It is with sadness that I write that legendary singer of the seminal grunge band Screaming Trees,Mark Lanegan has died aged 57.
The musician was also a member of rock bands Queens of the Stone Age
and The Gutter Twins – and collaborated with artists such as Nirvana’s
Kurt Cobain.
A statement posted on Lanegan’s official Twitter account said he died at his home in Killarney, Ireland, on Tuesday morning.
“Our beloved friend Mark Lanegan passed away this morning at his home in
Killarney, Ireland,” the Tweet read. “A beloved singer, songwriter,
author, and musician he was 57 and is survived by his wife Shelley. No
other information is available at this time. We ask Please respect the
family privacy."
While no cause of death has been released yet, Lanegan revealed in a December 2021 interview with Consequence that
he dealt with intense symptoms of COVID, which led him to a three-week
coma and temporary deafness. However, it’s still uncertain whether COVID
was related to his death.
In the interview, Lanegan stated that he was on the mend,
“[I feel] a million times better — I finally turned the corner. But it
took a really long time. It was crazy. There’s some residuals. Whatever I
had, it attacks places where there was trauma in the body previous
times.”
Born on November 25, 1964, to an abusive mother and a hard drinking father Mark William Lanegan was a singer, songwriter, author, and musician of Irish, Scottish, and Welsh descent.
By 12, as he recounted
he was a “compulsive gambler, a fledgling alcoholic, a thief, a porno
fiend”, and by18, his criminal record included breaking and entering,
shoplifting, drug possession, vandalism, insurance fraud and 26 counts
of underage drinking.Mark was using drugs heavily having already been arrested and sentenced to one years imprisonment for drug related crimes.
In 1985, Lanegan was repossessing rented videocassette
players for a video store in his hometown of Ellensburg, Wash. a small
rural town southeast of Seattle when he started the band Screaming Trees with his boss’ sons, guitarist Gary Lee Conner
and bassist Van Conner.
The lure of fame and the rock ‘n’ roll road appealed to the rebellious, discontented Lanegan.
“I wanted excitement, adventure, decadence, depravity, anything,
everything,” he wrote in his 2020 memoir “Sing Backwards and Weeps,”
adding, “I would never find any of it in this dusty, isolated cow town.
If the band could get me out, could get me into that life I so craved,
it was worth any indignity, any hardship, any torture.”
The group was the main part of Seattle's grunge scene, running in the same circles as bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Nirvana and Alice in Chains.
As frontman of Screaming Trees, the 6ft 2in underground rock star
produced some of the genre’s most psychedelic and experimental music. Their debut album, Clairvoyance, dropped in 1986. and their commercial breakthrough came with the
release of 1992’s Sweet Oblivion, which was buoyed by the popularity of
grunge bedfellows such as Nirvana. The album birthed their biggest single, the soaring Nearly Lost You.
When they disbanded in 2000 amid creative differences, Lanegan went
on to establish himself as a varied and successful solo artist, creating music
that was quieter, more bluesy, and more broody, earning him the
nickname “Dark Mark.”
Lanegan released his solo debut, The Winding Sheet, in 1990 via
Sub Pop. The record featured collaborations with Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain
and Krist Novoselic, and, in 2005, Dave Grohl called The Winding Sheet
“one of the best albums of all time.” Lanegan’s albums continued to
have notable contributors, such as J Mascis (who was on 1998’s Scraps at Midnight),
as well as PJ Harvey, Joshua Homme, Greg Dulli, Troy Van Leeuwen, and
Duff McKagan, who were among the many contributors to 2004’s Bubblegum.
His second solo LP 1994’s Whiskey for the Holy Ghost, which I've been listening to as I wrote this piece contains the six-minute
“Riding the Nightingale” which is an entrancing, atmospheric masterpiece .reflective of the darkness in Lanegan’s personal life at this time.
Gripped by drug addiction and disillusionment, he apparently attempted
to destroy the album’s master tapes by tossing them in a river behind
the studio, but was physically prevented by engineer Jack Endino. Had
Lanegan succeeded, he would have destroyed arguably his most beautiful
recordings..
In 2008, Lanegan codified his collaboration with Greg Dulli when they shared their lone LP as the Gutter Twins, Saturnalia.
His voice made him a sought-after collaborator with his fellow
Seattle musicians. He sang on projects with Alice in Chains’ Layne
Staley and Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready. He also recorded a series of Leadbelly
covers with Kurt Cobain. It would never be released, but Cobain would
use their arrangement of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” in a memorable
performance on “MTV Unplugged.” He also worked with artists such as English
multi-instrumentalist Duke Garwood and Isobel Campbell, the former
vocalist of Belle & Sebastian,Massive Attack, Moby, Pearl Jam, the Eagles of Death
Metal and more. ..
He first appeared on Queens of the Stone Age’s Rated R album in 2000 and lent his voice and songwriting talent to several songs. He was more involved on 2002’s Songs for the Deaf, writing songs and singing more vocals. Lanegan continued recording with Queens of the Stone Age through 2013’s Like Clockwork.
His last album, Straight Songs Of Sorrow, arrived to critical acclaim in 2020f which found him as creatively brilliant and darkly deep as ever.. Most recently he'd worked with the Manic Street Preachers on their latest album The Ultra Vivid Lament, who are said to be devastated with the news of his death .
He’d first worked alongside the band when they both supported Oasis on their 1996 US tour, and they’d kept in touch ever since.
The singer, who was known for his deep-gruff voice and even harsher living, sang of the darkest nights of
the soul, the deepest heart-breaks and emotional bruises, broken dreams,
desperate addiction and longing, failure, desolation and death, in 2020, published a “no holds barred” memoir called Sing
Backwards And Weep. in which the musician covered everything from
“addiction to touring, petty crime, homelessness and the tragic deaths
of his closest friends”, among them Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and Alice in
Chains’ Layne Staley.
The book beautifully written was an incredible record of a tormented life
and the complex relation between creativity, addiction and mental
illness.
In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2020, Lanegan spoke about the difficulties in his past,
including struggles with drug addiction and the death of Kurt Cobain. The two musicians had been known to share a close friendship, with
Lanegan even considering Cobain to be a “cherished little brother”. He wrote in his memoir that he was haunted after missing
calls from Cobain before his death, throwing himself into his addictions
before an intervention from Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love.
“I remember
Courtney leaving me a letter saying, ‘Kurt loved you as a big brother
and would have wanted you to live. The world needs you to live,’” he
told the magazine. “That was powerful because I hadn’t done any good for
anybody in years.”
In his 2017 collection of lyrics “I Am the Wolf,” Lanegan reels off a
list of artists who influenced that album’s music — including his friend
and idol Jeffrey Lee Pierce of the Gun Club, Leonard Cohen, John Cale,
Nick Cave and Ian Curtis of Joy Division ,whose impact would be felt
repeatedly over the course of a 30-year solo career.
In August 2020, mid-pandemic, Lanegan moved to Ireland with his wife, Shelley Brien. The stay was meant to be temporary, he told Spin last year, but the "physical beauty" of the area convinced him to stay.
Last year however Lanegan became sick with Covid-19 and nearly died, an
experience he documented in another memoir, "Devil in a Coma," published
in December. in which he detailed his harrowing .battle with Covid-19. In an excerpt from
the book, published by The Guardian, he told of being placed in a
medically induced coma while in hospital in County Kerry, Ireland.
In the chapter, Lanegan wrote:
:“I had been feeling weak and sick for a few days and then woke up one
morning completely deaf. My equilibrium shaky, and my mind in a
surreal, psychedelic dream state, I lost my footing at the top of the
stairs. Head over heels over head, I knocked myself out on the
windowsill as I crashed down the narrow staircase at my house. Bang. My
wife was out horseback riding for the day, and I came to hours later
still unable to hear a thing, unable to move, two huge opened welts on
my head and my knee not supporting any weight.
“For two days I tried to get from stairwell to couch, with no
success. I could not move, nor could my wife support my 200lb body, so I
lay suffering on some blankets on the hard floor. My ribs were cracked,
my spine bruised, battered and sore, and my already chronically
messed-up knee gone again as if some tendons were ripped or a ligament
severed.”
Read the entire excerpt HERE.
Early in the pandemic Lanegan was among those who believed COVID-19
fears to be overblown. After contracting the virus, which at one point
left him deaf and unable to walk, he stated in Devil in a Coma
that, “I was one of those knuckleheads who was wary of the vaccine. But I
learned my lesson. I’ll be the first one to get a booster shot when
it’s available in Ireland."
Further describing his COVID-19 battle in the book, he also wrote:
“Whatever was in this shitwagon I’d caught a ride on, it was no fucking
joke. I’d taken my share of well-deserved ass-kickings over the years
but this thing was trying to dismantle me, body and mind, and I could
see no end to it in sight.”
The singer openly battled alcoholism and drug addiction. He had two stints in rehab, once in 1996, and again in
2007.He was constantly busy, however, even when in the grip of addictions that at one point left him almost homeless. Lanegan managed to beat his substance abuse and, at the
time of his death, had been sober for over a decade.
Over the last decade, Lanegan was prolific, collaborating with the likes
of Neko Case and Marianne Faithfull and co-writing the theme song for
Anthony Bourdain’s show “Parts Unknown.”
Although Lanegan never saw major commercial success, he won a devoted fan base that
included critics and his fellow musicians of several generations.
Fans are paying tribute now across social media platforms to the grunge pioneer who was known for his powerful, low voice.
“Mark Lanegan will always be etched in my heart — as he surely
touched so many with his genuine self, no matter the cost, true to the
end,” John Cale of the Velvet Underground said on Twitter.
Iggy Pop tweeted, “Mark Lanegan, RIP, deepest respect for you. Your fan, Iggy Pop.”
“Mark Lanegan was a lovely man,” tweeted New Order and Joy Division
bassist Peter Hook, with a photo of Lanegan joining him on stage. “He
led a wild life that some of us could only dream of. He leaves us with
fantastic words and music! Thank god that through all of that he will
live forever.”
Charlatans singer Tim Burgess tweeted: “Oh no. Terrible news that
Mark Lanegan has left us. Safe travels man – you’ll be missed.”
Badly Drawn Boy, whose full name is Damon Michael Gough,
described him as one of the “great singers of the last 30 years”,
tweeting: “Hearing about Mark Lanegan passing away has properly stopped
me in my tracks. I’m absolutely gutted.
“Met him on a couple of occasions and I was nervous because I loved him so much.
“He was a perfect gentleman, really kind. One of the great singers of the last 30 years. So sad.”
Lanegan was “a supremely gifted performer, songwriter, artist and
author, and we are devastated to hear he has passed away,” his UK
publishing house, White Rabbit Books, said in a statement posted to Twitter. “His art will endure and only grow in stature.”
Killarney councillor and publican Niall O’Callaghan said people in the town were saddened to learn of Lanegan’s death.
He told the PA news agency: “On behalf of Killarney and the people,
we would like to sincerely send our condolences to the family of Mr
Lanegan.
“We are all in the town saddened to learn of the untimely death.
Killarney is a small town and we all know each other; it’s a tight-knit
community.
“It is a sad day for the town when you lose anyone who lived here.
For a man of the stature of Mark Lanegan, it was a real honour that he
choose to live in Killarney.”
57 is way too early to depart this weary land, especially someone who has survived so much darkness to find the powerful force of redemption, a tragic loss, such a talented man,who nevertheless leaves us with an amazing solid body of work, a poetical voice that soothed us all and a rich legacy that will not simply fade away. The man was the real deal, He is survived by his second wife, Shelley Brien. My thoughts are with his family and friends and all who loved his artistic vision. Rest in Peace Mark Lanegan..
Mark Lanegan - Down in the Dark
Mark Lanegan - Resurrection Song
Mark Lanegan - I am the Wolf
Mark Lanegan Band - Night Flight to Kabul
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