Sing Backwards and Weep: The Sunday Times Bestseller

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I've been into the music of Screaming Trees for years. They were definitely my favorite Washington band of the 90s. I owned albums by Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Mother Love Bone, etc--but Screaming Trees were the band that I took to the most from that state. I'm not entirely sure why. Until just recently, I wasn't even aware that the guitar player Gary Lee Conner had been the main song writer for the majority of their existence. I always did like the overall mood of the music though. They seemed to shirk the stereotypical formula of a lot of so-called "Alternative" bands. They had a strong 60s Psychedelic vibe, but an equally strong 80s Post-Punk vibe as well. Lanegan's voice and lyrics have always resonated with me. I have had their songs show up in my dreams more than once. Not too terribly long ago, I awoke with the song Shadow Of The Season in my head. Now I realize that song was really about Lanegan's substance abuse. This book details how bad that abuse was.

Sing Backwards and Weep by Mark Lanegan | Waterstones

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. Preface: I'm a fan...a big fan...of Mark Lanegan's music. From the Screaming Trees, to his solo work, to the work with QOTSA, his duets with Isobel Campbell, the Gutter Twins, and one-offs like the Soulsavers, I have always bought and listened to his musical projects, and will continue to do so. That said: This book is absolute garbage. Wat een junk was Mark Lanegan. Nietsontziend beschrijft hij zijn verslaving, de mensen die hij teleurgesteld heeft, de kansen die hij heeft laten gaan. De situaties zijn soms zodanig absurd dat het je tot in je diepste grijpt: hoe kan een mens met zoveel talent zo laag zinken? This was not an easy memoir to get through. I decided to listen to this as an audio book. I figured it would be great to hear Mark Lanegan's story in his own words. It might've been easier to read it as a book. His biography is grueling, to say the least. It might be poignant to end this review with a set of lyrics from the Screaming Trees' song For Celebrations Past that I had in my mind when I awoke one morning a number of years ago:

All of that’s compounded by amateurish writing. If I’d had the guy in a class, I’d push him on some of the sentence-crafting basics. He overuses adjectives, not just larding them on but allowing them to fill in for the substance of analysis. I honestly can’t tell one of the women he almost loves from another. They’re all ‘sensitive’ and ‘soul-tingling,’ but there’s little to distinguish them beyond the adjectives.

Sing Backwards and Weep: The Sunday Times Bestseller

Ik verdiep me zelden in het leven van muzikanten, ik beluister hun muziek en meer interesseert me niet. Uiteraard besef ik dat alcohol en drugs een grote rol spelen in het muzikale wereldje, maar dit boek was toch wel een eye opener. 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.Bruce Pavitt selected a photo for the cover of Mark's The Winding Sheet (1990) that the musician had specifically asked him not to use. Although Markburst into Pavitt's office with clenched fists, he left the bigwig unharmed in a triumph of the virtue of restraint. Mark nevertheless vowed that he would kill Pavitt if the opportunity ever presented itself again. A quasi-thug turned into a sensitive artist (or vice-versa), Lanegan's autobiography/memoirs are a more than captivating read! By the time so-called grunge hit mainstream, I was living abroad, and then married, overseas again, then graduate school, and I just lost the thread of those days, those friends. This was years before Facebook, so I was only tangentially aware of albums, the European tours, hit single from the movie Singles. The bewilderment and grief of Cobain's suicide was felt alone, in Ohio, strangely detached from the plaid, the boots, the rain and drear of the Pacific Northwest. A day or two later, Rosemary called me, her voice shaking with emotion, and delivered the news. Kurt’s body had been found in the small room above his garage—the same room at which I had stood at the foot of earlier—the victim of an apparent suicide. A medical examiner judged his death to have taken place the same day we were at the house looking for him. 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.

Sing Backwards and Weep: A Memoir by Mark Lanegan | Goodreads

I was stunned how raw, non-sugar coated and bluntly honest the book was. Written as if your talking to him. I take no joy in stating this, being no stranger to addiction myself... and Mark Lanegan having been a hero of mine since 1992... a position he no longer occupies, for a couple of reasons. 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. This book chronicles about a decade in Lanegan’s life in Seattle and abroad — from the mid-80s onward — in ultra-high definition, and if you’re looking for detailed retellings of sordid scenes with some of the key characters from that highly romanticised time in popular music, there are certainly plenty of those. In his own words, he was born a 'garbage can of a drug fiend', a teenage thief and alcoholic, the town drunk even before he was of legal age to drink. I did get the feeling he was eager to move on from his early years, though he does return to discuss his parents at later stages. We do get to read about his musical influences and how they shaped him.I expected his life to change soon after that sentence; I wanted him to get over the heroin and get on with his real life. I wanted the Lanegan who sings I’m Not the Loving Kind so beautifully to emerge. But he doesn’t, and my impatience with the book and Lanegan gradually turned into admiration as I began to realise that this wasn’t going to happen. I was going to have to wait for the redemption.