The late Mark Lanegan allegedly missed out on a ton of cash for his silent co-write of Nirvana’s ‘Something In The Way’.
According to the new tome, ‘Lanegan’, the Screaming Trees frontman was “kicking himself in the butt” that he didn’t get any publishing royalties from the Grunge icon’s 1991 track from their seminal album ‘Nevermind’ after he let late frontman Kurt Cobain use some of his lyrics for free in return for his work on his solo record ‘The Winding Sheet’.
Mark’s former Queens of the Stone Age bandmate, Nick Oliveri, told author Greg Prato: “Mark said he wrote some lyrics on ‘Something In The Way’ with Kurt on ‘Nevermind’.
“But Kurt had played on some of Mark’s solo stuff, ‘The Winding Sheet’.
“So, instead of getting paid, they just did this thing where, ‘Hey man, I added a lyric on your song and you added a lyric on my song. Let’s just call it even. Whatever happens, happens.’ Little did Mark know, if he would have had publishing on ‘Something In The Way’ on ‘Nevermind’, he would have had a lot of money. I remember him kicking himself in the butt a little bit about that – ‘If I had that ‘Something In The Way’ publishing…’”
The book also features a claim by Mark’s bandmate Gary Lee Conner that Kurt’s widow, Hole frontwoman Courtney Love, offered Screaming Trees the Nirvana classic ‘You Know You’re Right’ after her husband’s death by suicide in April 1994.
It’s the final song by Nirvana and was released eight years after it was recorded on the band’s self-titled 2002 greatest hits collection.
Gary recalled: “When we were working on songwriting for [1996 album] ‘Dust’, during that time, Mark is like, ‘Courtney wants us to do a song.’
“And it was that song – ‘You Know You’re Right’ [a then-unreleased Nirvana song]. 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.”
He added: “But who knows? We could have had a big hit with Kurt’s song. [Laughs] 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 capitalising on Kurt … although we could have used the money.”
Mark died in February last year at the age of 57. His bandmate and brother to Gary, Van Conner, passed away last month, aged 55, following a battle with pneumonia.