Mark Lanegan
1964 - 2022
One of the last true greats of grunge rock, and one of my favorite singers who ever lived, passed away yesterday at his home in Killarney. He was 57 years old.
I first heard Mark Lanegan when I was 12 years old. My stepsister had gotten me interested in the Seattle music scene, so I was listening to a lot of Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. I used to make VHS mixtapes that I recorded off of MTV. The first tape I made was six hours long, but it only had about 40 songs on it (give or take) because they would keep playing the same music videos over and over. This was back in 1992 - long before anyone could stream or download songs. I hadn't even heard of the internet back then, and even if I did, there was no music on it. Hell, there were barely any pictures online in the early to mid 90's. For a middle school kid, discovering new music that wasn't in heavy rotation on the radio or MTV was damn near impossible. There was only one place that I knew I'd be able to find something new. It aired once a week on MTV at 1:00 am on Sunday night into Monday morning, and it was called 120 Minutes.
I used to set my VCR timer to record 120 Minutes, and I spent much of the next week borrowing my dad's VCR from the living room and hooking it up to mine so that I could record the music videos onto a new tape without the talking and commercial segments. It was on this show that I heard Nearly Lost You and fell in love with a band called Screaming Trees who had a lead singer with a voice that was other-worldly. That singer's name was Mark Lanegan. I've listened to a lot of music in my life, and with the exception of Chris Cornell, he is my favorite rock singer who ever lived.
Sweet Oblivion was one of the first albums that I bought after getting my first CD player, and I listened to it constantly; especially Nearly Lost You, Shadow Of The Season, Dollar Bill, and More Or Less. It was around that time that I learned that Screaming Trees was not a new band. They've been around since 1984, and this was their sixth album. Mark Lanegan had also recorded his first solo album in 1990; a brilliant record called The Winding Sheet in which he collaborated with Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic over a year before Nirvana recorded Nevermind. Lanegan would go on to record a dozen solo albums, the most recent of which was released in 2020, in addition another dozen Screaming Trees albums and EPs, five albums as a member of Queens Of The Stone Age, and many other collaboration projects.
Sweet Oblivion was one of the first albums that I bought after getting my first CD player, and I listened to it constantly; especially Nearly Lost You, Shadow Of The Season, Dollar Bill, and More Or Less. It was around that time that I learned that Screaming Trees was not a new band. They've been around since 1984, and this was their sixth album. Mark Lanegan had also recorded his first solo album in 1990; a brilliant record called The Winding Sheet in which he collaborated with Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic over a year before Nirvana recorded Nevermind. Lanegan would go on to record a dozen solo albums, the most recent of which was released in 2020, in addition another dozen Screaming Trees albums and EPs, five albums as a member of Queens Of The Stone Age, and many other collaboration projects.
My favorite of his songs is called More Or Less. It's the fourth track from Sweet Oblivion. If you don't have the time to listen to a wonderful singer's incredible body of work that spans over 35 years, please take three minutes and seventeen seconds to listen to this one beautiful song. Press play, close your eyes, and just listen.
Rest in peace, Mr. Lanegan, and thank you for being a voice that gave a troubled boy some peace.
Screaming Trees (1992)
Now that we've run this road so many times
Tonight it will not take us home
Gonna go to that deep river
Where the water's moving slow
Feels like there's nothing to explain
(Nothing left to hear)
One more or less it's all the same
Now that it's feeling so much colder
(Coming back again)
Just be glad that it's all over
Now that we've closed our eyes so many times
Tonight I cannot see a thing
Gonna go to that deep river
Where the water's moving slow
Feels like there's nothing to explain
(Nothing left to hear)
And now you know just who to blame
For why you're feeling so much colder
(Coming back again)
Just be glad that it's all over
Gonna go to that deep river
