His being in Ireland was, frankly, puzzling. I saw a chance to demystify it a bit. In August 2024, I moved to the island of our forefathers as my wife took up a master\u2019s programme at University College Cork. <\/p>\n
I won\u2019t pretend I wasn\u2019t side-eyeing Mark in the decision to come. That\u2019s because, really, there is no closure. Not to things like this. Eddie Vedder<\/a>, Moby and other celebrities wrote notes of farewell to him when he died. But for our family it has been a long line of question marks.<\/p>\n Now, my being in Ireland has provided us with answers. Time being a river, it so happened that his inquest arrived more than two years after his death, in the autumn of 2024. A concert in his honour was held in London that December, 10 days after he would have turned 60.<\/p>\n Mark\u2019s inscrutable intimacy is legend. His presence was commanding: at 6ft 4in he cast a tall shadow. Narrow-set eyes and no interest in small talk. Gold-capped teeth and a laugh like a pirate who was, somehow, born at sea. He was sharkishly cool: aloof and stoic with a thrum of dark humour.<\/p>\n I set about knowing him in a deeper way like he described getting into music: by accident, as there seemed to be nothing else to do.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s not going to be able to ride,\u201d<\/b> Grandpa said. \u201cI\u2019ll go instead.\u201d I was outside an Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. I was six years old. The attendant saw Mark\u2019s arms and stopped him. Fat claws of pink and purple ran up his arm. I remember Mark scowling, walking off.<\/p>\n Uncle Mark was like this through my childhood. He was in and out. His career as a musician made that reasonable enough. It\u2019s not like everyone\u2019s uncles and aunts are recurring characters, \u00e0 la Full House. <\/p>\n But, more than that, Mark was in our lives when and if he was clean. His most serious vice was heroin, hence his arms. But his proclivities were a maw spanning alcohol, pills and, in his own words, everything else under the sun, too.<\/p>\n My mom missed her only brother. On the same green-and-silver CD player she has had since I was a kid, she played his albums Field Songs and I\u2019ll Take Care of You. His most profitable LPs, with Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age<\/a>, never make the rotation. Those are the ones Momski says overlapped with his \u201cdisease\u201d.<\/p>\n My penchant for partying and getting wasted collided with a nasty eating disorder when I was 19. I entered treatment at the Eating Recovery Center in Bellevue, in Washington State. Mark hit me up to talk about his time in these spaces. He helped me see the Band-Aid-on-skinned-knee days were over. Recovery is about living in recovery, he said, not waking up one day with a new brain, little brother.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Josh Homme: \u201cMark and I had a great respect for each other. We got on like a house on fire\u201dOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n We had a lot to talk about on this topic for some five years. I ball-of-lightninged my way through Seattle, something he pioneered in his grunge heyday with the likes of Kurt Cobain<\/a> and the Alice in Chains boys. Like him I moved to California.<\/p>\n We\u2019d text all the time at this point, discussing the sun\u2019s power on the brain of an addict from the Pacific Northwest. I self-published a shitty fantasy book. He read it on a plane ride and was wildly enthusiastic. We swapped poems. For me this was just the right relationship at just the right time.<\/p>\n \u201cHis cause of death is misadventure,\u201d<\/b> the coroner read. I chuckled in that too-empty courtroom. After almost 60 years of adventures, it was a misadventure that beat Dark Mark. Mom might have listened in over Zoom, but she couldn\u2019t understand what the coroner meant. It was a complication of his long Covid<\/a>, I told her.<\/p>\n In 2020 Mark changed. The day Covid shut down the Bay Area, my then girlfriend and I thought we\u2019d drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Looking back, it was dumb, but we just thought we\u2019d be working from home for a spell.<\/p>\n Mark tried to dissuade me from coming. We were still talking a good deal then, and he said it was stupid. I ignored him. Still, we made it there and back safe and sound. When I got home Mark chewed me out.<\/p>\n By spring it was clear that his focus on the Trump administration and its response to the pandemic was so intense that it had become overwhelming. By summer it had escalated.<\/p>\n He had determined that his and his wife\u2019s home in Glendale, just outside LA, was no longer an option. A darkness had shrouded the house. It was final: Mark had come around and said it was imperative I drive his two mini Australian shepherds to my mom\u2019s house. My uncle and his wife were headed to Ireland.<\/p>\n Part pandemic, part politics. Plus they had a friend who\u2019d rent them a place in Killarney \u2013 my uncle knew he had a big following in Ireland. They managed visas and were leaving right away. Could you come down now, little brother?<\/p>\n [\u00a0From the archive: Mark Lanegan on life in Kerry \u2013 \u2018Sometimes I have trouble with the accent, but I\u2019m learning\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n I rented a Kia Sorento and headed south down the I-5. Mark has so much music that there\u2019s a song for everything. I listened to his and Neko Case<\/a>\u2019s The Curse of the I-5 Corridor, a seven-minute thumper. It felt fitting for this quest, this particular trying to be there.<\/p>\n The last time I saw him alive he was distracted. A group of his friends sat in his garage in a circle. They ushered me in. I talked to a woman about happiness for a while. Mark and his wife said goodbye to their dogs. I don\u2019t remember what we talked about. Everyone was more than a bit scattered. I thought this was the version of him that understands my issues \u2013 but understands them a little too well. <\/p>\n [\u00a0Neko Case on her shiver-inducing memoir: \u2018A stunt so bizarre I\u2019m reluctant even to tell it\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Sitting in the stands <\/b>at the Roundhouse in Camden, in London, red light drenching the huge room, I was overcome. Hearing Dave Gahan<\/a> of Depeche Mode<\/a> cover Revival, a tune by the Soulsavers Mark once sang for, was an emotional blast. I cried in blinding bursts. It was a second funeral. <\/p>\n Once the two of them got to Ireland, Mark\u2019s paranoia had boiled to a point that affected his safety. Refusing to get vaccinated, he contracted Covid\u2019s Delta variant. His hospitalisation, at University Hospital Kerry<\/a>, was intense. He entered the hospital on St Patrick\u2019s Day. The coma spanned almost a month. Nurses were convinced he would die. Momski says his wife was allowed to enter his room only to say goodbye.<\/p>\n Later, the staff told her it was in these farewells that Mark\u2019s vitals improved \u2013 a miracle. It was Easter Sunday, Mark\u2019s resurrection. \u201cThe nurses said he was the most sick person in the hospital,\u201d my mom remembers, \u201cand that he was on death\u2019s door.\u201d<\/p>\n His rough-hewn body scarred further, this time on the inside. His lungs and oxygen flow never recovered. He wrote a spacey, rambling book about long Covid, Devil in a Coma.<\/p>\n I hadn\u2019t been on a conversational basis with him since that outburst in 2020. Complications of going overseas as an already solitary person might include the eight-hour time difference and yawning physical distance.<\/p>\n![\"Queens](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/XLBORWTP5VC7DB7F3YRPP7BCPU.jpg\")
Queens of the Stone Age: Mark Lanegan on stage with Josh Homme in 2002. Photograph: L Cohen\/WireImage <\/p>\n![\"Paolo](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/EXOHLYEKNFGXFMYHKM6DZDF3B4.jpg\")
Paolo Bicchieri with Mark Lanegan in 1998, when he was three and his uncle was 34. Photograph: Trina Lanegan ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/22O5SL62J5GCJLVIHWWJOFRSTI.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Dave](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/WB6Y56GEXZCRFJFIU5QZSMNCQI.jpg\")
Dave Gahan performs during the Mark Lanegan tribute at the Roundhouse in London in December 2024. Photograph: Ki Price\/WireImage <\/p>\n
![\"Mark](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/PAUQBVYSW5EJDC6J7YOFIBL6KE.jpg\")
Mark Lanegan on stage in France in 2019. Photograph: Sylvain Lefevre\/Getty <\/p>\n