Clint Black didnt think he would live past 21.
The country music star has written a new memoir, “Killin Time,” named after his triple-platinum 1989 debut album. The book explores the Grammy winners upbringing and how he rose to fame, selling more than 20 million records.
Blacks early years were anything but joyful. In the book, he admitted he was shocked to reach 17 â and convinced he wouldnt make it to 21. “Surely,” he wrote, “I wouldnt make it to the ripe old age of 21.”
The 64-year-old told Fox News Digital he had good reason to take a “fatalistic view” of his life.
“I had really come out of watching friends die â overdoses, automobile accidents â a friend got hit on a motorcycle and killed,” he said. “Another one was hit on a bicycle and killed. My brother narrowly avoided being called up for the Vietnam War, which ended before he was called. And my grandfather and his brother died of cancer. It just seemed like there was a lot of that going around. And why should I be so lucky to live on and on?”
“It didnt keep me up at night, but I lived with it,” he said.
WATCH: CLINT BLACK REFLECTS ON LOSS, SURVIVAL AND FAMILY LEGACY
Black himself had a near-death experience. In the book, the singer-songwriter recalled spending his childhood exploring Buffalo Bayou near Houston with friends â riding trails, fishing, catching snakes and building campfires.Â
But after a heavy rainstorm, he wrote that the dam at Addicks Reservoir was opened to manage , turning the bayou into what Black described as “a raging torrent of white water rapids.”
Black, who was 13 at the time, and his friends decided to “jump in at the headwaters and just free-float in the rapids.” Soon after, he found himself fighting for his life.
“We didnt see the huge oak tree in the water, just a few hundred feet downstream from where we jumped in,” Black wrote. “It must have toppled the day before in the heavy rain. Now it was creating a pocket of strong suction all around it. My friends and I could sense that sudden pull and quickly headed for the banks. The chance to get out was gone in an instant.
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“My friends all made it to safety, but I was unable to escape the pull of the current and was sucked into the tree and down to the bottom of the bayou. My eyes, sinuses and lungs burned from what I guess mustve been poison oak wrapped around the tree.”
Looking back, Black said every time he tried to climb back up, he grew weaker. He fought the urge to “give up.”
Black told Fox News Digital that, to this day, he still remembers the burning sensation throughout his body as he heard his friends screaming from the banks. They spotted a venomous snake near him.
“It was too dark for me to see underwater,” Black said. “But the visual I had in my mind of the bottom of the bayou and that rapid water pushing me against the tree, its a picture in my mind of something I couldnt see back then. But it just added to that feeling that I wasnt going to make it out of there alive.”
It wouldnt be the last time Black tested his luck.
During his tour for the 2004 album “Spend My Time,” Black went mountain biking on trails in Wisconsin when he made a wrong turn and crashed headfirst into a tree trunk. He wrote that he felt “the shock shoot through both arms and out to my fingertips.” After feeling disoriented for a few minutes, Black initially believed he was fine, unaware that he had seriously injured his spine.
“I didnt realize it was that dramatic,” Black told Fox News Digital. “It wasnt a dramatic bicycle accident, but it was a dramatic injury. The disc ruptured in my cervical spine and bruised my spinal cord, so it had to be taken out.”
“It would manifest itself in
