Mark Lanegan performs live in Rome on May 14, 2010. Photo: Simone Cecchetti/Corbis via Getty Images When Mark Lanegan died on February 22 in Killarney, Ireland, shock and disbelief hit not only the music community, but Lanegan’s friends and collaborators.
Lanegan performing with his Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age collaborator Josh Homme. Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images Moby, singer and producer: I was beginning to work on this album called Innocents that was going to have a bunch of different singers, and I wanted to have Mark on the record. I’m a small person and not very brave, but when it comes to pursuing people with amazing voices, I put aside my cowardice and become pretty hyperfocused in pursuing people.
Peter Hook, Joy Division/New Order: When my son was a teenager, he was into much different music than I’d ever been into. He was into grunge and bands like Metallica and Queens of the Stone Age. As a parent, I made the mistake of letting him use my iTunes, which was everything in the old days, to download whatever music he wanted. On a walk or jog, I started listening to all of his music, thinking, Oh my God.
Joe Cardamone, the Icarus Line, Dark Mark and Skeleton Joe: For our [Dark Mark and Skeleton Joe] record, I’d create an instrumental by myself and send it to him. He was really fast, and most times I’d get a voice message from him the next morning singing into his phone over the music. Sometimes within hours, and that was it. We’d pop into the studio, commit a vocal, and I’d finish up whatever needed to be done. It was beautiful, man. I still have all the voice messages.
Hanging out with Mark, it was like standing underneath a high-power transformer, where there’s so much narrative flowing through it. So much poetry, so much darkness, so much light. Just so much energy that you can feel the air around it hum and crackle. And he was such a powerful character just to sit in a room with. It’s like, motherfucker had been dead so many times and come back that it meant that his body had been weakened.
Mishka Shubaly, Sing Backwards and Weep editor: He played such a huge role in my life as a hero, a mentor, as a friend, a ball-busting buddy, and a huge pain in my ass. Lanegan and I clashed often and hard. It was really hard on him. I think literature is more important than any one person’s suffering. I really pushed him to walk through the graveyard and to talk to every ghost. I promised him that it would lead to catharsis and a diminishing of his burden.
drewster187 Missed.