Sing Backwards and Weep: The Sunday Times Bestseller

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His rescue, almost inevitably, is a bit of a disappointment. I’m glad it happened, but I knew it had. He wrote the book, after all, so I knew he was going to be grand. But the end is short and it left me wanting more. He came out of his hell a few years before I started listening to him. The bottom dropped out of my heart. Tears were instantaneous, even as disbelief had me shaking my head, whispering, "No." I always thought I'd have a chance to see another show, to capture a "remember me?" moment, a laugh and a hug. I’ve seen Lanegan perform on stage six or seven times. He walks on, sings for an hour and a half, says “thank you”, and leaves. Outside of the lyrics, he’s been a man of exactly two words. The lyrics are great; the book’s title is a line from a Lanegan song. The variety and quantity of his work, and its excellence, suggest a hard-working, driven artist; the lyrics suggest hard-living, loneliness, constant flight – trains are a very regular feature – and a nightmare world within the everyday. The songs gave me what I wanted. Would the book illuminate or just get in the way?

Sing Backwards and Weep by Mark Lanegan review – touring

Have I scared you away? Don't let that be: if the 90s Seattle music scene moved you, this is the Genesis of its Bible. A Seattle that no longer exists, for good in some regards, but deeply awful in others. I'm glad I knew it when and left before the city became what it is now. You will meet nearly everyone from that bygone era here, in grand and tragic style. Mark's stories are gritty, arch, fascinating and not a punch is pulled. Lanegan defines himself here – and I don’t know the alternative if there is one – as a hardcore junkie. He opens with a description of the day (or is it one of many?) when he got busted. He describes his descent into drugs, some music, occasional transactional sex, and more drugs. Layne Staley and Mark once allowed a woman to drink water they had used to clean their dirty needlesMyHome.ie (Opens in new window) • Top 1000 • The Gloss (Opens in new window) • Recruit Ireland (Opens in new window) • Irish Times Training (Opens in new window) It's amazing that Mark Lanegan is still alive. Forget "warts and all": this is truly an "all-warts" memoir of the pioneering grunge singer.

Sing Backwards and Weep: Mayhem, music and drugs Sing Backwards and Weep: Mayhem, music and drugs

How low does Lanegan go? He’s a delinquent teenage alcoholic who gets sober, but becomes gripped by addictions once again, with his raging alcoholism assuaged by the short-lived peace of heroin. Clayton-Lea, Tony (May 8, 2020). "Mark Lanegan: Straight Songs of Sorrow review – emotionally frayed, feral and beautiful". The Irish Times . Retrieved May 23, 2020. But it was the fear of showing my true heart, at times either so full it might burst or so empty I could cry, that hounded me most viciously. […] There had been a perpetual war between myself and the costume of persona I’d donned as a youngster and then worn my entire life. Petrified that someone might discover who I really was: merely a child inside the body of an adult. A boy playacting a man. My lifelong hard-ass exterior and, underneath that, ironclad interior were all an intricately constructed, carefully cultivated, and fiercely guarded sham. I was, in reality, driven by what I’d heard referred to in rehab all those years ago as “a thousand forms of fear”. Sadly, somewhere deep in my soul, I knew that was probably me." Very good memoir. It was often difficult to listen to. It also put me in a rather dark mood after hearing some of it. It was good to know what was going on behind the scenes during this tumultuous period. There was a lot I didn't know. With how dark the subject matter was, I am glad it turned out well in the end; and I am glad to have gotten through the memoir. I'm very sensitive to hearing about human suffering and I can only tolerate so much before it really starts to affect me. This memoir was starting to do that and I am relieved to be done with it.

The book ends after Mark’s rehab, and then with Layne’s death in 2002. I sat speechless for some time after because this memoir left me with an empty feeling. It was such an unexpected ending even with already knowing Layne’s outcome, and there isn’t much included on Mark’s collaboration with Queens of the Stone Age. The short epilogue was much appreciated, but what about all the other years? What’s been happening since Layne’s death? How has Mark coped? All I can do now is hope that Mark will write and share another memoir, and if he does, I’ll be first in line to read it. This book is only of interest to those of us with a morbid interest in the darker side of life; a tale of sunshine and redemption this is not. Don’t call Mark Lanegan a grunge pioneer! Mark referred to the term with which he had been “shitstained” as “moronic” and “media-generated.” Perry, Kevin EG (May 7, 2020). "Mark Lanegan – 'Straight Songs of Sorrow' review: grunge survivor shares music that salves the soul". NME . Retrieved May 23, 2020. With great skill, he renders long-ago memories in vivid three-dimensional scenes that perfectly capture who he was then and why he acted how he did in the moment. Only occasionally does he allow a modicum of present-tense wisdom to enter into the narrative and, when deployed economically, it becomes brutally effective.