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Feb. 23 (UPI) — Mark Lanegan, the frontman for Screaming Trees and a signer with Queens of the Stone Age, has died, according to his official Twitter account. He was 57.
“Our beloved friend Mark Lanegan passed away this morning at his home in Killarney, Ireland,” the statement said. “No other information is available at this time.”
He is survived by his wife, Shelley Brien.
No cause of death was given though it follows the singer-song writer last year being placed in a medically induced coma due to being infected with COVID-19 in the spring of 2020.
The experience became part of his memoir, Devil in a Coma, that was released in December.
“I can’t process this,” John Cale, a founding member of the Velvet Underground, said on Twitter. “Mark Lanegan will always be etched in my heart — as he surely touched so many with his genuine self, no matter the cost, true to the end.”
Lanegan is regarded as an instrumental musician of Seattle’s grunge movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s as part of the Screaming Trees, whose first album came out in 1986.
The group gained success as the music genre grew in popularity, and Lanegan started working on his solo career.
By the early 2000s, the Screaming Tees had dissolved and he joined the Queens of the Stone Age for five albums. He would later found the band The Gutter Twins with Afghan Whig’s Greg Dulli.
Following the announcement of Lanegan’s death, celebrities mourned and celebrated his life online.
“Mark Lanegan was a lonely man,” Peter Hook of Joy Division tweeted. “He led a wild life that some of us could only dream of. He leaves us with fantastic words and music! Thank god that through all of that he will live forever.”
British musician Badly Drawn Boy, whose real name is Damon Michael Gough, said the news of Lanegan’s death “stopped me in my tracks.”
“I’m absolutely gutted,” he tweeted. “Met him on a couple of occasions and I was nervous because I loved him so much. He was a perfect gentleman, really kind. One of THE great singers of the last 30 years. So sad.”
