Everybody Loves Our Town

by Mark Yarm

  NILS BERNSTEIN In retrospect, it’s amazing that there’s a Matt Dillon movie about grunge, but at the time so many weird things would happen every day that it just seemed almost expected, you know?

  STEVE MORIARTY (the Gits drummer; OK Hotel club booker) I remember seeing fake posters on the poles for a show that the band in the movie was supposed to be playing. They’d filmed them, then left the posters up. We were like, “Is that show really going on at the OK Hotel? I don’t remember booking that.” I was like, “Who the fuck are Citizen Dick?”

  DANNY BRAMSON (Singles music supervisor) Jeff Ament was in the movie’s art department. He crafted the cover artwork and the logo for the now-legendary Citizen Dick album. I remember Cameron sitting around on set and writing these fictitious song titles that were almost hilariously sensitive: “Seasons,” “Nowhere but You,” “Flutter Girl.” Jeff included them on the cassette Matt Dillon’s character, Cliff Poncier, sold for loose change next to his guitar case.

  At one point, Chris Cornell calls: “Danny, will you send me over the song titles from the Citizen Dick album?” And he goes, “It’s a secret. Don’t tell anyone.” When we wrapped the movie, he gave us a tape of songs he’d recorded with those titles. When we first looked at it, we went, “God, is this a joke?” But his delivery of those songs was so heartfelt. We just could not get “Seasons” out of our heads, and thankfully, with Susan’s deft hand, she secured it from A&M Records, which was extremely proprietary, for the movie and for the soundtrack.

  NANCY WILSON Jeff Ament had his big line in the movie, and everybody was like, “Wow, that sounded kinda like he was reading.” The delivery was kinda self-conscious. Cameron always gave him a hard time about it.

  JEFF AMENT Acting was really uncomfortable. There’s one part where I’m trying to get someone to leave an apartment and I say, “C’mon, while we’re young.” I felt like I really didn’t pull it off, and the next day, all the people from the Lollapalooza tour who saw it with me kept going up to me and saying, “While we’re young,” and I knew then it came off as bad as I thought.

  JASON FINN I was an extra in Singles. I was part of the infamous French café scene. If you read about that movie—there’s a Cameron Crowe diary—he’s like, “That scene was a huge pain in my ass,” and he finally cuts it. It was just a couple of the principals talking, and we all had to smoke constantly to make it smoky. The crew was coming through wearing masks, going, “Keep smoking! Keep smoking!” I was sitting with Roderick of Sky Cries Mary and his wife. I was a heavy smoker at the time, but we were there for four or five hours and finally we couldn’t take the smoke anymore. We said, “Fuck it,” and went over to the Pioneer Square Saloon and got some beers.

  BEN SHEPHERD My fingers were so sore from doing so many takes for the movie. You have to get all the different camera angles and performances of the actors and stuff. We’re in the background, playing “Birth Ritual,” and that song, if you play it enough—that sliding stuff, whoo, my fingers were so sore by the end. Big, nasty blisters from that. And they edited me out. All you can see is part of my elbow.

  ROBERT ROTH I was at the OK Hotel the night that Nirvana debuted “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and across the street there was a private thing where they were filming Alice in Chains for Singles. At the time, there was the punk-rock side of the street, which I was on—I was more of a Mudhoney, Sonic Youth, Nirvana kind of grunge fan. Then there was another side, which was more connected to that late–’80s metal scene.

  KURT BLOCH That show at the OK Hotel was legendary! There were a few genre-defining shows, and certainly that was one of them. I remember standing next to Nils Bernstein, and then, “Hey, here’s a new song, blah blah blah.” They started playing “Teen Spirit,” and Nils and I looked at each other like, Holy fuck! This song is unbelievable.

  STEVE MORIARTY Nirvana needed gas money to drive down to L.A. to record Nevermind, so they played a last-minute show at the OK Hotel, which my partner Robin booked. The band walked away with a few hundred bucks, drove down to L.A., and the rest is history.

  NICK TERZO Alice in Chains were the first band to have radio success in that movement, and that’s a fact. It’s been revised since, but the fact of the matter is, “Man in the Box” broke down tons of doors. The album came out in August 1990, but radio started playing “Man in the Box” in early 1991. And after that, their song “Would?” broke down doors on alternative radio—and then Nirvana went right through.

  RICK KRIM (MTV director of musical talent) MTV used to have this thing, for a while it was called Hip Clip of the Week and then it was called Buzz Bin. I remember discussing in a meeting whether we took Alice in Chains or this band Thunder, which was a hair band that sounded like Whitesnake. There was a whole big discussion, and I’m pretty sure we all picked Alice in Chains.

  The video for “Man in the Box” was pretty dark. Sort of the antithesis of a lot of stuff on the channel. Alice in Chains felt like it was something new, and Thunder felt like it was something old. That was the first sign: When MTV opts for this Alice in Chains band over a hair band, that was starting the tides turning.

  NICK TERZO The “Man in the Box” video definitely reflected a certain intensity. There was man with his eyes sewn shut in it. On radio, they had plenty of problems with the song. That lyric, “Jesus Christ, deny your maker,” caused a lot of stations to drop the song once they got into the lyrics. Some stations were playing it only at night. You had some stations playing it in the day, some stations sticking with it for six months, which was kind of unheard-of back then, and some stations dropping it after three months, then putting it back again. It was an anomaly, ’cause no one really knew how to deal with this music, or what it was. No one knew what grunge was then.

  DAVE HILLIS I became Rick Parashar’s assistant at London Bridge toward the very end of his work on Temple of the Dog. Then we did the Mookie Blaylock demos, which was interesting because they were all friends and cohorts of mine. When we started working on Ten, they didn’t have the Pearl Jam name yet; it was still Mookie Blaylock.

  A lot of people ask me, “What was it like working on the Pearl Jam record? It must have been magical.” And honestly, it really wasn’t. The music was great and everything, but nobody knew—they weren’t famous yet and they were developing as a band in the studio. Eddie really wasn’t Eddie yet. Eddie drove a yellow low-rider pickup, tinted windows; very San Diego Beach, which you don’t see in rainy Seattle. He just had a different personality. He wasn’t brooding and serious, the way people imagine him.

  At the beginning, Eddie was kind of struggling getting vocals done, and people were getting a little nervous. He wasn’t fully nailing it. Think about it: He was in the shadow of Andy Wood, brand-new band, he’s still trying to figure out the sound. Plus the weight of, Wow, I’m on a major label. Then he started staying the night in the studio. We would leave blank tracks that he could record himself singing on, and then pick the good parts from there. He’d watch Bukowski videos and all these different types of things to influence him. Over the making of that record, the Eddie Vedder persona seemed to take shape.

  MIKE MCCREADY Recording Ten, we probably did “Even Flow” 30 times. [B-side] “Yellow Ledbetter” was probably the second take; when we did that song, Ed just started going for it. But [Ten] was mostly Stone and Jeff; me and Eddie were along for the ride at that time.

  DAVE HILLIS I know Rick and Stone butted heads a little. Rick had a very different way of producing. He’s not one of those guys that sits behind the desk, jumping up and down and really getting into the music. He had a very traditional East Indian background and had a very different demeanor than you would think of someone producing a rock record. Stone wanted him to get into it more. I remember listening to them talk, and Stone would say, “Just act like you like us.” Rick would be like, “I’m not there to do that. I’m there to make your record good.”

  DAVE KRUSEN It got to the point where we need to pick a new name, because obviously we can’
t call it Mookie Blaylock. I remember sitting down in the practice room and everybody writing down names, and it went on for a while. Pearl came out of one category, and jam came out of another.

  JEFF AMENT The first time I mentioned Pearl Jam [as a band name] was when Ed, Stone, and I were watching Sonic Youth play with Crazy Horse. In the middle of Crazy Horse, I turned to Stone and said, “What about ‘Pearl Jam’?” A couple of years later, the first time that we played [Neil Young’s] Bridge School [benefit], I saw Neil’s big black, must have been a ’55 Chevy, and the license plate says PEARL 10. I think I’m in a dream. I asked Neil how long he’d had those plates, and he said 15 years.

  DAVE KRUSEN I used to do a lot of psychedelics, so I really like the story behind the name that they came up with: that Eddie’s grandmother Pearl had a hallucinogenic jam.

  I remember Eddie made each of us in the band a little artwork that said PEARL JAM. It was some glittery, purple goop on a clear CD tray. It looked a little like sperm the way that it was written, like a liquidy thing that had dried. People I knew were like, “Oh, I see what that’s about!” And I was like, “No, dude, it was just two words that came together!”

  DAVE HILLIS Dave I just always loved. What’s weird is I never even knew he drank. I never saw him party once in my life.

  DAVE KRUSEN I just wanted to party and get fucked up. When we did the photo shoot for the album, I got some beer, and halfway through the shoot, I started to fall asleep. Afterward, they were showing pictures and going, “You remember that?” “Hmmm, no. And I didn’t think I had sunglasses on.” They were like, “You didn’t. Your eyes were shut, so we had to put sunglasses on you.” I was sitting down, propped up against the wall.

  The Singles wrap party was the last gig I played with them. At the time, I had a lot going on in my personal life. I wasn’t really dealing with anything, because I just drank all the time. I remember Mike going, “I’m not gonna drink until after the show.” And I said, “Oh, that’s a good idea.” Well, I didn’t hold out, and that ended up being the night that things got really bad.

  By the time I got to the big party at the hotel—it was at Cameron Crowe’s room or whatever—I was just really bad off. I got into an argument with my kind-of girlfriend at the time. In a nutshell, I’d gotten together with this girl, she got pregnant, so I tried to do the right thing and stick around, but I was miserable. My son was born a day after we went in to record Ten, which only made things more intense in my life. It’s been written about that night that I beat up my girlfriend and put her in the hospital, but that is not true.

  Some guy jumped in who didn’t know who I was, and I got in a fight with him. It turned into a huge melee, and the cops end up coming. Everybody talked them out of arresting me. I left and passed out for a couple of days. They couldn’t find me, and when I woke up and finally called them, they were like, “We gotta go to England to mix the album, and you can’t go because you need to get straightened out.”

  I remember getting off the phone knowing I had to go to rehab, and I did. But it didn’t take, and it took me another two years to finally get to the point where I wanted to stop, and in ’94 I got sober.

  MATT CHAMBERLAIN (Pearl Jam drummer) I was originally in a band with Edie Brickell, the New Bohemians. I was living in Dallas, and I had been in that band for three or four years. I’d met G.E. Smith, and he said, “Hey, if the New Bos ever break up, give me a call,” because he was doing the house band for Saturday Night Live. We broke up at the end of that tour, and I called G.E. up and said, “Man, I’m so into moving to New York City and doing this gig.”

  Probably two weeks after I had gotten all that sorted out, I get a call from Tony Berg, who was the producer on the second New Bohemians record. He said, “Hey, my pal Michael Goldstone, who’s this A&R guy at Epic, has this new band called Pearl Jam. They are doing a tour, and they need a drummer. It’s a really short commitment.” It was for that last part of the summer before I started the SNL gig, and I thought, Perfect.

  Everywhere we played, we were the opening band, but people were just flipping out. Eddie wore army shorts, white Doc Martens, and a Butthole Surfers Locust Abortion Technician T-shirt every fucking day for the whole tour. He washed his clothes in the hotel room sink. He had a hole in the ass of his shorts, which he gaffer-taped. After every gig, he was shell-shocked because he was giving it his all. The tour culminated with a gig at RKCNDY in Seattle, which is where they filmed the video for “Alive.”

  All the industry people that I ran into were saying, “This is going to be huge.” I remember the guys in the band saying, “We don’t know what’s going to happen. We’d be really happy if this sold 100,000 copies, and we could just continue doing this.”

  They were looking for someone to join and be on the road forever. They had offered the position to me, and it was an issue at one point: “Are you going to join the band or are you not going to join the band?” It felt like a prearranged marriage, like somebody saying, “Hey, you should marry this person—there’ll be a lot of money in it for you.” But I just didn’t feel any connection to it. I thought, I’d rather just live in New York City.

  I recommended Dave, who was a pal of mine in Dallas who’d been playing around in some local bands. I think he was working at 7-Eleven. He was not doing so hot, but I always thought he was a great drummer, so I called him up.

  DAVE ABBRUZZESE (Pearl Jam drummer) When Matt called, I was in a funk band in Dallas called Dr. Tongue, and I was working at a head shop. My expertise was in the grow department, so if people would come in saying that they wanted to grow lettuce hydroponically in their closet—wink, wink—I would help them get set up.

  I had a show on community radio with a friend of mine called Chris and Dave’s “Music We Like” Show. People would call and request music; if we didn’t like it, we’d just play something else. I dug through the CDs and found Mother Love Bone and Pearl Jam’s sampler CD. We put the Mother Love Bone stuff on-air and I was like, “Eek,” and turned it off and put on Pearl Jam, and I think I made it through about 25 seconds of the first couple of songs. They just didn’t hit me right.

  I said, “What do you think, Chris?”

  He said, “It’s a free trip to Seattle.”

  KRISHA AUGEROT I was shocked to see Dave Abbruzzese in the lobby of Curtis Management when they were trying out drummers. Because he was such a rocker. Super-long hair, wearing a track suit. He’s from Texas, so it’s a totally different vibe. But a very skilled drummer, and I really liked him. Visually, it just was not what I was expecting. I could see him in Alice in Chains, not in Pearl Jam.

  DAVE ABBRUZZESE The first day I got to Seattle, I actually met them all an hour before their first video shoot, for “Alive,” at RKCNDY. I just stood back and took it in. The show was cool. I was watching it thinking, I wish I was playing right now. Dallas was a place where people were standing back, with their arms folded, watching, whereas at that show, everyone was excited.

  After we played our second show together, at the RKCNDY, I was in the Curtis office. That show just felt good and the music was great, and all of a sudden I felt like I was a part of that same energy that I experienced witnessing that show the first day I got there. I came across one of Jeff’s drawings, and one of the images was that stick-man figure; it’s tribal art of a man standing, arms outstretched, surrendering to the sky or whatever. That image really resonated with me, so the next day, I got it tattooed on my left shoulder. It wasn’t necessarily a statement of camaraderie; it was to document that personal feeling that I had then. The way I felt at the show that night, if I would have stopped playing right after that—if my car would’ve flipped over and I lost my arms or something—I would have felt gratified musically.

  KATHLEEN HANNA (Bikini Kill singer) In August of 1990, I found myself laying on my stomach, in the woods, with a pair of binoculars, a bottle of Canadian Club, and my friend Kurt Cobain. The reason why I had the binoculars was because I was the lookout while he ran across
the street to a teen pregnancy center that had just opened in our town. And it really wasn’t a teen pregnancy center. It was a right-wing con where they got teenage girls to go in there and then told them they were gonna go to hell if they had abortions. Since Kurt and I were angry young feminists in the ’90s, we decided that we were gonna do a little public service that night. We drank our Canadian Club, and he watched out while I went across the street and wrote FAKE ABORTION CLINIC, EVERYONE, ’cause I was kinda like the pragmatic one. And he was more creative, so he went over, and in six-foot-tall red letters he wrote GOD IS GAY. He was kinda cool like that.

  So, after that, we polished off the Canadian Club. And we lived in Olympia, Washington; we walked down the hill, we went to the bar, we got some more Canadian Club. Then we went to my apartment, we got some 40-ouncers, we got a little more drunk. And apparently I insulted just about everybody in my whole entire town, and I threw up on someone’s legs. It was one of those nights that like later on, whenever anybody mentions it you don’t want to think about it. So, ended up at Kurt’s apartment, and I smashed up a bunch of shit. And I took out a Sharpie marker and I wrote a bunch of shit all over his bedroom wall.… Then I passed out, with the marker in my hand. And I woke up, and I had one of those hangovers where you think that if you walk in the next room there could be a dead body in there. So I wasn’t that happy when six months later, Kurt called me up and said, “Hey, do you remember that night?” I was like, “Ehhhh …”

  Then Kurt is like, “Well, there’s this thing that you wrote on my wall and it was actually kinda cool and I want to use it as a lyric in one of my songs.” And I was like, as long as I can get out of the conversation and not think about [that night] anymore, you can use whatever you want. So I hung up and thought, How the fuck is he gonna use “Kurt smells like teen spirit” as a lyric?