by Mark Lanegan
We continued our pub crawl down in Sydney’s well-known Kings Cross, an area of the city filled with junkies, brothels, and bars, where I had scored drugs the day before. When I ran out of cigarettes, the women went into a shop to grab me some more while I leaned on my cane curbside and smoked my last one. I stood there, staring up at the sky, starting to get lost in my head, when I heard the unmistakable sound of someone speeding from around the bend and then the squeal of tires as they hit the brakes hard. I spun around. At that exact moment, an old panel truck plowed into a girl who was running across the street. The sickening crunch of impact made a hideous sound as it sent her flying out of her shoes toward where I stood. Her body landed in the gutter right next to me.
I snapped out of my reverie, recoiling in shock. I hobbled into the street. The first to reach her, I put my finger to her neck and checked for a pulse. Nothing.
My two new friends, the driver of the truck, and more passersby crowded around. As someone tried to do CPR, the truck driver began to quietly weep. When an ambulance arrived, they took the paddles to her, trying to shock her heart into starting again. I looked down at this good-looking young woman. Knowing I’d seen her last second on earth, I felt overcome with a sad weariness. The party was over.
The women gave me a ride to my hotel and only the blond stayed. As I said goodnight to the dark-haired woman, I selfishly wished that, if I was only to have the company of one of them for the night, it would have been her. But I knew I was more than lucky to have anyone at all.
The end of the tour brought us to Perth, far Western Australia, with one day off before the last show. Staying a few miles outside the city, I knew I was gonna have to hit the streets to score. On my way out of the hotel, I gave Al a courtesy call and asked him if he needed me to get him something. His curt “Nope, I’m good, man” told me he’d already lined something up for himself and had no intention of sharing any with me.
Brian Rat and I took a cab into town to a punk rock house someone had tipped us off to as a place to score. When we got there, it turned into a shitfest lasting hours as we kept being promised “It’s almost here” and “Fuck, man, I’m sorry, but we have some other shit on the way.” After several hours of this bullshit runaround, I was getting pretty dopesick and puked into the toilet within earshot of the tenants and their friends who knew I was a musician and who were coming to the show the next day. Finally, some guy showed up with some dope that I instantly knew was fake.
We grabbed our coats and on the way out, a girl grabbed my arm and said, “Come on, I know where to score.” She took us to a house where we were finally able to get our daily allowance of heroin, always the exact amount we were able to buy with the daily limit on the ATM card. As soon as we got back to the hotel and Brian and I had finally gotten well, the phone in my room rang. I picked it up and the first and only thing I heard was Jourgensen.
“Thanks a fuck of a lot for thinking of me, asshole!” and then, click, he hung up.
After our humiliating day’s worth of dopesick waiting, the runaround, fake dope, and, above everything else, the fact that I had specifically asked Jourgensen if he’d needed anything before starting that hellish trek, I became enraged. Brian looked at me with a slightly concerned curiosity as I jumped up and ran out the door, headed to Al’s room intending to teach him a painful lesson.
I banged on his door and Mikey, his sweetheart of a long-suffering guitar player, answered. I shoved my way past him, then, obviously on fire with anger, turned to him and said, “Do you want some of this, Mikey?” He put his hands up palms forward and shook his head. I turned to find Al standing on the bed in his Speedo underwear, while lying there under the blankets at his feet was a woman who looked to be Miss Australia 1971. He had hold of the large old-school rotary phone and was brandishing the receiver as though he planned to club me with it. I crossed the room in a few long steps. I grabbed the hand that held the receiver, twisting his arm while I did it, and quickly wrapped the cord around his neck. I picked the diminutive loudmouth up against the wall with the cord as a noose.
“Don’t you ever talk to me like that, you fucking pussy. You don’t know me well enough for that. I asked you this morning if you needed anything so don’t go throwing shit on me because it didn’t work out for you. You’ll wish you never met me, motherfucker!” With that, I released him and left him choking, desperate to get some air back in his lungs.
Brian and I laughed when I relayed what had taken place, neither of us a fan of Al’s by that point. The next morning, a Sunday and the last day of the tour but two days before we were scheduled to fly home, the ATM ate Brian’s card when he’d inserted it, to our horror. Our only source of cash gone, we were now faced with the prospect of two or more days of dopelessness before we could get home. The two of us sat on the steps of the backstage hours before showtime, dejected and wondering how we were gonna manage to score with no dough.
Suddenly, Curly walked up and, his voice filled with easily understood meaning, said, “Are you guys okay today?”
I shook my head no with a dark, disappointed look on my face.
“C’mon, boys,” he said.
We got up and followed him into one of the empty tents in the artists’ area. He closed the flaps and tied them shut. Then he pulled out a very large bag of the golden-brown powdered heroin we’d been using the entire tour. He poured it all out on top of a folding table and, with a credit card, pushed at least three-quarters of the pile to one side and left a small amount on the other side. He proceeded to fold a large piece of paper into a makeshift bindle and scooped the smaller of the two piles back into its original bag. Then he pushed the other huge pile into his folded paper container, closed it up, and handed it to me.
“What the fuck, Curly?” I asked, not believing he was giving me this huge pile.
He replied in his thick Scottish brogue.
“Al has to go to Japan tomorrow, he can’t take it with him. And besides, little brother,” he said with a smile and a wink, “I believe I might just owe you one,” referring to his theft of my stash all those years before.
We both gave him hugs of joy.
“Careful now, boys,” he said, “don’t mess up the clothes.”
At that moment, my heart was filled with love for the guy. Yet for me the best moment of the entire tour came late that night when I received a call on my hotel-room phone.
“Hello?”
“Lanegan, it’s Al. I just wanted to apologize for yesterday. I was out of line and I’m sorry. You’re still gonna sing on my next 1000 Homo DJs record, right? And remember, there’s always a room for you at my place in Texas.”
“Sure, of course, Al, I’ll be there whenever you need me. All is forgiven. I’m sorry I overreacted.”
“Okay, man, that makes me feel better … and by the way, you wouldn’t happen to be holding anything would you? I hate to ask, but I’m seriously hurting.”
As I looked over at Brian with a huge grin and then down at the gigantic pile of Al’s dope Curly had given us, I said in my saddest-sounding voice, “Fuck, Al, I wish. We’re fucked, too. Have a great time in Japan and call anytime when you’re back in the States.”
Predictably, I was never to hear from him again. We did run into each other by chance at a hotel lobby bar in Milan, Italy, years later. He’d packed on so much weight, it was obvious he was either clean or had traded his dope addiction for one for food. His longtime bandmate Paul spotted me while Al was giving an interview in the corner and came up to me.
“Hey, man, Al’s doing really well; please don’t offer him anything or fuck him up.”
“Don’t worry, Paul,” I said. “He’s safe from me. I wouldn’t piss in Al’s mouth if he were dying of thirst.”
28
PAYBACK, THE BITCH
Even though I’d made a couple of solo records over the course of five years, I’d never once played live. Nor did I intend to, until my manager called me on the phone one day.
“
Lanegan, you’ve been asked to open a couple shows for Johnny Cash. You have to do it, man!”
Johnny Cash was an American hero, an original talent like no other, respected and revered worldwide. I thought, Johnny Cash? My dad’s all-time favorite singer? Johnny Cash, whose records I listened to over and over again as a child? A few months earlier, I had been asked to submit some songs for what was to become Cash’s first release for American Records, producer Rick Rubin’s label. That album was to spark a late-life resurgence for him. Even though he was already a universally beloved superstar, it cemented his place in the very upper echelons of music history.
At the time the request for the songs had come in, I’d recently seen a rerun of one of Reverend Billy Graham’s televised sermons to a huge stadium-sized crowd during which Johnny Cash had spoken about his commitment to Christ and his personal relationship with Jesus. I started thinking, My tunes are way too dark to give to this man of God, he’ll never use any of them. So I had submitted a few of my songs I deemed devoid enough of death and darkness that he might consider using one of them. Of course, then the record came out, filled with murder ballads and original tunes by masters of the dark arts of the songsmith, Glenn Danzig and Trent Reznor. I realized my serious miscalculation and thought, That’s what you get for thinking, dumbass.
I knew I had to do the shows. I’d already quickly regretted turning down an offer to open for R. L. Burnside, an honest-to-god blues legend whose records I’d loved. If I were to do that now, I’d regret it for the rest of my life. I quickly put together a band of friends, guys I’d known forever and who had played on my records: J Mascis, Mike Johnson, Barrett Martin, and Danny Peters. During rehearsals for the shows, I realized I was doing them for two reasons. One, I had grown up on At Folsom Prison and had especially loved the record Orange Blossom Special as a kid. The second reason was my father. I bought him a plane ticket, from Alaska to Seattle. He’d lived in virtual isolation in Alaska for the past ten years or so, fighting a battle with alcohol and what seemed to me lifelong depression. He’d never even seen me sing before. Seeing Cash live would be the thrill of his lifetime.
The guys in my band were all pros and as the dates neared, my only fight was with my own nerves. I had intended to never play any of these quiet confessional songs in front of an audience. With my punk rock mentality, I approached each show as something akin to going into war. Playing in front of a country music audience seemed especially daunting because it was a genre that, more than any other, depended on a certain warmth and friendliness between artist and audience. That was a skill I was completely stymied by, never having spoken to a crowd unless I’d been compelled to by verbal abuse or something thrown at me. Nonetheless, after hitting a backstage bathroom to do a shot of dope that I’d brought with me already cooked up and in a rig, I got onstage in Seattle. Despite some minor heckling that I quickly responded to with a couple of expletives probably unexpected by the mainly older crowd, I got through it.
At the halfway point of my set, I had noticed Johnny Cash standing sidestage. He’d remained there throughout my entire performance. Afterward, he introduced himself with his trademark.
“Hello, I’m Johnny Cash,” he said and shook my hand. “Great voice, son. Thanks for singing tonight, I needed to hear that. Good for the soul.”
I was secretly thrilled by our interaction and watched his entire show with his trio from the wings. His son, John Carter Cash, joined them for a few songs. He was still playing all the old hits and both my father and I were both highly entertained by his performance. At the outdoor show the next afternoon in Portland, June Carter Cash, Johnny’s famous wife, joined him onstage for a rousing version of “Jackson,” much to the crowd’s ecstatic delight.
My dad was with me backstage and I offered to introduce him to Johnny. He declined.
“Just being here and seeing him play and hearing your music is enough for me, son. Thanks so much for bringing me here. I’m proud of you, Mark.”
Those were words I had rarely heard from anyone in my life, except from my dad. He’d always been a hopeful champion and staunch supporter of mine, no matter what I was doing. As long as I was not in county or prison, he considered my life a success.
Once, a few years earlier, I’d received a letter in the mail from him. It contained just one item: a photo scissored from a cover of the Seattle Times newspaper. It was of some inmates of the local jail carrying their mattresses down a city street under armed guard. The caption had said “Inmates Move to New Jail.” The very first guy in the photo bore an uncanny resemblance to me. My father had written on it with a ballpoint pen, an arrow pointing to him and the question “Is this you?” I knew he most likely did think it was me and felt slightly sad because it very easily could have been me, carrying my bedding down the hill to the new jail, to my father’s great disappointment. I’d not bothered to write anything in return; I didn’t have time for that shit. I had too much petty drug business to attend to.
Hicks had long ago moved back to Tennessee to clean up and Dylan had moved into my apartment. I had been sharing it with Steve “Thee Slayer Hippy” Hanford, erstwhile drummer and producer of legendary Portland, Oregon, punk band Poison Idea. Slayer was an old friend of mine who had moved north to supposedly begin work with me on what was to have been my third and final record for Sub Pop, thus fulfilling my contract with them. Instead, we spent our days making, selling, and smoking crack and shooting dope.
To my delight, incredible luck, and dark pleasure, Slayer landed a job with none other than my still heavily disliked nemesis Bruce Pavitt, whose betrayal regarding the cover photo on my Sub Pop debut had never been far from the forefront of my mind. Bruce had had a falling out with Poneman at some point and had sold out his half of the business to Jon and now lived the life of Riley, presumably just enjoying his millions and his early retirement. When I found out Bruce had hired Slayer to, of all things, rearrange his gigantic record collection, in my drug-addled mind possibly worth a million bucks or more itself, I instantly saw the opportunity to pay the prick back for fucking me over all those years before. I carefully questioned Slayer about the contents of the collection. Thirty mint-condition copies of the first Nirvana single? Check. Twenty copies of this, fifteen copies of that? Check. Every record in the collection worth big bucks.
Each day inside Bruce’s house, Slayer was left to arrange the records in total unsupervised solitude, and he came and went with his own key. I would give him a list of the most expensive records and how many copies to return with that night. It was a huge windfall for three dope fiends with no stream of income besides my sporadic royalty checks, selling crack to street people, and whatever we foraged from the occasional breaking-and-entering incident or boosting-and-returning scam— small-time junkie shit.
Dylan’s part in the equation was to travel with me to all the high-end record shops and unload this stolen booty while I waited outside. I smiled with evil satisfaction, thinking, Fuck you, Bruce, every time we returned with our pockets stuffed full of dough, which we immediately spent on drugs. We lived like kings off his stolen records.
It took a couple of months before the job was done to Pavitt’s satisfaction. By that time, and unbeknownst to him, Slayer had walked out of his house with thousands of dollars’ worth of rare and pristine records. Even though on occasion Slayer drove Dylan and me crazy with his sometimes too-talkative, passive-aggressive tendencies, I had to hand it to him: he had provided me with the perfect road map and vehicle for paying Bruce back. I was more than pleased to return some of the fucking he’d so cavalierly given me all those years ago, a fucking I’d patiently waited years to be able to reciprocate.
I also continued my usual daily routine of scoring heroin for people. We picked up a rich customer in his fifties, an executive at Boeing we’d met through Slayer’s cousin, a cute young blond woman who worked as an escort. She’d met the exec through her job, then handed him over to us. She was also an addict, and we became close as she
began to spend a lot of time at my place.
The Boeing bigwig would honk his horn outside the apartment every morning and Dylan and I would go get in the car with him and take a ride. I would sell him several pieces of our rock, then we’d go to a dope house where I’d get him a couple of grams of heroin, and then finally to another place where Dylan would score him some meth. This guy was both a junkyard and a goldmine. We overcharged him and freely helped ourselves to what we could get away with out of his bag and he’d pay us an extra $100 a day for doing it.
After a few months, one morning he just didn’t show up. Not long after that, Slayer left the apartment with some bogus errand he said he had to run. When he didn’t come home that night and the Boeing exec again failed to show the next day, it didn’t take a Nikola Tesla to figure out what had happened. Slayer and his cousin had gone behind our backs and stolen our cash cow.
I was furious. I got two of my Eritrean associates, Mikey and Dawitt, to put out a search for him among their other street-dwelling countrymen and I put out a $100 crack bounty for anyone who could tell me where to find Slayer. I planned to mercilessly beat him bloody for his betrayal. He was nowhere to be found. Not much later, word got back to me that, sadly, his cousin had OD’d and died.
It would be years before Slayer was to show his face in my presence again, in tears outside of a Trees show in Portland, begging my forgiveness. We repaired our years-long fucked-up love-hate relationship shortly before he went to prison in Oregon for a six-year stretch, busted after desperately holding up a Portland pharmacy at knifepoint. Even though we would remain inextricably linked by our longtime association and shared history forever, I found it hard to totally forgive him. No matter how many years passed.