Day After Day #88: One Hundred Days

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4). 

One Hundred Days (2004)

There's hard living, and then there's what Mark Lanegan did for most of his 57 years. The man had serious pipes, but he also had serious addictions that plagued him from his teens through the rest of his life. But he also left behind some seriously memorable music.

Lanegan had a troubled childhood in Washington state, one that left him a heavy drinker at the age of 12 and using drugs in his teens. Eventually he became the singer of Screaming Trees, an Ellensburg, Washington, band that played psychedelic hard rock. The band started in 1984 and began releasing albums on a few different labels, including SST. They were signed to Epic Records for their fifth album, Uncle Anesthesia, in 1991. 

As the grunge phenomenon took off in Seattle, the Trees got a lot of attention for their song "Nearly Lost You," which was on their 1992 album Sweet Oblivion but also on the soundtrack for the movie Singles. Lanegan's baritone rumble of a voice was unique among his contemporaries, making him equally adept at belting out hard rockers as crooning quiet blues laments.

Meanwhile, Lanegan was also releasing solo albums on Sub Pop. He had originally planned to do an album of Leadbelly covers with Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Mark Pickerel, but that was scrapped. One of the songs, "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" ended up on Lanegan's 1990 album The Winding Sheet. Cobain later famously did a version of it on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged album. Lanegan also appeared on the album Above by Mad Season, a side project that included Layne Staley of Alice in Chains, Mike McCready of Pearl Jam and Barrett Martin of Screaming Trees.

The Trees split up after recording some demos in 1999 but finding no label support. Lanegan continued to release solo albums and appear on other artists' projects, working with the Breeders, Queens of the Stone Age, the Twilight Singers and Gutter Twins with Greg Dulli, former Belle & Sebastian singer Isobel Campbell, electronica duo Soulsavers, Moby and many others.

His solo work was consistently interesting, whether he was singing roots music, hard rock or synth-heavy electronic music. For me, the high point was 2004's Bubblegum, on which he enlisted the aid of many well-known musicians including PJ Harvey, Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, Dulli, Dean Ween and Duff McKagan and Izzy Stradlin of Guns N' Roses. While most of his previous solo work had been quieter affairs, Bubblegum echoed some of the more uptempo music he had done with Screaming Trees and QOTSA on songs like "Hit the City," "Sideways in Reverse" and "Methamphetamine Blues". 

But there were also slower, elegant odes to struggling with addiction and heartbreak. One of those is "One Hundred Days," which features stoner rock OG Chris Goss on guitar and Homme on bass and drums. 

"From my fingertips, the cigarette throws ashes to the ground/I'd stop and talk to the girls who work this street, but I got business farther down/Like one long season of rain, I will remain/Thinking of you/One day a ship comes in/From far away a ship comes in/One hundred days you wait for it/And you know somewhere the ship comes in every day."

Whether he's waiting for his next fix or hoping that he won't slip up, Lanegan's protagonist is dreaming of something better. 

"There is no morphine, I'm only sleeping/There is no crime to dreams like this/And if you could take something with you/It would be bright/Just like something good."

This song has always been one of my favorites of Lanegan's; he just has a knack of conveying that solemn desperation of someone who's been to hell and back more than once. His memoir, Sing Backwards and Weep, is a harrowing, unflinching breakdown of the many lows in his life. Every time you think he can't sink any lower, he somehow manages it. It's a hard read, but an honest one. 

Lanegan moved to Ireland in 2020 and nearly died after getting COVID in 2021. He died in his home in February 2022. He had reportedly been sober for more than a decade when he died; no cause of death was revealed.

I saw Lanegan many times in concert over the years, the first time in 1992 when the Screaming Trees opened for Alice in Chains at the Channel in Boston. Later I saw him solo, with Queens of the Stone Age, the Twilight Singers and the Gutter Twins. He was a man of few words when he wasn't singing and he wasn't much for moving on stage; he would stand ramrod straight, with a death grip on the mic stand, unleashing that incredible voice. The last time I saw him was in 2017 on the tour for his album Gargoyle at Brighton Music Hall. It's sad that he's gone, but I'm glad I saw him in several of his musical incarnations.