From Publishers Weekly
This biography of country rocker Earle begins with him skipping a 1992 meeting with record execs to sign a potentially career-reviving, multimillion-dollar record contract. Instead, he sold his airplane ticket for $100 and went to score crack in the slums of Nashville, beginning what Earle calls his four-year "vacation in the ghetto." It's a brilliant opening hook, and St. John (Walkin' After Midnight) never lets the reader go, breezily guiding through Earle's wild childhood (he dropped out of school after the eighth grade and was living on his own by 16), his five tumultuous marriages, his many run-ins with the law, his restless wanderings through the American South and Mexico-and a quarter-century of addiction to booze, cocaine and heroin that finally ended after some jail time in the mid-1990s. By talking to many of Earle's closest friends, family and former wives, St. John manages to demythologize a man whose life often threatens to overshadow his music (unfortunately, however, she herself doesn't spend much time on Earle's actual recordings). She interprets Earle's death wish simply as an attempt to break away from his middle-class upbringing. Like his literary heroes Hemingway and Kerouac, he courts disaster to fuel his writing. As St. John writes, "It was no accident that his life was a series of belief-beggaring dramas; quite often he was the cause of them. Consciously or unconsciously, he cultivated his own legend." Springsteen may have been the "consummate chronicler of welfare-line blues," she writes, "but Steve had lived the life." Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Acclaimed singer/songwriter Earle granted St. John, a frequent contributor to the London Sunday Times, unrestricted access to write this unfliching portrait. Drawing on interviews with Earle as well as his friends and family (including six ex-wives), she traces the songwriter's life in gritty detail, from his childhood in rural Texas through his addictions, arrests, and breakups to his most recent triumphs. St. John also chronicles Earle's diverse musical influences, which range from Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark to Gram Parsons and Bruce Springsteen. When Earle's debut, Guitar Town, was released in 1986, he achieved success by reviving the pure sounds of legendary country musicians and combining it with the bluesy strains of rockabilly. Not long after the album's release, though, Earle began his slow descent into an inferno of drug abuse that nearly ended his life. After a four-year rut, Earle came roaring back to life with two flawless albums: El Corazon (1997) and Transcendental Blues (2000). On one hand, this first full-length portrait doesn't break any ground-the sordid aspects of Earle's life were already well documented. On the other, however, by using Earle's own words, St. John brings us closer to her subject's intimate relationship to music, which often gets overshadowed in the press. Ultimately, Earle emerges as a guy who wants to make damn good music. Recommended for all collections.Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Lancaster, PA Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Okay, so the name-recognition factor for a Steve Earle bio may not be what it would for, say, a Nellie or Justin Timberlake tell-all. But those lightweights hold no candles to Earle when it comes to rootin', tootin', cursin', boozin', and drug huffin'. Although best-known as a songwriter and guitarist, Earle is an all-around accomplished folk-, country-, and "biker"-rocker and a liver of the blues--not to mention a mistreater of his liver--in the mode of Robert Johnson, Hank Williams, and Johnny Cash. He resembles Cash the most, in that he has lived the hellion life and hasn't killed himself. In fact, he may be walking down Recovery Road. Still, nothing is simple in Earle's life. Son Justin characterized a 12-step program his pop entered to fight his addictions as "only marginally less evil than the drugs," for the "compulsive necessity [and] life and death importance" of the program mirrored addiction. St. John tells Earle's story in grisly detail, thereby baring "the stuff legends are made of." Earle's a must-know pop musician, for sure. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Sydney Morning Herald
A sensitive and amusing book…the Earle material is particularly entertaining, confessional and full of wicked one-liners.


Eric Alterman
An intimate and intelligent biography of an artist who--like all the greats--ain't ever satisfied.


Charles R. Cross, author of Heavier tha Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain
Meticulously researched and well–written...captures the heart and soul of one of America's most talented, troubled, and controversial songwriters.


Uncut (UK)
If you love Steve Earle, you'll buy this book. If not, get it anyway. It's one helluva story.


Time Out London
A fascinating book…utterly compelling…heartfelt…insightful…and much recommended.


Publishers Weekly
Brilliant...St. John manages to demythologize a man whose life often threatens to overshadow his music.


Booklist
St John tells Earle's story in grisly detail, thereby baring the stuff that legends are made of.


Q Magazine
Shockingly honest.


Maxim
Harrowing and inspirational.


Book Description

If Steve Earle weren't a living, breathing person he'd be a character in a blues song, a raucous ballad that would tell the tale of a gifted rebel who drank too much, lost his career and almost all of his women in a blizzard of heroin and crack-cocaine addiction, and lived wildly and extravagantly on the wrong side of the law.

Along the way, Earle has welded rock to country, the Beatles to Springsteen, Celtic to Americana, punk to bluegrass and has produced multiple Grammy-nominated albums and one enduring classic: Guitar Town. Like Hank Williams and Robert Johnson he has wandered across the American South; like Janis Joplin he has a huge capacity for self-destruction that matches an appetite for life in all its extremes. Like Stephen Foster, he is a storyteller and songwriter of rare skill and force whose sincerity echoes through all his work.

A heroin addict since the age of fourteen, six times married to five different women, a man who took a four-year 'vacation in the ghetto', Steve Earle none the less survived. And he came back with an artistic and personal vision intact, determined to change society for the better even as he seemed set to live his life for the worse.

Lauren St John has been allowed unrestricted access and cooperation by Steve, his family and friends. In exchange, she has written a hauntingly clear-eyed, unvarnished and uncompromising life of one of American music's talismanic sons.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"If Steve Earle weren't a living, breathing person, he'd be a character in a blues song, a raucous ballad that would tell the tale of a gifted rebel who drank too much, lost his career and almost all of his women in a blizzard of heroin and crack-cocaine addiction, and lived wildly and extravagantly on the wrong side of the law." "Along the way, Earle has welded rock to country, the Beatles to Springsteen, Celtic to Americana, punk to bluegrass and has produced multiple Grammy-nominated albums and one enduring classic: Guitar Town. Like Hank Williams and Robert Johnson, he has wandered across the American South; like Janis Joplin he has a huge capacity for self-destruction that matches an appetite for life in all its extremes. Like Stephen Foster, he is a storyteller and songwriter of rare skill and force whose sincerity echoes through all his work." A heroin addict since the age of fourteen, six times married to five different women, a man who took a four-year 'vacation in the ghetto', Steve Earle none the less survived. And he came back with an artistic and personal vision intact, determined to change society for the better even as he seemed set to live his life for the worse.

FROM THE CRITICS

Book Magazine - James Sullivan

Acclaimed musician Earle has never quite achieved the superstardom many predicted for him. Not that he ever really wanted it. Earle might well be the consummate country maverick, and part of the profile is an utter disregard for conventional wisdom. In fact, the political rocker recently made some of the biggest headlines of his career with the release of "John Walker's Blues, " a calculated provocation that attempts to understand the motives behind the American Taliban. Earle has lived the equivalent of three or four mythical lives, making his forty-eight years on earth fertile territory for a biographer. Zimbabwe-born journalist St. John makes the most of Earle's peripatetic escapades with such fellow country outsiders as Townes Van Zandt and openly discusses her subject's devastating addictions to heroin and crack. For Earle, the truth is the most powerful drug of all, and he cooperates with his biographer throughout, recounting even his ugliest moments with no apparent qualms.

Publishers Weekly

This biography of country rocker Earle begins with him skipping a 1992 meeting with record execs to sign a potentially career-reviving, multimillion-dollar record contract. Instead, he sold his airplane ticket for $100 and went to score crack in the slums of Nashville, beginning what Earle calls his four-year "vacation in the ghetto." It's a brilliant opening hook, and St. John (Walkin' After Midnight) never lets the reader go, breezily guiding through Earle's wild childhood (he dropped out of school after the eighth grade and was living on his own by 16), his five tumultuous marriages, his many run-ins with the law, his restless wanderings through the American South and Mexico-and a quarter-century of addiction to booze, cocaine and heroin that finally ended after some jail time in the mid-1990s. By talking to many of Earle's closest friends, family and former wives, St. John manages to demythologize a man whose life often threatens to overshadow his music (unfortunately, however, she herself doesn't spend much time on Earle's actual recordings). She interprets Earle's death wish simply as an attempt to break away from his middle-class upbringing. Like his literary heroes Hemingway and Kerouac, he courts disaster to fuel his writing. As St. John writes, "It was no accident that his life was a series of belief-beggaring dramas; quite often he was the cause of them. Consciously or unconsciously, he cultivated his own legend." Springsteen may have been the "consummate chronicler of welfare-line blues," she writes, "but Steve had lived the life." (Feb.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Acclaimed singer/songwriter Earle granted St. John, a frequent contributor to the London Sunday Times, unrestricted access to write this unfliching portrait. Drawing on interviews with Earle as well as his friends and family (including six ex-wives), she traces the songwriter's life in gritty detail, from his childhood in rural Texas through his addictions, arrests, and breakups to his most recent triumphs. St. John also chronicles Earle's diverse musical influences, which range from Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark to Gram Parsons and Bruce Springsteen. When Earle's debut, Guitar Town, was released in 1986, he achieved success by reviving the pure sounds of legendary country musicians and combining it with the bluesy strains of rockabilly. Not long after the album's release, though, Earle began his slow descent into an inferno of drug abuse that nearly ended his life. After a four-year rut, Earle came roaring back to life with two flawless albums: El Corazon (1997) and Transcendental Blues (2000). On one hand, this first full-length portrait doesn't break any ground-the sordid aspects of Earle's life were already well documented. On the other, however, by using Earle's own words, St. John brings us closer to her subject's intimate relationship to music, which often gets overshadowed in the press. Ultimately, Earle emerges as a guy who wants to make damn good music. Recommended for all collections.-Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Lancaster, PA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews