Sam Redlark

image generated by Craiyon This review first appeared on Goodreads ~ Brett Anderson mentions very early on in his selective autobiography that the last thing he wanted to write was “the usual 'coke and gold discs' memoir.” In keeping with his decision, this account of his formative years cuts off deliberately at the point where his band, Suede, sign their record deal with Saul Galpern's Nude label. His chronicle of a rock star in waiting stakes out unpromising territory in what is frequently the most turgid part of any musician's biography – the bit at the beginning where you get to learn something of their family background, prior to the arrival of the drugs and groupies. Fortunately, Anderson is good enough of a writer to breathe life into his early childhood and adolescence, lightly sketching the influences that would mould him into the frontman of Suede: A band that rose to prominence during the early 1990s, whose shop-soiled grandeur wobbled precariously between th...

[Spoilers lie ahead] image generated by Craiyon It is difficult, these days, to read a review of Morrissey's recorded output that isn't also a review of the man and his opinions on hot-button political and social issues, from which his art, we are told, is inseparable. Among these commentators, you will find a coterie of middle-aged journalists and bloggers whose callow teenage years are immutably anchored in the mid-late 1980s and the early 90s; men and women who are now putting down roots in middle age, whose personalities, social conscience, sense of aesthetics, and even their vegetarianism were informed by the charismatic Smiths frontman. When speaking of Morrissey, these writers will often convey a wounded sense of betrayal that is either tacitly admitted, or that simmers just below the surface – a resentment that someone who exerted such a profound influence over their formative years now no longer feels as they do, if indeed he ever did. Morrissey's devotees are fewe...

  Mark Lanegan's autobiography - Sing Backwards and Weep , charts the course of the tombstone-voiced singer's life, from his dismal, alcoholic upbringing in Ellensburg, Washington, up until the speedball-induced death of his close friend - the Alice in Chains frontman, Layne Staley, in 2002. Lanegan portrays himself as a piece of shit, with very few redeeming qualities: A bona fide drug dealer, whose band (Screaming Trees) happen to be signed to a major record label. For much of the book he is in the grip of twin addictions to crack cocaine and heroin; the latter requiring constant maintenance. From there on, it's a relentless downhill grind, to the point where he is sleeping rough while working as a dealer's lackey, stealing small quantities of smack from his employer, while pawning his last remaining possession of any value - a pair of filthy leather trousers that he purchased in Paris with the aforementioned Staley. This bleak downturn of events is sparsely seasoned ...