Promotional Information

* Review and feature coverage * Reading copies available

About the Author

Mark Oliver Everett, lead singer with Eels, is one of the finest singer songwriters of his generation. This is his first book.

Reviews

Everett, front man and creative force behind the remarkable indie rock band, the Eels, offers a stunning memoir about his childhood and ultimate rise to international success as a writer and musician. Read by fellow band member the Chet, the story is so jaw-dropping it will have even the most hardcore Eels fans reeling. Everett, the lone survivor of his family after his parents and sister were all killed in separate horrific incidents, manages to emerge from the ashes and use the events as fuel for his music career. The Chet, a natural performer who knows how to connect with his audience, offers a simple, uncomplicated reading yet one that carries a certain poetic intensity. A St. Martin's hardcover. (Dec.) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

Adult/High School-Everett, also known as E, front man for the alt-rock EELS, has written a compelling memoir in which it is easy to see the songwriter in the author. The songs often feature catchy melodies and lyrics that are variously dark, witty, or just quirky, while the book is a quick read, both funny and tragic, with a distinctive voice: honest, self-deprecating, wistful. The author tells a few stories from his youth-his first drum set, a humiliating teacher, his obsession with Lennon's Plastic Ono Band, a plane crash, his sullen teenage years. At 18, he discovered the dead body of his father, the quantum physicist Hugh Everett. Not long after, he headed for Los Angeles, where he worked a succession of nothing jobs while writing and recording songs on a four-track tape recorder. As he was gaining fame as an alternative rocker, tragedies continued to haunt him. His sister and mother died within months of one another, and friends and fellow musicians followed. Despite the title (also an EELS song), Everett has no children, much less grandchildren, but he says, "it only takes a second for your life to change in huge ways." Fans will certainly want to read this, but so will anyone interested in the music business or just in how one interesting guy lives life from day to day, trying to understand who he is and how he got there.-Sarah Flowers, Santa Clara County Library, CA Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

"Everett is the Kurt Vonnegut of the rock world."--"Rolling Stone""One of the best books ever written by a contemporary artist."--Pete Townshend "It is, like the music of Eels, intellectual, wry and unflinching as it conveys complex emotions with simple, graceful language."--"Los Angeles Times ""Everett captures the drama of a suburban Virginia family bedeviled by illness, early death, and madness, and illustrates how such adversities shaped his striking music gifts--and now this pitch-perfect memoir."--"Elle "