The best rock star biographies and memoirs: it's pure debauchery
We're talking sex, drugs and bloody good stories
Rock stars of yesteryear had all the fun. The best rock star biographies shed light on those glory days, answering questions you didn’t know you wanted answering.
From tales of debauchery to gritty insights into life on the road, the best biographies share the low points as well as the highs. Teasing details about their lives, many of these access-all-areas biographies allow you to be a fly on the wall for some of the most dramatic moments in musical history.
Here we’ve picked out a selection of the very best rockstar memoirs. They feature some of rock’s most prominent figures… as well as some who we’re glad we’ve been able to find out even more about...
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1. John Lydon – Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs
Lydon, known as Johnny Rotten during his time with the Sex Pistols, had front-row seats to the birth of punk in the UK. As you can guess, this makes for great memoir fodder. The Londoner tears in to anyone and everyone you can imagine from the “boring” society infiltrated by his band. As the man himself says: “A lot of people feel the Sex Pistols were just negative. I agree, and what the fuck is wrong with that?”
2. Laura Jane Grace - Tranny: Confessions Of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout
Grace, the vocalist for punk band Against Me!, has a unique story to tell. And she tells it brilliantly in Tranny. The singer and guitarist came out as transgender in 2012, and her memoir – written with journalist Dan Ozzi and published four years later – is a brutally honest look at her experiences with gender dysphoria alongside her breakthrough into the punk scene. As well as shedding light on Grace’s past, it allows us a look at Butch Vig and Bruce Springsteen through fresh eyes.
3. Mark Lanegan - Sing Backwards And Weep
Coming from Seattle in the 80s, Mark Lanegan saw everything grunge had to offer and managed to get out the otherside. This frank autobiography does not paint an idolised life of a rockstar, but one that has knocks, scrapes and near misses. It packed with the lowest of lows and the highs are all, well, something else. You need to read this.
4. Mark Oliver Everett – Things The Grandchildren Should Know
Everett, better known as E, has enjoyed a strong following with his band Eels without ever attaining worldwide superstar status. Everett’s emotional depth has always come through in his songwriting, so it’s no surprise to see him eloquently and sensitively detail the role of others’ deaths in his own life after losing both parents and his sister before turning 35. There isn’t the excess of other memories, but it’s just as emotionally affecting, if not more so.
5. Nikki Sixx – The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star
Some of the most eye-catching rock memoirs aren’t even really about the music, and this work from the Mötley Crüe man is a case in point. The bassist presents a no holds barred depiction of life on tour, in the studio and on heroin, all presented in diary form, during a period where addiction to the drug almost killed him. Throw in retrospectives from Sixx and his bandmates and it makes for compelling reading.