Screaming Trees: The rise and fall of the band behind 'Sweet Oblivion' and the hit single 'Nearly Lost You.'
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Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin would tell Rolling Stone in 1996 “This is not an easy band to be in,” “It’s like there’s this fine line between healthy creative tension, and total misery and self-destruction. We’ve definitely seen both” he'd say.
Screaming Trees should have been a much bigger band than they were, but bad timing, infighting and drugs cannibalized the band as Singer Mark Lanegan looked back at his complicated relationship with his bandmates telling Loudersound
“We didn’t have a damn thing in common except insanity. So we fought a lot he'd say.” Today, let’s talk about the rise and fall of Screaming Trees.
Growing up in a ranching town named Ellensberg, which is about 100 miles from Seattle, brothers Gary Lee and Van Connor were outcasts in school being painfully shy and getting into trouble with their parents and teachers by boozing. Soon enough, the brothers got drawn into punk music, more specifically the band black flag Also growing up in Ellensberg around this time was future bandmate Mark Lanegan whose towering stature made him the star quarterback in high school. But Lanegan, also had a troubled childhood and by the time he became a legal adult he had already been arrested for a variety of offenses including public drunkenness, shoplifting and - drug possession. Like the Connor brothers Lanegan would find punk rock in his early teens when he saw a picture of a shirtless iggy pop on the front cover of an issue of Creem Magazine at a record store. Lanegan would eventually meet Van Connor in journalism class and the pair bonded over their love of punk rock. Van’s older brother Lee, five years his senior, was writing and recording songs on a four-track recorder. Lee played his material for Lanegan who saw potential in it. Adding drummer Mark Pickerel to round out the lineup, Soon enough Screaming Trees were born. They would take their name from an old effects pedal.
The band would rehearse at the Connor brothers parents video rental store, but even from the start things were difficult for the band. Between the Connor brothers constant bickering and fighting, Ellensberg didn’t offer a lot of places for bands to play. Van Connor would reveal to author Greg Prato in the book Grunge is Dead that the Screaming Trees first gig was at a group home for people who were mentally challenged.
The band would go on to release their 1985 demo titled Other Worlds through local label Velvetone. And while many people think of Mark Lanegan as one of the best singers to come out of Seattle, original drummer Mark Pickerel would reveal in the book Grunge is Dead how the singer was still finding his voice revealing “this was maybe a few months after lanegan started singing with us so he was still figuring out his strengths and weaknesses. I remember that there’s this song Pictures in my mind he was self conscious about his voice, so we ended up speeding up the tape to give his voice a different edge.” The other worlds EP would get the band noticed in seattle especially by the local newspapers like the Rocket who were now writing about the band and soon enough their music was being played on college radio.
It would be the Connor brothers parents who who lent the band money to pay for their debut album 1986’s Clairvoyance which was released on Velvetone as well. For a band that people hadn’t really heard of, it was a surprise to its members when the album sold over 2,500 copies.
Following the band’s debut album Screaming Trees music eventually found it’s way into the hands of Black flag guitarist and SST Records co-founder Gregg Ginn.
Throughout the rest of the 80’s the band would release a string of albums, EP’s and solo records for SST including 1987’s Even If And Especially When, 1988’s Invisible Lantern and 1989’s Buzz Factory, But the band almost came close to calling it quits. Van Connor would tell author Greg Prato that following 1988’s invisible lantern the band almost quit revealing
We all had crap jobs and had no future. You weren’t making any money in a band like that. We were supporting our band habit by having a job. I left before 1989’s buzz factory for a while about half a year when i had my first son. I freaked out i was like i can’t do music anymore. Of course then i realized that life sucked even worse without