Serj Tankian on Including “Intimate” Details in Recent Memoir

Serj Tankian, lead singer of the fuckin awesome band System of a Down (in case you didn’t know, for whatever reason), just released his New York Times bestselling memoir Down With The System over the summer, and he shared even more details about the book in a new interview with São Paulo, Brazil’s 89 FM A Rádio Rock station. He was very candid about what he chose to include and not include in the book, saying this (as transcribed by Blabbermouth.net):

“I included a lot of intimate things within the book, a lot of things that could be seen as confrontational, but I did it in a way that was retrospective and respectful while taking responsibility for my own part in the drama. And so there’s a lot of things like that. The book is incredibly honest and intimate in that sense. There’s a lot of things I did leave out. Some of them were sensationalist stories of touring with other artists that I didn’t feel obliged to represent without their understanding and conditional release.”

He goes on to share about how his new approach to catharsis made him feel:

“I think telling your story through music is challenging because of the limitations of the musical refrain, whereas in a book, a 300-plus-page book, you can expound more so than any other form of art, more so than films or art itself.”

Down With The System came out on May 14 via Hachette Books. If you haven’t yet, you can purchase a copy here.

In it, Tankian opens up about how he fell into this life of music and activism. He also talks about how he was quite surprised the band took off the way it did. Even if he can’t believe it, we can, and we’re so damn glad SOAD has been going for this long.