Indie rock raconteur Chris Campion—one of the few patients ever to escape from Bellevue’s locked ward—recalls his band’s tumultuous ride, his plummet into addiction, and the strange road back to sobriety. Chronicling more than twenty years in the life of a Long Island kid who became a hardcore fixture of Manhattan’s indie rock scene, Escape from Bellevue is a coming-of-age tale like no other. As the lead singer of New York–based indie rock band Knockout Drops, Campion got a taste of fame (but, alas, no fortune) on a wild ride that lasted from the early 1980s through the 1990s. Charting Campion’s extensive experience in the music industry alongside his personal tales of struggle and survival, Escape from Bellevue puts the spotlight on the collective psychosis of twenty years spent in a rolling bacchanal. Just as the Knockout Drops reached the height of their success, having toured with headliners such as Soul Asylum and Violent Femmes, Campion Campion, lead singer of the (almost) nationally famous indie band Knockout Drops, is no polished writer. His stories ramble. He digresses. He desperately needs an editor. But there is undeniable power in the cautionary tale of his drug-and-alcohol-fueled rise and fall in the rock world. It isn’t just that the stories he tells are increasingly harrowing, or that his multiple addictions exact a terrible cost in lost friends and lovers and alienated family members, or that for a time he was essentially homeless. It’s that Campion is a talented raconteur, capable of turning every misbegotten moment from early adolescence spent hanging out with his older brother’s garage band to drug-hazed college years to equally hazy days down, out, and on the road in Massachusetts and Maine into addictively fascinating prose. His years on stage, including the autobiographical off-Broadway rock musical Escape from Bellevue, have clearly taught him how to get and hold attention. Campion parties like a rock star, crashes and burns like one, then rises from the ashes to tell us about it. --Jack Helbig Christopher John Campion is the lead singer of the indie rock band Knockout Drops and is the creator, playwright, and star of the hit off-Broadway rock musical Escape from Bellevue.