Rest in Peace Mark Lanegan

Death looked pretty good on him. But so far, Mark Lanegan was just flirting with it. Often evoked it. On February 22, 2022, it was death who has taken over, taking away the fifty-seven year-old songwriter with a heavy past as an alcoholic and a junkie. Lanegan was a major figure of the American underground. Born in 1964 in Ellensburg, 150 kilometres east of Seattle, he grew up with the grunge scene of the region at the head of the Screaming Trees founded around 1984 with the guitarist Gary Lee Conner, the bassist Van Conner and the drummer Mark Pickerel. Although they never reached the notoriety of Nirvana or even Soundgarden, the Trees gathered a good number of fans all over the world and recorded eight albums, mainly for SST and then Epic. The grunge of Lanegan, more psychedelic and hard than that of his colleagues, is as sticky, austere and dark as possible. The blues inhabited Mark Lanegan. The blues of Leadbelly in particular, a passion shared with Kurt Cobain whom he was seeing at the time.

Alongside the Screaming Trees, Mark Lanegan went solo from 1990 with the album The Winding Sheet published by Sub Pop. More intimate, more blues and darker, the tone is that of a real solitary songwriter with great potential. This is confirmed four years later with Whiskey for the Holy Ghost, a masterpiece on which Tad but also J Mascis and Mike Johnson of Dinosaur Jr. came to play. Many side projects followed, such as Above a unique album of Mad Season, the super group of Layne Staley of Alice In Chains, Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, Barrett Martin of Screaming Trees and John Baker Saunders of the Walkabouts, on which Lanegan sings on five tracks.

Mark Lanegan's aura was such that he could invite many big names on his solo albums: Duff McKagan of Guns N'Roses and Ben Shepherd of Soundgarden on Field Songs (2001), PJ Harvey , Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs, Dean Ween of Ween, Duff McKagan and Izzy Stradlin of Guns N'Roses , Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri from Queens of the Stone Age on Bubblegum (2004). From Rated R (2000), the second album of Josh Homme's band, Lanegan holds the microphone on several titles. He eventually becomes an official member in 2014.

It was another more unexpected but no less exciting collaboration that fleshed out his CV in the mid-2000s: a duet launched with Isobel Campbell, the former singer of the pop group Belle & Sebastian. Three magnificent albums, in line with the legendary duos Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazlewood and others Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg, that expanded his discography: Ballad of the Broken Seas (2006), Sunday at Devil Dirt (2008) and Hawk (2010). Between 2003 and 2009, there was also the adventure Gutter Twins with Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs.

If Mark Lanegan was a writer, he was also a voice. The relentless vocals of a hoarse rock Barry White who remained the same whether the music was grunge, psychedelic or tinged with electro like on the astonishing Blues Funeral of 2012 where guitars and machines merge to perfection… Author of several books (his memoirs, Sing Backwards and Weep, were published in 2020 and Devil in a Coma on his experience of COVID was released the following year) and fans of artists as diverse as Gérard Manset, Jeffrey Lee Pierce of the Gun Club, krautrock bands Harmonia, Cluster and Kraftwerk and the country of Townes Van Zandt, Lanegan accumulated an impressive number of projects. “It’s like travelling to different countries. It keeps me awake and excited…” he explained. These favourite countries? “Working with PJ Harvey meant a lot to me. Magical, creative, warm. I consider the songs recorded with her among the best I have done in my entire career… My duet with Isobel was also one of the most rewarding adventures I have had. I like the idea of ​​singing songs written by a woman.”

Released in 2020, Straight Songs of Sorrow designed with the help of guests including his old accomplice Greg Dulli, Warren Ellis of the Bad Seeds, John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, Adrian Utley of Portishead or even Ed Harcourt, was his ultimate rock'n'roll high mass that deserves to be experienced. At last album which once again showed that his art was as kaleidoscopic as possible, between contemporary grunge, electro-rock, austere blues, strange folk and shamanic ballad. Driven as always by his charismatic baritone voice, this disc was entirely autobiographical for the first time, inspired by his personal story and inseparable from his memoir, Sing Backwards and Weep.

“While writing this book, I had no catharsis. All I got was a Pandora's box filled with pain and misery. I walked in and remembered some bullshit I put aside twenty years ago. But I started writing these songs as soon as I finished my work, and I understood that there was a deep emotion because they were all linked to the memories of the book. It was a relief to suddenly return to music. Then I realized that was the gift of the book: those songs.

Yes Mark Lanegan's songs were often gifts. Sometimes poisoned. But gifts that will be missed...