Singing with a nicotine-ravaged growl that was deep, strong, and sensuously forbidding,
Mark Lanegan rose to fame when his band
the Screaming Trees won a taste of mainstream recognition in the '90s. Carving out a strong individual identity as a vocalist and songwriter,
Lanegan's music was nearly always informed by the blues, and the singer was willing to take his darkly poetic sensibility to whatever style his muse pointed him. His solo work veered from the semi-acoustic atmospherics of 1990's
The Winding Sheet, 1998's
Scraps at Midnight, and the adventurous hard rock of 2004's
Bubblegum and 2012's
Blues Funeral, to the clean electronic surfaces of 2014's
Phantom Radio and 2020's unsparingly confessional
Straight Songs of Sorrow.
Lanegan was also a frequent collaborator with a number of noted artists, among them
Greg Dulli,
Queens of the Stone Age,
Isobel Campbell,
Soulsavers, and
Duke Garwood.
Born in Ellensburg, Washington on November 25, 1964,
Lanegan, by his own estimation, grew up in a dysfunctional household and developed a powerful appetite for liquor and drugs in his teens that led to scrapes with the law. When he was 18, he struck up a friendship with Van Connor, who shared
Lanegan's interest in music.
Lanegan originally agreed to play drums in a band with Van and his brother, Gary Lee Connor, but when it was decided
Lanegan was a better singer than a percussionist,
Mark Pickerel came on board to play drums with the band that became known as
the Screaming Trees. The band released their first album,
Clairvoyance, in 1986, but it wasn't until 1992 that they scored a commercial breakthrough when their song "Nearly Lost You" -- which appeared on the soundtrack to the movie
Singles as well as their own album
Sweet Oblivion -- became a surprise hit thanks to extensive MTV play.
By the time "Nearly Lost You" hit the charts,
Lanegan had already launched a solo career. He and
Kurt Cobain shared a passion for the blues, particularly the music of
Lead Belly, and the two formed a side group with
Krist Novoselic and
Mark Pickerel known as the Jury, with a plan to record an EP of
Lead Belly tunes. While the Jury project soon fell apart,
Lanegan used a recording of
Lead Belly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" with
Cobain and
Novoselic as the launching pad for his darkly atmospheric solo debut, 1990's
The Winding Sheet. The album earned enthusiastic reviews, but after the success of "Nearly Lost You,"
Lanegan and the
Trees hit the road for a long tour; by most accounts, the group had a strained relationship in the best of circumstances, and as weeks turned into months on the road, the hard-drinking band clashed frequently. After the
Sweet Oblivion tour ran its course, the group took a break and
Lanegan cut another solo album, 1994's
Whiskey for the Holy Ghost, a more dynamic set that once again impressed critics with
Lanegan's powerful vocals and deep lyrical visions. In 1996, the
Screaming Trees finally released their follow-up to
Sweet Oblivion, but
Dust failed to live up to the commercial success of their breakthrough album, despite the modest success of "All I Know" as a single and the band joining the bill for the 1996 Lollapalooza tour.
In 1998,
Lanegan released his third solo album,
Scraps at Midnight, followed by
I'll Take Care of You, a collection of covers, in 1999. In 2000, after playing a show to celebrate the opening of the Experience Music Project in Seattle, the
Screaming Trees announced they were breaking up. With his main band out of the picture,
Lanegan began to dive deep into collaborations with other acts; he'd already contributed to tribute albums honoring
Willie Nelson and
Skip Spence and appeared on
Mike Watt's solo debut,
Ball-Hog or Tugboat?, and in 2000, he performed guest vocals on the breakout album from
Queens of the Stone Age,
Rated R. While
Lanegan was never an official member of
QOTSA, he became a valuable ally to leader
Josh Homme, contributing vocals and collaborating on songs for 2002's
Songs for the Deaf, 2005's
Lullabies to Paralyze, and 2013's
Like Clockwork. In 2003,
Lanegan worked with former
Afghan Whigs frontman
Greg Dulli on the sophomore album from
Dulli's project
the Twilight Singers,
Blackberry Belle, and he would also appear with
Dulli on two subsequent
Twilight Singers albums, 2004's
She Loves You and 2011's
Dynamite Steps.
Dulli and
Lanegan would also record a collaborative album under the name
the Gutter Twins, 2008's
Saturnalia. In 2005,
Lanegan recorded an EP of duets with
Isobel Campbell, formerly of
Belle and Sebastian, entitled Ramblin' Man; the pair would go on to record three full albums together, 2006's
Ballad of the Broken Seas, 2008's
Sunday at Devil Dirt, and 2010's
Hawk. The U.K. electronic group
Soulsavers brought
Lanegan in to sing on their albums
It's Not How Far You Fall, It's the Way You Land (2007),
Broken (2009), and
The Light the Dead See (2012).
Lanegan became a regular contributor to
the Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project, an ad hoc ensemble that interpreted songs by the late
Gun Club frontman;
Lanegan appeared on the albums We Are Only Riders (2009), The Journey Is Long (2012), and Axels & Sockets (2014).
While some of
Lanegan's collaborations got more press than he did during this period, he hardly had his solo career on the back burner. 2001's
Field Songs offered the sort of dark, roots-oriented songs that were his trademark, and 2004's more rock-oriented
Bubblegum was the first album credited to
the Mark Lanegan Band, though instead of a set band, the tracks featured a rotating variety of accompanists including
Josh Homme and
PJ Harvey. A second
Mark Lanegan Band set,
Blues Funeral, appeared in 2012, while
Lanegan dropped two albums in 2013, a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist
Duke Garwood titled
Black Pudding, and a second album devoted to covers,
Imitations. 2014 brought a third full-length from
the Mark Lanegan Band,
Phantom Radio, and in 2015,
Lanegan partnered with a handful of producers and remix artists (including
Moby,
UNKLE,
Soulsavers, and
Mark Stewart) to create A Thousand Miles of Midnight: Phantom Radio Remixes. By this time,
Lanegan's solo career had generated enough music to merit two different retrospective releases; in 2014, Light in the Attic issued the career-spanning compilation Has God Seen My Shadow? An Anthology 1989-2011, while in 2015, Sub Pop released One Way Street, a vinyl-only collection that featured new LP pressings of
Lanegan's first five solo albums.
In 2017,
Lanegan released Gargoyle, an album written with his frequent collaborators
Alain Johannes and Rob Marshall; it also featured guest appearances from
Josh Homme and
Greg Dulli. 2017 also saw him publish his first book, a collection of lyrics and essays titled I Am the Wolf.
Lanegan and
Duke Garwood teamed up once again to record 2018's With Animals, a set dominated by spare and evocative electronic accompaniment. 2019's Somebody's Knocking was another project that teamed
Lanegan with
Johannes and Marshall, while
Greg Dulli contributed guest vocals on the song "Letter Never Sent." In April 2020,
Lanegan published a memoir, Sing Backwards and Weep, an unsparing portrait of his life in music and his struggles with addiction. As
Lanegan revisited some of the lowest and most desperate moments of his past while completing the book, he channeled his emotions into a set of original songs. This personal material formed the basis of the album
Straight Songs of Sorrow, released in May 2020. In 2021,
Lanegan, who had left the United States to settle in Ireland, guested on a variety of projects from
Manic Street Preachers (
The Ultra Vivid Lament),
Moby (
Reprise), the Soulsavers with
Dave Gahan (Imposter), and
Cult of Luna (
The Raging River). He also joined forces with
Joe Cardamone of
the Icarus Line to launch a new project, Dark Mark vs. Skeleton Joe, whose self-titled album, a brooding exercise in rock-influenced electronics, was issued in October 2021. He published a second memoir, Devil in a Coma, in December 2021 that focused on his severe health struggles after he was hospitalized with the COVID-19 virus. This would prove to be
Lanegan's last work as an artist; he died at his home in Killarney, Ireland on February 22, 2022, at the age of 57. ~ Mark Deming