James Dennis Jim Carroll was an author poet autobiographer actor and punk musician He was the author of The Basketball Diaries a cultclassic memoir of his drugfueled misadventures as a teenager in the 1960s Then he became a celebrated downtown poet and then in 1980 the star of his own hit rock band With the help of the Rolling Stones Keith Richards Carroll signed a record deal and in 1980 the band released its first album Catholic Boy He appeared in two feature films and a couple of documentaries