Life's Too Short

January 1, 2024

Grammy Award-winning musician Rucker (Hootie & the Blowfish) offers a lyric memoir told through 23 songs: his own music, of course, but also works by Frank Sinatra, R.E.M., KISS, and Prince. It is a tale of becoming a musician and of navigating the blazing life of art and fame. With a 125K-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

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May 1, 2024
The rock and country star examines his career through "the songs that formed me." "We're not just the biggest band in America, we are omni-fucking-present." So writes Rucker of his band Hootie & the Blowfish, which, back in the 1990s, was inescapable. The band came out of the Chapel Hill music scene, which is so well documented in Tom Maxwell's A Really Strange and Wonderful Time, and while many acts were better, somehow they rode a zeitgeist wave to stardom, reaching "the top of the rock-pop music mountain." The band, writes Rucker, indulged in the customary rock 'n' roll vices: "Hootie & The Blowfish reigned supreme in two not altogether unrelated areas: selling records and doing drugs." As always happens in these rock memoirs, the author chronicles how drugs threatened to take down the whole enterprise, though there were other tensions of personality--and, of course, it's success itself that turned out to be the devil. Rucker's chapters are sometimes loosely, sometimes more coherently tied to songs that in some way contributed to his musical formation and shaped his songwriting. Naturally, R.E.M. figures with the jittery ballad "So. Central Rain," but, given the author's generally unchallenging approach to pop, so do more unlikely picks like the Black Crowes' "She Talks to Angels" and Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side." There's not much wild side at play in rounds of golf with Willie Nelson and hanging with Frank Sinatra, but there are some instructive moments in what it means to be a pop star, notably Chrissie Hynde's gentle upbraiding about setting aside artistic ego to take care of the fans. The rise-and-fall business is without a single wrinkle of surprise, but at least Rucker keeps his eye on the music throughout, even if Barry Manilow's is among it. Unexceptional, as rock memoirs go, but something for the fans.

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June 10, 2024
Hootie and the Blowfish singer Rucker reflects on his professional success and pays tribute to the music that shaped him in this run-of-the-mill autobiography. Rucker grew up in Charleston, S.C., and fell in love early with his single mother’s favorite musicians—especially Al Green—who soundtracked the family’s evenings and weekends. By the time Rucker was in elementary school, he was determined to become a singer; in 1986, he formed Hootie and the Blowfish with friends he met at the University of South Carolina. (The band’s name was inspired by two of the group’s nonmusician friends: one with owlish glasses, another with bulging cheeks “like the jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.”) After exhausting the Southern college circuit, the band broke through with a 1994 performance on The Late Show with David Letterman. As Rucker catalogs the group’s late-’90s success and his mellower career as a solo country artist after the band broke up in 2011, he speaks candidly about his former cocaine use, his confrontations with racist concertgoers and industry professionals, and his anxieties about fatherhood. Nothing in the account feels revelatory, but it’s a solid enough glimpse at rock stardom. This is best suited for Rucker’s most committed fans. Agent: Anthony Mattero, CAA.

June 1, 2024
Rucker has been a fixture in American music since his band, Hootie and the Blowfish, rose from the fraternity parties and dive bars of the South to dominate the airwaves in 1994 with Cracked Rear View. The album became one of the highest sellers of all time. Rucker later established himself as a beloved country music artist and the first Black country performer since Charley Pride to have a number one single. This open-hearted memoir details his remarkable career. Rucker's writing sings the most when he writes about singing. He describes his respect for the artists who have inspired him, including KISS, Hank Williams Jr., the Notorious B.I.G., Lou Reed, REM, Barry Manilow, and Al Green. His wildly catholic taste often confuses and annoys his family and bandmates, but it creates the template for his success across genres. Fans of Hootie and of Rucker's solo work will relish the opportunity to better know this dedicated and influential artist.

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