Summary
"Steve jerked blearily back to consciousness to find himself manacled in the back of a police car." Quotes like this are a dime a dozen throughout Lauren St. John's never-dull biography of the mercurial country singer Steve Earle, a born rebel whose edge-of-the-precipice lifestyle would terrify pantywaists like Keith Richards and Sid Vicious. Beset with the commercial setback of playing alternative country music in the 1980s-before the label existed-Earle nevertheless recorded respectably selling albums like GUITAR TOWN and COPPERHEAD ROAD, which, along with serial problems with the law, cemented his reputation as a country music outlaw genius. While Earle's recreational pursuits are the stuff of rock legend (St. John's research uncovers marital bust-ups, tequila and marijuana-fueled Mexican sojourns, and barroom brawls, as well as periods of extraordinary musical inspiration), his creative impulse illuminates the book's narrative, defying the clichéd poverty-riches-obscurity trajectory of many less-talented musicians' careers.
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Bibliographic Details
Publisher: Harpercollins
Published date: 2004
Size: 6 x 9.58 inches
Weight: 1.15 pounds
Pages: 416
Publisher's Notes
If Steve Earle weren't a living, breathing person, he'd be a character in a blues song -- a raucous ballad about a gifted rebel who drank too much, lost most of his women in a blizzard of crack and cocaine addiction, and always came out on the wrong side of the law. Somewhere in the midst of all this, he also managed to weld rock to country, the Beatles to Springsteen, and bluegrass to punk, establishing himself among the most thoroughly original and politically astute musicians of his generation. Granted unrestricted access to Steve and his family and friends, Lauren St John has given us a sometimes shocking, often moving, and completely unvarnished biography of one of America's most talismanic sons.
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