Mark has died

[LostCause]

I guess I was not prepared for the range of emotions that I am feeling. It is not normal for me to feel them all at once. My response to the music, even though I have always LOVED it significantly, has caught me off guard. We just went through my brother in law dying last month whom I was really close to. That was difficult but we did not have the open door to his soul like we do with Mark (though it is still slightly veiled). We have accompanied him through so much as he has accompanied us. We might not "know" what everything is exactly about like Raeni said above, but he was opening himself up in a profound way.

[dcdog]

Condolences LC, think we all could use a virtual hug . stay safe and strong.
Love is stronger than death.

[WC]

I can’t listen to him without crying. His music which was always a comfort and a balm now is like opening a wound. After reading about all of his near death experiences and his will to survive covid, this was just so unexpected however naive that sounds. This cuts deep. It is comforting reading everyone’s thoughts. I wish healing for all of us. Thank you Raeni for holding this space for everyone here.

[SheBangsTheTrums]

Three days later I’m still in shock!! It’s way worse to awake to this awful news as it meant processing it for a whole day. I cried, sobbed, had an awful headache, my eyes hurt then didn’t sleep too well that night. I pretty much played him every day for 12yrs on way to work and back - his music just talked to me like nobody else has or will!!
Love to everyone in this community - hope you’re going ok.
What kills me was that he’d been rehearsing in Belgium for a few days prior with Aldo and probably rest of band. I often wondered would he have been able to hardcore tour like he used to and would he have made it back to Australia but goddam I would’ve gone anywhere to see him again!
RIP LANEGAN ‘to the stars my love……’

[Whiskey (FTHG)]

Words from Gary Lee Conner posted to Facebook -

"Mark William Lanegan passed away today, 2.22.2022, at his home in Killarney, Ireland. He was our true brother and we all truly loved him..
In this city built on broken glass
And the carcasses of a million dead sheep
Where the blood runs thick down third street
Down the gutter to the railroad station
And takes a train
Up, over these big mountains to the sea
That's where you gotta be
You gotta go to the sea
Strange Out Here, Mark Lanegan
As we say goodbye to Mark, a member of our family, remember he still lives with us all in his music.
We Love You Forever Mark, Screaming Trees..."

[klaher]

It's been a few days now and still struggling with this. Will need the albums more than ever now.

[tripledistilled]

Feb 26, 2022 2:17:55 GMT -5 Whiskey (FTHG) said:

Words from Gary Lee Conner posted to Facebook -

"Mark William Lanegan passed away today, 2.22.2022, at his home in Killarney, Ireland. He was our true brother and we all truly loved him ... As we say goodbye to Mark, a member of our family, remember he still lives with us all in his music.
We Love You Forever Mark, Screaming Trees..."

Ah I'm loving the language used by the ST members towards Mark's passing. Declarations of fraternal love and wishing Mark peace and rest now. Heartbreaking and honourable. These big burly backwoods men who have grown and transcended their origins, all taking different paths post-ST, becoming silverback lions (Barrett Martin being particularly handsome & lionesque, right?). It's such a more healthy expression of masculinity, you know? Given some of their past behaviours and, um, misadventures, like. I take a lot of solace from that. I hope some of you might dig that aspect too.

I feel for folk on here who are still crying, bereft or dazed. Grief and mourning passes through us all differently, and at different angles and velocities. I've become quite an expert cryer in recent years - crying as a coping mechanism against some pretty serious past health issues, and by Jupiter! by Jacob's Ladder! it's the fucking best ninja healing trick I use. Welcome the tears, and usually laughing when I'm done. My torrent of tears on Tuesday (TWOSDAY 2022.02.22 etc) was what I needed to do, and have been less mournful each day since. Too old and experienced with death to spin out. But I still find myself saying now, more calmly, "Mark Lanegan is dead. Fuck." or "Lanegan died. Fucking hell." and you know what, it helps. I'm not into celebrity worship AT ALL (think this is a key common bond between us all, I imagine), but like many here, I had met Mark at gigs a few times... and 30 years of riding alongside in the Death Car... well... hence the tears, right?

Been gospel ploughing through Mark's output since Blues Funeral. Reappraisal of course, reacquainting. Just digging it. Going to be alright.

I really hope anyone who may be prone to depression or emotional dysregulation on these boards, who may be reading this, is keeping tabs on their internal barometer, and not taking the death of Mark *too* hard. If you feel you may be unsafe to yourself, please call a friend - or most people here would agree I suppose would be willing to point you in the right direction, depending where you live. Remember, you are not your thoughts. We're much more than that. Just be kind to yourself, ya wee monkeys.

OK enough from me. Remember, we've all fortunately shared time with Mark & friends on this rock hurtling through space. What luck!! Peace n love, and burn like there's no more tomorrows. Wish you well. xx


PS - the above is written to fellow fans, not directed at anyone personally close to Mark, whose grieving I'd dare not to even fathom. x

[dcdog]

I'd rather be drunk than dead, so I'll get drunk again.....or maybe not....

[tripledistilled]

Feb 26, 2022 12:29:56 GMT -5 dcdog said:

I'd rather be drunk than dead, so I'll get drunk again.....or maybe not....

It's Saturday night. Know your dosage, and proceed accordingly.

[Deleted]

Cornell's death hit me pretty hard, but Lanegan felt like a close friend even though I never even met the guy... that's just the kind of effect his music has had on me. Thank goodness his voice will live forever.

[Stephanie]

Feb 25, 2022 21:25:47 GMT -5 WC said:

I can’t listen to him without crying. His music which was always a comfort and a balm now is like opening a wound. After reading about all of his near death experiences and his will to survive covid, this was just so unexpected however naive that sounds. This cuts deep. It is comforting reading everyone’s thoughts. I wish healing for all of us. Thank you Raeni for holding this space for everyone here.

I understand and feel the same, in so many ways. Reading about Mark's ordeal (in articles and interviews - I haven't yet read the book, but I will soon) and then saying to myself - "Even COVID couldn't even take him down!" - had me lulled into a false, even smug sense of complacency that he'd be around, if not forever, at least for a good long time yet.

I'm angry that Mark's death blow most likely came from COVID. I'm angry he got caught up in all the misinformation. Even if it ultimately didn't make a difference (I got the vaccine as soon as I possibly could in April 2021, which was after Mark fell ill; I don't think the vaccine was widely available in Europe, or at least not to people without at-risk conditions, yet then either).

I'm angry that he was in such a place of creative flourishing when he died. That I spent years and years and years as a fan wanting him to write a book, then he finally did, then in a short time he'd written two memoirs and two books of poetry and seemed set to keep writing more... and then he was gone.

And yet... and yet. Even though they're not wrong, in the ultimate sense, I wince a little when I read people saying, "Oh, he died so/too young!" I mean, he did. But I don't think anyone who knows much about him can honestly say he didn't live far longer, to a much older age, than anyone, including himself, would have counted on at any point in his 20s, 30s, or even 40s.

I mean, at some point in the last 10, 15 years, I think we all decided to rewrite the Book of Mark, that instead of being dead man walking, who could go at any time, he'd likely be the Last One Standing, perhaps the only one to survive an apocalypse, perhaps become Gen X's Keith Richards and the living symbol in so many stupid jokes in which we pretend that death doesn't come for some of us. We forgot that the gods were watching, and that they remember everything, and that our cute little myths aren't the real ones that the Book of Time records.

All along, Mark was vulnerable. The macho, toxic masculine myth is that the body loves abuse! That's what makes it tough! Unh! But hard living takes its toll. And I don't mean that in a critical/judgy way. Just a simple fact. Mark was true to himself and lived a real life. Mark packed a lot of life into his years--another way it feels like a fallacy to lament his "young age." In terms of life lived, I think he was at least 100.

Thinking about Mark's death, even as it still feels so raw, even wrong, I take solace in so many things:

He didn't die when he was in the hospital with COVID, after being there for months. He didn't die having forgotten all colors but hospital white and blue. He got to leave. He got to go home.

He died in a place he loved, doing what he loved, with the woman he loved. He lived long enough to marry someone, and stay, and know a kind of happiness he seemed to think wasn't for him, at least going from what he sang in some of his earlier lyrics. And she had his back and protected him, defended him, so that he got to have his voice--his beautiful voice--up until the very end.

He wrote a fucking book. Then another. Then another. Yes, that was a gift to his fans and to his friends that wanted him to write one. But it was a gift to himself, too. I'm currently researching an article on trauma, and reading about how one of the most healing things to do for trauma is to tell your story. To work at it until you're not censoring any of it or holding any of it back in shame or fear any longer. As we know now, in clearer detail than we ever could have before he wrote that book, Mark's life was full of trauma. And he got to leave this world a little more healed from that than he could have been.

This is the gift of his relatively long years (again, at least relative to what might have seemed possible for him 30 years ago). He got to mature, and heal, and experience some really incredible things. The 57 Club is not nearly as tragic as the 27 Club.

And the thing I admire most--the thing I envy--is how Mark's life was full not just in the sense of living fully, and of loving and being loved, but in the sense of his dedication to his path and his craft and his life as an artist. This is the part that often gets neglected in the "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" memoirs. No matter how debauched or dull your life might be, if you're a creative soul, life demands certain things of you. You can either embrace them even when it almost kills you or you can push them aside and live an unfulfilled life and then die full of regret that you were too afraid to honor and fulfill the gifts you were given.

All the while he was living out some harrowing addiction stories, Mark was also pushing for his autonomy as an artist and to find his voice, which he didn't fully find until he started making his solo records. And he got to spend the last 20 years of his life as a free agent, collaborating and experimenting and always growing as an artist. How lucky we all are that he created so much amazing music in that time. And how lucky he is, as a soul now, that he took his bow after, instead of before, all that. That he was brave enough to keep walking that path even when he didn't really want to be there.

How many times did Mark nearly die? Or actually die, flatline, and then get brought back? I've read so many interviews over the years. It's all jumbled in my head now, even after reading his first memoir. But I feel like there was at least one experience prior to 2000, that he referenced in "Hospital Roll Call" and other songs on Scraps at Midnight. Then there was whatever happened in the early 2000s that he wrote about on "When Your Number Isn't Up" and elsewhere on Bubblegum. Oh, and there was the tractor accident even earlier on. Then the COVID near-death experience. That's at least four. I think there must be at least one more. Perhaps he really, almost literally, did use up all nine of his lives.

It was so eerie--in the weeks before his death, I was in a phase of listening to a lot of his music and thinking a lot about him. I'd just found out about Devil in a Coma and his poetry books and his moving to Ireland and all these things in late January/early February. And I was thinking--you can't go to hell and back, to death's door and back, that many times, without it opening some sort of spiritual channel in you. He's got to have even more spiritual power than ever before now. And I was imagining all the incredible things he might write, book-wise and music-wise, from that place.

Now--I just think--I mean, I am listening to him so much right now, and every other song seems to be sung from the lip of the abyss, at a point when he was feeling like this was the time he was finally going to go into it and not ever come back. Man, he got to live so many times when he might not have. He got to live and sing from that incredible place of having felt that maybe life was over, and then the execution being stayed, the firing squad being called down, at the last possible minute.

And in so many of the memorials I'm reading, I'm feeling vindicated, finding words for my love of Mark's music that I was always searching for and couldn't find... that listening to his music was and is a spiritual experience for so many of us. That it wasn't just me and my quirky spiritual obsessions, that Mark's music was a sacred place for a lot of us.

He was--he sang about being--a living flame, burning as he went. We all aspire, and often fail, to live that way. To be 100% true to ourselves and the muse and what life asks of us. So many people found him to be a muse. A balm when they were in a dark place or dark time.

And I believe it's because of where he sang from. A mysterious place, a liminal place, between the realms of life and death. That allowed him to sing truth back to us, perspective, about what it means to be one who lives and dies. He reminded us: There is love to be found yet. Always.

It means a lot to me to know that Mark was living when he died, looking forward to things--as much as it pains me, too. I'm glad, so glad, we got to have him for so long, that he decided to share so much of himself for as long as he did. This is gonna hurt for a long time, but there is peace here, too.

[dcdog]

Thank you Steph, your words are an anodyne.

[Stephanie]

Feb 26, 2022 15:27:34 GMT -5 dcdog said:

Thank you Steph, your words are an anodyne.

❤️

[WC]

Feb 26, 2022 15:27:34 GMT -5 dcdog said:

Thank you Steph, your words are an anodyne.

100%. Thank you for sharing these perspectives Stephanie, and for the reminder that there is a lot to be grateful for in the midst of everything.

I came here to post this article Mark wrote in 2019 that was alluded to in one of the tributes written by Heavenly which I hadn’t seen before, called “Mark Lanegan’s 10 Commandments“:

thenewcue.substack.com/p/the-new-cue-128-february-23-lost

I highly recommend it if anyone hasn’t seen it yet.

[WC]

Feb 26, 2022 13:26:48 GMT -5 Stephanie said:

And I was thinking--you can't go to hell and back, to death's door and back, that many times, without it opening some sort of spiritual channel in you. He's got to have even more spiritual power than ever before now. And I was imagining all the incredible things he might write, book-wise and music-wise, from that place.

Sincere apologies if this is completely discursive and inappropriate, but do you (or anyone else) make anything of the fact that he passed on 2/22/22? That seemed to be a spiritually significant day to a lot of people.

I have been thinking about this passage from SBAW: “The lyrical narrative of the individual songs was rooted in my day-to-day experience: pain, loss, the inner world and trials of someone strung out and struggling. Without comfort or love, searching for what, who knew? But it was something if ever found, might be located on a spiritual plane, not in the physical world.”

Also have been thinking of his dedication, “to Tony and all my other absent friends”.

[Stephanie]

Feb 26, 2022 19:34:55 GMT -5 WC said:

Feb 26, 2022 15:27:34 GMT -5 dcdog said:

Thank you Steph, your words are an anodyne.

100%. Thank you for sharing these perspectives Stephanie, and for the reminder that there is a lot to be grateful for in the midst of everything.

I came here to post this article Mark wrote in 2019 that was alluded to in one of the tributes written by Heavenly which I hadn’t seen before, called “Mark Lanegan’s 10 Commandments“:

thenewcue.substack.com/p/the-new-cue-128-february-23-lost

I highly recommend it if anyone hasn’t seen it yet.

WC ❤️

And thank you! That was a fantastic read!

Feb 26, 2022 19:57:30 GMT -5 WC said:

Sincere apologies if this is completely discursive and inappropriate, but do you (or anyone else) make anything of the fact that he passed on 2/22/22? That seemed to be a spiritually significant day to a lot of people.

I have been thinking about this passage from SBAW: “The lyrical narrative of the individual songs was rooted in my day-to-day experience: pain, loss, the inner world and trials of someone strung out and struggling. Without comfort or love, searching for what, who knew? But it was something if ever found, might be located on a spiritual plane, not in the physical world.”

Also have been thinking of his dedication, “to Tony and all my other absent friends”.

It felt significant to me.

Some spiritual folks say dates like that are portals.

The sense it gave me was of his being "called home"--a sense doubled by how he returned to the land of his ancestors right before he died. Tripled perhaps by his having peaced out right before this abominable situation with Russia and Ukraine erupted.

Who can really say, though--none of us can speak of these things with any degree of honesty and claim any kind of certainty about them.

[tripledistilled]

Yes, seconding thanks for Stephanie's beautifully-written piece above. Really insightful points, and I totally agree with your views and appraisals. Very poetic too.

I'm intrigued by your research on trauma - more than a passing interest here; love stuff like ACES score, work of ppl like Dr Gabor Mate, somatics, psychedelics, releasing trauma, working from a compassionate authenticity, etc etc. Within the bounds of personal privacy, I mean (though I'm pretty sure I'd recognise some of the faces here from Irish gigs over the years). I love keeping tabs on mental health talks, research and such. You'll often find me sitting at the fire under the stars, banging a drum or strumming a few tunes. Think I'll add some Lanegan tunes to my songbook. Thankfully he was mostly a 3-chord trick guy. :-)

And I particuarly loved "The 57 Club is not nearly as tragic as the 27 Club." Eloquently put. x

[mickyjesus]

I still bring myself to listen to Mr Lanegan yet!

[SheBangsTheTrums]

Feb 27, 2022 16:59:44 GMT -5 mickyjesus said:

I still bring myself to listen to Mr Lanegan yet!

I listened to a radio tribute show my friend did in which she played an interview she did in 2004.
I had a few tears as I listened to the songs she played but I still can’t sit and fully listen just yet 😞

[Stephanie]

Feb 27, 2022 5:31:39 GMT -5 tripledistilled said:

Yes, seconding thanks for Stephanie's beautifully-written piece above. Really insightful points, and I totally agree with your views and appraisals. Very poetic too.

I'm intrigued by your research on trauma - more than a passing interest here; love stuff like ACES score, work of ppl like Dr Gabor Mate, somatics, psychedelics, releasing trauma, working from a compassionate authenticity, etc etc. Within the bounds of personal privacy, I mean (though I'm pretty sure I'd recognise some of the faces here from Irish gigs over the years). I love keeping tabs on mental health talks, research and such. You'll often find me sitting at the fire under the stars, banging a drum or strumming a few tunes. Think I'll add some Lanegan tunes to my songbook. Thankfully he was mostly a 3-chord trick guy. :-)

And I particuarly loved "The 57 Club is not nearly as tragic as the 27 Club." Eloquently put. x

Thank you so much, td.

Love your description of what you like and what you do. I hope to make it to your neck of the woods this summer, should WWIII be avoided and another COVID variant not rip us all a new one. (A trip planned since long before I knew Lanegan had moved to Ireland, based mostly on my geeky dream to make it there for the centennial of Ulysses.) I plan to bring my dinky little lyre harp with me that I got for Christmas and have proven to be better at playing than expected. (But make no mistake--I'm no musician!) Hoping to maybe even buy a cheapie entry-level 'real harp' while there. So I can start learning more than just the right-hand melody of the tunes in my little tunebook I've put together.

Your mentioning of the ACES score was very timely. I threw it into my current article research and had to take a few personal moments after seeing how high my score was. It's funny--when, from a young age, I saw how dark my tastes ran in art and music, and noted the kind of people and stories I was drawn to, I always wondered, why? How? I haven't been through anything at all like what these people have gone through in their lives. And here I am learning decades later that there are all these different kinds of trauma and they can all fuck you up pretty good.

No doubt Lanegan's ACES score was off the charts. Which of course increases your risk for all kinds of things. Again, I'm still gutted he's gone, still have a hard time accepting it, but on the other hand can't deny what a miracle it was that he lived as long as he did and seemed to heal as much as he did. If nothing else about the circumstances of his passing were meaningful, I at least believe it was deeply meaningful he got out of the hospital and got to experience everything he did after it--writing that second book, enjoying life in Ireland with Shelley, etc.

[pooteeweet]

Stumbled upon on his obituary today. Didn't know both his parents are still alive.

www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/dailyrecordnews/name/mark-lanegan-obituary?id=33356569

Mark Lanegan
Mark William Lanegan, 57, was born on November 25, 1964, in Ellensburg, Washington to Dale and Floy Lanegan. On February 22, 2022, Mark passed away in his home in Killarney, Co. Kerry, Ireland.
As a child, Mark played sports year-round. His favorite, though, was baseball. He fell in love with it early. He made many close friends in childhood that he loved and kept all his life.
Mark found life in music. He was a prolific and original talent. He wrote and recorded many beautiful songs as a solo artist and with the Mark Lanegan Band, creating numerous albums and collaborations over a nearly four-decade career. He was also a founding member of, and vocalist for, the band Screaming Trees.
Mark had a fervor to create and did so in many ways, including poetry, music, memoir, and drawing. Artistically, he was dedicated to his own horizons.
His art was, to many, his greatest contribution to our difficult world. But Mark was, above all, a man determined to make a beautiful life, one where writing and singing were gateways to something beyond himself, one where all his friends and family could enjoy the fruit of his countless labors. Mark was convinced that everyone could improve their lives through hard work, a sense of humor, and an eye toward growth, and he demonstrated these values through his actions.
Visiting family often involved a trip to shoot pool, laughing until our sides split over the ridiculousness of life. The love he held for his Australian shepherds and cats, his passion for the L.A. Clippers, and the genuine way in which he took in what you had just said, listened and thought about it, then responded, made talking with Mark an enormous gift.
He was our deeply beloved son, brother, uncle, husband, and friend. He was fiercely loyal and, in your corner, forever. He was a protector, confidant, encourager, and teacher (though he would likely reject that title). He could make you laugh on your darkest day.
Mark is survived by his wife Shelley Brien, father Dale Lanegan (Sherrie), mother Floy Hotarek (Bill), sister Trina Lanegan, nephews Teo Bicchieri (Teresa), Paolo Bicchieri (Lucie), and David Coppin Lanegan, as well as great-niece Noémie Bicchieri.
To remember Mark, do something that you love that brings you joy. Talk to an old friend. Walk your dogs and hug them. Throw a baseball.

Published by The Daily Record on Mar. 1, 2022.

[fuellingobsession]

Shelley Brien also responded to Dylan Carson's tribute on his Instagram account, saying "He loved you so much , I can't believe he's gone 💔 my beautiful husband".

http://instagram.com/p/CaTkn7yrTGv

[Ugly Sunday]

This news was beyond painful. I've been playing all the albums in his honor since I got the news.

RIP Mark. We'll never get another like you.

[Stephanie]

What touching tributes. I’m assuming that obit was written by his sister?

I feel so much for all of us. Friends, family, and fans alike. Love to all.

[♫ ♪]

from facebook:

Barrett Martin
29g1tth1p88st5610utd ·
With the passing of our brother and bandmate, Mark Lanegan, I have found that humor is really the best medicine, and Mark knew this truth, perfectly. So I outlined 7 stories about Mark and the Trees, which I am currently writing and will post here on my pages. Humor is the operative word here, so I hope these stories lifts your spirits as we think about Mark over the coming weeks.
Story # 1
Beer Projectiles & Falling Refrigerators
By Barrett Martin
For some reason, the Screaming Trees had a propensity for throwing cans and even bottles of beer at each other, and Mark told the story in “Sing Backwards And Weep” of how I threw a can of beer at him in his New York City hotel room. This is true, and I wish I hadn’t done it, but I did. What is much more revealing about that event is the reason for my beer can chucking in the first place. It all came back in 2019, when Mark called to ask if I remembered certain stories differently from the way he remembered them. We had a really great phone conversation where I told him the things I could recall, and I’d say that his book is pretty darn accurate from everything I remember from those wild years. Anyway, Mark reminded me that it was I who threw that first beer, and the reason for this is as follows:
When we went to New York City to record “Sweet Oblivion,” the band was flat broke, but I was literally “broke ass broke” because my previous band, Skin Yard, had just split up on the plane flight home from Europe, and I had just quit my construction job to join the Trees and go to New York to make the album. I left Seattle with $100 cash in my pocket, and I remember that I spent $60 on a black leather jacket at one of those Pakistani leather markets in NYC, so I would look cool in the photo shoot for the back cover of the album. This is the photo (and the jacket) below. I only had $40 left and our label, Epic Records, had not given us any per diem money to buy food, so there we were in NYC, making a major label album and we still had zero funds to live on. My hotel roommate was Van Conner, and he and I survived on $1.00 slices of pizza and cans of Rolling Rock beer – every day. That is literally all we ate and drank, except for the free coffee in the lobby of our hotel. The one thing the label did give us were car vouchers that we could use to order a Lincoln Town Car to take us to the studio. So the label gave us fancy car rides, but money for food - not so much. We had several booklets of these car vouchers, which Van, Lee, and I would use to get to the studio, hours before Mark would arrive. Meanwhile, Mark was using up all his car vouchers riding around NYC raising all kinds of hell that we would later hear about, while we were cutting basic tracks for the album. But Mark would always arrive at the studio just in time to cut his vocals, which were of course, magnificent.
At a certain point, we were down to just one booklet of car vouchers and Mark called my hotel room and said he really needed it. I told him we only had one booklet left and we were all out of money and couldn’t afford to take taxis. But Mark charmed me into taking the booklet down to his room, which he snatched out of my hand quite rudely. I used this as an opportunity to lecture Mark on having better manners towards his band mates, and that I, the newest member of the band, wasn’t even getting food money while I was recording basic tracks for his album. I didn’t really know Mark at the time, and I had only been in rehearsal rooms with him as we prepared the songs for Sweet Oblivion. I was also as tall and even beefier than Mark, and I stood 6’3” and weighed 200 pounds, so I was built more like a linebacker than a drummer. I wasn’t about to take any shit from Mark, but he responded to my lecture with two words, which I remember exactly: “tough titty.” This infuriated me so much that I hurled my freshly opened can of Rolling Rock as hard as I could at his head, which missed him by a mile because, well, I was drunk at the time. Mark just started laughing hysterically, jumped out of his chair and hugged me exclaiming, “Well you must have been raised by Irish alcoholics too!” Which made laugh and cry a little bit, and suddenly everything was fine between us. In fact, I think we actually became brothers in that moment because we understood certain things about each other: I learned that Mark had a wicked sense of humor that disarmed most situations, and he understood that I cared about the band more than myself.
Well, the beer projectile karma came back on me years later, after the Trees had played a truly magnificent show in Cincinnati, which was one of the greatest shows I have ever played in my life. We played for something like 3 hours, playing absolutely every song in our catalog, plus a whole bunch of covers by The Velvet Underground, Cream, and the MC5. The encore was a Q & A where the audience could ask Mark questions, and he would answer in the most hilarious, good-hearted way. It was a truly magnificent show. After we finally ended 3 hours later, we went backstage and Mark and Lee got into some kind of petty argument. I said something that I thought was pretty neutral, but it caused Lee to hurl a full, unopened beer bottle at my head, which I ducked and barely missed, feeling it graze the back of my neck as it stuck, nose first in the sheetrock wall behind me. It literally could have killed me, and this infuriated Van to the degree that he screamed like a gladiator as he lunged at Lee, and both brothers began brawling like Godzilla versus Mothra, duking it out as they destroyed the entire backstage. At one point, they collided with a massive 1950s refrigerator that toppled over and landed on top of me, with Van and Lee howling and brawling on top of the fridge. I was crushed, literally.
Mark was sitting in an armchair laughing his ass off the entire time as he watched the spectacle unfold, and Van finally subdued Lee to where I could extract myself from underneath the fridge. But it just goes to show:
If you chuck a beer at someone, you will surely have one chucked back at you, even if it’s many years later. And it might include a refrigerator as well.