'I'm At An Age Where I Indulge My Influences And Let My Freak Flag Fly. I Don't Really Give A Damn Mark Lanegan

Mark Lanegan is not a man given to sitting around idly letting life pass him by. When Kerrang! catches up with him, his sublime new album Somebody’s Knocking is still a few weeks away from release, and yet he’s just pulled an allnighter working on another record.

- Olly Thomas

“I’ve got this book coming out, and it was suggested to me that I should put out a companion-piece record,” he explains. “I basically had two weeks to get it together. Luckily, once I’d finished writing, I actually had a bunch of songs that were directly inspired by it, which was really the only good thing that came out of the book,” he deadpans.

Mark’s talents first came to light as the vocalist of Washington State psych-rockers Screaming Trees. The band’s last two records, 1992’s Sweet Oblivion and Kerrang!’s 1996 Album Of The Year, Dust, make a pretty good argument for the Trees being one of the grunge era’s most underrated outfits, not that their frontman would agree. In a conversation today, he is lightly and amusingly disparaging about their merits.

In truth, his first band would prove only the beginning of an illustrious career for the man with one of the most recognisable voices in modern rock. Mark had already established a parallel solo career prior to the felling of the Trees, continuing as he joined Queens Of The Stone Age. His contributions provided gravelly-voiced gravitas to songs like In The Fade and A Song For The Dead, his presence offering a calm centre amidst the chaos of the band’s imperial phase.

Since stepping back from Queens, Mark has established himself as a serial collaborator. He’s worked with British artists like Isobel Campbell and Duke Garwood, electronic acts from Soulsavers to UNKLE, and fellow grunge survivors like Dylan Carlson’s Earth and Greg Dulli of The Afghan Whigs, with whom he’s performed in both The Twilight Singers and The Gutter Twins.