Mark Lanegan, frontman for Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age, dead at 57

Mark Lanegan, who followed a long stint as lead vocalist for the proto-grunge band Screaming Trees with a distinguished career as an impassioned solo singer-songwriter and adventurous collaborator with Queens of the Stone Age and others, has died.

Sometimes recording under the nickname "Dark Mark," Lanegan lived up to his sobriquet, in his work focusing on what he termed continuing themes of "loss, longing, mortality and chemical dependence" in original songs couched in music that alternated between loud, unfettered power and a hushed lyricism. Some of his deepest material was inspired by a harrowing life of dissolution, crime and addiction.

In 1985, Lanegan was already a blackout alcoholic with a long juvenile arrest record. He was repossessing rented videocassette players for a video store in his hometown of Ellensburg, Wash. — a small rural town southeast of Seattle where he was born on Nov. 25, 1964 — when he started a band with his boss’ sons, guitarist Gary Lee Conner and bassist Van Conner.