Mark Lanegan, who died on Tuesday morning at the age of 57, was perhaps the greatest singer of his generation. His remarkable gift was apparent from his earliest work with Screaming Trees: a worn, soulful burr betraying heavy emotional and physical mileage, but possessed of considerable dignity, vulnerability and heroism.
It only deepened as he pursued a lauded solo career, served as floating vocalist-in-residence with Queens of the Stone Age and engaged in collaborations with artists including Isobel Campbell, Greg Dulli, Martina Topley-Bird and Manic Street Preachers. A drug user and alcoholic for many years, Lanegan wove his agonising struggle with addiction into a grim, gripping memoir, 2020’s remarkably frank Sing Backwards and Weep, at the insistence of his late friend Anthony Bourdain. His 2021 bout of Covid-19 – which left him hospitalised for weeks – yielded a further tome, Devil in a Coma, published in December.
