Things used to be bad for SCREAMING TREES, what with the crazy times in a drugged-up Seattle. But they pulled themselves back from the brink to complete the now highly acclaimed 'Dust' LP. Then they got to support Oasis on their infamous US tour. JAMES OLDHAM catches up with the 'Trees in the US.

As far as the Screaming Trees were concerned they'd arrived in Seattle at just the right time. It was 1988, and all their friends had signed to the city's Sub Pop label. Now that the 'Trees finally lived here, there was nothing to stop them hanging out with those guys every night. This was going to be one incredible party.

They could go down to the Crocodile Café, see Nirvana and have a drink with Mudhoney. Perhaps though, they'd just head off to the Tad show on the other side of town and chat with Soundgarden. Not that it really mattered, because the end result would always be the same: the Screaming Trees would drink themselves into a head-removing coma and wake up the next morning wondering what the fuck they'd been doing the night before.

And even if you didn't go out that much, there was no escape from your Sub Pop pals. Singer Mark Lanegan wasn't one for hanging out at rock shows, he liked to stay at home.

Unfortunately he was living with Dylan Carlson from a band called Earth. Later in life, Dylan would become famous as the man who bought the gun that Kurt Cobain killed himself with, but in those days he just used to practise Earth's two-note bass drones in the basement. The house used to shake and Lanegan would decide to go out after all.

This lasted for eight years. Obviously, there were occasional interruptions when they had to go touring. Even then, though, their routine remained largely unbroken; they just got messed-up in a different town. In 1992, however, things started going wrong. They sat down to write the follow-up to 1992's 'Sweet Oblivion' album -- and it took four years.

It was sometime in 1995 when bass player Van Conner began to suspect things were really getting out of hand. He was coming back from a Tad show with a friend, heading for Mudhoney drummer Dan Peter's house. They were doing lines of coke off the dashboard, the back seat was covered with empty cans and they were speeding down Viaduct 99.

By the time they arrived at Dan's house, Van was crazed, sweaty and convinced he was about to die. He knew Mark was sick at home, his brother Gary Lee ('Trees guitarist) was on the verge of leaving for New York and 'Dust' remained unfinished. All of a sudden Seattle didn't seem so much fun any more...

Fast forward to Seattle 1996 and, when Mark Lanegan finally does arrive in the bar, he's virtually unrecognisable. He has a black, woolly hat pushed down just above his eyes, his gaunt face is covered with a rusty beard and he's clutching a dainty, red umbrella. Even with the collar of his leather jacket turned up, he's still shaking. Because that's the other thing about Seattle, more often than not it's cold and it's wet. He eases himself gingerly into his seat, and orders a root beer.

Lanegan feels sleepy today, and has difficulty keeping his eyes open. He's also in a hurry, he wants to visit the music shop around the corner before it shuts. He needs some fast money, so he's got to sell one of his amplifiers. When he places his hands on the table, you glimpse the tattoos on his knuckles. You also notice the tops of all his fingers have been gnawed away. They look sore and dirty.

He lives just up the hill from here, on the other side of the freeway. He likes it there because he can just about hear the cars rumble down Washington 5 from his bedroom. He enjoys the distant sound of droning traffic, it helps him to relax. It reminds him of when he used to live with Dylan. Anyway, Lanegan feels settled. He's been in Seattle for eight years now, and it's where he always wanted to live. After all, anywhere must be better than Ellensburg.

That's the ranching town 100 miles east of Seattle, where Lanegan grew up. His parents were teachers there, but he didn't have much time for school. In fact, he hated it. His father was also the football and baseball coach, so inevitably the teenage Lanegan was forced to pursue various sporting activities. It was here he realised that he didn't have much in common with his fellow pupils.

"You could say I was not well-liked by the other boys in the team," croaks Lanegan. "I pursued a life of crime, and I was always in trouble for petty, juvenile shit. They all thought I was a f---ing freak. I'd sit on the bus all by myself, and those guys would ask me what I was listening to and pass my tape player all around the bus. They were so f---ing ignorant. They didn't even know who Jimi Hendrix was, let alone the Sex Pistols or The Damned."

In his final year at high school, Lanegan met Van Conner in detention hall. He was part of the seven-strong Conner clan and was a few years younger than Lanegan. Lanegan had seen his brother around school. It was difficult to miss him. Permanently dressed in an army jacket, and with hair down to his waist, Gary Lee was known to everyone. He was another freak; a loner musician always playing guitar.

Lanegan liked Van, and wanted to meet his brother. They all knew Jimi Hendrix and they all liked punk rock, so they formed a band -- even though Van and Gary Lee hated the sight of each other. It was certainly no guarantee of escape from the backwoods discomfort of their upbringing. Indeed, before they'd even released any records, Lanegan became so disillusioned he decided he was going to leave Ellensburg for good.

"Two months before we made our first record," he recalls, "I had a job offer in Las Vegas. I was working over in the pea fields on the machines at that time, I was the grease monkey boy. And on the last day of work, just before I was set to get on my motorcycle and go to Vegas to stay with my cousin, I ended up getting run over by a tractor. My boss ran me over, with my own tractor. Fucking idiot. It was actually pretty comical, but it fucked me up for a while, laid me low."

There was no escape. Seattle continued to call for the Screaming Trees. Over the next three years, the band argued constantly, toured incessantly and released a series of increasingly gargantuan rock records, but remained in Ellensburg. They moved in varying social circles. As an SST Records band, they got to know Dinosaur Jr, their trips to Olympia meant regular meetings with Calvin Johnson's Beat Happening and, just by attending their shows, they started hanging out with Nirvana and Soundgarden.

In 1988, as Sub Pop began to gain influence, these disparate groups began to drift slowly together; drawn inexplicably nearer Seattle. The time was right for a move. The 'Trees had outgrown Ellensburg's less than enlightened small-town mentality, and yearned for a more cosmopolitan atmosphere. Seattle seemed to provide everything they could possibly hope for: small clubs putting on bands they loved and admired, fanzines documenting ever younger, ever louder punk bands and, of course, enough bars to keep the 'Trees occupied late into the night, every night.

Eight years later, Van has just arrived in one of those bars, lamenting the fact that there's nowhere to park a pick-up in this town. He looks thinner than before, although not by much, and he's friendly and keen to talk. His arrival gives Lanegan the chance to slip out around the corner to the music shop. His flatmate must have brought his amplifier down by now. Van meanwhile settles into his seat, orders a beer and starts to recount the realities of *that* move to Seattle.

For a while, it couldn't have been better. They drank with their friends, ended up on a major label and lived the life they'd always dreamed about. Inevitably, though, there was a price. As many of Seattle's newer citizens discovered, it was only a short walk from a bar to a drug dealer.

Despite the city's relative wealth (it's the home of Bill Gates' Microsoft), there's always been a problem with drugs in general, and heroin in particular. There's no difficulty getting hold of it, and junkies travel from miles around because of the ease of a score. So, if you've got the money, why not give it a try? After all, some of the 'Trees' best friends were already inextricably tangled up in the whole deal (notably a severely depressed Kurt Cobain).

"The more we toured, the more records we sold, the more drugs showed up in front of us and the more we thought we were invincible," recollects Van. "When we got off these tours, we'd think, 'What do we do now?' We couldn't just stop, so we carried on."

So, when the time arrived to record 'Dust', none of the band was in a fit state of mind. They arrived back in Seattle, settled into a familiar routine and lost control. Gripped by varying degrees of psychosis, the band became obsessed with the need to better 'Sweet Oblivion'. Their dysfunctional living made that impossible, and they ended up scrapping all their initial recordings.

"We were all in our own worlds, and I don't really know why," explains Van. "We kept ourselves prisoners in Seattle. All that mattered was making this record for a full three years, 24 hours a day. None of us got out much, it was like walking around with your finger permanently on a buzzer. We were just waiting for the dynamite around our waists to go off."

Were you worried about Mark during this period? "Well, it's true he was sick, but I wasn't worried about him. I couldn't say, 'Hey Mark, clean up your act,' because I was standing there with a drink in my hand, totally fucked up. It was really hard because we couldn't communicate with each other. Mark ended up singing down the phone and we'd record it.

"Nothing was fun any more. I had a problem that started with drinking and led on to other things; not so much heroin, as speed and coke. You know, things that go along with drinking. And it was pretty much the same for everyone.

"I just realised I didn't know what it was like to wake up in the morning, feel OK and put on some coffee. I couldn't do anything normal. There was nothing I did without thinking, 'Let's get fucked up first.' If I went shopping I had to drop acid.

"It's sad, I even thought of my wedding as a big party where I could get fucked up. Sometimes you just believe all that stuff about being in a band. It's like your job to get fucked up every night, you buy into it somehow. People say when bands get big they turn into assholes, but it wasn't like that with us. We'd been major fucking assholes for quite a long time before. Finally we just had to accept this is what we do, and Seattle's where we live."

From the depths of this torment, the band straightened out. Individually, they realised things had gone far enough. They came to terms with Seattle culture; it didn't have to mean being permanently strung out with every other musician in town. They stopped calling their friends, barricaded themselves into the studio and concentrated on making 'Dust'. And it's a colossal record, rightly the most critically acclaimed American rock album of the year; the sound of a band straining under an increasingly sober sense of desperation. Just how are you meant to fill your life? Relationships always end in despair (forthcoming single 'Sworn and Broken'), drugs wear off ('All I Know'), God, even if he does hear your prayers, rarely acts upon them ('Dying Days').

But for all its loathing and anguish, it's still powerfully uplifting and punishingly loud, a refinement of all the 'Trees have been doing for over a decade. Amid the rotting Hendrix riffs and warped-out psychedelia, Lanegan's cigarette-damaged drawl is the sound of a man who's lived what he's just described.

Still, these days the band are together enough to record consistently with other people. Drummer Barrett Martin is creating cinematic mysticism with REM's Peter Buck in a band called Tuatara. Van has hooked up with another of his brothers (Pat) to play iron-bending riffs with Valis, and Mark is steadying himself for another solo stint in the studio to record some more of his gnarled, dusted blues. This is their whole life now.

Tours no longer fill them with dread. In fact, they're actually looking forward to coming to England this month. They feel like they've grown up now; they're self-confessed old men. It's no wonder, then, that when confronted by the empty posturing of Oasis on their recent, most infamous US tour, they remained wholly unimpressed. Liam might have referred to them throughout the tour as "The Barking Branches", but the 'Trees thought Oasis were the bad joke.

Earlier, Mark Lanegan delivered the following succinct assessment: "That singer? He's just a smart-arse and a punk. The sort of guy who's never had the shit kicked out of him. There was such a lonely vibe about that band, they really wanted to hang out, but their singer's such a fucking dickhead, no one wanted to go near them."

An hour later, Lanegan strolls back into the bar, drenched and shivering. It's still raining outside. We don't know what's happened about his amp. He wanders over to our table, snarls, "Lord, damn this weather," and slumps down into his seat.

Seemingly there are some things about Seattle you can never accept, however long you stay.

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