{"id":10618,"date":"2025-10-06T22:30:51","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T05:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/?page_id=10618"},"modified":"2025-10-06T22:39:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T05:39:08","slug":"pitchfork-2025-the-jim-carroll-band-catholic-boy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/research\/music-reviews\/pitchfork-2025-the-jim-carroll-band-catholic-boy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Jim Carroll Band: Catholic Boy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lynne Greene
Pitchfork<\/a> 21 September 2025
Rating *8.8<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit the outstanding 1980 debut album from the famed Downtown New York poet, writer, and musician, a louche and witty hybrid of glam rock and \u201980s gloss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God had gifted saints with less talent than Jim Carroll. By 28, he\u2019d started and ended a vicious heroin habit, developed a reputation as a New York City sports prodigy, written a Pulitzer Prize-nominated collection of poems, and published 1978\u2019s The Basketball Diaries<\/em>, a best-selling chronicle of addiction and youthful hedonism from ages 12-15 and an early exemplar of autofiction. The 1995 film adaptation would star Leonardo DiCaprio. Some people become cool; some people, like Jim Carroll, are born with it, a burdensome inheritance. Everybody wants a piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bay Area was a tabula rasa without layers of memories. He got one dog, then three. He ran his pack down the beach in Bolinas, a hippie hamlet full of surfers in the shadow of Mt. Tamalpais.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA dog is kinda the biggest reason I got off methadone,\u201d Carroll said in 1981. \u201cIf I was crying from when I was in pain from kicking it, the dog was so conscious of it. He\u2019d just come up and start licking me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clear-eyed for the first time in a decade, he fell in love and got married. His new wife, a law school student at Stanford, took him to New Wave shows in San Francisco, and divine inspiration struck again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople had encouraged me to do rock \u2018n\u2019 roll for a long time,\u201d he said upon the release of Catholic Boy<\/em> in 1981, a vast understatement. New York City seemed insistent that Jim Carroll have a career in music, even if he was not. He \u201chad never listened to much rock after the Velvet Underground split,\u201d he said in an NME<\/em> article from the time, but he was impelled into collaboration by pals like Patti Smith and Blue \u00d6yster Cult\u2019s Allan Lanier. Lanier needed lyrics. Smith convinced him to open for her with her backing band, even though he missed a show after a drug bust landed him in jail overnight. When she worked at Scribner\u2019s books on 5th Avenue, she saved him from an overdose, walking him around until he came to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compared to the readings he\u2019d done all over the city, performing onstage felt vital and raw, a way to connect with people outside the incestuous, erudite New York poets\u2019 circle. \u201cI didn\u2019t like the negativity of punk,\u201d he said, \u201cbut at least I saw how I could get past my technical limitations, because you didn\u2019t have to sing well. And after publishing poems all those years and having a very esoteric audience, the prospect of this other audience seemed nice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was in Bolinas, on the beach with the dogs, that he\u2019d become the frontman of his own band. There, he met some members of a local group called Amsterdam, and convinced them to soundtrack one of his readings. Soon after, the new Jim Carroll Band were polishing material at Bay Area clubs until they finally won over the scene\u2019s youths. This was by design: \u201cI wanted kids to like it,\u201d Carroll said, \u201ckids into heavy rock and hot guitars.\u201d Doors opened quickly for Carroll, as they tended to do. On a trip to New York in 1979, he inked a deal with famed music mogul Earl McGrath at a party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Catholic Boy<\/em> is for the kids, it\u2019s a specific subset of them: precocious, kinetic, and traumatized. The breakneck pace of punk rock is perfect for outrunning what haunts you. A louche hybrid of New York Dolls-style glam rock and \u201980s gloss, the album is an emblem of the national transition from downtown punk squats to cocaine penthouses and Reagonomics. It\u2019s a bridge between the Ramones and the Cars, a yarn that ties together two decades and two cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the LP\u2019s cover, he is a prototypical Leo, mugging like Mick Jagger, red hair lank around his temples. He smirks between two pale cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass. Wedged between his normie parents, two relics of a bygone era, the Annie Leibovitz photopainting only adds to the mythology, reaffirming Carroll\u2019s legacy as a man who stood out even in a room full of stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Men and women alike chased Jim Carroll, undeterred by his age or his addiction. Freshly married in California, he admitted to a reporter that \u201ca lot of women throw themselves at you. Although a lot of the groupies that come to me are girls that don\u2019t want to screw me, they want me to read their master\u2019s thesis.\u201d This wasn\u2019t new, nor was it exclusive to this period of his life. The academics might have been high-minded, but the earlier hordes were not. In his autofiction, basketball scout Benny Greenbaum propositions and touches him repeatedly during the National High School All Star Basketball Game. His old lady \u201clover\u201d in a later chapter is the \u201cfriend of the mother of an old girl friend of mine,\u201d around 40 to his 14.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the LP\u2019s cover, he is a prototypical Leo, mugging like Mick Jagger, red hair lank around his temples. He smirks between two pale cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass. Wedged between his normie parents, two relics of a bygone era, the Annie Leibovitz photopainting only adds to the mythology, reaffirming Carroll\u2019s legacy as a man who stood out even in a room full of stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Men and women alike chased Jim Carroll, undeterred by his age or his addiction. Freshly married in California, he admitted to a reporter that \u201ca lot of women throw themselves at you. Although a lot of the groupies that come to me are girls that don\u2019t want to screw me, they want me to read their master\u2019s thesis.\u201d This wasn\u2019t new, nor was it exclusive to this period of his life. The academics might have been high-minded, but the earlier hordes were not. In his autofiction, basketball scout Benny Greenbaum propositions and touches him repeatedly during the National High School All Star Basketball Game. His old lady \u201clover\u201d in a later chapter is the \u201cfriend of the mother of an old girl friend of mine,\u201d around 40 to his 14.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the LP\u2019s cover, he is a prototypical Leo, mugging like Mick Jagger, red hair lank around his temples. He smirks between two pale cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass. Wedged between his normie parents, two relics of a bygone era, the Annie Leibovitz photopainting only adds to the mythology, reaffirming Carroll\u2019s legacy as a man who stood out even in a room full of stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Men and women alike chased Jim Carroll, undeterred by his age or his addiction. Freshly married in California, he admitted to a reporter that \u201ca lot of women throw themselves at you. Although a lot of the groupies that come to me are girls that don\u2019t want to screw me, they want me to read their master\u2019s thesis.\u201d This wasn\u2019t new, nor was it exclusive to this period of his life. The academics might have been high-minded, but the earlier hordes were not. In his autofiction, basketball scout Benny Greenbaum propositions and touches him repeatedly during the National High School All Star Basketball Game. His old lady \u201clover\u201d in a later chapter is the \u201cfriend of the mother of an old girl friend of mine,\u201d around 40 to his 14.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the LP\u2019s cover, he is a prototypical Leo, mugging like Mick Jagger, red hair lank around his temples. He smirks between two pale cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass. Wedged between his normie parents, two relics of a bygone era, the Annie Leibovitz photopainting only adds to the mythology, reaffirming Carroll\u2019s legacy as a man who stood out even in a room full of stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Men and women alike chased Jim Carroll, undeterred by his age or his addiction. Freshly married in California, he admitted to a reporter that \u201ca lot of women throw themselves at you. Although a lot of the groupies that come to me are girls that don\u2019t want to screw me, they want me to read their master\u2019s thesis.\u201d This wasn\u2019t new, nor was it exclusive to this period of his life. The academics might have been high-minded, but the earlier hordes were not. In his autofiction, basketball scout Benny Greenbaum propositions and touches him repeatedly during the National High School All Star Basketball Game. His old lady \u201clover\u201d in a later chapter is the \u201cfriend of the mother of an old girl friend of mine,\u201d around 40 to his 14.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether or not these anecdotes are strictly true, The Basketball Diaries<\/em> is filled with enough instances of benign and not-so-benign neglect that Carroll gets himself into harrowing scrapes, often at the hands of people who seem to want some of his shine. The son of an Irish-Catholic barman, Carroll was roaming Manhattan unsupervised by his preteens, defending himself mostly unsuccessfully against sexual predators, neighborhood toughs, and an array of accessible drugs. He turned tricks for drug money before he could legally drive a car. He describes slugging beer at age 12 with the impassivity of a Sally Mann photograph.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jim Carroll lived mostly between the opposite poles of slumped, strung-out oblivion and the divinity of a morning stroll on Bolinas beach. Locating Catholic Boy<\/em> somewhere on this spectrum is difficult\u2014it\u2019s mostly major key bombast, not quite resigned but also deeply blas\u00e9. Between the cock-rock bravado, he recites a list of dead children on \u201cPeople Who Died\u201d as if he\u2019s reading a grocery list. Like a screen separates the confessor from the priest, so the shredding guitars distance Carroll from G-berg and George, whose \u201cgimmicks got rotten\/So they died of hepatitis in Upper Manhattan.\u201d Carnage or otherwise, this is the song whose legacy has transcended a record that\u2019s mostly faded into the annals of rock history. Its driving power chords, evocative of Plastic Bertrand\u2019s \u201c\u00c7a Plane Pour Moi,\u201d open Steven Spielberg\u2019s E.T.: The Extraterrestrial,<\/em> and more recently, it played in The Suicide Squad<\/em>\u2019s opening credits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bluntly: he could not sing. Mostly, it didn\u2019t matter. There\u2019s a disconnect between the instrumentation across the album and Carroll\u2019s Sprechgesang, a mix of Jagger\u2019s \u201cShattered\u201d affectation and a less-melodic Bob Dylan circa \u201cSubterranean Homesick Blues.\u201d Occasionally, it feels like Carroll is rhythmically out of step with the former Amsterdamians who are plowing through the bars behind him. There is enough personality on opener \u201cWicked Gravity\u201d to make up for this demerit, but by \u201cThree Sisters,\u201d Carroll sounds like a washed-out Lou Reed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCrow\u201d and \u201cCatholic Boy\u201d are the record\u2019s best songs, not just sonically but because they come closest to touching the bruise. They are the album\u2019s most painterly and evocative tracks, with the closest kinship to Carroll\u2019s written poems. The former, a tribute to Patti Smith, describes her bringing donuts to the junkies, covering Carroll with blankets at the Chelsea Hotel. \u201cCatholic Boy\u201d paints a Hieronymus Bosch-version of religion, bloody and suffused with angels. \u201cI made allies in heaven\/I made comrades in hell,\u201d he sings, later declaring \u201cI was a Catholic boy\/Redeemed through pain\/Not through joy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How badly do you need to hurt to be a martyr? The principle he fought for was telling the stories of those comrades he made in hell, people whose lives came and went without much fanfare: the users, the alcoholics, the urban poor. St. Lucy famously gouged out her own eyes, and maybe Jim Carroll would\u2019ve, too, if he\u2019d known it was an option. \u201cPoets and writers in general have a vested interest in a decaying world, because everyone looks to poets to clarify the chaos,\u201d he told Creem Magazine\u2019s Mark Norton in 1981. People were beginning to see the corrosion  eating away at a certain version of America. The Vietnam War had manufactured platoons full of junkies, but you didn\u2019t need to travel that far to find people looking for an exit. They\u2019d been on Avenue C the whole time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he died in New York City in 2009, it was in the same Inwood building where he\u2019d spent some of the Basketball Diaries<\/em> years. The prodigal son had returned. He lived alone after a brief marriage and an amicable divorce. He\u2019d turned inward and chipped away at an unfinished novel, growing a beard that reached his shirt collar. In look and manner, he was less CBGB\u2019s than wizened sage\u2014an ailing mystic who\u2019d gone to the mountaintop and back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 eating away at a certain version of America. The Vietnam War had manufactured platoons full of junkies, but you didn\u2019t need to travel that far to find people looking for an exit. They\u2019d been on Avenue C the whole time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he died in New York City in 2009, it was in the same Inwood building where he\u2019d spent some of the Basketball Diaries<\/em> years. The prodigal son had returned. He lived alone after a brief marriage and an amicable divorce. He\u2019d turned inward and chipped away at an unfinished novel, growing a beard that reached his shirt collar. In look and manner, he was less CBGB\u2019s than wizened sage\u2014an ailing mystic who\u2019d gone to the mountaintop and back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you, LaVerne<\/a>, for sharing this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lynne GreenePitchfork 21 September 2025Rating *8.8 Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit the outstanding 1980 debut album from the famed Downtown New York poet, writer, and musician, a louche and witty hybrid of glam rock … Continue reading The Jim Carroll Band: Catholic Boy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":3987,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"folder":[],"class_list":["post-10618","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P9VlUH-2Lg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4037,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/photos-video-audio\/photo-gallery\/photos-of-jim-carroll\/","url_meta":{"origin":10618,"position":0},"title":"xxPhotos of Jim Carroll","author":"catholicboy.com","date":"January 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"If you have any good photos of Jim Carroll, please email them to me! Press Photos These photos may be reprinted (with photographer credits). Please do not reprint other photos on this site without reviewing the FAQs. xxxx Lorem ipsum XThe Catholic Boy Gets Blessed Lorem ipsum individual portraits Solo\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Jim Carroll (1998) \u00a9Ray Lego\/Cut the Fat","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/JC1998_color_005.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/JC1998_color_005.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/JC1998_color_005.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10052,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/research\/jim-carroll-biographies\/jim-carroll-sonic-net\/","url_meta":{"origin":10618,"position":1},"title":"Jim Carroll – Sonic.net","author":"Cassie Carter","date":"June 3, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"from Sonic.Net To rock audiences, Jim Carroll's crowning achievement was the near-hit \"People Who Died,\" a brutally emotional punk record saluting the victims of the New York drug culture. In truth, however, Carroll's artistic legacy was considerably more complex and far-ranging -- an acclaimed novelist, poet, actor and spoken-word performer,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4620,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/research\/performance-reviews\/preview-university-of-montana-1999\/","url_meta":{"origin":10618,"position":2},"title":"\u201cOne wrist in heaven, one ankle in hell\u201d: Jim Carroll to Speak in Missoula\u00a0","author":"catholicboy.com","date":"January 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"University of Montana (Missoula, MT)8 November 1999Nate Schweber, Eye Spy Reporter\u00a0Kaimin Online19 October 1999 When I discovered Jim Carroll a week before my 20th birthday, it took me 30 seconds to adopt the last sentence of the first chapter of his book \u201cForced Entries\u201d as a personal motto. After a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4635,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/works\/jim-carroll-music-and-spoken-word\/rare-jim-carroll-albums-live-recordings-videos\/","url_meta":{"origin":10618,"position":3},"title":"Rare Jim Carroll Albums, Live Recordings, & Videos","author":"catholicboy.com","date":"January 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"This page represents some of LaVerne Kreklau's collection of primo recorded rarities and ephemera. If you have anything unusual or any audio or video tapes not listed here, please contact me! Rare Vinyl One World PoetryMilkway Records & Giorno Poetry Systems, 1981Giorno Poetry Systems Records GPS 028-029 This album seems\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Cover Art - One World Poetry - Giorno Poetry Systems (1981)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/giorno-one-world-poetry.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/giorno-one-world-poetry.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/giorno-one-world-poetry.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4484,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/background\/important-places\/archive-important-places\/","url_meta":{"origin":10618,"position":4},"title":"Archive: Important Places","author":"Cassie Carter","date":"January 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Home > Background > Important Places Jim Carroll: Important Places Updated 2 September 2009 This section offers interactive maps that allow you to see map locations of key Jim Carroll-related sites in New York City, as well as photographs of the sites, explanatory text, and related links. There are also\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3999,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/research\/death-notices-tributes\/","url_meta":{"origin":10618,"position":5},"title":"Death Notices & Tributes","author":"catholicboy.com","date":"January 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"It will take a while to get the hundreds of notices documented, so I will post this page as \"in progress.\" At least initially (almost) all articles will be available in PDF format only. If you found something not listed here, please email me the details. Thanks! Addington, Carrie. \"Poet\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10618"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10623,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10618\/revisions\/10623"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/folder?post=10618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}