People tend to think that successful musicians, singers and songwriters live glamorous lives. After all, they are adored, emulated, sought-after people. It's only when one of them goes into rehab, gets a DUI, becomes embroiled in a nasty divorce, or is murdered that the reality of being a rock 'n' roll musician begins to intrude into the public consciousness. Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur, Janice Joplin, Dennis Wilson, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Elvis Presley, and Michael Jackson are just the best-known of a long list of musicians who went to an early grave. The pressures of striving to stay on top, the exhaustion of being on the road so much of the time, and the temptation to subdue the stress with drugs and alcohol are major factors in the high fatality rate for musicians.
David J. Krajicek has written extensively about celebrity life in books, newspaper and magazine articles and stories for truTV's Crime Library. Much more than a journalist and much more than a writer with decades of strong expertise in true crime, he is an excellent storyteller with incredible panache, and he knows the music world as well. He sings and plays trombone in a busy blues/swing/oldies band based in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. His band, The Blues Maneuver, plays about 50 gigs a year.
Krajicek is a longtime newspaperman, an author and a former Columbia University journalism professor. He is regarded as one of the country's best true crime storytellers. He writes "The Justice Story," a weekly true crime feature that has been running in the New York Daily News since 1923. He was a special correspondent for Court TV's Crime Library and has appeared frequently on television as a crime expert, including on "The Today Show" and Dominick Dunne's "Power, Privilege and Justice." He was "Crime Beat" columnist for APBNews.com.
Krajicek cofounded Criminal Justice Journalists, a national association of reporters and editors. He is co-editor of Crime & Justice News and a contributing editor for TheCrimeReport.org.
Krajicek is the author of Murder, American Style: 50 Unforgettable True Stories About Love Gone Wrong (News Ink Books, 2010). Its content is drawn from his work for the Daily News. His other books include Scooped! Media Miss Real Story on Crime While Chasing Sex, Sleaze and Celebrities, as well as a novella, Sutphin Blvd. Another book, True Crime: Missouri, will be published in September 2011 by Stackpole Books.
He has worked as a staff writer at the Omaha World-Herald and New York Daily News. His work has appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Newsday, the Village Voice and the Manchester (U.K.) Guardian. He holds degrees from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Columbia University, where he spent most of the 1990s as a journalism professor. Krajicek, a native of Omaha, Nebraska, has spent much of his career in New York City. He now lives in the Catskill Mountains and on the Alabama Gulf Coast.
