Three Dog Nightmare: The Chuck Negron Story

Three Dog Nightmare: The Chuck Negron Story
by Chuck Negron

Three Dog Nightmare: The Chuck Negron Story
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Book Summary Information

Author: Chuck Negron
Contributor: Chris Blatchford
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-07-14
ISBN: 158063155X
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Renaissance Books

Book Reviews of Three Dog Nightmare: The Chuck Negron Story

Book Review: Incredible, readable, captivating
Summary: 5 Stars

What a story of the drug era this is! I was only a child in that era but of course knew of the stars like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix who died of drug overdoses. I actually came across this book while looking for another and decided to give it a whirl.

This held my interest so well I had trouble getting other things done for a few days while I was reading it. It reads like a good novel. Chuck Negron tells the story of his shockingly bad childhood and years in the music business. While many autobiographies are self-serving and highly slanted, I did not get that impression here. Negron is very even-handed with all of the material, careful not to unduly blame others but also revealing the truth when it's right there.

He started in the early 1960s in the music business, but of course, did not have success till the late 1960s. It was interesting to see the many slips and falls of getting to the top. Many rock books skip over that long climb, always making it seem like overnight success. Then the famous years were shocking. Just when I think, "Okay, this is the point where he gives up drugs because he's at his lowest," he reaches yet another low. It truly is remarkable, as others have said here, that he lived through it to tell this story.

He does mention the many battles with other former band members Cory and Danny over the right to use the band's name, etc. It's ironic, but it seems they used him. Almost everyone recognizes Chuck Negron as the lead singer of Three Dog Night and wouldn't even know Cory and Danny if they saw their photos. In fact, many people think Negron sang the lead on all the songs. I did until I read this book!

Sharing rusty needles, staggering around doped-up and filthy, driving his car into light poles--it's all so juicy that if someone wrote this stuff as a fiction book, it would be said that the story "went overboard" or that it's "too much." Negron almost ruined the lives of his ex-wives and children, spent millions upon millions of dollars over the years in heroin, and to see his recovery his both astonishing and heroic.

I recommended this book to a friend who never cared about Three Dog Night but who wanted something captivating to read, and he liked it.

Summary of Three Dog Nightmare: The Chuck Negron Story

I lay there shaking like a Vegematic and sweating through the blankets. I prayed, "Please let me die or give me one minute of peace from this sickness." Then it happened. I knew then, and I still know now, that God did something for me that I could not do for myself. It was a gift. I was weak, alone, desperate, dying, and afraid. I surrendered. I prayed. He saved me. That's the only way I can explain what for me was the beginning of a miracle.

Three Dog Nightmare is the autobiography of Chuck Negron, and it is the story of one of the most successful rock groups ever, Three Dog Night. But unlike so many rock bios, this is much more than a self-indulgent paean to sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll.

Three Dog Nightmare is a profoundly moral tale, an inspiring story of recovery and resurrection. But without a fall, there can be no resurrection. Few have fallen as hard, or as low. And even though we know the outcome, even though we know that he survived, Chuck Negron's is a story that seems at times almost too painful to read in its devastatingly sad portrayal of wasted talent, ruined chances, and burned lives.

I shoved drugs into my system like a little kid eating candy. And in the end, it took away everything: my money, my fame, my wives, my children, and my self-respect. I traded a Mediterranean-style villa in the Hollywood Hills for a corner of an abandoned building where I slept on a filthy mattress I found in a vacant lot.

That he survived at all is a miracle; that he has his career back on track and a new life devoted to helping other drug abusers is an inspiration.

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