On a hot August night in Texas, 22-year-old Jesse Sublett was onstage experiencing what he thought was the realization of a long-held dream: his first big gig with a rock band. When he returned home, however, he found a nightmare: his longtime girlfriend, Dianne Roberts, had been savagely murdered in their bed.

Jesse became the police’s prime suspect, and while in custody, solved the crime. Though he couldn’t undo the damage, he moved on. But death had entered Jesse’s home and he had let it in. It wasn’t going away.

Jesse and pals Fazz Eddie Muños, Jon Dee Graham, and Billy Blackmon created the Skunks—a new wave rock ’n’ roll band that was instrumental in establishing Austin, Texas, as the live music capital of the world. In his star-studded memoir we find cameo appearances by Patti Smith, Debbie Harry, Elvis Costello, Carla Olson, Mick Taylor, Kathy Valentine and more.

In the late 1990s Jesse was diagnosed with stage IV throat cancer, with less than 9% chance of survival. He came to understand that the cancer was somehow connected with his past—with the hardscrabble life he endured growing up in the Texas Hill Country; with his girlfriend’s murder and the reality he never faced; and with the self-absorption of his years on tour with
the band.

Never The Same Again is a road trip through a landscape of rock ’n’ roll dreams, murder and malignancy—a true story, mostly, about a tall Texan
with “good-fallin’ hair” facing long odds and running out of time.

“Never the Same Again is a harrowing, wrenching, spell-binding work of
great candor and soul. Read it, think with it, dig it.”
—James Ellroy

About the Author

Jesse is the author of Rock Critic Murders, Tough Baby, and Boiled in Concrete. He lives in Austin, Texas.

www.jessesublett.com