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Jerry A. Lang: Black Heart Fades Blue (2022, Rare Bird)
This week I finished Jerry A from Poison Idea’s 3-volume autobiography, Black Heart Fades Blue. I can’t remember what rabbit hole I was falling down when I came across the page on Rare Bird’s site where you could order an autographed set of all three books, but remembering that Poison Idea-related stuff often isn’t easy to get (I still haven’t seen the Legacy of Dysfunction documentary), I grabbed it while I could. If you’re a big P.I. fan (and if you’re reading this, you probably are), I’d advise you to get while the gettin’ is good.
What did I think? It’s fucking Jerry A’s autobiography! How could I not love this? Black Heart Fades Blue splits Jerry’s story into three volumes. The first covers Jerry’s life until Poison Idea recorded Kings of Punk, the second volume covers the most intense years of Jerry’s notorious problems with addiction, and the third volume covers the period of (relative) sobriety when he picks up the pieces after living for decades as if tomorrow would never come. When I ordered the books, I wasn’t super clear on why Black Heart Fades Blue was published as three separate volumes rather than one long one, and I must admit it’s not much clearer after reading the entire set. The boundaries between the three volumes are porous, and there’s even a disclaimer at the front of each book encouraging anyone who comes across the volumes separately to read them together if they can. While I’m still a bit puzzled by the decision, it’s not too big a deal… I hate heavy books, anyway.
I read a lot of musicians’ biographies, and while it’s the music that prompts me to pick up the book, I often enjoy the parts of the books where the artists write about their childhood even more than the music-related tales. This is the case with Black Heart Fades Blue, as Jerry writes about his childhood bouncing back and forth between divorced parents in rural Montana and Eugene, Oregon. Both environments are dysfunctional and soaking in substances, but different in so many ways. I loved reading about the different drugs that were available in each environment, the different ways that kids passed the time (skateboarding versus going to sketchy swimming holes, for instance), and how Jerry had to revamp his identity and renegotiate his social standing when he moved every year. Jerry really captures the texture of a different time and place in these stories.
Speaking of stories, they’re the primary draw here. Black Heart Fades Blue is a lot like The Dirt, the book about Motley Crue, or The Hepatitis Bathtub, NOFX’s book. Like those books, Black Heart Fades Blue is bursting with crazy fucking stories, which you might expect given Poison Idea’s legendary appetite for excess. Jerry starts accumulating the wild experiences young, and they don’t stop, even when he lays down the hard drug addiction that fuels so many of his most memorable antics.
The Dirt famously does not mention Motley Crue’s music at all, and one of my few complaints about the book is that there isn’t much insider info about Poison Idea. As I was finishing Volume 1, Jerry sailed past recording their early records in just a few pages. There were some quick mentions about how Pick Your King was funded by Pig Champion’s cocaine distributor and how the band hand-assembled the record, and then a few pages later he’s writing about the cover shoot for Kings of Punk, barely even mentioning Record Collectors Are Pretentious Assholes. Maybe it’s just that conceiving and making these albums generated few significant stories, but I still would have loved to hear more about it. When Jerry goes into more detail about Poison Idea’s activity, it’s often to minimize their effort and ambition. He describes making Feel the Darkness as slapping together a few songs from previously released singles with a bit of filler. Crazy! Jerry mentions several times he doesn’t think much of self-important rock stars who tout their own achievements in their memoirs, but I wonder if he might have over-corrected a bit.
One area where Jerry’s writing excels, though, is when he writes about other people’s music. Jerry clearly loves music to his very core, and that comes across throughout the book. Unlike a lot of musicians, he remains an attentive, even rabid, fan throughout his life. Many of the best stories in the book are about his fandom, whether it’s trying in vain to get Elastica to autograph his rare 7”s, or his memorable encounter with Sakevi from G.I.S.M. Speaking of which, I got a big kick whenever Jerry name-dropped obscure international punk bands like G.I.S.M. and Lama, and there are plenty of tales that will make us record nerds salivate.
More than music, though, Black Heart Fades Blue articulates the nihilism that is so central to Poison Idea’s image and ethos. I mean, I knew the band was into drugs and lived a hedonistic lifestyle, but I guess I always assumed that was, to some degree at least, a pose. I know it is for a lot of my rocker friends, who love to talk about partying but watch as much Netflix and scroll through as much Instagram as the rest of us. But Poison Idea, particularly Jerry and Tom, fucking lived it, and it makes me hear their music differently. When you hear the stories behind songs like “Jailhouse Stomp” and “Feel the Darkness,” you realize they’re not works of pure imagination… they’re drawn from real life, and are much more shocking when rendered in the stark daylight of Jerry’s prose.