"As rough as a three-day beard, but as flexible and malleable as the leather of a moccasin." It is irrefutable. Mark Lanegan Erauna of the most distinctive and recognizable voices of rock, that of an indie and grunge cause icon that has lost an irreplaceable figure on Tuesday. The former vocalist of Screaming Trees was 57 years old.
The news was confirmed through his Twitter account. "Our dear friend Mark Lanegan died this morning in his house in Killarney, Ireland," says the challenge. "Dear singer, composer, author and musician, was 57 years old and survives Him's wife Shelley, there is no more information available at this time. We ask for please the privacy of the family is respected."
Lanegan, born in the Seattle of the 60s and part of a cultural explosion that reached its peak with bands such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam or Soundgarden, was also a member of two formations such as Queens of the Stone Age and The Gutter Twins, a collaboration Surgesed at the end of 2003 next to Greg Dulli. But with none reached the notoriety of Screaming Trees, pioneers of grunge from the far State of Washington and one of the largest indie phenomena of the decade.
Lanegan, with a mixture of Scottish, Irish and Welsh blood in the veins, was at the head of the band from its origins, at the end of 1984, and until the years after the launch of its Dust disc, published in 1996 in the midst of A strong dispute between the members of the group that led to its subsequent dissolution.
At first, Lanegan tried to make a position on the battery, "but they were so bad that they made me sing," he said. Over time they have ended up comparing with a giant as Leonard Cohen or even with the Australian Nick Cave. And not only by the voice but by the darkness and depth of the letters of him, on horseback between the addiction, the sadness and the exposed emotions without any filter. Youth traumas splashed many of him.
It was installed, in fact, at a nickname that justice did during his career, Dark Mark, focused on topics such as "mortality, nostalgia, loss and chemical dependence," as he explained, marked by his alcoholism and his Long history of arrests during your youth.
Lanegan, born on November 25, 1964 in a small town in Washington, Ellensburg, admitted that already 12 years old had a major problem with alcohol and that at 18 it consumed drugs without mercy. That lethal combination unleashed in the many problems of him with justice, including a litany of arrests and a sentence to serve a year between bars.
He was working on a local videoclub when a band began along with his boss's children, Guitarist Gary Lee Conner and under Van Conner, a training that then completed Mark Pickerel. Lanegan thus found the perfect exit for the permanent existential anguish of him and his childhood traumas. "I wanted emotion, adventure, decadence, depravity, all, nothing," he wrote in his memories in 2000. "I would never have found any of that in this dusty and isolated cow town, if the band could take me, take me to that life that Both long, it was worthwhile any indignity, any difficulty, any torture ".
It was rather the opposite. Screaming Trees became a reference of the psychedelic rock that emerged from such a remote state as Washington in the 90s, signing a contract with EPIC. The theme Nearly Lost You, included in your uncle anesthesia disk, catapulted them to the next level, prelude from Sweet Oblivion, its greatest commercial success.
The solo debut arrived in 1990 with The Winding Sheet, considered by Dave Grohl, Battery of Nirvana, as "one of the best discs of all time." In total, he threw a dozen solo disks.
Asked about his crucial role in Grunge, he acknowledged that "it simply happened organically, it is not something that was invented or cooked around the campfire somewhere." Although without the figure of him, it would not be understood at all.
Date Of Update: 22 February 2022, 22:25
