Black Heart Fades Blue

Volume Two

If you're looking for the events that inspired the lyrics to all my songs? Those stories are in this book. If you're looking for what I did when I was younger? That's in here. What changed me, made me stop hating and hurting? It's all here. This is my story and I'm sticking to it. That's the one thing I have, the truth.

Volume two of Black Heart Fades Blue, a three-part memoir by the founder and frontman for one of punk rock's most notorious acts, Poison Idea.

In 1980, Jerry A. formed Poison Idea, a Portland-based punk band that gave voice to disaffected and disenfranchised youth for over thirty years. As happened to so many punk bands, Jerry A. and Poison Idea also went all in on drugs and drinking as they toured the country, spiraling out of control and blowing both the band and their lives apart. 

Black Heart Fades Blue is not an apology or a nostalgic catalog of events, but a true reckoning with one's past and present. A memoir of a time and a place and a movement, as well as a deep conversation about the memories and moments we leave behind, Black Heart Fades Blue is a deep exploration of an unconventional life.

©2022 Jerry A. Lang (P)2022 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

This book absolutely rocked me

Poison idea will always be one of my favorites. Jerry doesn’t seem like a rockstar, he presents as a normal person. Human. I am so grateful I got to hear these stories.

Self Destruction Blues

The second volume of Jerry's trilogy, and things are getting dark. An honest, brutal portrayal of an addicts life on the downward trajectory. Jerry A has been through the abattoir of addiction, and lived to tell us his (cautionary) tale.