“The pressure’s off now in interviews,” There are no loaded questions they can ask me anymore. There it is. Read the book.

He comes clean about the humiliating beatings he withstood at the hands of his father, his criminal teenage years as a Toronto street kid, his years spent as a scrappy convict bouncing between juvenile halls and prisons where the frequent fighter and troublemaker would entertain himself by singing in the “natural echo chambers” that were solitary-confinement cells.

He comes clean about the drugs, the cutthroat business dealings and the ego clashes that went on within the band during its platinum-plated 1970s peak and its subsequent dissolution into Clayton-Thomas and a revolving cast of hired-gun musicians half his age, not to mention the fatal 1978 overdose in Amsterdam of his friend and bandmate Greg Herbert. And he comes clean about how the staunch will to succeed that elevated him from the streets into pop music’s elite was, for decades, a strain on his health, his family and his interpersonal relationships.

There’s also, however, a genuinely inspirational rags-to-riches story to be found in the life of a self-made man who, as Clayton-Thomas recalls, once “walked out of Millbrook Penitentiary with 20 bucks in my pocket, a mail-order guitar and a dream.

What’s critical for an autobiography is first of all a good story and Clayton-Thomas has one, for sure.

A genuinely inspirational rags to riches story…

In his memoir, aptly titled Blood Sweat and Tears, he shares his personal history that reflects and defines a distinctive era in music and pop culture. From the Yonge Street Strip to Woodstock, to Vegas and back to Toronto… “We are all heroes and villains in the play of our lives – it all depends on which act we are watching and who is writing the script. This is my story.” His author’s voice is much like the lyrics to his songs – intuitive, direct and genuine.

That’s worth much more than a standing ovation.

A compelling inside look at the music business, stardom and politics, set in the turbulent times in which he lived and told in his own words.