Van Conner Dies: Screaming Trees Founding Bassist Was 55

Van Conner, the Screaming Trees co-founding bassist who played on the rock band’s hits including “All I Know” and “Nearly Lost You,” died Tuesday of pneumonia. He was 55. His brother and bandmate, Gary Lee Conner, posted the news on social media.

“He was one of the closest friends I ever had and I loved him immensely,” the guitarist wrote on Facebook. “I will miss him forever and ever and ever… .”

Screaming Trees formed in Washington State in the mid-1980s and recorded a half-dozen indie albums before signing with Epic Records in 1990 as the grunge scene was coalescing around such groups as Mudhoney, the Melvins, Soundgarden and Nirvana. The band’s major-label debut disc failed to catch fire, but the follow-up — 1992’s Sweet Oblivion — was its breakthrough. The album featured “Nearly Lost You,” which became a Top 5 hit on U.S. Modern Rock radio and sent the disc into the Billboard 200 chart.

Sweet Oblivion also included two other singles that hit the Modern Rock Top 30: “Bed of Roses” and “Dollar Bill.”

Screaming Trees — which also featured singer Mark Lanegan, who died last year, and drummer Barrett Martin along with the Conner brothers — next released Dust, which spawned the band’s lone Mainstream Rock hit, “All I Know,” which hit the Top 10 on that Billboard chart and reached No. 62 on the Hot 100 singles tally (watch the video below). Co-written by the Conners and Lanegan, it also reached the Modern Rock Top 10. The album was the group’s biggest commercial success, reaching No. 134 on the Billboard 200.

Josh Homme, the former Kyuss guitarist and future Queens of the Stone Age frontman, joined the group for its 1996 tour.

But Screaming Trees would break up by 2000, and Van Conner went on to play in various other bands and do session bass work.

Here is the video for “All I Know”: