Mark Lanegan was born on November 25, 1964, in Ellensburg, Washington. He had a complication when he was born and had his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. According to The Guardian, his home life wasn’t great; his mother was abusive and his father was an alcoholic, and they went their separate ways when Lanegan was just in primary school. Lanegan said that his mother had her own troubles and took them out on him. His father, on the other hand, was “a good-hearted, caring man who means well but could not control me,” he said.
By the time he was 12 years old, he had already started drinking and gambling, and five years later, he was an alcoholic who had a lengthy rap sheet that included charges for vandalism, drug possession, breaking and entering, fraud, and underage drinking. Lanegan was longing for a sense of adventure, and it was then when he decided the best way to do that was with Screaming Trees, as reported by Variety. “I would never find any of it in this dusty, isolated cow town. If the band could get me out, could get me into that life I so craved, it was worth any indignity, and hardship, any torture,” he wrote in his memoir.
