by Mark Lanegan
I had always had a strong fascination with the perverse and strange. In my early teens, I saw a vintage photo of a fully tattooed man and immediately began to tattoo myself with a sewing needle wrapped in thread and dipped into a jar of India ink I had shoplifted from the college bookstore. Crude, jailhouse-looking tattoos, but I knew the moment I saw the photo that someday I’d be covered with them. When I got ahold of William Burroughs’s book Junkie, I knew then that I would also be a heroin addict someday. Rummaging around underneath the stands at the local college football field at age ten, I’d come across a pristine copy of Anaïs Nin’s Delta of Venus. I cultivated elaborate sexual fantasies and secret sexual obsessions of every sort and stripe. I wanted excitement, adventure, decadence, depravity, anything, everything … I would never find any of it in this dusty, isolated cow town. If this band could get me out, could get me that life I so craved, it was worth any indignity, any hardship, any torture.
2
THE FRAGILE KINGDOM
Only six months after our first practice, Screaming Trees went into the recording studio Creative Fire in Ellensburg and made our demo with Steve Fisk producing, a blatant ’60s garage band rip-off called Other Worlds. It was released by the owner of the recording studio on his Velvetone label. The only other record Velvetone had put out was an embarrassing piece of shit called Winnebago Weekend, an album of “comedy” songs about the joys of RVing.
Calvin Johnson, a childhood acquaintance of mine who had moved away while we were still in grade school, was now a successful underground musician living in Olympia. His band Beat Happening were a study in cool, catchy, idiosyncratic primitivism. I loved their music and Calvin’s singularly offbeat singing and style of performance. He had a cassette-only label called K. Steve Fisk was tight with them and K started to distribute our cassette EP and help get us shows.
It was only moments into the first song at our first show in western Washington that I really understood what I was dealing with. From the first note, Lee Conner went absolutely nuts, stomping, windmilling, and rampaging across the stage and back like a maniac. My jaw dropped at the sheer audacity of his performance, as did that of every member of the small audience. I had never seen it coming. There had been no indication that he’d behave like this once he got in front of people. Of course, the moment the show ended he turned back into the brooding, silent hulk that reminded me of the textbook example of a savant. But that almost didn’t matter—I and everyone else in the room had been blown away by his onstage histrionics.
The Conner brothers’ father put up $1,000 for us to record a full-length album called Clairvoyance that was also released on Velvetone. It was perhaps even shittier than our first recording. But by then we’d met someone who thought we could do better.
The second time the Trees ever played live was opening for a loud and nuanced power trio from Portland called the Wipers. The Wipers were gods in western Washington and Oregon. I hadn’t gotten into their records but when I witnessed it live, it stunned me like a kick to the head and I was hooked and after that, listened to their records constantly. Their guitarist and singer was Greg Sage, a leader so charismatic that even his drummer and bass player stared at him with rapt attention throughout their concerts, his snow-white hair always covered by a bandana. Was Sage forty? Fifty? He was at least ten years older than anyone else I knew but still making vital, cool underground rock in our part of the world, the Northwest gold standard.
Much to our thrill, Sage took an interest in the band and inserted himself into our naïve circle. I began to hang out with him from time to time in Portland, glad to be around this genius musician, hoping to learn something from him to take back to my band to improve it.
We’d meet at a bar where he ate lunch in a seedy area of Portland, then we’d walk back to his place and talk. He concocted a plan to get the Trees signed to Enigma, the independent label that put out his records. Then he himself would produce our records. Sage had produced the first Beat Happening album, which I adored, so that was enough for me.
Eventually, we received a huge twenty-page contract in the mail from an Enigma-offshoot label. I was immediately put off by the offer. Pink Dust appeared to be their boutique label for fake ’60s psychedelia. Granted, they did have Roky Erickson, the former singer of the 13th Floor Elevators, who we all worshipped. But their assumption that we belonged on Pink Dust with that non-punk, weak-throwback gang of rank imitators made me more determined than ever to change the trajectory of our band. I’d be damned if we didn’t transcend that corny hippy ghetto and create something more original and modern. Not only was the money terrible, it was also an incredibly long seven-record deal that could tie us up forever. Still, it was the only offer on the table. We made plans to sign it.
Then while working in the video store one day, I got a phone call out of the blue.
“Is this Mark Lanegan?”
“Who’s this?”
“It’s Greg Ginn from SST Records calling.”
Pickerel had gone to see Black Flag play at the Boxing Club in Seattle and managed to get a cassette of our first EP into the hands of Greg Ginn, Black Flag’s guitarist and the owner of SST Records. On our first tour, we had stayed at the apartment of an old friend of Fisk’s while in Los Angeles, an employee of SST named Ray Farrell. When Ray had seen us play in a record store in Santa Monica, he had instantly gone from being a silent curmudgeonly dude who was doing a pal a favor to an overgrown teenager, giddy with excitement. Greg Sage had also been in town and we had given him a ride back to his motel after we had performed. I couldn’t help but notice how he had played with Pickerel’s hair and whispered in his ear during the ride. Ginn had liked the cassette and that, combined with Ray Farrell’s enthusiastic report of our live show, had piqued his interest. Now he wanted to sign us. His offer was for only one record at a time, but no one had ever been dropped by SST, so we were free to make records with them as long as we wanted or leave to go to another label. It was such an unreal lucky break that I didn’t believe it was actually him on the phone, but someone playing a joke on me.
I called off the Pink Dust deal. Sage was furious with me. The next time I saw him, after a Trees show in Portland, he insisted I go with him to Pioneer Pies for coffee where he spent an hour berating me: “Do you realize what damage you’ve done to my reputation? My standing at Enigma?” “I personally stuck my neck out for you and you fucked me over!” “Get on the pay phone right now and tell SST you’re not signing!”
It was clear from the desperate hostility of his outburst that his interest was in something other than our music. Our just-turned-twenty-one drummer Mark Pickerel was a very handsome kid who drew a lot of attention from men and women both. As a devout Christian, Pickerel was often ignorant of people’s intentions, blind to the bounty of sex he could have had. One day, Sage, at his storage unit/apartment/cat- shit-covered-floor recording studio, had told me that he would need the band there for just three days to record our parts, but Pickerel would have to be there alone for two or three weeks to get the drums right. I was far from a genius but I could see his intent from a mile away. I instantly thought, Right … two or three weeks to overdub drums on an eight-track recording? And weren’t the drums the quietest, weakest thing on all the Wipers’ records anyway? At every show the Wipers played, Sage was always accompanied by some young-ish dude. I knew a grooming when I saw one and whenever he was around Pix, he acted like a teenager in love. I would always see him touching Pix, talking quietly and intently, staring into his eyes while rubbing his shoulders. Sage just wanted to get with our drummer, plain and simple. Without knowing it, Pickerel had nearly gotten us supremely fucked, and then saved our asses.
We’d built a reputation for a crazed, must-see live show, but being the first Washington band to sign with SST brought us instant credibility in the Northwest scene and, with it, hope for the future. SST immediately put us in the studio and then out on the road.
We played a show opening for the SST band
Firehose, one of the first things we did as part of the label. Firehose was the new band of legendary Minutemen bassist Mike Watt. The oversized Conner boys reminded him of his late Minutemen bandmate D. Boon. Watt took an instant liking to us, and our first two full-length tours for SST ended up being opening slots for Firehose. Our payment for the first tour was $100 a night, bumped up to $200 for the second tour. It was just barely enough to pay for our gasoline to get us from place to place and the occasional one room for everyone to share at a Motel 6. Watt was such a tightwad that he had the nerve to bum-rush our room some nights and lie there snoring for free, never offering to help pay the $60 bill. But it was a thrilling education for some small-town country boys. I myself had never even been east of the Rockies until then.
The day after returning to Ellensburg from traveling the United States on our inaugural SST tour, I woke up ready to hit the road again. After seeing the rest of the country, Ellensburg seemed even tinier, even more lifeless than I’d remembered. I shuddered as I saw my hometown again for the first time, with the eyes of a stranger: not one business or house over two stories tall. I’d become inoculated to its “quaint” (i.e., empty) downtown with not one thing for a kid to do, much less a man in his twenties who no longer drank or did drugs. Being home again, even for such a brief moment, made me begin to unravel. I had to keep moving or else I was going to lose my mind for real. My girlfriend at the time was distraught.
“I can’t live like this. You need to see a doctor and get some professional counseling but you’re too sick to see it.”
“For what? Give me a fucking break. All I’m doing is going for a goddamned ride, not flying to Saturn.”
“Get help or I’m leaving!”
“You’re the one who needs help. And keep your fucking voice down; I’d rather not become known as the building wife-beater, if that’s all right with you.”
I walked out, got into our extra-long Ford Econoline touring van, and drove all day, three hundred miles to far eastern Washington, only returning after midnight.
The monotony of the hours and hours of stultifying boredom that went in hand with SST’s aggressive touring schedule was brutal. We were game, at first: young, hungry, and totally unprepared for the rough education that came with endless, thankless touring. We played every shitty dive bar, college student union, record store, and house party willing to have us perform for $100 a night, driving across the US for months on end. If we didn’t find someone to put us up or I didn’t find a girl to take me home, then that meant getting one room at a Motel 6 for the entire band plus our soundman/tour manager and T-shirt salesman. Bleak nights like these, I opted to sleep on the couch in our van to guard the equipment. Not because I thought anyone would break into our piece-of-shit vehicle with the name of the previous owner’s carpet cleaning business still painted on its side. Mostly so I’d not have to lie sleepless next to someone I detested in a dank, crowded room where the snoring was nearly as loud as our stage show.
Violence had been an occupational hazard of Trees live performance from the very beginning. At one of our first shows, someone had called one of my bandmates fat and I had gone out into the crowd to settle it. The Conner brothers almost only ever fought each other. It was like a bad movie I watched through half-closed eyes: the two massive men fighting over money, food, seats in the vehicle, anything, everything, sometimes onstage in full view of the audience. It had become clear that I didn’t have one thing in common with Lee Conner and I began to take an unhealthy pleasure in occasionally watching his younger brother beat the shit out of him. He had it coming every time.
Lee was completely inept socially and expected the world to come to him, something that was never going to happen. He comported himself like a fucking prima donna, a hillbilly diva who considered himself a genius. He treated strangers, venue employees, coworkers, fans, crew, record company people, family, and everyone else he encountered like they were shit on his shoes, barely qualified to do his bidding. He was a stone prick and we were constantly at odds over the songs, the direction of the band, his all-important wants and demands, almost everything. He became obsessive with jealousy when he saw me getting laid nearly every other day while no woman would ever approach him. And why would they—with his huge, baggy tie-dyed pant legs tucked into his boots, his ’60s-style sunglasses worn indoors, and silent, brooding, menacing affect, he projected an unwelcoming, unhappy, borderline scary presence.
One tour ended with a show in Pittsburgh, leaving us to drive the entire length of the country to get home. As the guys were discussing their future plans, I took that moment to tell them that this had been my last tour, I no longer wanted to be in the band.
Lee, who was driving at the time, pulled maniacally off the road into a gas station. He jumped out of the Econoline and ran to the rear, where he yanked open the back doors and began pulling out all of the equipment and our personal shit, throwing it into the parking lot. I was incensed, as were Pickerel and Van. Van, who never needed a reason to get physical with his brother, ran to the back of the vehicle and began to slug Lee in the face and side of his head as hard as he possibly could, screaming at him the entire time to stop. For the first time ever, Lee didn’t cower from his younger brother. Undeterred by the attack, Lee continued methodically laying waste to all of our stuff.
I jumped in and punched Lee several times in the head, but it felt like my fist was making contact with a cinder block. He withstood all of it until every last piece of our shit was strewn across this gas station lot on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. When Lee grabbed his own bag and waddled off into the distance, I took one last opportunity to try to inflict some damage on him. From a backstage catering area somewhere, he had hoarded several round metal tins full of cookies for himself, which he had left in the van. I quickly hurled them after his retreating form, one after another. With a teenage varsity quarterback’s precision, I banged can after can off his retreating head and back from a considerable distance away.
Of course, when he sat sullenly by himself at the other side of the parking lot, Van and Pix pleaded with me to tell him I wouldn’t quit and coax him back into the vehicle so we could continue home.
“Fuck that. Leave his ass here. Fuck that prick!”
Van sheepishly admitted his mom would kill him if we left her coddled, spoiled, and entitled firstborn favorite alongside an East Coast highway by himself. There was no way he could go home without him. The standoff stretched to over an hour before I gave in.
I finally went over to him, told him I would not quit, and got him back into the van. Of course, I intended to go back on my word as soon as I was home, no longer able to accept his inexplicably bizarre, infantile outbursts. And, of course, my resolve melted when faced once more with my dead-end-street existence in my hometown and I joined again, desperate for a reason to get back out of Dodge.
Lee began trying to sneakily follow me around while on tour if I was in the company of a woman. If it hadn’t angered me so much, it would have made me laugh to glance back down the street and see him try to quickly hide his huge body behind a tree or a car, then follow us again when we continued to walk. To me his behavior had all the classic earmarks of a stalker. I caught him clandestinely spying on me while I was having sex in the van, in the backstage area, and once when I was unlucky enough to be forced to share a room with him but had gone ahead and fucked someone anyway. He once made a veiled threat to tell my girlfriend about my cheating because he “felt so sorry for her.” I laughed out loud at the ludicrous notion that he cared about anyone but himself and told him if that ever happened, I would make it his last day on earth.
I had a high tolerance for weirdos who exhibited disturbing, ugly, antisocial traits since I clearly recognized them in my own damaged, fucked-up, obsessive behaviors, but the dynamic between the Conner brothers was nearly impossible to bear. The band was sick, violent, depressing, destructive, and dangerous. But my entrapment in Ellensburg had become an infected, weeping wound. I had to f
ight the urge to stay in bed around the clock, sleeping the days away, a prisoner to sloth and mounting anxiety. Bad as things were, I saw the band as my ticket out of my go-nowhere life in my hometown, my only ticket out.
For that, I endured the constant Conner shitshow, the cornball lyrics, the self-imposed indignity of singing songs written in keys so far out of my natural range that it was a daily headache-inducing bitch to play them live. But I called it right. Through luck and comic/tragic circumstance, Screaming Trees indeed became my way out. I was, in short time, traveling the US and Europe, stumbling from one drunken, drug-fueled mishap to another and taking advantage of whatever sex, drugs, or money that came my way.
The monotony and suffering of those early Trees tours was a bad movie, but not one without moments of unintended comedy, however. Our merch man at the time was a childhood friend of mine named Matt Varnum, whose father had been the punchboard salesman I’d stolen from as a youngster. We were being harassed by cops just after leaving a gig in Princeton, New Jersey. As the sirens and lights came on, from my seat next to him on the couch I watched as he took a huge baggie of dirt-dry, shitty, full-of-seeds-and-stems weed out of his pocket, poured the entire contents into his mouth, and then shoved the empty bag under the couch cushion. After the cop had taken all of our IDs back to his car, Matt motioned to whoever was riding shotgun to hand him the can of soda from the tray between the two front seats. He slammed the entire thing, washing down the immense amount of shit weed in his mouth right as the cop walked back up to the driver’s-side window. He elbowed me in the ribs and then frantically whispered into my ear, “Lanegan, what is in that can?! Is that chew juice?”
For years I had chewed Copenhagen tobacco all day long, a habit common among men and boys from our backwards red-neck of the woods. I cautiously smelled the can, the cop still at the window talking to our soundman.
