Screaming Trees guitarist Gary Lee Conner turns 64 today, more than three decades after “Nearly Lost You” helped carry the Washington rock band to a much bigger audience.
Born Aug. 22, 1962, Conner spent much of his career slightly outside the spotlight, but his guitar playing and songwriting were essential to Screaming Trees’ unmistakable sound. Mixing psychedelia, garage rock and heavier influences, the group carved out its own corner of the Pacific Northwest scene before grunge became an international phenomenon.
The band’s story began in Ellensburg, Washington, where Conner joined his younger brother Van Conner, singer Mark Lanegan and drummer Mark Pickerel to form Screaming Trees in 1985. Years of albums, touring and underground acclaim followed before the wider rock world finally caught up with them in the early ’90s.
“We had a lot of music song-wise,” Conner told Goldmine in 2023. “We didn’t have a very much punk influence but playing wise… None of us really could play that well, and we would just kind go up there and “give it all you got” kind of thing. The thing is, we were used to playing in front of no one, because we’d do that plenty of times. We wouldn’t just be like, ‘F***, no one’s here.’ We’d be like, ‘Yeah, let’s just give it like we’re playing an arena show or something.'”
But then came “Nearly Lost You.”
Released in 1992, the song was written by Gary, Van and Lanegan and appeared on the band’s sixth album, Sweet Oblivion. With its surging guitars, huge chorus and Lanegan’s weathered vocal, the track distilled much of what made Screaming Trees different into a little more than four minutes.
“We did two rehearsals before going into the studio in New York,” Conner told SPIN. “‘Nearly Lost You’ was done in one or two takes — it just kind of happened. It was a wild time for the band. We were basically running around, raising mayhem, using the record label’s limo vouchers like they were going out of style.”
The song’s appearance on the soundtrack to Cameron Crowe’s Singles gave it an even larger platform. The movie’s soundtrack became a snapshot of the Seattle-area rock explosion, placing Screaming Trees alongside acts including Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains.
“When we were making Sweet Oblivion, suddenly Nirvana exploded, and so did Pearl Jam right after that,” Conner said in a 1997 interview. “So, by the time we got that record out, it was suddenly a completely different environment for a band that was from Seattle. Even though we were never really ‘grunge’ at all. In the early days we were half punk, half psychedelic, especially live — we were more punkish, you know. But by the time Sweet Oblivion got out, we were a bit more hard rock, probably. But, you know, that didn’t matter, we were from Seattle, so we were considered grunge as well.”
Screaming Trees never became quite as commercially dominant as several of their Pacific Northwest contemporaries, but that was hardly the end of their story. The band continued evolving through albums like 1996’s Dust, while Conner’s swirling, muscular guitar work remained a crucial part of its identity.
Today, “Nearly Lost You” still sounds like the moment Screaming Trees’ strange combination of heaviness and psychedelia clicked perfectly into place. As Gary Lee Conner celebrates his 64th birthday, the song remains an enduring reminder of the guitarist’s role in shaping one of the grunge era’s most distinctive bands.
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