"Our beloved friend Mark Lanegan passed away this morning at his home in Killarney, Ireland. A beloved singer, songwriter and musician, he was 57 and leaves behind his wife Shelley 'Brien', is it written on the own Twitter account of the disappeared, specifying that "no other information will be available" for the moment by "respect for family privacy".
Born in November 1964, near Seattle in Washington State (northwest), Mark Lanegan was first the singer and leader of the rock and "psychedelic grunge" group Screaming Trees from 1984 to 2000, then a member of the Queens of the Stone Age band until 2014.
Having also led a solo career and collaborated with other artists, he can boast about fifteen studio albums.
In addition to his talents as a musician (guitar, keyboards), he was renowned for his baritone voice.
Mark Lanegan was the friend of Kurt Cobain, of the mythical group Nirvana, who committed suicide in 1994 at the age of 27, as well as the American chef and writer Anthony Bourdain, who also killed himself by hanging in Alsace ( East of France) in 2018.
The musician has never made a mystery in his autobiography of his addictions to alcohol and heroin and recounted having been close to death in March 2021 because of the Covid-19, a disease for which he believed for a time in certain conspiracy theories, before making his self-criticism and advocating vaccination.
In a 2020 interview with the French edition of Rolling Stone magazine, posted online for free on the occasion of his death, Mark Lanegan wanted to "minimize his place in the grunge dynasty", according to the newspaper.
"To keep making music, I had to distance myself from the whole Seattle thing. I had to keep my distance to avoid being known as a drug-addicted ex-grunge who never successful," he replied to Rolling Stone.
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© 2022 AFP