Mark Lanegan’s memoir “Sing Backwards and Weep” is a well-written, intelligent and engaging page-turner of a book. It’s pages not only tell the story of Lanegan’s life as a rock star and junkie, they also reveal several inside stories about Seattle’s music scene in the 90s and contain plenty of noteworthy misadventures.
Lanegan spins a good yarn throughout his memoir which contains stories about tax evasion, late-night TV appearances gone awry, recording studio mishaps and many more interesting tales. At times it reads like the gossip pages for a subset of rock stars, but it doesn’t have a tabloid feel when reading Lanegan’s stories. Instead, it’s more a straightforward retelling of Lanegan’s experiences as he remembers them.
If you’re interested in reading the book, and if you’re a fan of rock music from the 90s you really should be, then you can check out a spoiler-free review over here. If you don’t want to read the book but want to get all the bits of gosssip, read below. But be warned, there are spoilers from “Sing Backwards and Weep” below the photo so stop reading now if you want to discover these gems on your own.
Krist Novoselic wanted to join Screaming Trees
Mark Lanegan first met Kurt Cobain and the Nirvana crew when Nirvana performed at the Ellensburg Public Library in the late 1980s. At that point Lanegan’s band, Screaming Trees, were looking for a new bass player because Van Conner had quit. According to Lanegan, when Krist Novoselic heard about the vacancy he asked if he could join Screaming Trees because he didn’t like how Nirvana was becoming a dictatorship. Lanegan said that he convinced Novoselic to stay with Nirvana because he thought they were onto something special.
Lanegan has beef with one of Sub Pop’s co-founders
Lanegan’s first several solo albums were released on venerable Seattle label Sub Pop Records and he never liked the image used for the cover of his solo debut “The Winding Sheet.” He got Sub Pop co-founder Bruce Pavitt’s word the image would not be used and when he found out it ended up as the cover of his first album Lanegan burst into Pavitt’s office in a rage and nearly punched his lights out. Lanegan ended up getting is revenge years later when a friend of his stole albums from Pavitt’s massive record collection and the two sold the valuable records for dope money.
‘Singles’ star Matt Dillon literally got burned by Lanegan
Despite the “Singles” soundtrack arguably launching Screamings Trees into the mainstream, Lanegan has no love for the movie or its cast. That’s likely partly because the band was shorted money for its inclusion on the multi-platinum soundtrack. When recalling the film, Lanegan tells a story about bumping into the movie’s star Matt Dillon at an industry event and purposefully burning a hole into the back of Dillon’s jacket with a cigarette. That hole caused Dillon’s entire jacket to catch fire.
Food flew on Late Night with David Letterman
Screaming Trees’ television debut was a performance on Late Night with David Letterman where they performed “Nearly Lost You.” Lanegan got into a fight at a bowling alley the night before the performance and ended up making his television debut singing with a black eye. But that’s not the worst of it. After the performance Letterman had the band come over and eat some food from catering at the end of the show. Lanegan attempted to throw some chicken at one of the Conner brothers as a joke and ended up almost hitting Letterman, who was not amused. Because of this Lanegan did not return to Late Night with David Letterman for 17 years.
A President spread a rumor that Lanegan was HIV positive
Lanegan isn’t shy about naming names when it comes to people he has beef with (see the Bruce Pavitt story above) and one of the many people he calls out is former Presidents of the United States drummer Jason Finn. According to Lanegan, Finn spread a rumor in the Seattle music scene that Lanegan was HIV positive. This rumor caught on and eventually made its way to Lanegan’s girlfriend at the time, which as you can imagine did not sit well with Lanegan.
Chris Cornell once licked Lanegan’s eyeball
Just about every major Seattle rock star from the 90s who isn’t named Eddie Vedder manages to get at least a mention in “Sing Backwards and Weep.” Chris Cornell, who Lanegan calls “a solitary creature” who presented a “quiet, serious and thoughtful front to the world” and had a “sly, somewhat perverse sense of humor,” comes into the picture relatively early in the book.
Cornell co-produced Screaming Trees major label debut “Uncle Anesthesia” and that perverse sense of humor came into play during the sessions. At one point Lanegan had a bad cold and Cornell insisted on testing a theory about virus transmission he made up on the spot. His theory was that colds could be transmitted through eyeballs so Cornell licked Lanegan’s eyeball to find out.
A cookie jar played a vital role in ‘Whiskey for the Holy Ghost’
The opening track on Lanegan’s sophomore solo album, “Whiskey for the Holy Ghost,” features an odd whistling intro. That intro is courtesy a cookie jar that J Mascis fiddled with throughout the recording of the album.
Mad Season made mad money and a mad bill for back taxes
Lanegan’s stories don’t reveal a lot about his creative process and how he operates as a songwriter, but one memorable story involves Layne Staley and Mad Season. To write “Long Gone Day” he and Staley wrote lines of lyrics back and forth with each person’s line informing the next set of lyrics. Lanegan said it took no more than 45 minutes to write the song and that in total he spent about an hour working on the two tracks he contributed to the record.
Since the album went gold and Lanegan was given full royalty points he ended up getting large royalty payments regularly, which he kept for himself and did not report to the IRS. That later came back to bite him in the form of a hefty bill to tune of $500,000 in back taxes. He was able to avoid prison time at the last minute by agreeing to a new recording contract.
Lanegan inspired part of Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance
The stories Lanegan includes involving Kurt Cobain are the heart of the book, which taken as a whole is actually a pretty dark recollection of an interesting life lived. At one point Cobain, Novoselic and Laneanegan were planning to record an album of all Lead Belly songs together. While that never happened, Cobain did record the Lead Belly song “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” with Langen for “The Winding Sheet.”
Years later when Nirvana was the biggest band on the planet, Cobain asked his old friend to join him on the Lead Belly tune at the taping of Nirvana’s iconic MTV Unplugged performance. Lanegan declined and Cobain told him he was going to sing it just like Lanegan did for his album.
