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Devil in a Coma: a memoir

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It was definitely in my top five worst experiences,” the 57-year-old deadpans down the line from his home in County Kerry. He speaks slowly, with traces of the “scratchy whisper” he describes in Devil in a Coma, his memoir of his harrowing illness. “But I finally turned a corner recently and I’m feeling pretty normal, so it looks like it’s behind me.” Compelling . . . When he eventually does sing again, Mark Lanegan has the record of a lifetime to make

This is a journal not of the Pandemiad but of the plague raging through one man's body and his brutal struggle to survive. If you're a Lanegan fan it feels like a natural extension of SBAW and his recent albums. If you have no idea about Lanegan but want to read about what it was like to have a bad bout of covid this may also interest you. I expected I’d relate to his story somewhat, but never expected to relate as much as I did. Though I didn’t have Covid, mere months before Covid existed, I was in the ICU with damaged lungs and ventilated for a bit too long, with the conversation of a tracheotomy with my loved ones occurring. His descriptions of the nightmares and hallucinations, the extreme obsession with getting out- all worded as though it came directly out of my own head. I’ve never read such a similar description of my own experience (though his was quite a bit more extreme and a much lengthier stay- my 37 days to his MONTHS). No sooner had the accolades dried on that memoir than Lanegan, relocated to Ireland, land of his great-great-great-grandfather, to escape Covid, contracted Covid. In denial at first, he falls downstairs. Unable to breathe, deafened, with deep welts on his scalp and a useless leg, he is committed to hospital and put in an induced coma on kidney dialysis. His wife learns that Lanegan holds the hospital record for surviving longest in this parlous state. At one point, she refuses to allow the doctors to perform a tracheotomy that would have ended his singing career. I ask Lanegan if he feels the seasons in his songs, and I tell him that so much of what he sings conjures autumn for me, darker days with warm and fading light. “I grew up in a place where we had really hot summers and really icy, snowy wintertimes. But the fall and the spring are my favourite seasons when you’re in a place that has four seasons, fall being the best. I find it an inspiring time, something about the crisp air, the smell of woodsmoke, the changing of the colours of the leaves.” There’s a little bit of autumn left before the solstice, and it feels like the perfect time to read Lanegan’s new memoir while listening to his records. Lanegan’s worsening drug use (it was on a 1992 tour that an infection from heroin abuse had doctors considering amputating his arm, and in the wake of Cobain’s death in 1994 he admitted diving deeper into drugs) didn’t seem to hinder his productivity. His 1994 solo album ‘Whiskey For The Holy Ghost’ was considered amongst his finest. 1995 saw him collaborate with Alice In Chains singer Layne Staley and Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready in the supergroup Mad Season.

Heavy

I nervously typed the digits of Mark Lanegan’s Ireland number into my phone and pressed the green call button. It wouldn’t connect, and my heart sank. A few seconds later his number appeared as an incoming call. Is this still a good time? “Yeah,” he says, in his gravelly, quiet voice.

One morning in March 2021 with the second wave of infections ripping through Ireland where he was newly resident, Mark Lanegan woke up breathless, fatigued beyond belief, his body burdened with a gigantic dose of Covid-19. Admitted to Kerry Hospital and initially given little hope of survival, Lanegan's illness has him slipping in and out of a coma, unable to walk or function for several months and fearing for his life.

The Devil was fairly profligate with the best songs, but rare was the singer blessed with His very own voice. Grunge pioneer Mark Lanegan – who died yesterday (February 22) aged 57 – sang like a southern swamp, a canyon catacomb, a gallows tree. My favorite part (if it’s appropriate to have a “favorite” part of such a brutal retelling of an illness) was the style of his writing- the combination of old memories combined with the re-telling of his hospitalization, and then poems that relate to the specific part of the story in between.

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