LOS ANGELES:

Variety

Tosches

Some time around the turn of the century, author Nick Tosches prankishly hacked his own online biography so that it gave his death date as the year 2021 – picked, he said, because “it was the anniversary of Dante’s death (in 1321); it made so much sense.” He wasn’t too many years off with that not entirely serious prediction: Tosches died Sunday in New York City at age 69.

No cause of death was immediately revealed, although it was reported that he had been ill for some time.

A former rock critic and profane man of letters who branched out into a wide array of biographies and novels, Tosches remains best known for two essential music biographies: “Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story”, from 1982, which Rolling Stone called “the best rock ‘n’ roll biography ever written,” and a 1992 book about Dean Martin, “Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams”.

Serious fans of early rock ‘n’ roll also revere two early books: his first, 1977’s “Country: The Biggest Music in America”, which found greater acclaim when it was re-released with a subtitle that got more specifically to its true subject, “The Twisted Roots of Rock and Roll”; and “Unsung Heroes of Rock n’ Roll: The Birth of Rock in the Wild Years Before Elvis” in 1984, which endeavored to prove that Jerry Lee Lewis was not the burgeoning artform’s only seminal loose screw.

His legend was large enough in recent years that he appeared on an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” show in 2009 and was interviewed by Marc Maron for a “WTF” podcast in 2015. “Marc considers him to be an indispensable tour guide through the darkness in life,” the introductory copy for the episode read. (RTRS)