“Nothing but love”: How Courtney Love saved Mark Lanegan’s life
Life in Seattle wasn’t easy for its grunge stars. The genre itself is one borne from massacres, miserable weather and being washed up on an influx of drugs. As punk waned when the 1980s arrived, it was time for something new to reflect the times. The final frontier of America was the perfect flowering ground for the next revolution, the revolution well and truly without a cause. But why there? And why would 1983 be the catalyst?
In February, three armed men stormed Wah Mee Club, which operated as an illegal casino. These men proceeded to hogtie the people present. They then robbed them. The assailants then proceeded to shoot the victims in the head. The only apparent motive for the massacre, which resulted in the death of 13 people and severely injured another, was money. Headlines about the deadliest mass murder in Washington state history hit the newsstands. The number one single, ‘Flashdance… What a Feeling’ by Irena Cara seemed out of place.
In fact, optimism was not a feeling that had been faring well in the city for a while. The decade before, the headline had been “Boeing bust”, and it cost 100,000 people their jobs. A quarter of them left the area looking for work. This led to a subsequent headline in later years that read: “Will the last person to leave Seattle please turn out the lights?” Thus, by the time of the Wah Mee Massacre, there was a whopping unemployment rate of 12%, and dilapidation was distending. The AIDS epidemic was rampant, and kids wondered what on earth they could do.
Mark Lanegan was just about to turn 20 at the time. He was also on the brink of forming Screaming Trees. They became a pivotal band when it came to inspiring the grunge movement that followed in their wake. In fact, they were particularly pivotal for Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. “During my first few months of living with Kurt [Cobain], we went up to Seattle to visit Mark Lanegan and his friend Dylan Carson [of drone-core band Earth], who shared a house,” Dave Grohl recalls.
Lanegan’s music moved Cobain just about as much as his kinship comforted him. The pair were withdrawn characters in their own unique way and they gravitated to each other. “Mark is one of the most gifted and tortured artists you’ll ever hear,” Grohl told Kerrang. The same could be said for Cobain. And so, their friendship blossomed. Lanegan was three years older than the Nirvana frontman and saw a certain responsibility in helping him navigate the heady Seattle scene.
Lanegan was aware he was in the presence of a great tenderness that needed nurturing from the moment he first saw Cobain play live in 1988 and recalled, ”I walked back to my depressing hovel with an electricity in my step and a newfound buoyancy of spirit. I had just experienced something touched by greatness.”
He would also recall, “I knew him for a long time before he was a superstar. I considered him a cherished little brother.” He cared for him like a little brother, too. But on the day that Cobain committed suicide, Lanegan missed a call from him a few hours earlier. ”That’s a guilt I’ll always have,” he said in his memoir.
Nevertheless, in the aftermath of the event, Courtney Love became determined to ensure that the same fate would not befall the grief-stricken Screaming Trees singer. In a bid to keep him sober and off the streets, she gave him Cobain’s old car, she paid his rent, she put him up, and eventually, she paid for a year in rehab. Simply put, she saved his life for no other reason than it was what she felt Cobain would’ve wanted.
Much was lost in this period, but thankfully, Lanegan survived. As Screaming Trees guitarist Gary Lee Cooper recalled, “In 1994, after Kurt had died, I was writing songs, and Mark came by the apartment. He comes over driving this old Dodge Dart, and he’s like, ‘Courtney gave me this car – it used to belong to Kurt. But I can’t get in the trunk.’ And I don’t know if he ever got in the trunk. I don’t know what was in the trunk – but you can just imagine. [Laughs] Was it guns? Drugs? Song lyrics? What the hell could it have been? It’s probably missing forever now because it was sold. Whoever bought it didn’t even know it was Kurt Cobain’s car.”
While it might not have straightened him out entirely, it was continued acts of kindness like this that kept Lanegan with us, most fatefully, Love recommending and paying for the rehab where he found peace and sobriety in the wake of Cobain’s death.
It is on this poignant chapter that Lanegan closes his memoir, liberated through kindness to put the harshness of Seattle and all that loss behind him having transfigured it to art that continues to comfort. “She had a direct impact on my life,“ he writes of Love’s kindness, “I have nothing but love for her.”
