Vermorel stresses that he was not drunk (“I never mix alcohol with work”), but something emboldened him, warmed his spirit, some wild unauthorized urge. He threw himself headfirst through the antagonistic brambles, and he “felt Henry’s panic 109 years before flooding my body and I clawed in the black winter ditch and sucked for air to feel the shock of cold water in my mouth.”
Can you dig it, rock biographers? The commitment, the risk, the immersion? The dark ditch beckons. Leave your facts behind in the daylight, and take the plunge.
James Parker once wrote an unauthorized biography of Henry Rollins. (Seriously.) He can be reached at jparker@thephoenix.com.
 
  
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