Eddie Vedder is now the last man standing of the Seattle grunge-era frontmen.
Vedder, performing last night as Eddie Vedder and The Earthlings at Benaroya Hall in Seattle, stopped his show to pay tribune to Mark Lanagen, the Screaming Trees singer who passed away yesterday (February 22) at the age of 57.
Pearl Jam posted a video to their YouTube channel with Vedder saying he was taking the news especially hard.
“I felt good last night and excited to do it again and then, you know, I got here about four o’clock and all of a sudden my body started shaking a little bit and I started to feel really terrible and I think it was because I was having an allergic reaction to sadness,” he said. “We lost … there’s a guy called Mark Lanegan and he … (there were) a lot of great musicians. Some people know Seattle because of the musicians that have come out of the great northwest. Some of those guys are one-of-a-kind singers and mark was certainly that and with such a strong voice, it’s hard to come to terms at this point with, um, yeah.”
Except for Vedder, the Seattle scene now has lost all of the great singers of the grunge age: Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, Alice in Chains’ Layne Staley, Mother Love Bone’s Andrew Wood, Lanegan, and Shawn Smith of Brad.
“Mark is gonna be deeply missed and at least we will always have his voice to listen to and his words and his books to read,” Vedder said.
Watch below video of Eddie Vedder addressing last night’s crowd in Seattle:
Watch Vedder and Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagen, a native of Seattle, performing “Precious” by the Pretenders.