ISBN: 1936873575 9781936873579

Category: Biography & Autobiography / Entertainment & Performing Arts

Page count: 300

Before his life went totally off the rails, Patrick O'Neil was living the punk rock dream, working at San Francisco's legendary Mabuhay Gardens, going on to become a roadie and then the road manager for such seminal bands as <i>Dead Kennedys, Flipper, Subhumans</i>, and <i>T.S.O.L.</i> But that was before his heroin addiction veered totally out of control. A junkie for eighteen years, O'Neil, the educated son of intellectuals, eventually turned to a life of crime, ending up the ringleader of a group of armed bank robbers, all in an increasingly out-of-control attempt to keep himself and his girlfriend in drugs. Now, after a stint in San Quentin and fourteen years sober, O'Neil takes a look back at the experiences--moving, calamitous, and at times both hilarious and terrifying--that led to his downfall and recovery. Told in sparse prose and graphic detail, <i>Gun, Needle, Spoon</i> examines the long road to redemption and the obstacles along the way, demystifying the "criminal life" so often depicted in film and fiction but seldom written about from the first-hand viewpoint of those who have lived it.<br>