Mark Lanegan

Not one of his ten planets sits in a cardinal sign. Five are fixed and five mutable, and the elements run four in earth, three in fire, two in water and a single one in air. Nothing in this chart starts anything, which is an unusual load to carry. Lanegan sang in Screaming Trees, and the record credits him with a solo catalogue and a voice it calls ruined.

The Sun sits on the fourth degree of Sagittarius with Mercury much further along the sign at twenty four, while Mars, Uranus and Pluto gather inside seven degrees of Virgo. Sagittarius heads out and states its case; Virgo corrects what it finds. His Moon sits at twenty eight degrees of Leo at noon and may by then have moved on into Virgo, so the private half is open between needing to be appreciated and checking the work over. Venus sits on the first degree of Scorpio, taste right at the opening of the sign that gives nothing away. For a singer the record moves from a band to a catalogue of his own, a private half open between wanting the room and checking the work is the division that matters.

Venus sits in mild friction with Pluto at a quarter of a degree, the tightest thing here, and in that same friction with Uranus at just under a degree and a half. Jupiter sits directly opposite Neptune at a degree and a quarter and was the one retrograde planet at his birth. Uranus conjunct Pluto at just over a degree and a half belongs to everybody born across a stretch of those years rather than to him. In a singer, taste rubbed at by concentrated force and by the planet that refuses an arrangement is the pairing that sits nearest the work.

He died at Killarney on 22 February 2022, at fifty seven. Jupiter rules his Sagittarius Sun, and that day Saturn stood square it at a degree and a third while Venus sat in easy contact with it at a degree and a quarter. Saturn also stood square his natal Neptune eleven hundredths of a degree from exact, the closest thing in that sky, and the Sun stood square his own natal Sun at a quarter of a degree, which is simply the three month mark from a birthday. The Moon was disseminating and sixty six per cent lit, a phase that passes on what was worked out and needs it to land. No cardinal planet anywhere, in a record of one band and then a catalogue of his own, puts every bit of the movement in the fixed and mutable halves.