#lanegan

[grungeincluded]

Happy birthday Mark Lanegan. He would have been 60 today.

Interesting music facts about Lanegan:

Lanegan co-wrote lyrics with Kurt Cobain for ‘‘Something In the Way’’. He was not credited and in his memoir reveals he regretted not taking credit.

Lanegan was so impactful, that his album The Winding Sheet is the album that inspired Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance (and Nirvana covered ‘‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night’’ because of Lanegan’s cover). Even, Dave Grohl expressed that it is one of the greatest albums ever. 

Kurt Cobain was a fan of Mark Lanegan. Actually, all of Nirvana. Alongside, Krist Novoselic, and Mark Pickerel both formed The Jury. In August 1989, the band rehearsed at the Seattle practice space Nirvana had rented above the Continental Trailways bus station.

[krispyweiss]

Book Review: “Lanegan” by Greg Prato

It’s a weird thing to put in a biography. But in this case, the following is true.

“When it comes to Mark Lanegan, there are many things that you are better off not knowing,” music journalist Charles R. Cross says of the former Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age singer and solo artist.

Fortunately for “Lanegan” author Greg Prato, Lanegan wrote all that stuff in his harrowing memoir, “Sing Backwards and Weep,” freeing Prato to focus on other stuff in his oral biography.

Like Lanegan the man, “Lanegan” the book is non-traditional. Generous at 319 pages and including a passel of black-and-white photos from throughout Lanegan’s career, it’s self-published - released Feb. 22 on the one-year anniversary of Lanegan’s death from undisclosed causes - but professional in content and layout.

“I look at (Nirvana’s) Kurt (Cobain), (Alice in Chains’) Layne (Staley) or even more Andy Wood - Mark was darker than them all,” Cross says. “I don’t know that Mark’s death is darker, but Mark’s life was darker than any of those people.”

In addition to Cross, Prato spoke with Lanegan’s Screaming Trees bandmate Gary Lee Conner; QOTS bassist Nick Oliveri; collaborators Chris Goss (Masters of Reality), Mike Johnson (Dinosaur Jr.), guitarist Jeff Fielder and bassist Aldo Struyf; Sub Pop Records CDO Megan Jasper; original Nirvana drummer Chad Channing; former Red Hot Chili Pepper Josh Klinghoffer; former Soundgarden bassist Kim Thayil; Jesse Hughes of Eagles of Death Metal; and friends including Sally Berry, Clay Decker - who makes the dangerous assertion that Lanegan died because he was vaccinated against the coronavirus - and others. The result is an often-surprising portrait of a singular musician that paints Lanegan as an even more enigmatic figure than he seems in life and art.

“Like, we liked Lindsey Buckingham,” Hughes says in discussing Lanegan’s musical influences.

“How the fuck are you going to tell me you can see that? Point to a Mark Lanegan song and go, ‘Oh, Lindsey Buckingham.’ I couldn’t do it. So, the fact that I can’t do it tells me … Mark was in full possession the knowledge that he was unique.”

Rather than unfolding like a typical oral biography, Prato’s book is organized in 16 chapters built mostly around a single question such as “What made Mark so unique as a singer?,” “What was it like to work - in various capacities and on various projects - with Mark?” and “How would you like Mark to be remembered?” This makes “Langegan” as unusual and singular as Lanegan.

Though Lanegan left a ton of damage - to himself and his friends and collaborators - in his wake, the man who emerges from “Lanegan” is a musical omnivore (as his unlikely partnerships with Isobel Campbell and Soulsavers demonstrate) with a wicked sense of humor and a fierce sense of loyalty to the people he held closest.

“His heart was wonderful,” producer John Agnello says. “I know he was tough, I know he could be a cocksucker to people, but man, I saw things about him that I don’t think enough people saw.”

These are the things about Lanegan you are better off knowing. And they’re there for the learning in “Lanegan.”

Grade card: “Lanegan” by Greg Prato - B

3/27/23

[jarofalicesgrunge]

Alice In Chains and Screaming Trees Concert at Noorderlicht Tilburg 1993

📸 by Popline ©️

[guerrilla-operator]

SCREAMING TREES. OLYMPIA, 5/11/86.

[meetmeinthesandbox]

[jeffament]

[straightjacketfitting]

Queens of the Stone Age

Doing things the hard way forever! [insp]

The Vampyre Of Time And Memory [dir. Kii Arens and Jason Trucco]

The Way You Used To Do [dir. Jonas Åkerlund]

No One Knows [dir. Dean Karr and Michel Gondry]

Monsters In The Parasol [dir. Bob Stevens]

Go With The Flow [dir. Shynola]

Burn The Witch [dir. Chapman Baehler]

Sick, Sick, Sick [dir. Brett Simon]

Carnavoyeur [dir. Liam Lynch]

Negative Space [dir. Liam Lynch]

I Appear Missing [anim. Boneface and Liam Brazier]

Template credits: [lyrics] [playing bar] [band/discography/album]

[ph0totr0p1c]

if you aren't wearing hoop earrings, are you really grunge?

[rockingreads]

Mark Lanegan: Sing Backwards and Weep: A Memoir (2020)

When Mark Lanegan published his gritty, unsettling, teeth-grinding autobiography, Sing Backwards and Weep, in April of 2020 (on my 50th birthday, no less!), he was amazingly one of the few '90s grunge frontmen still breathing!

So his unsparing account of his years of drug addiction and the music career he somehow managed to pursue in spite of it with the ever-dysfunctional Screaming Trees (while close friends and peers like Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley, and others dropped like flies all around him) makes for a gripping read.

Based on Lanegan's candid misadventures, the fact that he ultimately beat the odds to enjoy immense critical acclaim, relatively stable and continued success both as a solo artist and key contributor to Queens of the Stone Age and other projects, plus some manner of personal contentment is nothing short of a miracle.

Indeed, by the time you put it down, this is one of those rock star memoirs that leave you thinking "there's no way this guy should be alive!"

And yet, it still felt like a tale of triumph over adversity with a seemingly open-ended happy ending … until Lanegan sadly passed away two years ago, still far too young at 57.

The only consolation it that he lived to be much older than many of those who knew him well could ever have expected.

R.I.P.

Featured Records:

Screaming Trees: Sweet Oblivion (1992)

Screaming Trees: Dust (1996)

Queens of the Stone Age: Songs for the Deaf (2002)

Buy from: Amazon

[grungeincluded]

‘‘It was impossible for me to accept that someone else could find worth in what I did because I could not. How could Kurt be a fan when I saw in him a talent that was genuinely not of this place and time, like Bob Dylan, John Lennon, David Bowie, or Jimi Hendrix? I simply had the heart of a packhorse.’’- Mark Lanegan

The Winding Sheet (1990) is Mark Lanegan’s first solo album and it’s the most important album in the development of grunge and Seattle rock music. The album is completely different than any musical work from Screaming Trees, the band he fronted from 1985 until 2000. One of the most fascinating things about this album is the fact that he had not picked up an instrument before or contributed musically to any Screaming Trees song beside lyrics. 25 years of age, working in a warehouse, the grunge icon spent his days trying to come up with melodies and lyrics for his first album. He bought a cheap and used acoustic guitar with a Mel Bay chord book and got to work.

"I remember listening to his solo album, The Winding Sheet, over and over again, when I was living in Olympia. It was winter, when the sun wouldn't come up until 8am, and would go down by 2 or 3pm - it was like a rainy Scandinavia, it was fucking depressing. And that album was the perfect soundtrack for that season.''- Dave Grohl

On ‘‘Down In The Dark’’ Lanegan sings : ‘‘I don't have very long, I think my blood might boil, And then my veins might burn, You're gonna make it better for a little while’’. And if you listen carefully, you will hear Kurt Cobain singing on ‘‘Down In The Dark’’. Whilst, Cobain plays guitar and Krist Novoselic plays bass on ‘‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night’’.

[ostdrossel]

We have several maples in the yard but they don't really look super spectacular usually. This one decided to change things up, and I love it.

[jarofalicesgrunge]

Alice in Chains and Screaming Trees flyer 90s Concerts ©️

[guerrilla-operator]

MARK LANEGAN

[twymyn99]

Queens of the Stone Age - Song For the Dead (2002)

Mark Lanegan on vocals

[spilladabalia]

Screaming Trees - Nearly Lost You