'I was in hospital 20 minutes from my home in Co Kerry': Mark Lanegan's Irish connections

The late American star had been living in Killarney in recent years after falling in love with the area during gigging visits

Wed, 23 Feb, 2022 - 12:40

Mike McGrath Bryan

Sections of the Irish music world have been in mourning as the passing of alternative rock legend Mark Lanegan at his home in Killarney was announced on social media on Tuesday, February 22.

Lanegan, 57, was of Irish-American stock, and best known for his time in US outfit Screaming Trees, and later for his work with Queens of the Stone Age. His solo debut album, The Winding Sheet, also featured a collaboration with Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain.

Moving to Kerry in 2020 after becoming enamoured with the area when visiting again for Other Voices - the Dingle event he first played in 2004 - Lanegan set up in Killarney both as a means of re-establishing his connection to his ancestral homeland and setting up headquarters for his live touring in Europe and the UK.

We’re heartbroken to hear we’ve lost Mark Lanegan.

Rest easy Dark Mark 🌹 pic.twitter.com/0AbWjdLBCu
— Other Voices (@OtherVoicesLive) February 22, 2022

“A friend of mine had a house here,” he told the Irish Times in a recent interview, “When I became reacquainted with the physical beauty of the place and made some really good friends right off the bat, the warmth of those people made it an easy place to stay. Sometimes I have trouble with the high voice accent, but I’m learning...”

His career and personal life were marked by addiction and its consequences, as tackled by the artist himself in his first memoir, 2020's Sing Backwards and Weep, while its follow-up, Devil in a Coma, recounted his near-death experience after contracting Covid-19 in 2021 - including four weeks in a medically-induced coma in Kerry University Hospital.

He wrote of his experiences in the hospital as he experienced bizarre dreams and recurring hallucinations, not being able to work out where he was.

“In reality I was in hospital 20 minutes from my home in County Kerry, Ireland, and I didn’t realise the view in my dream was the sight out of the window in the hospital room,” he wrote in Devil in a Coma.

Not always an easy patient, he admitted he shunned the hospital staff for a week after he says they reneged on a promise of giving him a cigarette, and detailed how his long years of abuse had made him almost immune to the regular doses of some medications: “I’d been self-administering elephant-sized doses of the same shit on and off for years.”

Ultimately, however, he described himself as being “incredibly lucky” to be in the care of the Irish health system, as opposed to America's.

His experiences also made him revisit his Covid conspiracy theories, and his scepticism about vaccines, telling the Consequence website, “I was one of those knuckleheads who was wary of it. But I learned my lesson. I’ll be the first one to get a booster shot when it’s available.”

In addition to headlining sets at the festival in pre-Covid times, Lanegan also participated in its Covid-era live streaming, with one of his final performances coming from St. James' church in Dingle in 2020.

Lanegan's Other Voices connection wasn't his only draw to Ireland in recent years, however: the singer performed at Cork's Indiependence Festival in 2015, while 2017 saw him perform among the support line-up for Guns N' Roses at Slane.

Foggy Notions promoter and former No Disco presenter Leagues O'Toole was among those from Ireland's music community to pay simple tribute, with many others registering their disbelief and sorrow as the news broke.