The country music icon holds nothing back in his autobiography “Behind the Beard.”
All things considered, William Lee Golden kinda-sorta wishes he hadn’t waited so long to start work on his autobiography.
“When you write your life story, and you decide to bare everything,” the long-time Oak Ridge Boy admits in the introduction to Behind the Beard, his impressively candid memoir, “it’s kind of scary. It feels a lot like getting naked… in front of the entire world. Now that I’ve committed to it, there is one thing going through my mind… if I was going to get naked in front of everyone, I probably shouldn’t have waited until I was 82 years old!”
Trust us: The book is well worth the wait.
Working with writer Scot England, Golden has crafted a richly detailed, unflinchingly honest and often laugh-out-loud funny account of his private and public lives. How honest? Well, wait until you get to the part where he describes his first wife’s reaction when she discovered he had been unfaithful. Or the part where he reveals the real reason he was away from The Oak Ridge Boys for nine years — and how he made his “Prodigal Son” return to the group.
We talked about all of this and much more in a Zoom conversation a few days ago.
