by Mark Yarm
KRIST NOVOSELIC We played another show in the West, then ended up in Hamburg the next night. Hamburg is known for its entertainment district, the Reeperbahn: full of strip clubs, porno stores, and brothels. Now it was packed with little Trabants and their newly liberated owners. Oh yes, the freedoms of the West! The TAD dudes dragged me into a porno shop to show me the most disgusting porno ever. The photos had people smeared with feces having sex. I literally ran out of the shop screaming!
KURT DANIELSON I remember one night in Germany, we were staying in an old hostel that obviously had been an officers’ barracks at some point in its past. And for that reason, Krist had nightmares that he was in a Nazi concentration camp. Krist sleepwalks, and he was sharing a room that night with Kurt. He actually punched Kurt, thinking he was a Nazi!
JONATHAN PONEMAN Bruce and I flew to Europe, the idea being that we were hoping to provide some kind of support as they were entering the last week of their tour, which was going to climax with a big Sub Pop Lamefest, with Nirvana, TAD, and Mudhoney, at the Astoria in London.
MEGAN JASPER Bruce and Jonathan went to Europe to see TAD and Nirvana, and as soon as we knew they were gone, we took every bit of furniture in the Sub Pop office and pushed it aside and made a big dance floor. We’d blast music and do dance-offs and gymnastics. We did cartwheels, flips, somersaults, all of us acting like three-year-olds.
JONATHAN PONEMAN We arrived in Rome and went to the show. TAD and Nirvana were obviously worn out. Kurt had broken and repaired his guitar so many times that it was the second or third song into his set that his guitar just completely came apart. He smashed his guitar once and for all and climbed up on the mains, and he looked like he was ready to jump off, which would’ve been disastrous both for the people he would’ve landed on and for him.
BRUCE PAVITT The guy had a nervous breakdown right in front of everybody, and it was really scary. Everybody was freaking out, but they managed to talk him down.
I remember going to the guitar shop with Kurt and Jon and coming up with $150 or whatever for another guitar. And it was $150 that we barely had. And instead of him driving up to England, we all took a train together. People would oftentimes give us a hard time about being so broke, but what they also have to realize is that a lot of our money was spent on bailing bands out like that.
ANTON BROOKES Sub Pop had flown into Italy to see them play, and they must have come business-class or something. I just remember that there was a big hoo-ha about it because the bands thought they were suffering on the road to make Sub Pop money and that Sub Pop was squandering it. That was probably the first sign of any discontent within the label.
BRUCE PAVITT Did we need to go to Rome? No. Did we need to go to England? Yes, I do think so, because there’s a lot of media and press there. The U.K. Lamefest really broke the scene internationally—our bands got on the cover of the NME—just like the first Lamefest broke the scene in Seattle.
EVERETT TRUE I’ve spoken to quite a few people who were at Lamefest, and everyone’s got a different opinion. Some people thought, That’s the worst concert I’ve ever seen Nirvana play, and other people thought, That was the greatest show I ever saw them play. I’m not sure musically Nirvana were up to anything at all that night, but they realized that, so they just trashed the stage, absolutely left it completely wiped clean of anything: amplifiers, guitars, drums.
ANTON BROOKES Nirvana stole the show, basically. Kurt threw himself around the stage like a man possessed. Afterwards his knees would be all cut and bruised. I always remember thinking, We’re going to have to get him some knee pads. Looking back on it, it was obviously one of the key points in Nirvana’s history. That was the gauntlet that they laid down to everybody: Take us seriously; we can play.
KURT DANIELSON By the time Mudhoney played, I was really totaled. Billy, the drummer for the Cosmic Psychos, and I decided to try to rip Lukin’s pants off, but Lukin had these really tight black jeans on and his belt was fastened in some really arcane manner. So we’re onstage, like a couple of deer in some headlights, and we decide to throw him into the crowd instead. Then we went in after him. At the same time, Tad came out and threw Dan way out into the crowd. Mark was hiding under the drum riser. Or was that Steve? It was Tad, Bill, Dan, Lukin, me out there.
I remember that crowd was so dense. You didn’t sink down to the floor for a long time. We were lucky none of us got killed or ended up with a broken neck. It was thrilling; it was all about kicks. Those were the days.
MEGAN JASPER I moved from Northampton, Massachusetts, to Seattle in 1989. I had been on tour with Dinosaur Jr., selling their merch and doing random stuff. I came on as Sub Pop’s first receptionist. In the morning when we got in, there would be all these messages from Courtney Love from the night before: “Where the fuck are you? Fucking call me back, it’s Courtney,” and all different variations of that. She would call constantly, whether we were in the office or not. She wanted a record out on Sub Pop, and we eventually did a seven-inch with Hole. I have to give it to her—her drive and her ambition were so intense.
COURTNEY LOVE (singer/guitarist for Los Angeles’s Hole; Kurt Cobain’s widow; Frances Bean Cobain’s mother; actress) In any scene I’ve been in, whether it’s Minneapolis or Liverpool or Seattle or Portland or L.A. or New York, I’ve always been the fucking most ambitious one in some weird way. And I’ve always been the one that didn’t really fit in with what everyone else was doing, and I’m pretty proud of that. We were not grunge. The bands that were labeled that were Mudhoney and Nirvana, Soundgarden, TAD, that shit. Sometimes, when it was all “grunge this” and “grunge that,” I wished we were a grunge band, because we would maybe sell more. At the same time, the name was always retarded and I knew it would date, and that’s the last thing a prodigious person needs.
But Hole wasn’t grunge. I wasn’t allowed to be then, why should I be ghettoized now? No, I’m asking you, it’s not a rhetorical question. You find me one fuckin’ article that says that Hole was a grunge band in 1991, ’92, ’93, ’94, or ’95 and I’ll give you a hundred bucks.
ERIC ERLANDSON (guitarist for Los Angeles’s Hole) First we were called “foxcore” by Thurston Moore, and then we started to be lumped into Riot Grrrl. With the grunge thing, I always thought we weren’t really a part of it, but the press wanted a label, so eventually you’d start seeing in a magazine, like, “Grunge Rock: Hole.”
MEGAN JASPER Courtney would call all the time, and I would try not to talk to her all the time. There was nobody who wanted to talk to Courtney for the 48th time. Except we had this kid Rob who started at Sub Pop and had worked at Doctor Dream Records in Southern California. So we called him Doctor Dream, because he was kind of a nerdy kid. He was more than happy to talk to Courtney.
COURTNEY LOVE The two times I went to Seattle previous to being successful as a musician were really frightening. The first time there was a guy named Vinny up on Capitol Hill with a huge abscess in his leg, and then when I came down from Alaska, after I went up there to gather my thoughts, because I was 24 and if I hadn’t succeeded by the time I was 25 I was pretty much gonna jump off a roof. I spent three fuckin’ months in Alaska in the dark, in a trailer writing lyrics and working a fuckin’ six-hour shift at PJ’s, a strip club that fishermen go to.
I got off the bus in Seattle and saw a U-Men poster and a Mudhoney poster, and I got one block from the Greyhound station and went, “No way. They will throw me out of town or I will die.” So I got back on that bus. Why? Just instinct, man. Just instinct. I felt like it was a dangerous place. It’s got death in it. For someone like you, it probably appears to be a nice town. Like it’s all holistic and trees and arboretums. Bullshit! What I know about Seattle is dark, dark drug stuff, dark, dark money stuff. Fuckin’ lumber, fuckin’ corruption, fuckin’ heroin, fuckin’ scary!
MEGAN JASPER We told Courtney that Bruce and Jon weren’t doing A&R anymore, that Doctor Dream was doing it, and we would just direct her calls to him. I really got the sense that he e
njoyed chatting with her. She is bright and funny. It’s not like she was horrible and screaming at us. That came afterwards, when thankfully I wasn’t there.
NILS BERNSTEIN The heart of Sub Pop was always the receptionist. It was Megan for a while, and then it was Kim Warnick from the Fastbacks. When I think of Sub Pop back then, I think of Megan. Megan and Kim have similar styles, as far as talking back to people on the phone or playing practical jokes. To me, they really set the tone of the label as much as any fuckin’ marketing plan.
MEGAN JASPER I was in the poor man’s version of Dickless. When Kelly Canary left, the other girls didn’t want to stop, so they must have hit a level of desperation and they asked me. The funnest shows were when you could provoke someone in the audience and they would get really upset. My sister had made me this wand, which I called the Herpes Wand; if I touched someone with it, they got the herpes. So at shows, I kept giving people wand herpes. Some people loved it, and some people thought it was the worst thing in the entire world. Mark Arm didn’t seem to mind; Krist Novoselic didn’t seem to mind. The funny thing was, all the girls made a mental note of everyone who bitched about it: Don’t kiss that guy, because you know he just had a herpes outbreak.
COURTNEY LOVE I moved to L.A., and I had about six months left ticking on my 25-year-old clock, so I was hurrying as fast as I could to put songs together and to put a band together. I became acquainted with the ins and outs of the grotesque L.A. scene: the Bordello and Taime Downe and girls named Marilyn that Axl bought pink Corvettes for. Just the Strip. Strip culture.
I remember being in Portland once and looking at a “Love Buzz” seven-inch and a Cat Butt single. I still don’t like that Kurt’s wearing a Harley-Davidson shirt on the cover of “Love Buzz.” It was just so part of the Strip, and it signified to me that he was trying to fit in, like that guy Jason in his band who had long hair and was doin’ whatever the fuck he could to make it. I didn’t like that Kurt was wearing a Harley-Davidson shirt, so I bought the Cat Butt single instead.
MEGAN JASPER When I moved to Seattle, I used to go to this bar called the Comet Tavern on Capitol Hill. I was in there with the Dickless girls and a bunch of other people who were giving me the scoop on Seattle, and one of the first pieces of advice I got was, “Whatever you do, don’t fuck anybody in Cat Butt. They just went on tour with L7.” Apparently L7 liked to enjoy themselves with a lot of men, and it was implied that if you went on tour with them you had some skanky experience.
STEVE TURNER That trip with L7 was legendary for Cat Butt. I remember getting the heebie-jeebies hearing about it. Like, Ughhh!
JAMES BURDYSHAW I was the first person from Cat Butt that L7 met, so the whole L7–Cat Butt connection happened because of me. It was on Cat Butt’s first tour, in January/February of ’89, and a lot of crazy shit happened—sex, drugs, debauchery, acid, weirdness. In L.A., we went to the NoMeansNo show at Raji’s. Our drummer Erik [“Erok” Peterson] and Dean and I got super-fuckin’ drunk and started flippin’ the singer shit, even though we love NoMeansNo. All of a sudden, this real cute girl keeps comin’ up to me and goin’, “Hey. Hey. Hey. Who are you?”
It turns out it’s Jennifer Finch from L7. So I go to where she’s staying, with her bandmate Dee [Plakas], and this guy who Dee was dating or friends with. I’m waitin’ for them to go to bed so I can make out with Jennifer. And this dude sits in the chair and waits for me to fall asleep. He won’t leave me alone with her. I can’t remember his name, but I’ll always fuckin’ be pissed at that bastard, ’cause that was my one chance to hook up with Finch.
The only reason why that connection was created was because Jennifer was flirtin’ with me. Though Jennifer might deny the whole episode even happened.
JENNIFER FINCH (bassist for Los Angeles’s L7) I had just met a girl whose mom was dating Bruce Pavitt, so she gave me the phone number for her mom. This is kind of how it went when L7 would book shows—you just get a phone number and call. Danny Bland, who was in Cat Butt, answered the phone at Sub Pop, and we started talking and I sent him a promo pack with a cassette, and he set up a show with Cat Butt.
DANNY BLAND Shortly after I moved there, Dave Duet got in touch with me and wanted me to join Cat Butt. I replaced John Michael Amerika. Dave and I had met in Phoenix, when the U-Men had come through; he was their roadie or driver or whatever. We were thick as thieves right away. I’ve always been fond of lunatics, and he’s quite obviously one from the get-go.
DAVID DUET Mike was a sweetheart and the greatest guy in the world, but he had a drug problem. We were gonna play Squid Row, and I wasn’t living with Lisa anymore; she was still at the Blaine House, which became a notorious house and was constantly being watched by cops. I was over and there was a knock at the front door, and there are two cops asking for Mike, using a fake name he used. And we’re like, “Uh, I think he left town.” And they were like, “Oh, really?” and lift up a Cat Butt flyer for Squid Row. They’re like, “We’ll just catch him at the next show then.” So not only did they know him, they knew I was the singer.
So Tom Price agreed to play Squid Row and the next Vogue show. And after that, people were comin’ up to me after shows saying stuff like, “He owes me 60 bucks, can I get it from you?” I had to kick Mike out of the band. It was one of the hardest things I ever did.
DANNY BLAND Every band that I ever was in, my main thing was to go on tour. So Cat Butt was doing West Coast runs and going into Texas and all that. That got the attention of Bruce and Jonathan, because a lot of other bands were not touring, and we were the biggest fuckups around, and for some reason we could get it together enough to go on tour. One day they just sat me down and asked, “How?” I explained that I had this Rolodex of phone numbers, people that I knew, and I’d just call and set up shows. So they asked me to do booking for Sub Pop.
JAMES BURDYSHAW I get back from that tour and all of a sudden I’m at a party in Seattle and guess who’s with Danny? Jennifer. I was like, “What the fuck are you doin’ up here?”
“Oh, I’m just visiting. I’m hangin’ out with Danny.” I put two and two together and realized that they’d shacked up, and I was like, “Oh man, how come he gets her?” I didn’t realize at the time how entrepreneurial, shall we say, she can be. She was basically trying to find out, What’s happening in Seattle and how can I get L7 involved?
JENNIFER FINCH We were received incredibly well in Seattle. Sub Pop gave us the single of the month. Sub Pop as the tastemakers declared this was the next thing. Eventually we went up to Seattle so much that people in Los Angeles thought we were from Seattle.
DANNY BLAND Before that tour with L7, we did shows together in California. Yeah, somewhere along the road, I woke up on top of Jennifer one morning, I guess. (Laughs.) My girlfriend, Kerry Green, who was in Dickless at the time, found out. Yes, that was awkward. Awkward, disastrous, all that good stuff.
L7 were badasses. They were guys. They were an all-male female rock-and-roll band. They fuckin’ smelled as bad as we did.
MEGAN JASPER L7 came into the Sub Pop office, and I think I told you how we would rate bands on how much they smelled? No? It wasn’t an official list, but our accountant, Geoff Kirk, would make jokes and write it down. L7 were on the list, but Babes in Toyland were the smelliest. Geoff actually followed them around one time with a Glade air-freshener, spraying them.
Nirvana was also on the list. Those were the three biggies. It was mostly the drummer, Chad. One time it smelled so bad in the office when Nirvana was there—it was beyond a human smell; it smelled like yeast or something—and everyone was trying to open the windows. Because I didn’t think it was a person, I said, “What is that smell?!” And Chad said, “Oh, I think it’s me.”
JAMES BURDYSHAW Donita named our big tour together Swapping Fluids Across America. Why? Guess. Donita was with Dean, and Danny was with Jennifer. It lasted about seven weeks, across the entire country. It was five of us, four of them, plus a roadie, all in the same vehicle. It was like the fuckin’ Partridge
Family. We had this Aeroporter bus, which we painted metallic gray. It looked like a big bullet, but Donita called it the Poon Tank. L7 loved crackin’ sex jokes.
Donita was very down-to-earth and really interested in me as a friend. I would have liked it to be more, but that’s not what ended up happening. She and Dean had a relationship for a while that started from that mini-tour. I was really bummed. Dean always got the girls. He was very confident, he’s tall as fuck, and he had a mane of flowing red hair. I mean, I was a redhead, but you couldn’t even notice that I was, being in a band with him.
DEAN GUNDERSON Donita was a pretty amazing character. Real excitable, really intuitive. We liked each other a lot.
JENNIFER FINCH There were lots of fluids being swapped. A few members of L7 were dating a few members of Cat Butt. There was a lot of alcohol. There was a lot of vomiting. James had terrible intestinal trauma on that tour.
JAMES BURDYSHAW I ended up having stomach flu really bad. I kept shitting my pants. The first show of the tour was in Kansas City, and Donita took me to a drugstore, and we bought some fuckin’ Depends. I was humiliated. The show where I was wearing the Depends, everything seemed fine until right at the end, literally the last fuckin’ chord. That’s when I said, “Oh, shit,” which is hilarious because I just shit. Nobody knew except for David, and he was laughin’.
DANNY BLAND I remember thinking, I’ll probably never be on a tour that’s this fucking crazy ever again. Because it was not only the regular disasters that go along with a tour on that level, like the van breaking down. Cat Butt were a roving gang, and anybody who fuckin’ looked sideways at the girls fuckin’ risked a pummeling.
