Mark Lanegan, grunge icon and Screaming Trees singer, dead at 57

Mark Lanegan, the lead singer of 90s rock band Screaming Trees, has died at 57.

The grunge icon, who was also a member of Queens of the Stone Age, passed away at his home in Killarney, Ireland, Tuesday morning, according to a post published on his official Twitter account.

“Our beloved friend Mark Lanegan passed away this morning,” the tweet read. “A beloved singer, songwriter, author and musician he was 57 and is survived by his wife Shelley. No other information is available at this time. We ask Please respect the family privacy.”

The singer’s shocking death comes just months after he spoke candidly about his months-long battle with COVID-19, which led to hallucinations and a medically induced coma.

Lanegan, along with his close friend Kurt Cobain, was considered one of the key figures of the grunge music genre, which originated in Seattle during the late 1980s.

The rocker was born outside Seattle in 1964. He formed Screaming Trees as a teenager alongside guitarist Gary Lee Conner, bassist Van Conner and drummer Mark Pickerel.

The band released their first LP in 1986, before signing a major label contract with Epic Records in 1990.

Screaming Trees’ biggest album, “Sweet Oblivion,” was released in 1992, selling hundreds of thousands of copies and cementing their reputation as one of the world’s biggest grunge bands. Several of their songs appeared in “Singles” — Cameron Crowe’s hit film starring Matt Dillon and Bridget Fonda about Gen X’ers living in Seattle.

The rockers released seven albums together before they split in 2000.

From 2000 until 2014, Lanegan was a backing singer and keyboardist in Queens of the Stone Age.

He also released 12 solo albums between 1990 and 2020. His last record, “Straight Songs of Sorrow,” was released just before he contracted COVID-19.

In his memoir, “Devil In A Coma,” which was published last year, Lanegan reminisced about his harrowing March 2021 battle with the coronavirus, writing: “Every attempted breath was a battle, no matter how hard I tried to take a natural one. Though I refused to go to hospital my wife finally called an ambulance behind my back and I was wheeled out of my yard on a gurney.”

He continued: “I eventually ended up in intensive care, unable to draw oxygen, and was diagnosed with some exotic new strain of the coronavirus for which there was no cure, of course. I was put into a medically induced coma, none of which I remembered.”

Lanegan said he suffered “bizarre dreams, strange visions, shadowy darkness, untrustworthy memories, and recurring hallucinations, all hallmarks of near-death experiences” following his COVID battle.

The singer also openly battled alcoholism and drug addiction in the 1990s and 2000s. He had two stints in rehab — once in 1996, and again in 2007. However, Lanegan managed to beat his substance abuse and, at the time of his death, had been sober for over a decade.