With the recent release of ‘Lanegan,’ a biographical book about Mark Lanegan written by Greg Prato, fans were able to learn new information about the late musician and his life. The book includes memories from Lanegan’s former bandmate, Gary Lee Conner, about an unrecorded song that may have impacted Screaming Trees‘ career.
Mark Lanegan passed away a year ago due to an unknown cause, and ‘Lanegan’ by Greg Prato was released earlier this year. The book is a collection of interviews with Lanegan’s friends and admirers, which reveal some interesting memories regarding the musician. One such memory involves Courtney Love, whose farewell message after Langegan’s death was controversial.
According to his former Screaming Trees bandmate, Gary Lee Conner, Love offered the last song recorded by Nirvana before Kurt Cobain’s death to the band. The band learned the song ‘You Know You’re Right’ but never recorded it because Mark changed his mind and refused to do it due to his late friend’s memory. Later, the song was released and achieved enormous success, which Conner believes they could have shared by releasing an unreleased Nirvana song cover.
The former guitarist of the band recalled the time as follows:
“When we were working on songwriting for Dust, during that time, Mark is like, ‘Courtney wants us to do a song.’ And it was that song — ‘You Know You’re Right.’ So, I got a tape of it and we learned it. We never recorded it. But we learned it without Mark, and Mark came down to sing it…and he couldn’t. He changed his mind. And that was the end of it.
But who knows? We could have had a big hit with Kurt’s song. I’d imagine it would have been a pretty big deal – in ’95 or ’96 to release a cover of an unknown Nirvana song. I don’t know. That was the idea. But I don’t know if it was the idea of capitalizing on Kurt … although we could have used the money.”
It seems that Screaming Trees could have succeeded with Courtney Love’s offer if Mark Lanegan had accepted to record the song. However, the late musician could not bring himself to sing his late friend’s song. Therefore, ‘You Know You’re Right’ thrived without them.
