the only rock autobiography
you need investigate. Like some nicotine-stained amalgam of
Tom Waits and Kurt Cobain, 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 brazen and bleakly comic saga about the needle and
the damage done. * Irish Independent *
Sing Backwards and Weep - by turns mordant, entertaining and
bleak - is both a portrait of a damaged man and a chronicle of a
now legendary music scene * TLS *
Sing Backwards and Weep is the only rock autobiography you need
investigate. Like some nicotine-stained amalgam of Tom Waits
and Kurt Cobain, 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 brazen and bleakly comic saga about the needle and the
damage done. * Irish Indepdendent Summer Reads *
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