Mark Lanegan, the gravel-voiced singer-songwriter who helped pioneer grunge music with his rock band Screaming Trees, then launched a career as a bluesy, introspective solo artist while collaborating with groups including Queens of the Stone Age, has died aged 57.
As the lead singer of Screaming Trees, Lanegan was an architect of the high-octane, Seattle-based grunge scene, which reached a national audience in the late Eighties and Nineties with the rise of bands including Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden. His own group never reached those commercial heights but scored an MTV and alternative radio hit with its 1992 single “Nearly Lost You”, which was featured on the soundtrack of Cameron Crowe’s Gen-X romantic comedy Singles.
