Mark Lanegan, former Screaming Trees singer and former Queens of the Stone Age member, reveals his experience contracting COVID-19 in an upcoming memoir.
Last year, the rocker was hospitalized after contracting the contagious disease that caused the global pandemic. He slipped into a coma and had “little hope of survival,” according to a book synopsis, Devil in a coma, which arrives next month.
Towards the bottom of this article, read the synopsis and see the book cover illustration.
Lanegan also became “completely deaf” during his illness, for Result. A spokesperson for the Screaming Trees alum said the musician has “recovered his hearing now, but his health is going up and down.”
Other rock stars who have fought COVID include Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden), Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley (KISS), Jonathan Davis, Munky and Ray Luzier (Korn), Chad Gray (Mudvayne), Sean Killian (Vio-Lence) and Sebastian Bach (ex-Skid Row). Heavy metal singer Eric Wagner died in August after being hospitalized with COVID pneumonia.
Vaccination and booster efforts continue across the world as 57 percent total US citizens are now fully vaccinated. More than 700,000 Americans have died from COVID, according to one New York Times database. Since the bands resumed touring after a largely non-concert year 2020, many have canceled or postponed shows due to the situation.
An earlier memoir by Lanegan, Sing backwards and cry, was released in 2020. He followed his 2017 lyric book, i am the wolf. Lanegan’s latest solo album, Straight songs of sorrow, emerged last year.
Devil in a coma releases December 14 in the UK – pre-order it here.
One morning in March 2021, with the second wave of infections tearing apart the Ireland where he was [a new] resident, Mark Lanegan woke up breathless, fatigued beyond belief, his body loaded with a gigantic dose of COVID-19. Admitted to Kerry Hospital and with little hope of survival initially, Lanegan’s disease causes him to enter and come out of a coma, unable to walk or function for several months and fearing for his life.
As his situation becomes more intolerable during this darkest spring, he is assaulted by nightmares, visions and regrets about a life lived on the brink of chaos and disorder. He is brought to consider his predicament and how, in his sixth decade, his lifelong battle with mortality led to that final mundane encounter with a disease that destroyed millions of people, as he apparently cheated on death for its entire existence.
Written in vignettes of prose and poetry, ‘Devil in a Coma’ is a terrifying tale of illness and accompanying remorse by an artist and writer with a singular vision.
Marc Lanegan, Devil in a coma Art book
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