Mark Lanegan of the Screaming Trees and Queens Of The Stone Age performs at Koko in London on June 22, 2017. Photo by Alberto Pezzali/NurPhoto.

Mark Lanegan died at his home in Killarney, Ireland on Tuesday. As vocalist for The Screaming Trees, Lanegan was part of the grunge explosion that came out of the Pacific Northwest in the early ’90s, though the band formed way back in 1984. The Screaming Trees joined bands like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden that went from being bar bands to being courted by the biggest labels in the industry following the wake of Nirvana’s success. Following his stint with the Trees, Lanegan released 11 solo albums and collaborated with everyone from Kurt Cobain (recording an unreleased collection of Leadbelly covers together) to members of Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains.

His family released a short statement Tuesday morning: “Our beloved friend Mark Lanegan passed away this morning at his home in Killarney, Ireland. 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. The family asks everyone to respect their privacy at this time.”

Lanegan lived a difficult life and his years with The Screaming Trees were peppered with tales of onstage temper tantrums and inebriation. When I saw the band play a tiny hole in the wall across the street from Wrigley Field in 1991, Lanegan stormed off the stage after two or three songs. Brothers Gary Lee and Van Conner, the band’s guitarist and bassist, entertained the crowd for another 10 or 15 minutes by tackling each other on stage.

Lanegan was good friends with Kurt Cobain and was reportedly invited to visit the singer at his home shortly before Cobain’s death. Lanegan struggled both publicly and privately with alcoholism and heroin addiction, but credited Courtney Love with helping him to get sober after she paid for a year of his drug rehab. Lanegan was friends with the late Anthony Bourdain, who encouraged Lanegan in the writing of the singer’s memoir, Sing Backwards and Weep, which came out in April 2021.

The melodic gravel of Lanegan’s vocals helped The Screaming Trees find a sweet spot between the rutting aggression of bands like TAD with the radio-friendly melodic sludge popularized by Nirvana. The Screaming Trees scored an MTV hit with their overdriven anthem “Nearly Lost You” which appeared on the soundtrack for the cinematic ode to angsty flannel, 1992’s “Singles.” Lanegan’s solo work tended toward more mellow acoustic moods. “Ugly Sunday,” on Lanegan’s 1990 masterpiece The Winding Sheet, distills the singer’s gracefully somber vibe perfectly.

Lanegan suffered a very serious case of COVID-19 in 2021, which left the singer temporarily deaf and unable to walk on his own. His encounter with the illness forced Lanegan to change his tune after expressing vaccine hesitancy and speculating on connections between the pandemic and 5G towers in 2020. In an interview in January of this year, Lanegan stated that he was eager to receive his booster shot as soon as it was available.

No cause of death was given. Lanegan, survived by his wife Shelley Brien, was 57.

Follow writer David Gill at Twitter.com/songotaku.