Man, being a huge Black Crowes fan, I loved the book... reading about the history, but disappointed in the details! The music will live on forever. As a drummer, Steve's groove and feel makes him one of my faves!
Cheers!

I’m a casual Black Crowes fan, and I will admit the feuding and fighting between the two Robinson brothers always intrigued me, perhaps because I’ve never fought with my own sisters, and we get along famously. What would make two brothers constantly go at each other, not even talk to each other? The author never answers the question because he’s even baffled by the Brothers Robinson constant fighting when they should be happy about their success instead of arguing about it.

Read more here: https://maggieblackbird.com/2021/08/17/steve-gorman-hard-to-handle/#more-23565

Good to hear the story of what happened to one of the nineties’ biggest. And glad Gorman’s favorite era and style of the band matches mine.

Compulsively readable tell-all history by the drummer of the notoriously unstable rock band. Gorman is a gifted raconteur, even if he does lean a little bit too much on constant foreshadowing, and the many small jumps backward and forward in time can make the chronology a little confusing. But this memoir really does feel like a balanced, pretty credible, and quite juicy account of a big rock group’s highs and lows over nearly 25 years.

I listened to the audio version of Hard to Handle: The Life and Death of the Black Crowes, written and read by Steve Gorman, the drummer of the Black Crowes. His voice is perfect for reading aloud, and it enables the listener to hear nuances that he, with first-hand knowledge of the experiences he described, was able to inject. I am a big fan of memoirs by and about musicians and bands, and I enjoyed hearing the story of the rise and fall of the Black Crowes. I enjoyed it until the narrative got a little repetitive, the narrative, of course, being that the Robinson brothers, and more particularly Chris, are self-absorbed narcissists whose toxicity poisons everything that they touch. As someone who doesn't know much about the Black Crowes other than being familiar with their music, I really did not like the Robinson brothers by the end of the book. While Gorman claims he has moved on in life, it seems like there is a residual anger still simmering behind his words. He fully admits that any book written by the other members of the band would give very differing accounts of the stories he has told. If you are willing to overlook the repetitiveness of the memoir, if you don't mind hearing what I imagine to be a very biased telling of the band's story, and if you are a fan of music memoirs and/or the Black Crowes, you will probably enjoy this.

It probably helps to be a Crowes fan (I am), as this is a fairly routine (if better than average) rock memoir on many levels, but I was drawn in to the personal conflicts and enjoyed (maybe not the right word?