Mark William Lanegan (November 25, 1964 February 22, 2022) was an American singer, songwriter, and poet. He was the lead singer of the Grunge band Screaming Trees, he was also a member of Queens of the Stone Age and The Gutter Twins.
He released 12 solo studio albums, as well as three collaborative albums with Isobel Campbell and two with Duke Garwood.
Lanegan began his musical career in 1984 with the Screaming Trees, with whom he released seven studio albums and five EPs before disbanding in 2000. During his time with the band, he also began a solo career, releasing his first solo studio album The Winding Sheet, in 1990.
He subsequently released another 10 solo albums, which received critical acclaim but moderate commercial success. Following the end of Screaming Trees, he became a frequent contributor to Queens of the Stone Age and was a full-time member from 2001-2005 during the Songs for the Deaf and Lullabies to Paralyze eras.
Lanegan collaborated with various artists throughout his career. In the 1990s, he and Kurt Cobain recorded an album of Lead Belly covers that was ultimately never released.
He also joined Layne Staley and Mike McCready in the band Mad Season, and formed the alternative rock group The Gutter Twins with Greg Dulli in 2003, as well as contributing to releases by Moby, Bomb the Bass, Soulsavers, Tinariwen, The Twilight Singers, Manic Street Preachers and Unkle, among others.
In 2017, Lanegan released the book I Am the Wolf: Lyrics & Writings, a collection of lyrics accompanied by explanations and anecdotes. His memoir, Sing Backwards and Weep, was published on April 28, 2020. Lanegan and Cold Cave frontman Wesley Eisold published a book of poetry Plague Poems in 2020.
Another memoir Devil in a Coma was released in 2021, which details Lanegan‘s experiences contracting COVID-19, and being admitted to Kerry Hospital in March 2021. Leaving California a final book of 76 new poems was released in 2021.
Lanegan battled drug and alcohol addiction throughout his life, but had been sober for more than a decade at the time of his death. At the encouragement of his friend Anthony Bourdain, he released the memoir Sing Backwards and Weep in 2020.
He followed this in 2021 with the memoir Devil in a Coma, which focused on his near-death experience with COVID-19. He and his wife Shelley Brien left the US in 2020 and settled in the Irish city of Killarney, where he died two years later at the age of 57 on February 22, 2022.
