Jim Carroll Dead at 60

via RollingStone.com
Poet and punk rocker Jim Carroll, whose life story was famously documented in his autobiography The Basketball Diaries, died following a heart attack on Friday, September 11th in New York City. Carroll was 60, the New York Times reports.

The Basketball Diaries — which detailed Carroll’s struggles with drug use as a teenager in the 1960s — depicts his fall from prep school basketball star to heroin addict who turned to prostitution, all before Carroll was even 17 years old. Leonardo DiCaprio portrayed Carroll in the 1995 film version of the book. Besides Basketball, Carroll’s other notable works include 4 Ups and 1 Down and 1973’s Living at the Movies.

After establishing himself as a poet, Carroll next turned to music, coaxed in part by his friend Patti Smith. Carroll caught the eye of the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards, who helped the Jim Carroll Band secure a three-record deal. Their first album, 1980’s Catholic Boy, is considered a landmark of the New York punk scene. Carroll followed the debut with two more LPs, 1982’s Dry Dreams and 1983’s I Write Your Name, then released a fourth album, Pools of Mercury, in 1998.