He was the friend of the legend of grunge Kurt Cobain and was himself considered a pioneer of this current born in Seattle: the American musician Mark Lanegan died Tuesday February 22 at his home in Ireland, at age 57, announced his loved ones on Twitter.
“Our beloved friend Mark Lanegan passed away this morning at his home in Killarney, Ireland. A beloved singer, songwriter and musician, he was 57 and leaves behind his wife Shelley” Brien, is it written on the missing person’s own Twitter account, stating that“no further information will be available” at this time out of “respect for family privacy”.
Our beloved friend Mark Lanegan passed away this morning at his home in Killarney, Ireland. A beloved singer, songwriter, author and musician he was 57 and is survived by his wife Shelley. No other information is available at this time. We ask Please respect the family privacy
— mark lanegan (@marklanegan) February 22, 2022
“I wanted excitement, adventure, decadence, depravity, anything, everything”wrote Mark Lanegan in his memoirs, Sing Backwards and Weeps, published in 2020. There was part of his addictions to alcohol and heroin. At the time of his death, he had been clean for over ten years.
Born in November 1964, in Ellensburg near Seattle in the state of Washington (north-west), he began to work at the age of 21 in hometown video club. With the owner’s sons, he set up his first rock and “psychedelic grunge” band, Screaming Trees. In total, the group released seven studio albums between 1984 and 2000. Mark Lanegan would then be a member of Queens of the Stone Age until 2014.
Having also led a solo career and collaborated with other artists, he can boast about fifteen studio albums. In addition to his talents as a musician (guitar, keyboards), he was renowned for his baritone voice.
Mark Lanegan was the friend of Kurt Cobain, of the mythical group Nirvana, who committed suicide in 1994 at the age of 27, as well as the American chef and writer Anthony Bourdain, who also killed himself by hanging in Alsace ( East of France) in 2018.
In a new book, Devil in a coma, published at the end of last year, he said that he was close to death in March 2021 because of the Covid-19. While he had once believed in certain conspiracy theories, he had been self-critical and since then advocated vaccination.
In an interview given in 2020 to the French edition of Rolling Stone magazine, posted online for free on the occasion of his death, Mark Lanegan wanted “minimizing his place in the grunge dynasty”according to the newspaper. “To keep making music, I had to distance myself from the whole Seattle thing. I had to keep my distance to avoid being known as a drug-addicted ex-grunge who never succeeded”, he replied to Rolling Stone.