Everything, including her name, is larger than life.
Storm Large is the Queen of Portland, Oregon. She is a rock and roll goddess who has dominated clubs, dazzled theatergoers and headlined with two symphonies. Outside of Portland, she is most famous for a high finish on the reality show “Rockstar Supernova.”
Crazy Enough is the book version of her one-woman show by the same name. It transcends the typical hardscrabble, hard rock memoir with a deeply personal journey through and around mental health and family.
Yes, this book has sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll in large supply. But for Large there was more than just the usual tug of the rock lifestyle. Her childhood was forever marred with visits to mental hospitals and terrifying ordeals involving her severely mentally-ill mother. Nine-year-old Storm casually asks one of her mother’s doctors if she will someday be as crazy as her mother? The doctor replies, with equal casualness, yes. Storm then makes her life decisions as you might expect from someone who feels fated to a doom she can see in front of her every day.
Yet, Storm Large did not end up as sick as her mother. Instead, she invented a rock and roll persona as large as a storm. But, unlike many rock and roll personas, Storm’s is 100% authentic and rooted in what she readily calls “a fucked-up childhood.” Here is the most clear evidence of authenticity: her name REALLY is Storm Large. Could she ever have become anything else than the greatest rock and roll legend most of us have never heard of?
Seen Storm Large perform? Got a reaction to the book or show? React below.
Link to Crazy Enough on Powells.com
Link to essay Book v Movie: Crazy Enough on this site
Link to Poetry in Prose: Middle Finger on this site.
Posted by Drevil, 12/23/2012
“Like some twisted love child of Mae West and Keith Richards, Storm Large is a force of nature. Her ballsy, heartbreaking, hysterical, tour de force of a memoir is not to be missed. Crazy Enough is vulgar and fragile, tragic and empowering, and like Storm, it is always entertaining” (Chelsea Cain, New York Times bestselling author of Heartsick and The Night Season).
What the heck is Storm Large up to these days?