by Mark Lanegan
I reasoned that he was still alive because the unbearable, minor-league-dictator aspects of his buckshot-wild, painfully feeble, head-injury-victim’s personality hadn’t fully flourished until he had hit the big time and made enough cash to hire the two giant fucks glued to his hip, paid to shadow him every moment of every day and finish the fights he would indiscriminately start at the drop of his dunce cap. His manner was strongly reminiscent of a child ruined with indulgence, but one with an unpredictable predilection for cruelty and an ocean-sized, burning-black-hole need for attention. I could see him as a kid in short pants, on a bright sunny day, gleefully jacking his miniscule dick while frying ants under a magnifying glass.
Or maybe these woefully amateur theatrics had been generated and saved up especially for my personal benefit? All I knew was that in my thirty-one years on earth, I had never encountered anyone with a larger head or tinier balls. And he had chosen exactly the wrong guy to fuck with. He’d gone out of his way to interrupt my slumber and I was now wide-ass awake and looking for the first opportunity to throw down. I detested bullies with a smoldering hatred and refused to put up with them. Liam Gallagher was an obvious poser, a would-be playground bully. Like all bullies, he was also a total pussy. Always with the big fucking mouth as long as he was safely wrapped in the wet-nurse security blanket of the company of the two tall, rotund dudes paid to protect and, I assumed, suffer his endless stream of bullshit.
The tour took us north of the border for one date where Oasis and the Trees, along with my friend Jason Pierce’s band Spiritualized, were to open a huge outdoor show playing before Neil Young and Crazy Horse at the Molson Park amphitheater outside of Toronto.
There was no way I was carrying any drugs across the US border. I’d once been arrested by the Canadian customs officials on the mere suspicion I was holding, only to be released hours later after they’d completely taken apart my car, stripped, and cavity-searched me and found me to be clean.
I spent the entire night and morning getting loaded before boarding the bus to cross over. I’d left the rest of my stuff with my clothes in a bag in the motel room of our merch guy who was staying on the US side. We were coming back that night to pick him up; I would just have to bite the bullet and spend the several hours in Canada without getting high. As we sat on the bus waiting for Van Conner, often the last guy to arrive for any lobby call, bus call, plane flight, or stage time, Kevan started to get agitated as ten minutes stretched to thirty. We were due onstage in early afternoon and the border crossing could take a few hours, depending on how thoroughly officials on both sides decided to take a look at you.
Finally, Wilkins went back into the hotel and called Van’s room. No answer. He came back to the bus and asked us all if we knew where he was. Nobody had a clue as to his whereabouts. Wilkins went back inside, up to Van’s room, and pounded on the door to no response once again. Now Kevan was worried. Even though Van was still a relatively young guy in his mid- to late twenties, he nonetheless lived an incredibly unhealthy lifestyle. Wilkins began to envision him possibly deceased inside his hotel room.
He got the desk manager to unlock the door. Upon entering, his worst fears seemed to be confirmed: the apparently lifeless body of our free-spirited, hilarious, and contrarily rebellious bass player was slumped over in a chair before a TV set blaring porn, pants around his ankles. Kevan yelled at him. No response. He put his finger to Van’s neck. Feeling a pulse, Wilkins slapped him across the face. Van came to and immediately stood up, the half-empty bottle of scotch in his naked lap spilling the rest of its contents on the carpeted floor. The minute he reached his full height, he tumbled backwards over the chair and hit the floor himself. He’d passed out while watching porn and jacking off, and at seven a.m. he was still completely shitfaced, so drunkenly incoherent he could barely stay on his feet. A giant at six foot four and nearly three hundred pounds, it took great effort for Wilkins to get him upright, his pants on, and down to the bus.
Once Van got on the bus and we started rolling out toward the border, he came back to life, and in a big way. He stumbled around the moving tour bus with a newly cracked fifth of booze in his hand, slamming down giant mouthfuls of it, yelling in his brother Lee’s face and generally raising hell. At some point he burst into my sanctuary in the back lounge, the only place on the bus that had windows that actually opened all the way up.
“Fuck, Lanegan, why is it so goddamn hot back here?” he slurred and began struggling to pull both windows all the way up, blasting a rush of cold air through the smallish room and creating an instant whirlwind. Once he’d accomplished the mission of freezing me out, he stood with his arms upraised like Rocky Balboa. Suddenly, to my shock and horror, he grabbed an empty beer bottle out of the small garbage bin on the floor and whipped it out the window directly toward a car driving by.
“Van! What in the fuck, man?” I shouted over the din of the wind tunnel he’d created.
He paid no attention and reached down to fumble through the trash for another bottle. I jumped up from my seat and wrapped my arms around him in a bear hug.
“Get off me, Lanegan!” he yelled and effortlessly threw me against the wall, falling to the ground himself as the effort of shaking me off had thrown his drunken equilibrium into a spin. I jumped up and slammed my body down on him.
“Hold on, bro! Wait a minute, Van, just hang on a second!”
He lay there not moving for a few seconds and I realized he had actually passed out. Jesus Christ, he is FUCKED UP, I thought, and cautiously left him snoring on the floor and went up front to let Kevan know what had been transpiring. We were for sure going to have a major problem getting through the border with him in such a compromised state.
After an hour’s drive, we arrived at the US/Canadian border. After being waved through by the Americans, we were asked to pull over and get out, go inside the office, and sit while some officials went through our bus, I assumed to look for contraband. Van kept slumping against me, on the verge of passing out every minute we sat waiting. Finally, a uniformed customs officer informed us that all was cool and we got back on the bus, heading into Canada. As soon as we arrived, I hit the couch in our backstage tent.
An hour or two later, we took the stage, first on the bill. Standing in the bright sunlight of the early afternoon, before we could even begin playing, Van went up to the microphone and began rambling incoherently through the PA, still completely smashed. I looked back at Barrett and yelled, “Let’s fucking do this!” Still mumbling into the mic, Van was taken by surprise and came into the song late and hitting the wrong notes. In doing so, he lost his balance and fell straight onto his back to the stage floor with a resounding thud. We played on as he lay there like an overturned turtle, unable to get up for the entire length of the song. Between songs, two of our crew guys struggled to get him on his feet while I stood there dick in hand, feeling the heat of humiliation on my face, in front of this very large crowd. I had seen a lot of fucked-up shit onstage through the years and had been guilty of some of the most embarrassing scenes myself, but this was a new tragicomic high/low.
Finally, thankfully finished with our short thirty-minute set, I went and lay back down on a couch in one of the tents backstage that served as dressing rooms and fell asleep. I was awakened by a commotion. I stuck my head through the opening of the tent and, to my shock, was greeted by the sight of Van Conner chasing some guy around with a huge, real machete.
“Van!” I screamed. “What in the fuck are you doing?”
My groggy mind raced. Where in the fuck had he found the sword, and more importantly, was he going to kill this guy? At that exact moment, I watched as he stumbled over a small inflatable children’s wading pool full of water that was inexplicably sitting on the ground in the backstage area. He toppled face first into it, the machete flying harmlessly away as he did so. Van got wasted often, but I had never seen this advanced degree of prolonged insanity from him in my life. He rolled over on his back and lay there smiling
, self-satisfied, his weight smashing down the sides of the pool, draining all the water out of it. My mind flew back to that lifetime ago when I had been walking to school as an elementary student and had first seen him, as a baby, smiling this same smile as he lay in a kiddie pool exactly like this.
Wilkins finally got him up and put him to bed in his bunk on the bus. He was down for the count, not to appear again the rest of the day. As day turned to night, I watched from the side of the stage while the power of Crazy Horse blew my mind. When Neil Young began singing “The Needle and the Damage Done,” I was caught on my heels. My heart went straight up into my throat, the sad majesty of this song I’d heard a million times bringing tears to my eyes as I thought about all the friends I’d lost to the scourge of the same heroin addiction I was still fully in thrall of and beholden to.
After returning to the States, I was talking to one of the catering guys traveling with the tour I’d become friendly with, he sharing my affinity for crack.
“Did you meet Neil?” he asked me.
“No, you?”
“No, but I was there when that asshole Liam Gallagher did. He was so rude to Neil I wanted to punch him out.”
This bit of news enraged me. It was one thing to be a prick to me, but how dare that son of a bitch be rude to Neil? One of the all-time greats and one of my heroes? It was the cassette tape of After the Gold Rush that had been my only companion and lifesaver during one of the lowest points of my life. This made my hatred grow to epic proportions and gave me all the more reason and resolve to kick Liam’s fucking ass.
While walking down the corridor in the Philadelphia arena home to the 76ers before doors, I came face-to-face with Liam, flanked by his two huge bodyguards, Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber. Heeding Wilkins’s warning, I stepped to the side to avoid potentially getting hospitalized by Liam’s triple-extra-large employees. As they passed, Gallagher turned back and curled his lip in yet another failed attempt to intimidate, a “crazy”-eyed facial expression with all the scare factor of a Z-grade Steven Seagal.
He shouted, “I’ll see you in Miami, mate!”
I stared at him with shark-dead eyes.
“You got it, man.”
I was going to have to put this putrid piece of shit down, that much was clearly obvious, yet everywhere he went, his goons went as well. I was in no hurry to walk weaponless onto a battlefield, one against three, especially when two of the three were gigantic paid ballbreakers.
Once back in the dressing room, I asked Kevan what the deal was with Miami.
“Miami is the last date on the tour, buddy.”
I broke out into laughter as I realized his Miami comment had been the classic grade-school threat of “I’ll see you after class.” What is this, fucking kindergarten? I thought. I was a grown fucking man with a lifelong propensity for violence who’d had to literally fight my way out of life-threatening situations in the past. Who did this fucking idiot think he was dealing with?
After we played our forty-five minute set that night, I was jonesing for a hit. I decided to head to a Philly neighborhood where I’d often scored crack in the past. I got into a cab outside the arena and told the driver where I wanted to go.
“Hey, fella,” he said, “that’s a pretty rough neighborhood you’re going to.”
“It’s cool, man. I’m no stranger to it.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror and immediately clocked the sour expression on my face.
“If you don’t mind my saying so, you look pretty angry, friend. What’s the matter?”
“I’m working on a job and there’s an unstable loudmouthed prick there who’s been threatening me with violence. I want to take him out but he is surrounded by these huge dudes who will put me in traction if I do it. Or worse.”
“Do you have a spare ten dollars?”
I pulled a wrinkled ten-dollar bill out of my pants pocket and handed it to him.
“Here,” he said, handing me a roll of quarters. “Keep these in your fist and the next time you see him, break his fucking jaw. An asshole like that won’t give up until his friends get you down and he’s able to jump in and finish the job once you’re hurt. You have got to hurt him first. He won’t give up until you’re destroyed; you’ve got to destroy him first.”
His looking glass into future possibilities and its variety of outcomes had already occurred to me, but it was still refreshing to encounter a dude with the same worldview as myself. This arrogant, spoiled, wounded baby Gallagher was so full of himself that I could not put anything past him.
After the next concert, I got an unwelcome surprise. Cliff Burnstein, one of my managers, had shown up unannounced. After kicking everyone off the bus except me, he began to give me the sternest talking-to I’d ever received in my adult life.
“Lanegan, you have a deadly serious problem. I know it, you know it, the band knows it, the record company, everyone. At this point, it’s even obvious to the people who come to watch you play.”
Fucking hell. He’d come to give me a one-man intervention.
“You’re dying, Mark. This drug addiction is killing you and we at Q Prime are no longer going to be party to it. You have two options. Either you go to treatment and get clean or we are sending you on an extended six-week tour of Canada.”
Canada? Six weeks? Were there even enough places to play there in order to stay six weeks? A six-week tour of Canada was essentially a forced kick. I could only assume that outside of Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and Ottawa, Canada was a heroin-free zone, devoid of any reliable source of dope. Neither of these choices held an ounce of appeal.
“Let me sleep on it for a night? Please, Cliff.”
“Okay, but if I don’t hear back by tomorrow, we’re booking a Canadian tour.”
I stayed up the entire night, running what I’d been offered over and over in my mind. Eventually, I decided upon a third option, an option of my own invention. We had been a Q Prime pet project that had never earned them a cent. They could afford to indulge their ultimately failed effort to break the Trees because at that time they had behind them the most clout of nearly any other management company in the rock world with a stable of some of the biggest-earning bands in the business. I would fire Q Prime, the world-class powerhouse management team who had taken care of us for years. And I would quit the band. I just wanted it over.
Since I had made up my mind I was done with the band, that also meant this dismal Oasis tour. Not wanting to create chaos on the band front for the moment, I told only Wilkins of my decision, but I insisted he first allow the bus to show up at the next arena in order for me to go inside, find Gallagher, and finish what he’d started. There was no possible way I was leaving before I’d taken out my retribution on this cancerous slug.
Probably just humoring me, Wilkins said, “Just hold on a second, buddy. Let me go inside and see what’s going on. I promise that before I tell them we’re quitting, I’ll let you go in and take your shot at him.”
I waited impatiently for twenty minutes, getting intensely worked up. I was finally going to put this fucking cunt in his place, walk the fuck away, and be done with the bullshit charade of the Trees and of rock music in general, forever.
Finally, Kevan came back on the bus.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, buddy, but the tour’s over. Not because of you, but because Liam quit the band and flew back to England last night. The good news is we’re being paid for all the remaining shows.”
He had quit and bailed before I could have a go at him. Before his promised playground battle royale in Miami. Typical, I thought. He hadn’t sought me out to “put me through a wall,” with or without his hired gorillas. That phony motherfucker had pissed his pants and gone home to mama before I had a chance to blow this whole thing up myself.
Later, an employee of Epic Records asked me how the tour had gone. He said they’d been taking bets in the office as to how long it would take for Liam and I to come into conflict.
I said, “Whoever put their money on ‘immediately’ won the pot.”
39
ABSENCE AND HARDSHIP
In the fall of ’96, Trees headed back to Europe for a tour. I taught St. Louis Simon, my runner, how to cook up a batch of crack on the kitchen stovetop and left him at my apartment to watch over and keep up my crack-selling business. He already knew my coke connection because I’d sent him there a million times to re-up. I paid my annoyed apartment manager Christian my next month’s rent early and the Screaming Trees got on a plane for London in the cold autumn weather.
I had dressed for comfort for the long flight in coach: pajama bottoms and a hoodie under a coat, two full rigs in the top of each of my long sweat socks. I knew by experience that I never once got patted down in an airport in those pre-9/11 days and that the tiny points of metal on my syringes never set off the alarm while going through security. Once on the plane, I immediately went into the can and did a shot before we’d even taken off. I also had crack and a pipe on me but had no plans to risk smoking that in the bathroom; it was way too iffy. But I found it nearly impossible to go even an hour without taking a hit on any normal day so I knew it might prove challenging to resist the urge. The other guys had a good laugh when they’d caught an eyeful of my attire but I didn’t give a damn. Due to their size alone, they were in for a long, uncomfortable flight.
I fell asleep before take-off, then woke up already several hours into the flight. I went to the bathroom and did another shot. Remembering the crack pipe, rock, and lighter in my hoodie pocket, I was suddenly gripped with an unstoppable urge to take a hit. There was a strong sensor and smoke alarm on the ceiling of every airplane restroom and to smoke in there was insanity. But wait a second … any time you flushed the shitter on a plane, it sucked everything down with incredible force. Couldn’t I just hold the smoke in my lungs and blow it into the toilet as I flushed it?