Screaming Trees: Time For Light ASHES TO ASHES
by Everett True
Melody Maker, July 13, 1996
We're lucky Screaming Trees, peers of Nirvana, are still here, given mainman Mark Lanegan's excess-all-areas past. We're especially lucky because the Trees have just recorded one of the rock albums of the year...
Rockford, Illinois sucks. It's the third largest city in the state: it's also nothing but mile after pleasant mile of leafy, Mid-Western suburb. Newt Gingham must love it here. Nothing to disturb the ambience, nothing to jolt mid-American complacency bar a tastefully tucked away university campus and a downtown area so dismal it makes you start yearning for the delights of Sunderland. Ever wondered precisely where Beavis & Butt-head are based? Try Rockford. It's as white as white bread, only classier. Just. Checking in, we ask the smiling girl behind the desk of our Marriott/Super 8 motel where we can get a drink.
She looks at us puzzled, taken aback, before replying. "Well, there's a couple of strip bars on State you might want to check."
Clearly, we're not from round these parts. Everyone in the hotel reception area on this lazy, pleasant valley Sunday afternoon, knows everyone else; our English accents cause mild consternation.
If this is the sort of place Lollapalooza is playing nowadays, no wonder it's ditched the alternative approach of last year's event (Sonic Youth, Beck, Pavement) and gone for a much more mainstream, metal line-up (Metallica, Soundgarden, Ramones) this time round. Otherwise, the nickname "Big Money Loser" would be for real, for sure.
Seriously daunted, we're on the phone to Mark Lanegan, singer with Screaming Trees - the band who, with "Dust", are responsible for 1996's first classic rock album - within minutes of arrival.
He's stuck in a Freeport Holiday Inn, 35 miles down the road, where there's even less to do: among the restaurants the hotel proudly boasts as being local are MacDonald's and a Pizza Hut.
"Don't you f***in' dare," he warns, upon hearing of our plans to visit him. "We're already on our way over. Whatever it takes."
Jesus Christ. I knew middle America was dull, but... this?
So Steve Gullick and I wait in our rooms (no hotel bar, but there's a handy free grocery delivery service) for seven hours, waiting for Lanegan to show. Waiting. And waiting. Rickard Linklater's "Slacker" is on TV, appropriately enough. We scorch the microwave popcorn, we bust a toilet, we argue over who's our scariest co-cohabitant. And still we wait.
Lanegan never appears. F***.
'TRAVELLER' It's the next day.
Steve and I have been at the festival site in Winnebago County Fairgrounds for four hours now, driven here this early by sheer boredom. We've checked out the massive gorilla by the entrance, the "rain tents", the rip-off food places which charge $3 for a bottle of coke, the third "indie" stage which is literally the back of a lorry. We've bumped into the Trees' guitarist, the affable (and large) Gary Lee Conner, watching awesome Australian garage band You Am I on the second stage, shaded from the sun by an umbrella. I've been complimented on my dancing by a Rancid roadie, who informs me his band has a video of me onstage with Girl Against Boys from the previous date of the tour in Des Moines (a town just as dull as Rockford). F***! I don't even remember seeing 'em! Must have been that bottle of Jagermeister that Trees drummer Barrett Martin thoughtfully passed my way.
But still, there's no sign of Lanegan.
Seconds before the Trees are due to go on (2:20 pm, main stage - it would've been half an hour later, but the Shaolin Monks got impounded at Customs by American officials suspicious of anything vaguely Chinese), he appears, drenched to the skin and clearly in pain.
He doesn't even notice us, he's suffering so heavily.
After Screaming Trees play a shortened set mostly noticeable for the interchange of missiles between band and audience (dried mud from the crowd; clothes from Lanegan), I corner the singer and ask what the f*** happened to him the previous night.
"I got caught in a lightning storm," he growls. "We ran out of money for the taxi halfway to your hotel, met a couple of strippers, got soaked, had to sleep out in the pouring rain, and finally got home this morning wearing the same clothes as you saw just now. At one point, as I was walking through the worst part of town, this carload of brothers come by with a big-ass water machine gun and squirted me right across the face. They totally nailed me! I started laughing so f***ing hard I had to hold my stomach for two blocks."
So why the impromptu strip act onstage?
"My clothes were so f***ing heavy," Lanegan explains, sprawled out on the ground outside his band's trailer, "that I just threw them into the crowd. I took my boots off, they were still wet, and my pants were still wet - I threw everything, my wallet, my belt. I couldn't wear them any more. It was like 'Knocking On Heaven's Door' - 'Momma, take these pants off of me/ I can't wear them for one more week'... I'd been wearing them for three weeks, but the rain didn't wash the stench away. I was so hot, I couldn't f***ing breathe."
Welcome to middle America, spiritual home of Screaming Trees.
'ALL I KNOW' Screaming Trees have been around for a while.
It's been over a decade, in fact, since Mark Lanegan first formed the band in Ellensburg, Washington - a small rural community not so far from Seattle. It's been over 10 years since Lanegan, inspired by the first Gun Club album, decided his life was going nowhere (not only had he seen the inside of a few jails by the time of the Trees' debut LP, he'd also had a promising basketball career cut short after he broke both his legs falling off a tractor, drunk one night) and hooked up with the equally disaffected Conner brothers. Since then... well, it ain't been easy. After the initial run of fine, psychedelic-flavoured, heavy-rock records on SST (and, later, Epic), the flow dried up completely after the band's seventh album, the bleak and blistering "Sweet Oblivion", released in 1992. (That is, if you discount Lanegan's astonishing solo albums, the second of which, "Whiskey For The Holy Ghost", came out in early '94 on Sub Pop. Here was an album which proved Lanegan's worth as a modern-day bluesman; far richer and more rewarding to listen to than even his closest peer, Nick Cave. Cave, y'see, is just a storyteller. Lanegan - like the bluesmen of old - has f***in' *lived* the tale. Tales of his brawling and drinking and whoring are legendary.) The Trees were supposed to be recording an album - in fact, *did* record an album - in the spring of 1994. But the death of Mark's friend Kurt Cobain round that time, coupled with the fact that none of the Trees could even stand to be in the same room together, meant the album never really took off. It got scrapped in its entirety, barring one song, the darkly affecting "Dying Days". (Kurt, in fact, left a song behind for Lanegan: but he's chosen not to record it with the Trees, preferring to leave it for his next solo album. "I didn't feel it was appropriate to record it so soon after his death," he told Rolling Stone last month.) The band then spent the next two years writing and rewriting enough songs for about 30 albums. Their new album, "Dust", is like the best of the last three years of Screaming Trees. It's a f***ing awesome record; almost certainly the first classic rock album of the year. And, make no mistake, this is classic ROCK. "Drink, desolation and self-destruction, presented intact and shining," as David Bennun put it in his album review last week. "It sounds like distilled thunder. It's a silken, baritone rumble, a cruise-controlled cyclone. Frankly, it's a marvel." Precisely.
From the swirling guitars of opener "Halo Of Ashes" through the powerful statement of love on "Look At You" (a song which almost makes me believe in romance again) to "Dying Days" itself and the bruised "All I Know", this is rock in all its splendour. Try not to think of grunge: the Trees have always looked first to Sixties acid rock and the chiming harmonies of The Beatles and The Byrds for inspiration. And definitely don't think for one moment this is unapproachable. Serious, yes. Proud - f***, yeah. Turgid, no.
At last Screaming Trees have made an album wherein the raging fury of the Conner brothers' guitars match the brooding, emotional intensity of Lanegan's deep voice.
And yet the last time I saw Lanegan - round the time of Kurt's death - it seemed unlikely he'd ever record another song again. No f***ing way. I'd never seen a man so despairing of life itself.
'HALO OF ASHES' "I wanted to quit music last time I saw you," Mark confirms. "We talked about it a lot. I thought it was too negative. I sat around for damn near four years, but, you know..."
The singer takes a deep breath, shading his eyes from the relentless afternoon sun, before continuing.
"One day, I realised I had all this guilt, and these real deep feelings of sadness over everything that happened, my part in it, what I did and didn't do, and I thought, 'Man, you're still alive. You've been dead with your dead friends for too long. You have to move on.' And I realised that I'd been dead as all those people I'd been missing those four years, there years, two and a half years, whatever. You can only stay dead for so long. I'll admit I never wanted to make another record after all that. I never thought I would, but, as corny as it sounds, this record is a real healing process for not only me, but the band as well."
The singer clears his throat, and continues.
"I could try and kill myself a million f***ing ways, and have - unintentionally, of course - but it just doesn't seem to happen. So, you know... I'll stay on the f***ing road and make music and hopefully leave something behind that is a worthy tribute to all those who should still be here and making music that was so much f***ing better than anything I ever did. That's all."
Silence.
"I've got friends who are still living that f***ing zombie life, that alive/dead thing," the singer says. "People who should be making music. And it makes me sad they don't. Cos shit, you know, I probably wouldn't have made it past 10 years old if I hadn't had music. Or 12. Or 15. Or 18. Or 20. Just in the past few months, I've remembered the one thing that made me f***ing want to start a band was hearing the first Gun Club record. I remember thinking, 'Shit, I could play drums like that.' So I did. It was the middle of f***ing winter, I was living in a storage shed with my drums, a couch and that was it. My friends would come over, plug in their guitars, and we'd play all the slow songs off the first Gun Club record. And now Jeffrey [Lee Pierce, singer] is gone... at 36."
Mark clears his throat again. He was meant to be recording some songs with Jeffrey for his next solo record.
"I'm like a carpenter when it comes to making songs," he muses. "It's not easy, it's something I've got to force myself to do. I knew guys who just picked up the f***ing guitar - like Jeffrey or Kurt - and, bang!, it was right there, the second they started playing. It's not that way with me. And I wish that those guys were still around. I really do."
Silence.
"It's like this," he explains. "I can do one of two things. I can sit in my apartment and do drugs until the day I die, or I can f***ing get out and be a social person, whatever. I'm a f***ing man, I do what I do, and I'll take responsibility for it, whether it's good or bad. And if anything good comes along, that's beautiful."
'DIME WESTERN' Lollapalooza is a pretty f***ing dumb-ass scene. Kurt would have f***ing hated it, that's for sure. A load of sunburnt middle American jocks and their girlfriends in Stars And Stripes bikinis, throwing dried mud at anything which isn't... well, Metallica, basically. It's a good thing the "alternative" stages are so small; no one goes f***ing near them, anyway. The food stalls charge extortionate prices, alcohol is barred (even from the parking lots!), there's no sign of the array of "carnival" tents from even two years back.
All pretence is gone. There is no "alternative" here. Lollapalooza '96 is basically Metallica plus supporting cast, no more, no less. (Kick-ass fireworks, though.) The local equivalent of Beavis & Butt-head must be delighted. How does Mark feel about the situation?
"Well, it beats the f*** out of opening for Dumbf*** Jonas And His Mighty Quartet," he laughs. "I'd rather come and see The Ramones every day, see the second stage, get to hang with the other bands. I couldn't care less about the diversity of the thing, what people have to say about the headliner. I'm just happy to f***ing do it. I don't give a shit. I'll f***ing open for anybody, I've got no problem with it, cos I know I'll blow their shit off the stage."
Do you feel any empathy with the people of Rockford?
"Physically, this town is a lot like where I grew up, but f*** 'em. I never had a thing like this, I didn't even have a f***in' record store. I had to take a Greyhound bus 120 miles just to buy punk records. Where I grew up there wasn't even a f***ing place to buy an electric guitar. And if you played songs of your own, you were ridiculed and made fun of.
"You think we had something like this?" Lanegan asks rhetorically. "Fuck, no. Now, there is. We're playing 50 miles away from my home town on this tour. Those kids are lucky. They're fucking lucky. They're lucky to have my fucking boots and they're lucky to have my pants. They're lucky to see The Ramones, they're lucky to see You Am I, they're lucky to see Metallica, for that matter.
"But yeah. I wish there'd been something like this. But then, maybe we wouldn't have started our own band. Maybe I'd have been too busy waiting around for Lollapalooza to fucking come around."
It seems Lollapalooza and MTV over the past few years have taken away the need for local identity. Audiences all over America are the same now. They've been taught how to behave.
"Shit, yeah," the singer agrees. "You just nailed it on the fucking head. The world's getting so small that it's no fun for me. I can't even get laid in most towns, just because of my bad reputation, all because the world's too fucking small. That's a lie. I'll get you the best fucking whore Rockford has to offer. I'll pay. Just to see the look on your face."
What are we waiting for? Let's go!
"Calm down, man," Mark laughs. "We've got plenty of time."
'GOSPEL PLOW' Right now, Lanegan is lying on the ground, shivering from cold, even in this f***in' heat. His tour manager's hovering anxiously. Across the way, Trees bassist Van Conner and new guitarist Josh are chatting to Joey Ramone.
"Hey, man, don't rock the floor!" - that's what Joey had said to me as I sprawled in the dirt, nearly insensible, in Des Moines, two days earlier. I didn't understand him then, and I don't now. Local heroes Cheap Trick are about to go on. A Hell's Angel on a uck-off motorbike roars by. Mark indicates he wants to speak to him. Time to wrap this one up.
I ask Lanegan whether he's bitter at the way Screaming Trees seem to have been passed over during the goldrush that was northwest America these past five years.
"I see it this way," the singer replies. "In this business, there are spinners and there are marathon runners. I'm going to be around while these fucking *pissants* have spent their last fucking royalty check and are living back home with fucking grandma. I'll be still out on the road, playing tiny fucking clubs to 50 people, when I'm f***ing 65 years old. And that's fine.
I've long stopped wishing for the pie in the sky, American dream, beautiful wife, beautiful house on the water, fucking nice car. I've never thought that way. I grew up in a time when we thought we'd never live to see 18, because there was going to be a nuclear war and everyone would die. When I first quit drugs and drinking when I was 21 and the girl I was really in love with had left me because of it, it was like the first time I really sobered up and looked at myself - 'Man, you're still here and you're 21! You didn't even think you'd make it to 18! What is there to do?'
"Music. I fell into it. I knew these guys, they asked me to play f***ing drums with them, and I was such a bad drummer that they made me sing, and I'm still with them, 13, 14 years later. And, all of a sudden, half my life is gone. I'm 31 years old! What happened? It's bound to hurt. But when I start thinking that way, I put on a record, write a song. Music is still the only thing that fucking saves me. Because, as shitty and f***ed-up as it sounds, it has been worse.
"It has been so much worse."