Mark William Lanegan (November 25, 1964 – February 22, 2022) was an America… Read Full Bio ↴Mark William Lanegan (November 25, 1964 – February 22, 2022) was an American singer, songwriter, and poet. First becoming prominent as the lead singer for the early grunge band Screaming Trees, he was also known as a member of Queens of the Stone Age and The Gutter Twins. He released 12 solo studio albums, as well as three collaboration albums with Isobel Campbell and two with Duke Garwood. He was known for his baritone voice, which was described as being "as scratchy as a three-day beard yet as supple and pliable as moccasin leather" and has been compared to Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, and Nick Cave.

Lanegan began his musical career in 1984 with Screaming Trees, with whom he released seven studio albums and five EPs before their disbandment in 2000. During his time with the band, he also started a solo career and released his first solo studio album, The Winding Sheet, in 1990. He subsequently released a further 10 solo albums, which received critical recognition but only moderate commercial success. Following the end of Screaming Trees, he became a frequent collaborator of Queens of the Stone Age, and was a full-time member between 2001 and 2005 during the Songs for the Deaf and Lullabies to Paralyze eras.

Lanegan collaborated with various artists throughout his career. In the 1990s, he and Kurt Cobain recorded an album of Lead Belly covers that was ultimately never released. He also joined Layne Staley and Mike McCready in the band Mad Season, and formed the alternative rock group The Gutter Twins with Greg Dulli in 2003, as well as contributing to releases by Moby, Bomb the Bass, Soulsavers, Tinariwen, The Twilight Singers, Manic Street Preachers, and Unkle, among others.

Lanegan struggled with addiction to drugs and alcohol throughout his life, but had been sober for over a decade at the time of his death. Encouraged by his friend Anthony Bourdain, he released the memoir Sing Backwards and Weep in 2020. He followed this up in 2021 with the memoir Devil in a Coma, which focused on his near-death experience with COVID-19. He and his wife Shelley Brien left the U.S. in 2020 and settled in the Irish town of Killarney, where he died two years later at the age of 57. No cause of death was revealed.

Studio albums
The Winding Sheet (1990)
Whiskey for the Holy Ghost (1994)
Scraps at Midnight (1998)
I'll Take Care of You (1999)
Field Songs (2001)
Bubblegum (2004)
Blues Funeral (2012)
Imitations (2013)
Phantom Radio (2014)
Gargoyle (2017)
Somebody's Knocking (2019)
Straight Songs of Sorrow (2020)

Juárez
Mark Lanegan Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

Night train is groovy
An orange jubilee
Feels good comin' and goin'
I'm warm all over me

Fire up the crack boys
And tie off my arm
Cinch up my diaper

Turn the TV on
Give me another blow job
Before I'm on the nod
Say you'll always love me and
Never do me harm
Never do me harm
Never do me harm

Well you're a preacher's daughter
And I'm a bastard's son

Overall Meaning

The song Juarez by Mark Lanegan has quite a haunting and disturbing set of lyrics. It is a song that portrays a man who is succumbing to his drug addiction and losing control over his life. The opening lines, "Night train is groovy, an orange jubilee, feels good comin' and goin', I'm warm all over me" depict the drug-induced euphoria the singer feels when he takes the "night train," a slang term for heroin. The next line, "Fire up the crack boys, and tie off my arm," refers to the act of smoking crack cocaine and tying up the arm with a belt or rubber tubing to make the veins more visible for injection.

The singer's desperation becomes more apparent with the lines, "Cinch up my diaper, turn the TV on, give me another blow job before I'm on the nod." The metaphor of the diaper suggests that the singer has lost control over his bodily functions due to his addiction. Turning the TV on is a way to drown out the inner demons that haunt him, while the blow job is a way to feel some kind of human connection before the drugs take over.

The final lines, "Say you'll always love me and never do me harm," suggest a sense of fear and insecurity within the singer. He fears that he will be abandoned and left to suffer the consequences of his addiction. All in all, the song Juarez is a bleak portrayal of the life of an addict and the destruction it brings to one's life.

Line by Line Meaning

Night train is groovy
I'm enjoying the ride on this train

An orange jubilee
The sunrise's orange color is beautiful

Feels good comin' and goin'
I feel good both arriving and leaving

I'm warm all over me
I feel a warming sensation all over my body

Fire up the crack boys
Let's smoke some crack cocaine

And tie off my arm
Prepare my arm for drug injection

Cinch up my diaper
Prepare my adult diaper due to incontinence caused by drugs

Turn the TV on
Put on some entertainment

Give me another blow job
Perform oral sex on me again

Before I'm on the nod
Before I fall asleep

Say you'll always love me and
Promise me you will always love me