#van conner

from raw magazine issue 101, july 8-21 1992

Mark Lanegan: Sing Backwards and Weep: A Memoir (2020)

When Mark Lanegan published his gritty, unsettling, teeth-grinding autobiography, Sing Backwards and Weep, in April of 2020 (on my 50th birthday, no less!), he was amazingly one of the few '90s grunge frontmen still breathing!

So his unsparing account of his years of drug addiction and the music career he somehow managed to pursue in spite of it with the ever-dysfunctional Screaming Trees (while close friends and peers like Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley, and others dropped like flies all around him) makes for a gripping read.

Based on Lanegan's candid misadventures, the fact that he ultimately beat the odds to enjoy immense critical acclaim, relatively stable and continued success both as a solo artist and key contributor to Queens of the Stone Age and other projects, plus some manner of personal contentment is nothing short of a miracle.

Indeed, by the time you put it down, this is one of those rock star memoirs that leave you thinking "there's no way this guy should be alive!"

And yet, it still felt like a tale of triumph over adversity with a seemingly open-ended happy ending … until Lanegan sadly passed away two years ago, still far too young at 57.

The only consolation it that he lived to be much older than many of those who knew him well could ever have expected.

R.I.P.

Featured Records:

Screaming Trees: Sweet Oblivion (1992)

Screaming Trees: Dust (1996)

Queens of the Stone Age: Songs for the Deaf (2002)