The fact that Mark Lanengan survived as long as he did is... well amazing. I love his music... all of it from Screaming Trees, to the solo albums, plus his songs with Queens of the Stone Age and Greg Dulli. I've seen him in concert a few times and met him once. This book covers his childhood, how he go started with Screaming Trees until the end of the band. The only mention of QOTSA was when he met Josh Homme. Mark doesn't hold anything back in this book. He lays it all out from his crummy childhood growing up, his drug and alcohol abuse and all the people he has met and lost along the way (and how he really feels about them). He lays it all out and doesnt give a **** what anyone thinks, including himself. It was really interesting to read and I enjoyed it. I had to look up some of the drug terms because I'am not personally a heroin or crack user so some of the names for items I wasn't sure about. All I can say I am so glad he go the help he so desperately needed and I was able to enjoy the music he maid throughout the 2000's until today. His untimely death really saddens me. To think all those times he was on deaths doorstep (literally). RIP Mark. You will be so missed and your voice still gives me goosebumps.

Dark, gritty, and brutally honest, this is one of the most eye-opening memoirs I’ve read.

Mark Lanegan is digging up some serious skeletons in his new memoir Sing Backwards and Weep. He spews it all, sharing parts of his childhood upbringing, the rise to fame with Screaming Trees, and his descent into drugs and homelessness. The truth is the truth, but I can see some people mentioned in this book becoming irate with the all-out divulging of the past.

In retrospect, this book is Mark’s hard knock life throughout. This doesn’t feel like an autobiography in any sense—it does begin that way, but quickly turns into scenes of Mark’s tumultuous life beginning in childhood with the mental beat-downs from his mother, all the way up to somewhere around the death of Alice in Chain’s vocalist Layne Staley.

High points for me were the stories about Mark’s friendships with Kurt, Layne, and others. There were even a few comical tidbits including one with Chris Cornell that made me smile.

“I had a terrible cold one day and Cornell insisted I allow him to lick my bare eyeball to test his invented-on-the-spot theory of virus transmission. I was, of course, delighted to take part in the experiment. Chris never got sick. I can’t recall if this proved or disproved his theory, but it was an effective way of making me laugh.”

I was hoping Mark would expand on these relationships surrounding him, but what’s here is a huge helping of what seems like (has to be) the darkest times in Mark’ life. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the book and loved the writing; I literally dissected this book; there was just so much hope in me for a more in-depth accounting of these relationships. It’s always been hard for me to stay interested in stories where there’s constant animosity between people, in this case: band mates, drug dealers, friends, and family. Writing a about physical fighting and getting back at one another can sometimes feel like a total drag. For that, maybe this book won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it sure kept me hypnotized regardless of what I felt the book didn’t share.

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.

5*****

Wow. I was completely blown away by this memoir (a genre I don't often read). This book chronicles the rise and fall of Screaming Trees singer, Mark Lanagan. I was drawn to this book because of a) I had never before heard of the Screaming Trees and b) I find redemption stories irresistible, true or not.

The publisher describes this book as "gritty, gripping, and unflinchingly raw". I couldn't have said it better myself. Mark Lanagan's drug addiction was portrayed in the truest and clearest of fashion. It's like a car crash.. you can't help but look. And look I did. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.

If you like memoirs than you will undoubtedly devour SING BACKWARDS AND WEEP.

Wow. You just never know what someone is going through. I liked the Screaming Trees ok. I was a bigger fan of his brooding solo stuff. I was naive to think that he wasn't a messed up junkie, or a typical cheating rockstar. This book takes you into the dirty depths of his addiction. All those times he got up there to perform, he was strung out. I don't know how he held it together. How did he fall so far - losing everything he ever made - and come back and live to tell about it? It's not a preachy book. It's not a warning. It's just his life. Wow. I couldn't put this down. Also, check out the story about Oasis and Liam Gallagher. That was my favorite rock 'n' roll story.

I enjoyed this more than I thought. I figured it was going to be all dark and depressing, but Mark’s humor is the thread that pulls everything together. I love his music and I wasn’t unfamiliar with his life. That said, it’s a really deep dive into his story, without the begging for pity that comes with a lot of these memoirs. I could’ve done with fewer Cobain mentions, but it‘s his book.

I’d recommend this one.

Sing Backwards and Weep, singer Mark Lanegan’s autobiography, is a darkly entertaining account of Lanegan’s rise to a measure of fame and fall into heroin- and crack-addicted homelessness and despair. I’ve long enjoyed Lanegan’s music, particularly his solo work, but prior to reading this book, I knew very little about Lanegan’s background or where he and his band--The Screaming Trees--stood in the context of the larger Seattle explosion that permeated rock and roll in the early 1990s. The stories about the utter dysfunction within the Screaming Trees are as amusing for the reader as they probably were maddening for the author. Lanegan also details his comradeship with famed luminaries of the Seattle rock pantheon, like Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley, both occasional collaborators and, of course, fellow travelers down the dark road of drug addiction.

The book does get a bit repetitive at times as Lanegan recounts in harrowing detail his spiral into addiction, but he leavens the material with enough self-deprecating dark humor that the material remains a compelling, if far from pleasant, read. Throughout most of the book, Lanegan’s writing is engaging and evocative, as he demonstrates an eye for telling detail and a talent for powerful description.

My most significant critique of the book is that it doesn’t detail much of a connection between Lanegan’s life and his music--I would have liked more specific detail about how his experiences informed his songwriting. However, I have not read Lanegan’s I Am the Wolf book, where he ostensibly does more of this, so I can’t really fault him for not duplicating his content--I should just read the other book, too.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing a preview copy of this book.

Mark Lanegan is a true rock and roll man and this book proves it. Following his career from Seattle to modern day, this is a heartbreaking and powerful story of one man and music.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I was familiar with Mark Lanegan's music, but not his story. To say it's a harrowing tale is to put it lightly. The book starts out with childhood stories that wouldn't be out of place in a Jim Thompson autobiography (Check out Bad Boy and Roughneck) and only gets more hardboiled from there. The author doesn't pull any punches when it comes to his past behavior and we're thrown into his world of axe-grinding, sh*tkicking, bare knuckled junkiedom. Like a lot of books about drug addiction, it gets monotonous towards the end, but that's kind of the point. The reader is nearly as tired of the spiral into oblivion as the author, but that doesn't make it less impactful. I love a lot of Mr. Lanegan's work, especially his collaborations with Greg Dulli, and I think reading this book enriches my appreciation of how far he's come back from the brink. This is a must read for fans of musician memoirs and memoirs in general. It's one of the best I've read in a long while!