Inside Mark Lanegan’s Harrowing Battle: the True Story Behind His Teeth and Survival
Lanegan’s survival was never a simple, linear triumph. He experienced relapses before finally establishing long-term sobriety in the mid-2000s. The damage inflicted during his twenties and thirties lingered, weakening his immune system and leaving him susceptible to chronic health complications later in life.
In early 2021, while residing in Killarney, Ireland, Lanegan contracted a severe case of COVID-19. The infection put him into a medically induced coma for months, took his hearing, and left him temporarily unable to walk. He documented that harrowing ordeal in his final book, Devil in a Coma.
Lanegan passed away at his home in Ireland on February 22, 2022, at the age of 57. He left behind an extraordinary body of music that stretched from the primal howl of the Screaming Trees to the delicate acoustic gloom of his solo records and his electronic work with Skeleton Joe.
His journey remains a stark testament to the visceral realities of addiction. The story of Mark Lanegan’s teeth is not a piece of rock-and-roll trivia; it is the physical record of a man who crawled out of an early grave, rebuilt himself piece by piece, and kept singing until his body finally gave out.
