Hardcore Troubadour: The Life & Near Death of Steve Earle

by Lauren St. John

Fourth Estate, 404 pp., $14.95 (paper) Steve Earle’s never been shy about living his life in public. Even the casual music lover probably knows about his five or six wives, the drugs that nearly ended his career, and his ability to write songs that made Townes Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen envious. Lauren St. John, who writes for the London Sunday Times and the Independent, was granted unrestricted access to the people that have been a part of Earle’s life, and the results are both unflinching and remarkable. St. John brings it all to life in a way that’s engaging and leavened with Earle’s down-home Texas humor even when the subject matter gets downright tragic. Of particular interest to Texas music fans will be the description of Earle hitchhiking his way from San Antonio to Nashville in the mid-Seventies and falling in with a pack of like-minded misfits that included Van Zandt, Guy and Susanna Clark, Rodney Crowell, Mickey Newbury, and Billy Joe Shaver. Then there’s Earle’s first meeting with Nashville kingpin Tony Brown, with whom he almost came to blows. Brown then goes on to sign the songwriter to MCA Records and allow him to blossom into a country/rock star. Hardcore Troubadour paints Earle as a musician whose rebellious, intellectual, and self-destructive tendencies have given voice to a survivor committed to making a difference.

This article appears in February 27 • 2004.

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