Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
Mark Morton, guitarist for Lamb Of God, recently discussed his memoir “Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir,” which was published by Hachette Books in June 2024, on The Jasta Show, as per Blabbermouth. The book, which was co-written with Ben Opipari, examines Mark’s life in music as well as his turbulent journey from addiction to recovery.
It was just a weird thing, man. The book is called ‘Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir’, for your listeners that don’t know. It’s been out now for a year and a half. And it’s really kind of three stories in one kind of all blending together. It’s basically this story of me being this sort of anxious, kind of shy, uncomfortable kid that finds guitar and finds the music and it just takes over my entire psyche. And then it follows the journey of Burn The Priest into Lamb Of God that is really the most unlikely story, really. I mean, it’s kind of a trope; it’s like a Cinderella story. The degree of success we’ve had would’ve never made sense at any point if you’d have tried to have said ‘script that’ or ‘plan that’. And it all sort of happened by accident, and it kind of details that. And then it also details just my descent into alcoholism and drug addiction, and then my coming out of that. And all those things, stories kind of intertwine. And there’s some tragedy in there and there’s some comedy in there, some funny stories and some sad stuff, too.
Mark explained his decision to read the audiobook “Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir” himself rather than hiring a voice actor to record it.
Really, that boils down to — there is a section of the book where I discuss the birth and death of my first daughter. And I frankly just would never want anyone else to tell that story. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable with someone else voicing that story. And beyond that, I didn’t have any reason not to do it. I’ll tell you this, and you know this — I didn’t know this until I did it — doing voice work is tricky. It’s a skillset that I didn’t have, and by the end of it, ’cause it took me, like, five days to do the book, to read it and record that. And I did it in a studio with a producer, et cetera, et cetera. But it’s a tricky thing. You become very well acquainted with your own sort of speech impediments and idiosyncrasies and throat gurgles. And you learn when to not eat, when to eat, how much to eat, what to eat, when to drink water, when not to drink. You can’t be too hungry, but you can’t have just eaten, and your body’s just making all this noise that you gotta work around. It’s wild.
Mark responded to Jasta’s observation that the audiobook must be “word for word” identical to the textual version.
Yeah. I mean, that, to me, is easier because I’m just simply just reading it. But kind of learning to be aware of your breath as you’re reading and that kind of stuff, it’s stuff that I walked into it not even thinking about. I’ve never listened to much of it. I’ve listened to clips here and there.
He was also questioned if co-writing the book, giving it a voice, and sharing it with the public made him feel like a different person.
I didn’t co-write it — I wrote it. I wrote every single word.
Morton elaborated on Opipari’s role in the book.
Ben was a friend already. And the way the book came to be was, he has a place down at the beach in North Carolina, and we go down to that area of North Carolina, outer banks in North Carolina, pretty much every summer for vacation. And he was down there at the time. We were having coffee, and I was telling him some goofy story, music stuff. And he was, like, ‘You’ve got a book in you, man. You should write a book.’ And he’s an English professor, and he works teaching lawyers how to write better and that kind of stuff. He’s like a consultant. And he’s, like, ‘Let’s write a sample chapter, just for fun, and see if we can get any interest.’ And I was, like, ‘All right, I’m down to go that far.’ And we wrote one chapter, sent it to the one publishing company. We were, like, ‘If we wanted someone to put this out, who would it be?’ So we sent it to that company, and they were, like, ‘Let’s do a book.’ I was, like, ‘Oh, no.’ So then I had to decide, like, am I gonna do it? I wrote every word.
And the interesting thing about that is I don’t type very well, so I wrote a hundred thousand words [very slowly]. So it took a lot of time on my laptop. So, hours to dollars, I probably made five bucks an hour writing this book. And then Ben would sort of edit and fix grammar, and if I said something twice, he would sort of — he just kind of cleaned it up. But no, he didn’t write anything. I didn’t recite anything. It was all written. Um. And so when I read it, it’s not like I was reading something for the first time. I wrote every word.” To your question, I did not feel — it wasn’t cathartic. It wasn’t some self-discovery. That makes for good bylines, taglines about a project. But it wasn’t, because everything in there, it’s my story, it’s my life. So all that stuff I’ve lived and I have as learned and lived experience.
