Disgraceland: Musicians Getting Away with Murder and Behaving Very Badly

Today’s post is on Disgraceland: Musicians Getting Away with Murder and Behaving Very Badly by Jake Brennan. It is 272 pages long and is published by Grand Central Publishing. The cover is grey with faux mugshots of the musicians inside on it. The intended reader is someone who is interested in true crime and music history. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket- You may know Jerry Lee Lewis married his thirteen-year-old cousin but did you know he shot his bass player in the chest with a shotgun or that a couple of his wives died under extremely mysterious circumstances? Or that Sam Cooke was shot dead in a seedy motel after barging into the manager's office naked to attack her? Maybe not. Would it change your view of him if you knew that, or would your love for his music triumph?
Real rock stars do truly insane thing and invite truly insane things to happen to them; murder, drug trafficking, rape, cannibalism and the occult. We allow this behavior. We are complicit because a rock star behaving badly is what's expected. It's baked into the cake. Deep down, way down, past all of our self-righteous notions of justice and right and wrong, when it comes down to it, we want our rock stars to be bad. We know the music industry is full of demons, ones that drove Elvis Presley, Phil Spector, Sid Vicious and that consumed the Norwegian Black Metal scene. We want to believe in the myths because they're so damn entertaining.
DISGRACELAND is a collection of the best of these stories about some of the music world's most beloved stars and their crimes. It will mix all-new, untold stories with expanded stories from the first two seasons of the Disgraceland podcast. Using figures we already recognize, DISGRACELAND shines a light into the dark corners of their fame revealing the fine line that separates heroes and villains as well as the danger Americans seek out in their news cycles, tabloids, reality shows and soap operas. At the center of this collection of stories is the ever-fascinating music industry--a glittery stage populated by gangsters, drug dealers, pimps, groupies with violence, scandal and pure unadulterated rock 'n' roll entertainment.

Review- A fascinating, engagingly written narrative about some very famous musicians and the crimes they committed. Brennan was a deep love of his subjects, their music, and that shows in his work. We travel from Elvis to Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes to the three young men who made Norwegian Black Metal with lots of different stops between. While the chapters are self-contained, they do add up to something greater than the size of the parts. We get to see how much music is built upon itself, where artists listen to each other, learn from each other, and where will the music is in the end. If you are at all interested in music history or true crime then do yourself a favor and read this book. I highly recommend it.

I give this book a Five out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.