Crazy Enough
By Storm Large
By Anne Adams
“PEOPLE THINK I’M NUTS,” writes Storm Large in the opening pages of Crazy Enough. “They think I’m a killer, a badass … a boot-stomping, man-chomping rock ’n’ roll sex thug with … well-notched bedposts….” The truth, she insists, is much more boring. And indeed, the ubiquitous 42-year-old singer’s ever-growing franchise suggests more savvy than debauchery: gigs with nouveau big band Pink Martini, appearances on Rock Star: Supernova, and even an original musical version of her life at Portland Center Stage.
In the process of reaffirming her “disenchanting normality,” Large’s memoir leaves much of her punk-rock persona intact. The tumultuous saga begins in 1974 in a small town west of Boston where 5-year-old “Stormy” is discovering orgasms while her depressed, pharmaceutical-popping mom hops between mental hospitals. As her mother’s downward slide ends in electroshock therapy and partial paralysis, Large takes up with a crowd of freaks, punks, and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of sexual partners. (“If you’re going to go ho, go full-on slutbag,” she advises.)
Some of her antics are guffaw-out-loud funny. During an acid trip, Large becomes suddenly convinced that “clothes are a lie” and narrowly escapes jail time for swimming nude in a public fountain. But her later escapades take on a graver tone, as when she relives quitting heroin cold-turkey in her San Francisco apartment: “I must’ve looked like a sick, milky slug, some hollow-eyed larvae … twitching under my dank cocoon of rags.”
Large’s salvation comes after belting Pat Benatar’s “Heartbreaker” in a San Francisco club and realizing her desire to be in a band. Lured by a lover to Portland, she put together the now-legendary lounge act Storm and the Balls. Even in her current iteration as a sleek chanteuse, Large still retains her sawtooth edge. “Somebody slap me!” she remembers yelling backstage at her PCS premiere until a willing assistant “made my right cheek his bitch.”
The 261-page memoir is graphic, tragic, and at times downright disgusting. But Large has built her brand by sacrificing charm on the altar of authenticity. With cleverness and honesty, she transforms a story that in most hands would be maudlin into yet another funny, passionate, and irreverently jarring adventure.
Published: January 2012
Storm gives a literal meaning to: “My life is an open book.” Since I pre-ordered, I’m still waiting for Amazon to deliver. After this review, I expect to be page turning with trepidation.
I love reading realistic stories like what this new book is offering. As a teenager, I realize how people can fall in step with that path and destroy themselves. I understand and empathize with them. I’m in too good of a place to go there, but hey things change and sometime you just want to feel in order to feel and be alive. My heart goes out to teenagers who are or have been in that dangerous place on the other side of the tracks.