Mark Lanegan, Screaming Trees Singer, Dead at 57

Mark Lanegan, the lead singer of Screaming Trees, died Tuesday. He was 57. Lanegan was also known for his work with Queens of the Stone Age and The Gutter Twins, and released 11 solo albums during his career. Late last year, Lanegan opened up about his devastating battle with COVID-19 and released his memoir Devil in a Coma.

“Our beloved friend Mark Lanegan passed away this morning at his home in Killarney, Ireland,” Lanegan’s family said in a statement published on his Twitter page. “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’s privacy.”

Lanegan’s family did not share a cause of death. In November 2021, when Lanegan announced plans to publish Devil in a Coma, he said he battled COVID-19 for weeks and was “completely deaf” at one point, reports Consequence. He was “slipping in and out of a coma” after he was diagnosed in March 2021. It is not known if his health battle last year was related to his death.

While promoting the book in December, Lanergan told Consequence he was feeling “a million times” better and had “turned the corner.” He said there were still some “residual” effects of the illness. “Whatever I had, it attacks places where there was trauma in the body previous times,” he said at the time. “And I had a number of accidents over the course of my life. I have a chronically f—ed up knee which still gives me some pain. That was one of the strange things about the thing – it went for any place where you were injured or had something happen before.”

Lanegan was born in Ellensburg, Washington, and began his music career in 1984 as a founding member of Screaming Trees. While the group was still together, Lanegan began pursuing outside projects, starting with his first solo album in 1990. After Screaming Tees broke up in 2000, he began working with Queens of the Stone Age and became a full-time member on their 2001 album Field Songs. In 2003, Lanegan joined Greg Dulli to found The Gutter Twins. He also recorded three albums with Isobel Campbell and two with Duke Garwood. Lanegan was a close friend of Kurt Cobain’s, and he spoke with Cobain hours before Cobain’s death.

In his interview with Consequence, Lanegan said he was working on new music and said he planned to publish a new book of poetry. “I’ve got a [different] book coming out sometime next year. It’s another book of poetry, with Wes Eisold of Cold Cave fame. We did one a couple of years ago [Plague Poems],” he said in December. “And I plan on making music.”