An Exclusive Excerpt of Steve Almond's Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, Part One

I had no idea who I was dealing with at that point. I didn't know Bob had spent a decade fronting the two most raucous party bands in Austin's hallowed party band tradition, that he appeared to know every song ever written, and to have written half of them himself, that he was (in short) not just a hunky troubadour but a variety of musical savant, the most charismatic and prolific songwriter of our proximate generation, the most fearless and versatile, and certainly the filthiest.

Man Meet Mancrush A passel of label honchos appeared at Bob's next Boston show. The place was mobbed and Bob had shaved for the occasion. During an instrumental break, he walked offstage and wandered over to the VIPs and I remember thinking, as I watched this brief and devastating charm offensive, How can you not make this guy a superstar? He's destroying this club before your eyes. He writes hits in his sleep. He's dating Sandra Bullock -- and he's better looking than Sandra Bullock.

That's not what happened, obviously. The next time I saw Bob, he was hidden behind a thick beard and he played a suite of songs so sad they could only have been the result of dashed love, meaning he and Sandra were splitsville. (Us Weekly had the deets.) Lonelyland had yielded one minor radio hit. The six months he'd spent in the studio trying to produce a commercial follow-up had nearly driven him mad.

How did I know all this? Because it was my job as a Drooling Fanatic to acquire such details. I also did some minor stalking. This is how I discovered, a few shows later, that Bob had gotten married and had a son. I spotted him and his wife pushing a stroller down Commonwealth Avenue several hours before his gig. I startled them by handing Bob a copy of one of my books, which I'd inscribed just in case I saw him.