Rock Book Club #1: Sing Backwards and Weep by Mark Lanegan

I love reading books on music — memoirs, biographies, oral histories. There’s something about unearthing the stories behind the songs and the deeper meaning in the music that feels like the ultimate backstage pass.

I am always ready to be wowed. The pathways my experiences have carved over years of reading these books have trained me to expect that I will walk away having learned something genuinely new. Every one of these books has deepened the grooves in my brain: the anticipation of discovery, the utter appreciation for writers who excavate scenes so vivid you can almost smell the backstage beer and feel the story buzzing through you like a secondhand high.

I am kicking off my Rock Book Club series with one of the rawest and most honest memoirs I have ever read. One that made me laugh, made me tear up, and made me blush more than any other rock memoir, to be honest.

Mark Lanegan’s Sing Backwards and Weep is the quintessential story of the 1990s told through the eyes of the untamable lead singer of Screaming Trees. Full of chaos, excess, and plot twists, it is a powerful account of addiction, survival, and trying to reinvent yourself when everything else has fallen apart.

What makes it special is how Lanegan pulls you straight into his world where you are right there with him in the dirty clubs, the trashed hotel rooms, the endless tours, and the quiet moments of regret before starting all over again. His prose is sharp, funny, and brutally self-aware. It never asks for sympathy, but it leaves you understanding exactly how someone so talented could burn so brightly and so destructively at the same time.

It is the 1990s distilled into one raw, unflinching book, packed with references to the OJ trial, the LA riots, Lollapalooza, and of course, the grunge explosion. Lanegan tells it in his signature no-bullshit, gutter-mouth flow that captures the decade for exactly what it was: a fucking free-for-all filled with loaded syringes on commercial airplanes and bloated record company expense accounts.

Peter Hook of Joy Division writes the foreword and calls it the most honest rock memoir he has ever read, criticizing so many others for sanding down the rough edges. And he is right. This is not a glossy gossip book, though some of the stories are absolutely snackable if you love 90s culture. Layne Staley and Kurt Cobain appear as recurring characters, with wild cameos from Oasis (that chapter is comedy gold), Ministry, Hole, Rancid, and Slim Moon. It reads like a who’s who of the era. But at its heart, it is a powerful story about the unrelenting grip of addiction and the long road toward survival.

As someone who has seen addiction up close and is a big believer in the 12 Steps, this book hit me especially hard. It is a stark reminder that addiction is a disease, but it also shows how the simple act of telling your story can help you reconcile with the past. What could have been relentlessly dark is instead told with surprising humor and sharp, killer prose drawn straight from Lanegan’s hard-earned life experiences.

I first read it in early February 2022 and basically inhaled the whole thing. The writing was so fluid and the stories so shocking that I had to force myself to slow down because I did not want it to end. During a break I poked around online and discovered he was living in Ireland, just across the pond from me here in France, and had been touring again. It felt like a quiet, hopeful ending to a book that never promised easy redemption. I even thought about tweeting him to say how much I was loving the memoir… but then I stopped myself because seriously, who the fuck was I?

Then, on February 22nd, he died. The news hit French media hard, with art channels running tributes and playing his music from Screaming Trees through his solo work with Isobel Campbell. After spending so much intimate time with his voice and his story, his parting of this earth held more meaning than just another musician passing. It left me sitting with the book in my lap, feeling like I knew the guy. And in essence, I did.

Lanegan’s voice was apart of my mental chatter for weeks after, making me grateful to have read the book when I did. His music will live on. There’s no question there. But more importantly, his story will too.

Book Club Food for Thought:

• Have you read Sing Backwards and Weep? What did you think of Lanegan’s voice and the way he tells his story — did it feel as raw and unflinching to you as it did to me?

• Which parts of the book hit you the hardest — the wild 90s chaos and cameos, the stories about Layne and Kurt, or the sections about addiction and trying to survive it?

• Lanegan shows both the destructive power of addiction and the possibility of reinvention. Did any part of his journey make you think differently about recovery, rock stardom, or second chances?

ALSO: If you are into rock books, you have got to check out my friend Freakout! Bookshelf on Instagram. He shares music books of all genres from his absolutely massive and impressive collection. He has it ALL. Tell him I sent you!