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Sing Backwards and Weep

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Sing Backwards and Weep

Written by: Mark Lanegan
Narrated by: Mark Lanegan
Free with 30-day trial

₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for ₹650.61

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About this listen

The Sunday Times best seller.

From the back of the van to the front of the bar, from the hotel room to the emergency room, Mark Lanegan takes us back to the sinister, needle-ridden streets of Seattle, to an alternative music scene that was simultaneously bursting with creativity and saturated with drugs. He tracks the tumultuous rise and fall of Screaming Trees, from a brawling, acid-rock bar band to world-famous festival favourites with an enduring legacy, and tells of his own personal struggles with addiction, culminating in homelessness, petty crime, and the tragic deaths of his closest friends.

Gritty, gripping and unflinchingly raw, Sing Backwards and Weep is about a man who learned how to drag himself from the wreckage, dust off the ashes, and keep living and creating.

©2020 Mark Lanegan (P)2020 Orion Publishing Group Composers & Musicians Entertainment & Celebrity

Critic Reviews

"Mark Lanegan - primitive, brutal, and apocalyptic. What's not to love?" (Nick Cave, author of The Sick Bag Song and The Death of Bunny Munro)

"A stoned cold classic." (Ian Rankin)

"Mark Lanegan writes like he sings, from the pained heart of a damaged soul with brutal honesty." (Bobby Gillespie)
All stars
Most relevant
I’ve revered this man for over a decade, yet I’d never really taken the time to dig into his origins or his story. I’ve lived with his music for so long that I can sing along to most of what he’s written, his words etched into my mind. This read was long overdue, and in a strange way, I’m glad I only got to it after his passing.

Mark Lanegan’s life, as laid bare in this book, was brutally cruel — a story of talent consumed by heroin, of opportunities torched, and of self-destruction with an almost deliberate hand. It gave me a perspective I never had before, and if I’m honest, I don’t see the man quite the same anymore. But it also allowed me to place his whisky-aged, acerbic, raspy voice in context. That voice carried truth and pain that couldn’t have been fabricated — and maybe that’s the point. Perhaps you can’t create such raw, genuine expression without having lived through hell. And that, in a way, is heartbreaking.

The book lays bare not only Mark’s demons but also the extraordinary privileges he had — privileges that many would kill for — which he often spat on, for reasons rooted in compulsion, defiance, or both. It’s an unflinching memoir: beautifully written, harshly honest, peeling back the layers to reveal the grit, the shame, the humiliations. Mark was always good with words — we knew that from the songs — but here, he uses them with surgical precision, cutting straight to the bone.

I have immense respect for him for confronting his own wreckage, committing it to the page, and somehow surviving long enough to turn things around, to make something out of a life that seemed determined to self-destruct. That doesn’t mean I hold him in quite the same regard as I once did — but my admiration for his artistry remains intact.

You were an extraordinary musician, a gifted songwriter, and one of my favourite voices, Mark. And now, I understand the weight you carried.

Through Hell And Back

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