Musics dark prince as remembered by his friends and collaborators.
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There was the myth created around his persona, and then there was the guy I knew.
When you meet your own kind, its only natural to latch on to each other.
It makes the abyss of the music business a little less lonely.
I saw his collaborations with me as a gift.
He was so fucking generous, and would give whatever he could to help someone he cared about.
Often, all he had to give were his collaborations.
I had never really looked at it that way, and only through my own stilted perspective.
Im not so much a collaborator and keep to myself.
I looked at it as a compromise I made to branch out to different communities.
That was my own selfish, creative perspective.
Thats what it was all about.
He was lending what he had of value to lift up people he cared about.
He was a fucking music fan in a real way.
I went up to him backstage and I was very nervous.
I said, My names Moby and I loved that version of the Gun Club song you did.
And immediately, he became the sweetest person on the planet.
I played him some music I was working on and gave him an instrumental.
He took it home, and a few days later he came back to my studio.
Everything had been written perfectly.
But this one song calledThe Lonely Nightgot released onInnocentsand it has such a poignancy to it.
Its just a very beautiful, poetic look at some pretty dark stuff.
This is the first time Mark and I worked together.
My band and I were starting preproduction rehearsals for the very first of my Nico tribute concerts in 2008.
Everything was kind of a mess, to be honest.
By the time we started playing anything resembling music, we were totally fried and ridiculously silly.
I began singing in my lower range, then lower, and even lower.
He was into grunge and bands like Metallica and Queens of the Stone Age.
I loved it, though.
He said, Theres loads of great musicians that are massive Joy Division fans, Dad.
Why dont we ask them to play with us?
I was like, What?
Jack mentioned Moby, Perry Farrell, and Mark Lanegan.
I still didnt have a clue who he was or where hed come from.
I respect Jacks opinion, and he said, Lanegans playing tonight in Manchester.
Why dont you check him out with me?
I went down, and lo and behold, I knew nearly every song.
We did Transmission, Atmosphere, and, I think, Love Will Tear Us Apart.
Then, when we were in America, Mark would come and play with us.
I think he played with us four or five times, and we became friends.
Or they say theyll do something in five years when theyre free.
Once the orchestral version was mixed, I sent it to Mark and I didnt hear from him.
I thought it was odd because we were in pretty steady contact and he was very responsive.
I finally heard back from him and he told me that hed been in a coma.
Its got my name on it, but its Mark and Kris.
Im just the weirdo.
Im the technician in the background.
I hope that anyone listening to it doesnt think of it as my song.
Mark wrote the lyrics and its such an earnest, beautiful song.
I had no involvement in the lyrics.
Sometimes within hours, and that was it.
Wed pop into the studio, commit a vocal, and Id finish up whatever needed to be done.
It was beautiful, man.
I still have all the voice messages.
He had the gift of having no filter with what he wanted to say and turning it into poetry.
He could do that in a simple, direct way.
For that alone, hes at the top of my list of all-time greats.
Mark could sing the phone book and youd listen.
His voice was a unique gift.
He was also a great writer, and thats the fucked-up thing.
In the last few years, he had really started taking writing seriously.
We were on tour in 2017, and he kept hinting that he might start working on a book.
He didnt think he could do it, as it was a daunting task and a new thing.
I told him, Theres no way you cant write a book.
I hate rock books, but his reads more like literature.
In rock-and-roll culture, theres a lot of stupid romanticization of drugs and hard living.
He showed the truth in the brutality of that life.
Its not a rebellious affectation.
Its just desperation, and not a cool trip.
In that regard, its not a typical rock memoir.
Mark hated rock memoirs and bios.
The only one he liked was John Phillipss memoir.
Marks writing had much more in common with Jim Carroll and Charles Bukowski than Motley CruesThe Dirt.
Mishka Shubaly,Sing Backwards and Weepeditor:I think Mark was convinced that he was born bad.
Specifically, had he been molested, or abused, or raped, or kidnapped, or imprisoned.
He said, I know what youre getting at and none of that ever happened.
When I was a little kid I was so bored.
I was such a freak.
We talked about suicide when we were writing the book.
I was like, Mark, you kind of missed your fucking window, bro.
Like as bad as shit was, how did you not tap out?
I do think he was death-obsessed, though.
Ive seen some speculation that he killed himself.
I think thats a bunch of fucking bullshit.
I think Mark made up his mind early and often that he wanted to live.
And the thing that kept him alive was his desire to create.
He was determined to keep making shit until somebody forced him to stop.
So much poetry, so much darkness, so much light.
And he was such a powerful character just to sit in a room with.
This ones not worth the trouble.
Peter Hook, Joy Division/New Order:When I read his book … oh my God.
You literally need to put your seat belt on for it.
Its the wildest ride Ive ever been on as a human being and an author.
Theres the truth, and then theres the absolute, honest, unblemished truth.
He laid everything out, all his faults.
I was so in awe and so proud of him for being able to do that.
There was no showbiz claptrap.
He was quiet and cool.
In the end, he felt more like a friend than a showbiz friend.
His presence was very stoic, but he was a pleasure to be with because he had no agenda.
He was very genuine and down-to-earth.
The best thing in the world about him was that he did not suffer fools gladly.
He was a great musician and lyricist, and a fantastic workaholic.
He had a tremendous, full-on work ethic.
He was a really good baseball player in high school.
All of his albums are good, and several are great.
He never put out a bad record.
I think hes one of the great American voices.
Im perfectly happy saying Sinatra, Sam Cooke, Nina Simone, and Mark Lanegan in the same sentence.
That will only take you so far.
They never stopped working, and it was an around-the-clock commitment.
Mark never stopped until the end.
Lanegan and I clashed often and hard.
It was really hard on him.
I think literature is more important than any one persons 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.
But he said that he never got that relief, and I feel terrible about that.
We had to take that journey together.
And Im so grateful that we did.
I will mourn Lanegan until the day that I die.
Greg [Dulli] knew that Mark and I would hit it off, and we did.
One thing I loved about Mark was he was wickedly, devilishly funny.
Mark was putting out his albumSomebodys Knocking, and they wanted to do a video.
Mark always dug the character, and to bring him back after 25 years was so fun.
I watched it the other day, and I never watch myself onscreen.
Im one of those people who cringe, but it made me smile.
It also ultimately made me so sad.
And I was scared.
I was like, Jesus, he sounds really great.
But sometimes he would say it.
I liked to watch him squirm because I knew how much he did love me back.
I might have told him 4,000 times and got ten back.
He was so fucking generous.
When he found out I hadnt done taxes for 15 years, he was like, Fuck, dude.
He got my taxes taken care of.
But our biggest thing was basketball.
I had separated with my chick and I was on the couch unresponsive.
I had the blues, man.
The next year we got season tickets, and suddenly Im fucking super-obsessed and Mark is totally obsessive-compulsive.
I have probably 10,000 texts on three phones, all basketball-related.
We would obsess on the Clippers year-round, just insane.
He was so compulsive.
One year there was this dude Hedo Turkoglu, this Turkish guy, on the team.
Mark was like, Dude, you need a Turkoglu jersey!
Then he would order me the most authentic Hedo stuff he could find.
He was crazy like that.
I was like, This is amazing!
Id never been on a jet or anything.
Lanegan didnt seem to really care.
He was just Lanegan.
He was never impressed by stuff like that.
Were having a great old time, and Lanegan was in the corner, scowling and trying to sleep.
I didnt know much about him, and didnt understand his personality yet.
I knew he was a dark character that had lived a hard life, but was sober with Queens.
The rest of us were all getting wild, drinking and having a good time.
I tried to chum up to him, saying, Dude, were on a jet.
Dont you want to have fun?
And he just stared me down and wouldnt respond.
So, I kept going for him.
I was like, Ah, come on, man.
And he really didnt like that.
We played a couple more shows and Josh was like, Dude, just leave him alone.
Im like, Fair enough.
Over the course of the next few shows, I just let him come to me.
And then from that point on, we became really good friends.
Ive had plenty of friends go down that dark pathway and never come out.
I always respected Mark because he was constantly working.
He was constantly writing and constantly putting things out.
He had a hustle that would just blindside you.
There was this thing in Olympia called Capitol Lake Jam, and my band was playing with Screaming Trees.
We looked at them and thought, Look, we can actually do this for a living.
That ended up being our last show, and I moved back to Seattle.
Mark moved soon after, and we ended up as housemates.
That began our long and winding road together.
Drugs came later, as it started off as a musical friendship.
He was one of the most fiercely loyal people Ive ever known.
He also had a much bigger heart than he ever wanted anyone to know.
He was secretly really sensitive, and a much better person than he ever let himself believe.
It sounds very Protestant, but he had an insane work ethic.
He was relentlessly trying to expand and do something different with music and writing.
There was never any resting on laurels activity for him.
Kat Corbett, SiriusXM radio host:My introduction to Mark Lanegan was through Bed of Roses.
There was something uber-manly about it, but not in some bro/metal kind of way.
His voice was comforting, like you were in good hands listening to his music.
It was his apartment initially, and when he first moved in, it was quite nice.
By the time we both bounced for California, there was no power.
The floor was dangerous with all the sharp objects lying around.
Our bathroom had become unusable because this dude we were with had scored something a while back.
He wanted to go home, and I was like, No, youre not.
We locked him in the bathroom and told him, Let us know when it comes out!
While he was waiting, in a passive-aggressive manner, he had smeared his shit all over the bathroom.
I dont blame him, because we had him locked in there for a few hours.
That was the nadir of everything, you could say.
He basically called to say that they were leaving L.A. and he had made his decision to get out.
I said, Why dont you go down to Kerry to our house?
Because my family has a house outside of Killarney.
They found it and Shelley and Mark fell in love with the place and with Killarney.
Mark was incredibly prolific in these last two years.
Mark would send me poems that he had written in the house about living there.
My parents were devastated by Marks passing.
Mark sent a picture of his little setup in our living room shortly before he passed.
If you look deep, you’re free to see the lights of Killarney in the background.
Take a little breather up there, then get back to it, my friend!
It has since been updated.
