It's hard to read memoirs of my favorite musicians, it makes them human. Mark Lanegan is my favorite singer, and I'm lucky to have seen him perform live at one point. His music got me through several rough patches in my life, and I'm sad he's gone. But this memoir just makes him seem like a giant asshole... which I suppose heroin addiction will do to a person. ( )

Intense, terrifying, exhausting. I wasn't familiar with Mark Lanegan's music as part of the Northwest music scene in the 1990s (he detests the label "grunge" and I don't blame him). He had a sad, abusive childhood with this mother and a father who cared for him but was distant. What is unbelievable is his story as a functioning heroin user. How he functioned while living with his addiction is gripping. He hits a horrendous low. This is a window into another form of existence. He is not trying to be likable but one has to respect his honesty as dark as he is.

This was about as extreme a contrast as I could imagine in autobiography/biography after having just read biographies of Ulysses S. Grant (Chernow) and Rutherford B. Hayes.

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The life of an addict is monotonous and horrible, and Mark Lanegan takes you there. This book is raw and painfully honest (or as honest as an addict's memory can be.) I find it shocking that people (Josh Homme, Courtney Love, Mike McCready, Duff McKagen and many others famous, non-famous and infamous) so often helped him. It is hard to imagine why they felt like there was something worth working to save. I am so glad they saw that spark. Their generosity of spirit helped ensure he did not end up dead from addiction like most of his closest friends, including Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley.

I am a Mark Lanegan fan, he was spectacularly talented with a voice like no other. For those people only familiar with his work with the consistently mediocre Screaming Trees I urge you to check out the great work he did on his own and in collaboration with other artists from PJ Harvey to Nick Cave to Johnny Cash. (FWiW my favorite albums are Whiskey for the Holy Ghost, Bubblegum, and the gorgeous Hawk - a collab with Isobel Campbell from Belle and Sebastian.) Like his music this memoir has a raw, gritty, untrained urgency. It drags in parts, but for those interested in addiction memoirs, it is one of the best I have read. When Lanegan died this year (maybe from Covid - he had a bad case and it appears he never fully recovered though no cause of death was released) he had been clean for over a decade and was living in Ireland where was apparently happily married and was putting out a lot of music. I truly hope those ten years were happy ones.

A 3.5, rounded up for Goodreads because I am sitting here listening to Come Undone and it is making me love him enough to round up instead of down. ( )

Tough book by a tough character. Hates his family, hates his hometown, hates his bandmates, hates himself--not an easy guy to spend a book with. A harrowing, detailed journey to the depths of down-and-out addiction. Even this hard case finds God as a means to finally kick for good. ( )

As great a rock biography as you will ever read (remember kiddies, just say no!) ( )