“I JUST LET IT ALL FUCKING HANG OUT”
In print journeyed from self-discovery to collateral damage. He bares all about baring all to KEITH CAMERON.
“i HAD TO GO BACK TURN AND OVEr THE ROCKS, WASN’T TOO AND IT PLEASANT UNDERNEATH”. UNDERNEATH”. WHAT i FOUND
iN DECREEING Mark Lanegan’s Sing Backwards And Weep, “Raw, ravaged and personal – a stoned cold classic”, crime writer Ian Rankin recognised a fellow master of the dark arts. Whereas Rankin deals in fiction, though, every hard-boiled twist and primeval turn of Mark Lanegan’s slog through the drug-drenched badlands of grunge-era Seattle was true. The reader wondered how he had survived, let alone added ‘accomplished prose stylist’ to ‘prolific recording artist’ and ‘legendary singer’ in his arsenal of epithets. Lanegan has a simple answer for that: “Pure dumb luck.”
Congratulations – Sing Backwards And Weep is MOJO’s Book Of The Year.
“Cool!”
Do you have a theory why it’s struck such a chord?
“Not a lot of books get as gritty. When
I was getting ready to write it, [the late chef] Tony Bourdain told me that to make a book that would be anything other than a shitty rock bio,
I would have to find a level of honesty I would be uncomfortable with. So I just let it all fucking hang out.”
You read the audio book – how was that?
“Brutal. I thought I was going to knock that thing out in two days. Three weeks later I was on Chapter 4. I’ve done a fair amount of voiceover stuff, and I thought this would be the easiest part of the process. But since I was doing it at my place – fine for making records but not really soundproof – I had to do it at night. Since the lights made a noise, I had to do it in the dark, in freezing cold, with my wife recording it. She had to hear me reading about stuff I did 25 years ago, and was like, ‘That’s what you do now!’ I probably should have had someone else do the recordings.”
Given how well it’s been received, might you consider a sequel?
“Not at all. I enjoy writing, just not that kind of writing. And since, in this day and age, you’ve got to find alternative streams of income, I need to write. And the quickest way to end my writing career would be to write a Part 2 of this book. It could never be the same. But I think I’ll write fiction next. A fictional version of… events.”
Might you possibly draw upon your own experience for this work of fiction? “(Laughs) I might! It might include stuff I didn’t include, or was unable to include, in the first go-round. Fictional things, of course.”
Have you received any feedback from the other people in your story?
“Any death threats?! Some people were unhappy about the way I depicted them. It’s all from memory, written from the standpoint of 25 years ago, and not necessarily the way I feel about anybody today.”
There are many unflattering portraits, not least of yourself. Did you seek approval from certain people in advance?
“I ran it by everybody who was still alive that I cared about. And everybody was totally cool. I didn’t get everything right – anybody I may have depicted in a way that wasn’t true to their experience, then I apologise. I tried to get hold of Van Conner from Screaming Trees about 50 times, but he ignored all that, so I just went ahead and wrote it. And of course, that made those guys unhappy. So be it.”
The book displays an acute self-analysis – did the act of writing aid that process?
“In the timeframe I was writing about, I wasn’t too self-aware. I stumbled from one disaster to another and let the chips fall. But in subsequent years I’ve come to realise things about myself, my behaviours and motivations, and yeah, there was more to be revealed in writing the book. I had to go back and turn over the rocks, and it wasn’t too pleasant what I found underneath. But there’s a perverse part of me that took delight in writing those cringeworthy moments.”
Finally, what’s the best thing you’ve heard all year? “My favourite this year is Bill Callahan’s Gold Record. It’s brilliant. All his records are.”