A Tribute to Mark Lanegan: 1964 - 2022

Mark Lanegan: 1964 - 2022Photo by Jordi Vidal (Click photo to enlarge)

 

The following tribute to Mark Lanegan is brought to us by Brother Alan in Seattle.

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Happy Friday to all.

I have been morning the loss of a lesser known musician, Mark Lanegan. He was the singer for the proto-Grunge psychedelic punk band, Screaming Trees, and had a long and celebrated career as a singer. He died 2/22/2022 in Ireland. He had a massive amount of songs recorded as not only a solo artist but also as part time singer for Queens of the Stone Age & many other collaborations and vocals he lended to a huge # of bands.

He covered 2 Neil Young songs at least. Cinnamon Girl can be heard at this link:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dj05xjwMIgQ

Through My Sails can be heard at this link:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OU0UNGxBn_g

He was a junkie and wrote an incredible book about his life, staying clean for 10 years before his death.

Mourning, in the morning and more in the evening. 

Mark Lanegan has left this life. I never saw him play live. I was planning on hitting up his next show in Seattle, but it was not to be. You guys know about him, I am happy to see. I have been a fan for long enough to have everything you can get on label. Solo, Gutter Twins, 2 with Duke Garwood, all the Queens of the Stone Age albums with Lanegan on them (except the last one, in which he sings one song backup). I've got Mad Season deluxe. The 3 extra tracks on that which Mark sang on to complete them after Layne Staley died. Black Book of Fear is killer. And got the 3 albums with Isobell Campbell, Soulsavers, all of his solo albums, all of the Screaming Trees albums except their first LP, Clairvoyance (which followed their 1st EP), which is out of print and expensive, more so every day now. Prices and shortages of all his albums are surging, from $40 to $100. Many are unavailable, perhaps half.

So many great songs and albums. He would sing for almost any band or Artist that asked him to. So he has a million collaborations. And you can listen to all of his recorded tracks at MarkLanegan.com It may have been created in the spirit of NYA.

Screaming Trees were a "Psycedelic Rock" band that played punk style in a different way, but Mark's vocals made it. Lee Conner wrote a huge number of the songs, but somehow Lanegan blossomed into an ever-changing, shape-shifting master of his underground musical world. His main fan base is in Europe, he said. He was still largely unknown in the mainstream until his death.

Lanegan hated being compared to Jim Morrison, he said and related in his book, Sing Backwards and Weep (2020). Just got his lyric and writings book, I Am The Wolf. I was 100 pages into his first book when he died.

I discovered his genius too late, but somehow I got into a feeding frenzy and picked up every single release I could get my hands on. Who wants to stream low resolution?

Odd coincidence of timing that I had picked up a dozen of his albums and side projects in the 2 months leading up to his death. 2 of them are still in the mail: Phantom Radio, and Gutter Twins. I missed the price surge by a hair.

I was listening to the Screaming Trees first LP, Clairvoyance, for the first time (streaming) as I fell asleep the night before the world found out that he had died. I like to think that is somehow a good omen. I hope to see him at the Great Gig in the Sky.

I am having on ongoing Mark Lanegan listening party every day, from now on, until I am intimate with every album.

He also has a bunch of off-label albums he sold at shows. Live shows on CD and LP and "Dark Mark Does Christmas" 2 different albums, 8 years apart.

His last known album is Dark Mark vs Skeleton Joe. Its pretty cool and the videos are outrageous, gritty, powerful, electronic driven music.

I have been on a bit of a limited Neil Young diet as of late. Mark Lanegan is what is playing endlessly. I will let you know when the listening party ends. It will be about a month or two.

He is gone but NEVER forgotten. His Art enriched the world. He was extraordinarily prolific and his albums are typically very good. he doesn't really have bad albums, I guess.

Lanegan used to score Heroin for his good friend, Kurt Cobain, every day after Nirvana made it big. Cobain idolized Lanegan as a Big Brother because Screaming Trees were one of the originators of of the music that became Grunge. Them and Soundgarden. There were a lot of bands. Alice in Chains in 1990 released their first album, a masterpiece.

Mark Lanegan was close friends and using buddies with Layne Staley. In fact, he hung with him even in his later years as he circled the drain. They toured together and shot a lot. Mark said Layne always gave his live shows absolute devotion and poured himself into it with great power every night, no matter how hard he partied the night before, etc.

His Artistry draw comparisons to Tom Waits in some ways.

Alan in Seattle, where Grunge was born, where Mark Lanegan launched his career. Rest in Peace. See you at the show.  

Brother Alan in Seattle.

PS- Good night. 

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NEW TIMELINE CONCERT: Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Rotterdam, The Netherlands on Mar 24, 1976 | NYA

Neil Young & Crazy Horse  Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Mar 24, 1976 via Sugar Mountain
 

A 1976 Tour of Japan & Europe concert by Neil Young & Crazy Horse at Sportpaleis Ahoy' in Rotterdam, The Netherlands on Mar 24, 1976 is now streaming on Neil Young Archives.

From Neil Young Archives:

March 3, 2022

Touring with the Horse in 76, after arriving in Oslo Norway from Japan, we crossed Europe and played a great rock and roll hall in Rotterdam. Then we went on and toured the the US. An album was made and a film was created to memorialize that world tour. Perhaps the Horse was at the first peak of its powers. It was a great tour. Coming soon in NYA Volume 3, the film and the record.

Love Earth, Be well, Neil

More reviews and photos on Sugar Mountain, as always.

 

1976-03-24, Sportpaleis Ahoy', Rotterdam, The Netherlands

via Sugar Mountain

 

Also, see Neil Young Archives: Complete Listing of "Timeline Concerts of the Week" + UPDATE: NYA Subscriber News.

Here is a listing of all of the Neil Young concerts on the NYA Timeline:

• Boulder, Colorado, Nov 6, 1976 w/ CH 
• Melbourne, AUS (The Plenary) 13th march 2013 w/ CH
  
• San Jose, 1984-06-06,  w/ The International Harvesters  
• Antwerp, July 9, 2019 w/ POTR
• Paris, 11 dec 1989
• Stockholm, 3 jul 2001
• Kelowna, 22 apr 2009
• Hunter Valley, 9 mar 2013
• Belfast, 7 jun 2016 w/ POTR (3h !)  
• Amsterdam  w/ Promise of the Real - July 9, 2016  (205 mins and 26 songs the longest Neil show ever)
• Solo Trans Tour, Buffalo - 1983
• w/ Booker T. & The MGs at Finsbury Park - London, England on July 11, 1993 
• Solo @ United Palace - New York City, New York, Dec 16, 2007
• Los Angeles, 1999 Solo Tour  
• Solo @ Canterbury House, Ann Arbor, Michigan - Oct 16, 1969
• w/ The Bluenotes - CNE, Toronto - August 18, 1988 
• Solo @ Fox Theatre, Atlanta, May 29, 2010
  

(Have we missed any?  Is there a complete listing on NYA somewhere???)

  TIMELINE CONCERT OF THE WEEK | NYA

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Photo of the Moment: Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Cleveland, Ohio, Oct. 8, 2012

Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Cleveland, Ohio - Oct. 8
Alchemy Tour 2012
Photo by TW
(Click photo to enlarge)

 

Ahhh, life on the rail.

We were quite fortunate to have a few rail experiences on the Neil Young & Crazy Horse Alchemy Tour 2012.

More photos and stories on Thoughts & Memories of Alchemy Tour: Neil Young & Crazy Horse 2012.

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ATTENTION All TW EMail Notification Subscribers: This IMPORTANT Note's For You (UPDATE)

Hello,

This alert is being issued for awareness to all of our email notification subscribers.

Last year, we announced that our daily Thrasher's Wheat Neil Young News email notification subscriptions would cease operations.

It took us a very longtime to build our email notification mailing list and it troubles us greatly that yet another TW communications channel is being shutdown in a long running pattern of suppression, discrimination and censorship against this platform and similar independent media voices. [diatribe end]

So we are now attempting to manage the existing mail list manually.  We will have to see how this works.

Today, we attempted distribution of our 1st email notification to previous subscribers.  Please be on the lookout and check your SPAM folder.

That is all.

thrasher

ps - btw, if you're expecting a reply email back from us, please check your SPAM folder.

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INTERVIEW: Neil Young - SPIN 1993 Artist of the Year

Neil Young Farm Aid - April 24 1993(Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns -- Click to enlarge)

 

This past weekend, we posted a discography overview titled "Every Neil Young Studio Album, Ranked" | UPROXX by Steven Hyden which contained a quote we were not familiar with:

Neil Young: “I know that the sacrifice of success breeds longevity.

That’s an axiom. Being willing to give up success in the short run ensures a long run.”

The quote sparked an interest in tracking down the SPIN interview when Neil Young was named "1993 Artist of the Year".  The interview originally appeared in SPIN’s January 1994 issue.

 

Neil Young: "1993 SPIN Artist of the Year" - Jan. 1994

 

Neil Young: [in response to his mid-’80s albums] “I was doing things that didn’t really commit me one way or the other. 

I think I was disillusioned with a lot of things— [I was disillusioned ] with life. 

For whatever reason, I chose to disguise the music, and keep everything inside the music, and not reach out, do things in styles that I knew would piss everybody off so nobody would even buy it or listen to it.

I don’t make excuses for those records. I think those records are going to stand up, in time. 

I don’t feel the records are not as good as the records I’m doing now. I just feel that they’re not aimed at success—in any way. Yet if you put them on a wall—I look at them as if you’re walking through a museum. You see somebody’s paintings. You go, ‘Wow, look at this period here! Is this weird!’ 

Especially considering what came after it and what was before it. And then you have to look at ‘Well, during that period, what was the artist doing?’—and even knowing what he was doing, no one knew what was going to follow. 

Obviously [in my case], people considered nothing was going to follow. This was the end.”

Full SPIN interview with Neil Young when he was named "1993 Artist of the Year". 

Incidentally, so why exactly did SPIN Magazine name Neil Young their 1993 Artist of the Year?  Because, to quote: "If the 48-year-old Young can be named Artist of the Year for 1993, it’s not only because of what he’s done over the last 12 months or so, but because of the extraordinary fusion of weight and grace in his work of the last four years."

For more on  Neil Young 1980's albums, see ‘Trans’: An Album So Controversial, The Label Sued Neil Young Over It: Revisiting The Legend’s Robot Rock Opus. 

Also, see Reassessing Neil Young's Geffen Records Years.

Year 1982 - Neil Young Pulled from the Future into the Past
(Out of the Blue, Into the Black)

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Comment of the Moment: Every Neil Young Studio Album, Ranked | UPROXX

A Few of Neil Young's "Studio"* Albums(Click photo to enlarge)

 

This past weekend, we posted an overview titled "Every Neil Young Studio Album, Ranked" | UPROXX by Steven Hyden.

The UPROXX overview provided a very in depth look at Neil Young's career with a focus on studio album -- with a few exceptions* -- and it seemed most appreciated Hyden's efforts to attempt some type of "Big Picture" of Neil Young's wild career.

So, here is our Comment of the Moment on "Every Neil Young Studio Album, Ranked" | UPROXX by Dan:

I’m of the opinion that attempting to rank or categorize art (be it music, writing, painting, dance, compositions, etc, etc), is ultimately an exercise in futility. 

Concerning an artist as prolific as Neil Young, with his extensive body of work, everyone will obviously have their personal favorites, yet personal taste shouldn’t be equated into the overall value of such a vast output. Nor should numbers of unit’s sold, or a ‘Rolling Stone Magazines’ 500 greatest albums of all time list. A body of work this vast contains way too many variables to condense into a simple list.

There are different eras where Neil’s focus is represented clearly, and others where the results were more of a mixed bag of different textures. Neither one should carry more, or less weight when evaluating the whole. Each one has value. To dissect a fifty plus year career requires the ability to first accept the whole, and then begin to dig deeper into the individual works. Each one carries with it the times in which it was created.

There are internal and external elements that need to be considered before one can claim an understanding of the finished product. At the time the artist begins their work on a particular project there are things occurring within their personal lives. And in some cases those things may also be affected by historical events happening outside their personal lives. The health and well-being of the artist. Their relationships with family and friends. The current trends and fashions happening in their respective fields should also be considered. There are so many different aspects of creating works of art, and these outside elements can play a big part in the finished results. So they must be considered when assessing their individual worth, and how each relates to the whole.

As a body of work, I believe that Neil Young has created something truly extraordinary for future generations. Not only for them to enjoy, but also to learn a great lesson from. He’s an exemplary example of an artist who fearlessly follows his own heart, and refuses to be dictated by anyone else’s opinions or ideas of what he should, or shouldn’t do with his gift. He has always trusted and protected it from being infiltrated by outside forces, and this is one reason he has sustained such a long career. This may be his greatest lesson for future generations…. Stay true to yourself, first and foremost. Always trust your heart and follow the muse wherever it leads you.

When we look back on the history of art in all its forms, it has always been those who refuse to settle; pushing the boundaries of their craft. These are the artists we recall with the most admiration. The artists who are driven by their natural instincts to do the work. Not for monetary gain or public adoration, but because it must be done, because they are compelled to do it.

That is how I categorize Neil Young’s overall output, and the highest of qualities in which it exhibits for those willing to listen with an open heart and mind.

Peace

Thanks -- as always - for another CotM Dan! Many thanks for the careful thoughts and even keel.

The UPROXX review wasn't just another run of the mill catalog rundown. Again, not that anyone really needs another album review list, but this article makes a very sincere effort to capture both BIG NY and little NY albums. We found Hyden's review to be actually quite personalized. Kind of thought the Harvest review pretty much summed up the classic view on Neil ... as a romantic.

As we mentioned in the comments, one of the most enlightening observations was how Neil's 1980s albums don't seem so strange at all when compared to some of his post 2000 work. Afterall, look at how history has re-evaluated TRANS. TRANS has gone from the bottom of the barrel to the middle of the pack, thanks to FITR (which we love, of course.)

For us, we look at Neil Young's discography as fitting into 3 rust buckets:

1. Essential
2. Interesting
3. Non-Essential

And if it really is all one song, then the song remains the same -- only it keeps getting longer and longer and louder and louder ... or something ...

 

Neil Young
Swedish TV Interview Discussing His Catalog - 2005

 

Also, see: 

• Neil Young Albums From Worst To Best | Stereogum  
• The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time| Rolling Stone
• Every Neil Young Album Ranked | The Guardian) 
• Neil Young's albums, reviews and commentary
• Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Times
• Neil Young: Rolling Stone | 100 Greatest Guitarists
• Reviews of 52 Neil Young Albums | Everybody's Dummy 
• Results and discussion of Poll for Favorite Neil Young Studio Album of 21st Century 
• Comment of the Moment: Poll Results for Favorite Neil Young Studio Zero's Album 
• Neil Young on Swedish TV Interview Discussing His Catalog - 2005
• Listening to All of Neil Young's Albums in Chronological Order: His journey, his self-appointed task by Mike "Expecting 2 Fly"

 

Neil Young Album Cover Images via Sugar Mountain | Discography

(Click photo to enlarge)

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Every Neil Young Studio Album, Ranked | UPROXX

Neil Young Album Cover Images via Sugar Mountain | Discography

(Click photo to enlarge)

 

Sometimes you can trust the ranking, polling and voting and sometimes ... 

From Every Neil Young Studio Album, Ranked | UPROXX by Steven Hyden,  a very in depth look at Neil Young's career with a focus on studio album -- with a few exceptions. (Thanks Mike "Road Dawg"!)

The review begins with the following  Neil Young quote:

“I know that the sacrifice of success breeds longevity.

That’s an axiom. Being willing to give up success in the short run ensures a long run.”

We were not familiar with the quote and went hunting around for it and located in a SPIN interview when Neil Young was named 1993 Artist of the Year:

[continued] "If you’re really doing what you want to do. I think that works. I don’t know.

I won’t know for 20 years.” He broke off laughing.

Well, 30 years on from the quote, do we really know yet?  Maybe it will take another 30 years to fully comprehend the vast legacy Neil Young continues to churn out like wake from a yacht.

And so it is that the rather daunting task to ever attempt to rank or categorize or compartmentalize Neil Young's body of work given it's sprawling range, idiosyncrasies, style/genre hopping eras -- to name just a few pitfalls.

Starting with Living With War (2006) at  #42, UPROXX's Hyden valiantly trundles down the broken roads and across the superhighways attempting to explain the weirdness of the 1980's Geffen years with the even more bewildering and exhilarating post-2000 releases.

Check out Every Neil Young Studio Album, Ranked | UPROXX by Steven Hyden.

Also, see:

Neil Young Albums From Worst To Best | Stereogum
(Click photo to enlarge)

 

The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time| Rolling Stone
P. 80 - 3 of Neil Young's Albums
 (Click photo to enlarge) 

1. Rust Never Sleeps (1979)

 (see Every Neil Young Album Ranked | The Guardian)

More on Neil Young's albums, reviews and commentary.

Also, see Neil Young on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Times.

Also, see Neil Young: Rolling Stone | 100 Greatest Guitarists.

UPDATE:  

• Results and discussion of Poll for Favorite Neil Young Studio Album of 21st Century 
• Comment of the Moment: Poll Results for Favorite Neil Young Studio Zero's Album  
• The Essential Neil Young Albums
  

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