DISGRACELAND - Mark Lanegan: Kurt Cobain’s Drug Runner, Liam Gallagher’s Tormentor, and Matt Dillon’s Firestarter

Episode Date: July 29, 2025

Mark Lanegan was grunge’s darkest secret – a gravel-voiced hellraiser who ran dope for Kurt Cobain, scared Liam Gallagher into quitting Oasis, and nearly lost his arm (and his mind) chasing the next high. He brawled his way out of a dead-end town, made as many enemies as friends in the music industry, and somehow kept singing through it all. From crack dens to concert halls, his life was pure rock ‘n roll noir – violent, haunted, and painfully real. This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including depictions of suicide. If you or a loved one are thinking about suicide, help is available 24 hours a day at the 988 Lifeline. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠⁠⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠⁠⁠. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠TikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor? That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on, from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners.

Please check the show notes for more information. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. This is a story. about violence, about heroin, about the real man who made Liam Gallagher quit Oasis. Hint, it wasn't his brother. And it's about some seriously underrated rock and roll. Great music. Great music made by a man named Mark Lanigan, singer and leader of screaming trees, and later, one of the singers from Queens of the Stone Age. Mark's music was very much unlike that music that I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great

music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Kurtz Nightporter, M.K. 1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to, we don't talk about Bruno by the cast of Enkanto. And why would I play you that specific slice of weird, animated Uncle Cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on February 22nd, 2022. And that was the day that Mark Lanigan, after years of rough fights and even rougher nights, after recovering from a nearly three-week coma, gave in to his own demons and died at the age of 57. On this episode, violence, heroin, Matt Dillon on fire, Liam Gallagher-Nagher scared shitless, and Mark Lanigan. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Dumb as you fucking look.

You're a piece of shit that much is true, but my mouth to God's ears, son. I know you're a piece of shit. Your mama knows you're a piece of shit, but don't be going all dumb on me now, too. Got it? Okay, then. I'm going to ask you one last time. Which one of your shitbag friends is stealing all the goddamn stereos out of the goddamn cars down at the dealership? 15-year-old Mark Lannigan shifted uncomfortably in his chair,

while his aggressor, Captain Limpdick here from the local sheriff's department, loomed over him from where he sat on the edge of his desk. Of course, Lannigan knew who was taking the stereos. Bad recognizes bad and all that. And when it came to bad, right now, in the year 1979, in the dead-end city of Ellensburg, Washington, Mark Lannigan was about as bad as it got. He was a thief, a trespasser.

He was drunk or stoned 24-7, covering public walls with spray paint and piss, barely tolerated by his teachers and abused physically and mentally by his miserable mother. He did what he had to do in order to survive in what he saw as a dead-end town, and thus survived the authority, apathy, and stupidity that ran amokly.

there. And yeah, technically, Ellensburg was a city, but it was such a backwards podunk shithole of a city that it had that permanent small town stink all over it. In just a few years from now, by the time Landigan was a senior, he would destroy his probation officer's van with a sledgehammer, the cherry on top, as it were, of a long list of alcohol, drug, and theft-related offenses. And those offenses in total would earn him an 18-month prison sentence, a sentence that a lenient judge would suspend on the condition that Lannigan complete substance abuse treatment. The judge, bless him, thought that Mark Lannigan could change. Captain Limpdick, on the other hand, despite all his obvious flaws, most glaring of which was the cast he was currently wearing on one arm due to

injury he no doubt sustained while beating on some other unlucky miscreant, Captain Limpdick knew that change wasn't something a kid like Lannigan was capable of. The bottom was where he was born, and the bottom was where he would stay. There was no amount of blackout drunk nights that could make him forget that. And no matter how hard he fought, he'd never claw his way out. That didn't mean that Lanigan wouldn't put up a fight trying. In fact, violence was one thing that Mark Lanigan trafficked in from a very early age. Come on, kid, Captain said. I'm going to ask you one more time.

And you fucking A better give me a name this time. Who took the goddamn stereos? Lanigan cocked his head upright, finally making eye contact and said, I don't know. Captain Limp Dick's face went red with rage. He lunged at Lanigan. and he swung his busted arm at the side of Landigan's head, connecting with a thud, knocking Lannigan off to the chair and onto the floor, where the captain was now standing over his teenage prey,

ignoring the throbbing pain shooting up and down his arm. He wanted to see the abject fear in the kid's eyes. But instead, he saw the eyes of a victor, a look of satisfaction, even down there on the grimy floor. And that pissed limp dick off to no end. You had this coming, boy, he said, grabbing Landigan by his shirt collar with his good hand, cocking back his bad arm, and then. The punch landed squarely on Mark Landigant's jaw. He stumbled backwards, the cold, salty air of Asbury Park, New Jersey,

stinging his lip where it had been split open. He'd drunk himself into a stupor again tonight, so the pair of angry bouncers now standing before him looked like a quartet. These meatheads were Planet Fitness big, not brick shithouse big, like the Connor boys, Van and Gary Lee, or Barrett Martin. The guys who collectively, along with Mark, comprised the tallest and most intimidating band from the Pacific Northwest, screaming trees. But Van and Gary Lee, where the hell had they gone off to? Lannigan grabbed a piece of wooden signpost that was rotting in the gutter and waved it at the bouncers who were coming to finish what they started. He turned to see Barrett at his side, his arm dangling in a way that was not natural screaming,

They broke my arm! They fucking broke my arm! The piece of wood felt too heavy in Landigan's hand. It was wasted enough that he knew that an attempt to wield it would be a fool's errand, or at least of drunks. So he tossed the weapon to the ground, put up his fists, and went in swinging. It was October, 1992. Mark Lanigan had long since put Ellensburg, behind him, saved from a life as the town Barfly by the only thing that mattered,

rock and roll, the sex pistols, the stranglers, Iggy Pot, Gun Club. Discovering music like that, music that no one was listening to in Ellensburg, that was like discovering a new language. And while Mark Landigan may have felt like the only long-haired punk rocker in a city full of jocks, in reality, there were a few others. So when he met Van and Gary Lee Connor, who not only understood his musical vocabulary, but made their own music, too, Lanigan knew he'd found his ticket out. Mark Lanigan didn't play an instrument, but he could sing, and within a few years he had honed his voice into the one we know today,

the resonant baritone that was gruff like Tom Waits and gravely like Billy Holliday, if Billy Holliday sometimes had a beard. And by the early 90s, the screaming trees had evolved from, Nuggets-era garage rock into a powerful behemoth of sound that was as formidable as they looked, while also being as catchy as anything the so-called grunge scene was producing at the time. And just like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice and Chains, and the other bands that they'd come up with, the screaming trees quickly found themselves riding Seattle's Rising Tide. Sweet Oblivion, their second album for Epic Records, and their sixth overall,

also their first to feature Barrett Martin, who replaced its original drummer, Mark Pickerel, set them up for the big time, but never actually got them there. Months before it was released in September of 1992, its lead single, Nearly Lost You, have been featured on the soundtrack to Cameron Crow's movie Singles, a fictionalized take on Grunge in Seattle starring Matt Dillon.

But when Mark Lannigan found out that every other band on the soundtrack got paid, while the screaming trees were told to waive their sink fee in the name of exposure, that pissed him off to no end. Mudhoney got $20,000 and the screaming trees got fuck all. It made Lannigan feel like he and the boys were swimming at the bottom of the barrel. At least he was familiar with the bottom of the barrel, and glass being half full and all that, there was only one way to get out of the bottom.

But not tonight. Tonight on the boardwalk, in Asbury Park, outside a club called the Fast Lane where the screaming trees were scheduled to play a gig tomorrow night. The bottom embraced Mark Lanigan. And tonight, when the bouncers told the trees bassist Van Conner he couldn't take his drink outside, Van told the guy to go fuck himself.

And when the bouncer told Landigan the same, Lanigan knocked the tyrant's ass off his little stool with one punch. The fist fight that followed ensured that the screaming trees would not play at the fast lane, not tomorrow night or any other night for that matter. They did tape a performance of their great song nearly lost you on the David Letterman show the next day, but did so with drummer Steve Ferone sitting in for Barrett Martin, since Barrett had dislocated his shoulder in the melee.

Lanigan, however, was front and center, Van and Gary head banging behind him, Lanigan gripping the mic stand with both hands like he was holding on for dear life, looking very much like the last dude you'd ever want. want to fuck with and sporting a huge shiner on his left eye for maximum effect. This was not Matt Dillon with phony long hair in a soul patch up on a movie screen trying to be a singer from Seattle. This was not singles. This was the real deal. This was uncompromising rock and roll at its most violent, underappreciated best. It didn't give in to anything, and it didn't give anything up, just like young Mark Lannigan wouldn't give up any names to

Captain Lipstick all those years ago. Some things are better kept the secret. Some things you take to your grave. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

I'm Anna Sinfield. And in this new season of The Girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands.

I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the Girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler,

we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an act or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance.

Like he's about to attack me, like, making karate noises. And his entire, the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships

or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things.

Tena Monsu. Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie to Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien.

And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the criterion closet? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells.

running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to your movies I love you on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. you get your podcasts. Did you call for the Knight Porter?

You asked this of your buddy, Kurt Cobain, who was looking at you through the crack of the half-open front door at his house on Lake Washington. The Night Porter is Kurt's nickname for you. Your friends call you all sorts of things. Old Scratch, Dark Mark, a homeless crack addict that he once ran a scam with to scare up drug money used to call you Whitey Ford. But only Kurt calls you the Night Porter. He does so on account of the fact that you run dope all over Seattle like a bike messenger.

But you don't have a bike, and you do your work under the cover of darkness. There's a gaping hole in town that needs filling, and just as you'd sing in one of your later songs, you're there to janitor the emptiness. Everyone in town benefits from your quicksilver ass. Baristas making minimum wage at Starbucks, tech millionaires at Microsoft, and your good buddy, Kurt Cobain here, who just so happens to be the biggest rock star on the planet.

You benefit too, because ever since you cut alcohol from your life and replaced it with heroin, your habit is all-consuming. And that habit costs a pretty penny. You are not Kurt Cobain or Chris Cornell. Shit, you're not even any fucking vetter. The money you make from screaming trees and from your solo career,

which is running on a parallel track, next to the bands, it's not enough. It's never enough. So your side hustle helps make ends me. And it also keeps you within arm's reach of some killer brown. Anyway, when Kurt sees that it's you at his door, not some crazy fan who's figured out where he lives, this huge smile bursts across his face. And he shouts your name, Lan again, like some God-fearing old bitty shouts, amen, at Sunday service, because amen, brother, you are the light. You are the flesh and the blood. You are the fucking Knight Porter, and you've got the goods.

Kurt knows your situation and does what he can. And you understand that there are some things he can't do, like go out and score heroin now that he's the most famous person in Seattle. Kurt always repays the favor. Once, he took out three grand in cash from the bank, stuffed it in your fist just for you being you, for being there for him, for being, as he once told you,

were one of the only real friends he had. Kurt didn't just have your back. He was your champion. The two of you almost made a record of leadbelly songs together, but when that didn't pan out, you had to settle for Kurt guesting on your cover of the Bluesman song Where Did You Sleep Last Night from your solo debut album, The Winding Sheet. That's right.

Be proud of that, man. Everyone connects that song with Nirvana in their unplug album as they should, because it's incredible, but you did it first. with Kurt. You put him onto that lead-belly shit. And then, two years later in 92, when the screaming trees were banned from all European festivals after you got blackout drunk at Roskilde and fought the stage crew at the end of your set like a cornered animal,

Kurt was the one who orchestrated your redemption. He told the organizers at Reading the Nirvana would pull out of that festival unless the screaming trees were back on the bill. At fucking Reading, one of the most iconic Nirvana performances of all three, time, and it almost didn't happen because Kurt liked you too much. Still, after a while, it became a lot to manage all this night porter business, because being a junkie was hard enough as it was. All the running around, trying to find your guy, and then finding out your guy got

pinched or he skipped town, so you got to find another guy, and that guy is holed up in the sketchiest part of town where if you don't have piece stuff down in the front of your jeans, you're either incredibly fucking stupid or you're about to be dead. And if you're not at home when you score, then you've got to find somewhere to shoot. And let's say you do. You find a place. Then you have to find

a working vein to shoot in. Because you're always running out of good veins. Next thing you know, you're pulling down your pants staring at your cock specifically at the big vein that runs upside it, wondering, well, it's a vein, isn't it? It'll only hurt for a second, right? And then, as soon,

as the needle breaks the skin, you watch that same vein balloon up and you're like, fuck, am I going to lose my cock now? Just like you thought you were going to lose your arm that one time in Quebec, there was no such thing as a clean needle, at least not on tour buses in the 1990s. Everyone shared everything, and once you were high, you didn't worry about that shit anyway. But this time, before the bus crosses the Canadian border, you shoot up with a car. with that dirty needle you hide in one of the van's interior panels, and your arm just fucking goes, poof.

It inflates to twice its size. It's fire red and hot to the touch. You wind up in a hospital where the doctors are telling you, Monsieur, your arm, we made it too. How do you say, remove it? So you're sitting there in a bed, waiting it out for 24 hours to see if the blood infection raging away inside he was going to come down

or if they're going to amputate. You're doing this while also sweat. writing out the final vestiges of the heroin left in your system. You're going cold turkey right there and you feel like shit. Your drum tech takes pity on you and hits the bricks to find a Montreal prostitute with huge lips to come give you one last blowjob as a two-armed man. But he can't get her past security, which is a huge buzzkill for your equally huge blue balls. The next day, the doc tells you that you can keep the arm,

which is great news because there's a mic stand somewhere that needs leaning on. its entire purpose is to be there for you to grip it tight with not one but two hands. And that gargoyle power stance you strike designed to scare off all comers, all posers. And if any shit-talking roughneck knows any better, they know to keep their distance from Mark fucking Lannigan. The only thing you haven't figured out yet is how to ward off the demons. Lannigan stood at the foot of a set of stairs outside Kirk Cobain's house smoking a lucky strike non-filter. He exhaled and looked up the stairs to where they led, a room above the garage. Kurt was missing.

He had escaped from a detox facility in L.A. and caught a plane back to Seattle. But no one knew where he was now. And his wife, Courtney Love, was freaking out. Geffen Records was freaking out too. Landigan's lawyer, the one he shared with Kurt, he was also freaking out. Landigan shadowed a private investigator, took him to drug houses on Capitol Hill. bought dope with the P.I.'s money. Going everywhere and anywhere, he thought Kurt might be hiding out.

Places to fix. Places you checked into but would never leave, but no dice. They called Kurt's friends and searched Kurt's house. Nothing. Outside, Lannigan took another puff off a cigarette. Just days earlier, Kurt had called three times and left three messages on his answering machine. Said he wanted to hang out and listen to music.

In other words, cop some dope, bro, and bring it over and let's get high. Lanigan never answered, and never called him back. All that night, Porter business, it was too exhausting. And Lanigan had no idea that Kurt was AWOL when he called. And now he wished he had picked up. He looked up at the stairs and at the door leading into the room above the garage. He didn't feel compelled to make the climb.

So instead, he tossed the butt on the ground, crushed it with his boot, and left. The next day, his phone rang. Kurt Cobain was dead, and they found his body in that room above the garage, just steps away from where Lannigan had stood. Courtney called him soon after and told him that Kurt had been listening to Lannigan's new solo record Whiskey for the Holy Ghost for days before he pulled the trigger, which just fucked Lannigan up to no end. He didn't need to hear that.

But there was no one hearing it now, just like there was no unthinking the thought that he was the last person Kurt ever called. His friend was gone on his watch, and Mark Lanigan was left to contemplate his place in it. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.

And rule two, never. mess with her friends either. We always say that, trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me?

The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he did. deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like,

young people come up to me and they want to be an act or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do. Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

Dennis Leary. I wake up. And I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance. Like he's about to attack me. Like, making karate noises. And his entire, the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming.

I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead.

Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Madarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Morone at Carrie Kenny Silver. And more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart Radio app,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods

with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says, she's gone, she's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you'd do.

You know, you look back at it, and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Reputation is everything. In the music business or the whatever business doesn't matter. Your reputation precedes you if you're doing it right. Some have to work on building the reputation, but for Mark Lannigan, it came naturally, authentically. Just by being himself, did his reputation evolve to where it was, firmly established in the mid-1990s. And it didn't really change from there.

Everyone knew Mark Lannigan took no shit. Didn't matter who you were. If you got on Lannigan's bad side, if you pissed him off, watch yourself. And that goes for hecklers in the audience calling his bandmates fat, or even for those same bandmates when they did something that he felt was deserving of his well-documented physical retaliation. I mean, have you seen Van and Gary Lee Connor? Those dudes were nine-foot-tall Andre the Giant-looking motherfuckers,

but shit, man, sheer size did not phase Langeley. He even challenged Liam Gallagher to a fight when the screaming trees opened Oasis's brief American tour in 1996. This, after Liam insulted him, insulted his band, and in general acted like a proper cunt, as they'd say in his native Manchester. Liam fancied himself a brawler, but Lannigan knew the type. His idea of fighting was a loud mouth that wouldn't shut the hell up. So when Liam Gallagher told Mark Landigan that he'd throw down mono-a-mono at the tour's final stop in Miami,

Landigan could rest assured that all this time spent around this prick would be worth it when he got to break Liam's nose at the end of the line. But they never got to the end of that line. Because right before the Miami date, the final night of the tour, Liam Gallagher bailed. He quit Oasis and flew back home to England. Yes, Liam Gallagher briefly quit his own bail. band in 1996, and it wasn't because of his dysfunctional relationship with his brother Noel. It was because he was terrified that Mark Lanigan was going to beat the shit out of him. If Lanigan shared something with Liam, it was that intimacy with dysfunction.

The screaming trees dysfunction was one thing pushing him further into a solo career. But in 96, the trees remained an important part of Landigan's revenue stream, which was necessary in order to maintain his all-consuming drug habits. it. And that was the other part of Landigan's reputation. He was known as a junkie and a fiend, and an amateur cook who made crack cocaine in his kitchen that he could sell on the side when he wasn't shooting or smoking whatever he could get his hands on with friends like Lane Staley from Allison Chains, who incidentally filled in for Mark Landigan at the screaming tree show in Montreal when Landigan was laid up in that hospital wondering if he was going

to lose his arm, but I digress. But in a bad part of town in Rockford, Illinois, home of Cheap Trick, where the trees were passing through as part of the Lollapalooza tour, that same year in 1996, Mark Lannigan's reputation didn't mean shit. He was just another mark with crumpled up bills in his pocket looking for a fix. Some brown, some rock, some of whatever came easy. And the old guy's standing guard outside this dilapidated drug den said it was ten bucks to get inside. And then he looked over at the tall dude standing next to Lannigan, Josh Hami, formerly of Caius and a new addition to the trees as their touring second guitar player.

Short red hair, white pukashel necklace, nice polo shirt. His palm desert jaco fucko vibe was in direct conflict with Mark Lanigan's strung out shoulder-length hair and beard. That's ten bucks each, the old guy corrected. Lanigan forked over the cash, and then he and Josh walked inside. The place was dark. cigarette smoke hung from the ceiling. Ready or not, but the Fugees was blaring from a set of shitty speakers behind a bar

where a dope head nodding off made a show of nursing liquor from a dirty glass. Some skinny piece of ass draped herself on Lannigan's arm. Give me a 20 and I'll take you to score. Lannigan reached into his pocket and pulled out another Andrew Jackson. Price had doing business. And the woman stuck the money down her bra and began to walk up a set of old stairs. She stopped, turned back, in motioned that Lanigan and Josh should follow. And Lannigan could feel it already.

The rush, the high, the escape. They reached the second floor where the woman knocked on a wooden door. It opened, and no sooner had Lannigan and Josh stepped inside that three dudes, big dudes, leaped at them, chest out, antenna up. The fuck is he doing here? One of the guys yelled. Are you a fucking cop? Lanigan had never been accused

to being a cop before but then he realized he wasn't being accused they're all staring at Josh Hami shit Lanigan thought looking at his friend through the eyes of a paranoid drug dealer

yeah he could see it Josh had an arc written all over him look man we're not cops Lanning said trying to diffuse the situation get his fix and get out you may not be a cop

But he is, motherfucker. Lannigan panicked. And Josh slowly began to reach for his back pocket, which is where, as Lannigan knew, he kept his switchblade. Shit! All three of these mean-looking bastards were no doubt strapped. If Josh snapped open his blade, they were fucked. Lannigan put his hand on Josh's shoulder.

As it to say, cool it clean eastwood, and then calmly addressed the room. Excuse me, gentlemen, but I think we've made a mistake. We will see ourselves out. You're fucking right, you will, old man. Take your bitch-ass cop with you. Now, Lanigan and Josh were back out on the streets of Rockford, $40 lighter with no direction home.

They've been dropped off in this neighborhood earlier and had no idea which way was out. So they started walking. Up the road a piece, Lanigan spotted some dudes loitering under a broken street light. Definitely looked like they were holding. and he still had a few bucks on him, so he told Josh to hang tight for one minute and went to score. Josh stood stone solid, watching helplessly.

And before Landigan could say anything that the guys he hoped had what he so desperately needed, he heard footsteps come up on him fast from behind. And then, the feeling of cold steel pressed into the back of his neck, followed by the sound of a pistol cocking. Keep walking, caught. Lannigan wasn't running now, but he was moving faster, away from another potential score. Those early symptoms of dope sickness beginning to set in. Josh Hami was there with him every step of the way, freaking out but trying not to show it.

Then, headlights. A car was making its way toward them, engine humming, the muffler doing God's work. It began to pick up speed, and as it got closer, Lannigan and Josh could see the barrel of a gun hanging out the rear driver's side window. They had no time to react. The car was rumbling directly past them now, and the kid holding the gun was squeezing the trigger, and suddenly Lannigan and Josh were sprayed with water.

Standing there, soaking wet, the car's tail lights fading into the night. Lannigan and Josh laughed. It was the only appropriate response to thinking you were just about to lose your life on some back-end street in cheap tricks hometown, only to find out that the joke was on you. Moments later, Hami went quiet, his smile fading and he said,

If you ever do that to me again, I'll fucking kill you. Josh Hami did not kill Mark Lannigan. But a few years later, he did hire him as a secondary lead singer and his new band, and Queens of the Stone Age. Being asked to join Queens in the year 2000, when Lanigan was 36 and at a personal and professional crossroads, it saved his life. And I'm not being hyperbolic here either.

Let me set the scene. Screaming trees had finally broken up. But not before that close call in Rockford, Illinois, some years prior had gone full-blown bad omen, and Landigan was robbed in Amsterdam at knife point while trying to score. And then in London it happened again. Only this time, Lannigan's old school captain Limp Dick defying fight-or-flight instincts kicked in, and he beat the living shit out of this would-be mugger.

And when he got home to Seattle, he was broke. His phone and his electricity had been shut off. And before he got himself evicted, he was frantically cooking up batches of crack cocaine that he could sell for a few bucks on a Coleman propane camping stove. Soon he was homeless, sleeping under a tarp near the freeway. Lannigan was then saved not once, not twice, but three times. First, by Courtney Love, his unexpected benefactor, who put up cash when Lannigan needed it most.

Just like Kurt used to do back in the day. She paid for Lannigan to live at drug treatment facilities and halfway houses in California for nearly a year so that he could get clean. Next, by Seattle resident Duff McCagan, bass player for Guns and Roses, his unexpected sponsor who helped Lannigan get back on his feet as the caretaker of his two houses. And then by Josh Hami and Queens of the Stone Age, his unexpected new boss, who gave Lannigan a new creative lease on life, not to mention a great gig. Lanigan used to say that being in Queens was the best because he only had to be the center of attention for one-third of a show.

Following his brief but impactful tenure with Queens of the Stone Age, Mark Lannigan continued making great solo records and continued to find inspired, collaborations with Greg Dooley, the Afghan Whigs, and Isabel Campbell of Bell and Sebastian, and with Soul Savers, Moby, and Uncle. He was the go-to guy for discerning musicians and their fans, with a voice like Top Shelf Bourbon. And it was a voice that only comes around once in a great while. You can't learn that voice or teach it. It's just always been inside you, just like your attraction to violence and hard drugs, and conversely to close fellowship with those who get you

and are worthy of your good graces. It's all part of what makes you so authentic, for better and for worse, because above all else, inauthenticity is the greatest sin. And to that end, you find yourself in a bar or New York one night after a show, and someone taps you on the shoulder, you turn around and take a drag off your lucky strike and narrow your eyes. Mark, do you know Matt Dillon? The actor sticks out his hand to shake yours,

says he's a big fan. Yeah, thanks, man. You don't have much beyond that to say to him, so you stand there smoking your cigarette and feeling awkward. Nothing personal, but every time you see this guy, all you can picture is him wearing that stupid wig and that stupid movie that turned your friends into a cartoon and screwed your band out of thousands of dollars. Someone else catches Dylan's attention, and he turns his head away from you, and as he does, you drop what's left of your lit cigarette in Dylan's suit jacket pocket, and it begins to smolder, and then Dylan's jacket catches fire, and he's wildly stamping out the flames with his hands now, looking around to see who did this to him. But you're long gone, out the door, onto the sidewalk, and there,

but for the grace of God, into the emptiness. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is discreet. I hope you dug this episode. Apple podcast listeners, make sure you have auto downloads turned on so you never miss an episode of Disgraceland. This week's question of the week, guys, who is your favorite but most underrated rock star? Is it Mark Lannigan? Is it someone else? I want to know who, and I want to know why you love them. Hit me up.

Voicemail and text 617-906-66-3638 and let me know. I can also be reached on Instagram, Facebook, X, at Disgraceland Pod, and Discraceland Pod at G. email.com for going to do the email thing. Leave a review for the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and win some free merch. All right, here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.

Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axist member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelampod.com slash membership.

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Rockerola. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that, trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, and my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tana M'Ju, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor? That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You. podcast from the exactly right network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on,

from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.