Mark Lanegan - Sing Backwards and Weep

The artists journey to find ones true voice can travel some very dark roads; addiction, violence, poverty, and soul-crushing alienation have taken the last breath of many I have called friend. Mark Lanegan dragged his scuffed boots down all of those bleak byways for years, managed to survive, and in the process created an astonishing body of work. Sing Backwards and Weep exquisitely details that harrowing trip into the heart of his particular darkness. Brutally honest, yet written without a molecule of self-pity, Lanegan paints an introspective picture of genius birthing itself on the razors edge between beauty and annihilation. Like a Monet stabbed with a rusty switchblade, Sing Backwards and Weep is breathtaking to behold but hurts to see. I could not put this book down.

D. RANDALL BLYTHE, author of Dark Days and lead vocalist of Lamb of God

If you ever wondered how Mark Lanegans music came to blossom, heres a taste of the dark dirt that fertilized it. But saying that, or something like it, feels irresponsible, almost like saying, If you want to make great, soul-shattering art, traumatize yourself to the limit and beyond Sing Backwards and Weep is gnarly, naked, and true.

MICHAEL C. HALL of Dexter and Six Feet Under

A no-holds-barred memoir of uncompromising honesty. All of the usual suspects are heresex, drugs, rock and rolland if that were all, it would be compelling enough on the strength of Lanegans writing and the setting of 80s and 90s Seattle, a near mythical time and place in music history. But what elevates Sing Backwards and Weep above the pack is the window into Lanegans development as an artist, from his first musical influences to the singular singer and songwriter we see today. He seamlessly weaves that story line into the more conventional rock memoir fabric, and the results are outstanding.

TOM HANSEN, author of American Junkie and This Is What We Do

Harrowing, edgy, tense, and hypnotic. A very truthful, sobering account of what its like in the throes of addiction, with shades of Bukowski, Burroughs, and Hunter S. Thompson.

GERARD JOHNSON, director and writer of Tony, Hyena, and Muscle

Some books amuse you, some intrigue you, and somethey dont come along oftenlike Mark Lanegans Sing Backwards and Weep, squeeze you by the throat and drag you down the back stairs of the authors soul and blast you till you see what hes seen and feel what hes felt. Mark Lanegan spares no detail of the toxic and maniacal things hes done and had done to him, nor of the glorious, weird beauty he walked out with on the other side. You cant look, and you cant look away. This is my kind of book. Fucked-up, full of heart, and as hardcore as a shot of battery acid in the eye.

JERRY STAHL, author of Permanent Midnight; I, Fatty; and Happy Mutant Baby Pills

Sing Backwards and Weep is powerfully written and brutally, frighteningly honest. First thought that came to my mind was, Mark Lanegan gives the term bad boy a whole new meaning. These are gritty, wild tales of hardcore drugs, sex, and grunge. But this is also the story of a soulful artist who refused the darkness when it tried to swallow him whole. And who found redemption through grace and the power of his unique and brilliant music. Finally, the song becomes truth. And the truth becomes song.

LUCINDA WILLIAMS

For Tony
And all my other absent friends

Fix

Its true

It keeps raining baby

So crystalline in my head

Gonna watch from the balcony

Sing backwards and weep

Police.

At first his warning didnt register, my mind fixated on the pinprick ending of the mornings routine, the relief from what at this point was only a dull, aching pain.

Police, the African cab driver whispered again in a thick accent while motioning with a roll of the eyes and quick hunch of his shoulders to look in the rearview mirror where, sure enough, the three young guys following in the van behind looked like undercover cops, eager to beat someones ass. Maybe mine.

My six-foot-four cross-dressing drug buddy St. Louis Simon and I had just scored a bag of dope and a bag of coke, both of which I had thrown somewhat carelessly in my unbuttoned shirt pocket. I had a sack of new rigs stuffed in the front pocket of my tight pants as I hadnt expected to encounter the authorities today. Now I felt totally exposed.

Another ten blocks across Seattles Capitol Hill and it was obvious we were indeed being followed. As the car pulled up just down the street from my building I hopped out and started walking up the sidewalk, trying my best to act naturally. Simon got out the other side and, wearing a trailer-park-style denim skirt and wedge shoes that made him even taller, started to cut across the gravel lot between buildings where out the corner of my eye I saw two guys tackle him to the ground not good. I was almost to the corner when a short, young cop in jeans and muscle shirt suddenly jumped around in front of me, held a badge in my face, and said, Hold on a second, buddy! Where ya off to so fast, buddy?

Hands raised automatically, I did my best full-of-shit, bewildered, whats-this-all-about look.

Im just going home. I pointed dumbly to my apartment building.

Whats this? he asked, reaching out to squeeze the drugs through the thin cloth of my shirt.

What the fuck, man? I live here! What do you want? I yelled while pulling away from him with phony indignation. In my head, I quickly calculated how sick Id be in jail before making bail since I hadnt done a shot yet that morning. Down the street, I could see both Simon and the cab driver sitting curbside in handcuffs, feet in the gutter, the entire backseat pulled out of the cab.

Okay, man, lets see some ID.

In my mind, I saw my passport upstairs on the coffee table covered in crack pipes and the huge pile of used syringes next to it. That wasnt going to be an option.

I dont have it on me. My name is Mark Lanegan.

The cop narrowed his eyes, took a hard look at me, then said, Didnt you used to be a singer?

After walking me back down the street to the surveillance van, he took a small black-and-white photo off the dashboard: a guy they wanted for auto theft and who looked something like me. He had me sign it with a ballpoint pen, then let us be on our way.

With the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck, I was born by C-section in November 1964 and then came up on the wrong side of the Cascade Mountains in the small, eastern Washington town of Ellensburg. My family were from a long line of coal miners, loggers, bootleggers, South Dakotan dirt farmers, criminals, convicts, and hillbillies of the roughest, most ignorant sort. They came from Ireland, Scotland, other parts of the UK. My grandmother on my mothers side had been born in Wales to Welsh parents. The names of my parents, uncles, aunts, and grandparents came straight out of the Appalachians to the deserts of eastern Washington and every trailer park in between. Names like: Marshall and Floyd, my grandfathers; Ella and Emma, my grandmothers. Roy and Marvin and Virgil, my uncles. Margie, Donna, and Laverne, my aunts. Dale, my father. Floy, my mother. My older sister was given the name Trina. I was the only one who escaped with a non-backwoods white-bread name, a name I hated but thanked God for when I found out my mother had intended to name me Lance. Lance Lanegan. I couldnt think of anything more ridiculous or humiliating and I thanked my father for not allowing it. After that, I could live with Mark. But I always preferred to simply be called by my surname, Lanegan. If I were introducing myself to a stranger, I would always use my middle name, William. As if by telepathy, though, that was how most of my teachers, coaches, and acquaintances referred to me: Lanegan.