by Mark Yarm
STEVE MORIARTY Why was it called Rathouse? Don’t remember. Oh, oh, the guy that owned it was a warlock, and he said there had been rats in the house but he caught one and cooked it and ate it and then all the other rats knew that they had to leave the house. I think that’s where it came from. The place was disgusting when we moved in.
ELIZABETH DAVIS-SIMPSON (7 Year Bitch bassist) I came over from Eastern Washington. Walla Walla. My parents wrote contemporary Christian music and performed music. My dad—he just died a couple years ago—was a musician since the ’20s. All my oldest siblings played guitar and sang and did a lot of music in church. In third grade, I had an aha moment when I got punished for innocently asking my teacher a question about original sin, and I realized I was not going to be a Christian.
After graduating from Walla Walla University, I was working on a fishing boat in Alaska with my boyfriend, and the boat ported in Seattle. My boyfriend was a guitar player, and he thought, Oh, I’ll buy my girlfriend a bass and she can play along with me. I played with him one time and then I was like, “I don’t want to play that kind of music,” which was introspective and sensitive and complicated, so I just started playing along with AC/DC and Stooges records, and it came real fast for me.
SELENE VIGIL-WILK (7 Year Bitch singer) We were in a band called Barbie’s Dream Car for a minute. Elizabeth, who also worked at Pike Place Market, ended up being the bass player and then the other girl left, and Stefanie Sargent joined. Me and Stefanie knew each other; she stayed with me off and on and we used to see each other around at shows.
ELIZABETH DAVIS-SIMPSON I worked in the Pike Place Market, upstairs from the health-food store where Valerie and Selene worked. I used to go down there and get snacks, and I would see Valerie and Selene there, and I thought, These girls are the hottest and coolest chicks in Seattle. I kind of idolized them. Then I saw Valerie walking up the street with cymbals and I said, “Hey, I just started playing bass.” She said, “We’re playing in a band but our bass player is going to Germany so why don’t you come and play with us?”
So I started playing with Valerie, Lisa Orth, Selene, and Stefanie in Barbie’s Dream Car. I was intimidated by everybody. The only people I’d really hung out with before were Seventh-day Adventists. Lisa left, so we moved our sessions from Lisa’s loft to the Rathouse basement. We started from scratch and had three songs but no band name.
Our first show was opening up for the Gits for a books-for-prisoners benefit at the OK Hotel. We needed a name for the flyer, and Ben London came up with 7 Year Bitch, which I did not like, but then it stuck.
SELENE VIGIL-WILK We played a house party at a professional snowboarder guy’s place, and that’s when I met Eddie Vedder and his girlfriend at the time, Beth. She really liked our band. Eddie became a friend.
VALERIE AGNEW (7 Year Bitch drummer) Pearl Jam couldn’t open some shows for the Chili Peppers, so the Peppers’ management asked who Pearl Jam would want to replace them, and Eddie said that they should call us. And I will never forget the day that they called. Selene and I were living together in this little house, and we got home and there was this message on our machine, and we literally fell down on the floor, just screaming and laughing. “No way! The manager from the Red Hot Chili Peppers is calling us? What’s going on? This is crazy!”
ELIZABETH DAVIS-SIMPSON I don’t think I related to the Gits as much as the other girls did. Those guys were hard-drinking intellectual liberals, and I really admired them and thought they were awesome, but I didn’t really fit in or relate necessarily. Mia was the one that I related to the most. She was really encouraging of 7 Year Bitch, and she would come down when we were rehearsing and say, “Keep doing it. Keep playing, keep writing music. You guys are doing really good.”
BEN LONDON 7 Year Bitch were not well-skilled musicians at that point, but there was the delivery and the intent, and everything was very charming, and you had some really attractive women that were part of it. And so I think Daniel saw … One thing I’ll give Daniel House is, I don’t think he ever saw a dollar sign he didn’t like. So he put a seven-inch out with them on C/Z.
DANIEL HOUSE For me, the 7 Year Bitch song title alone that is undeniably confrontational, without knowing any of the lyrics, is “Dead Men Don’t Rape.” That sort of militant attitude was so shocking. I had a girlfriend who had in fact been raped in her own apartment, and I had previous experience with my mother having been raped when I was a kid and being aware of it, and so for me, those lyrics alone, that song title alone, brought me to a place where I’m going, “Fuck, yeah! That’s right.”
STEVE MORIARTY C/Z wasn’t a good experience ’cause Daniel couldn’t really understand where we were coming from artistically or personally. We would say, “We don’t wanna do this show that you have us lined up to play with these bands that have a poster with a bunch of references to pussy on it. Mia doesn’t wanna be objectified as a female singer.” He wouldn’t get that, and he would do it anyway.
We held our nose and signed to C/Z because he had enough money to put out our record, and that’s what we were looking for right then. We decided with 7 Year Bitch to do it, thinking we would be the main bands on his label and anything that he tried to throw at us we could boycott if we didn’t like it.
DANIEL HOUSE The Gits were, from the day I first started talking to them, innately paranoid and mistrustful. They were of the opinion, it seemed, that everybody was out to take advantage of them, everybody was out to fuck ’em over. They almost seemed to resent that we as a label, as a business entity, were going to be making a profit off of them if they saw success. At one point, I had to say, “I don’t know if I can do this if you are just going to be so paranoid and mistrustful of our relationship before we’ve even started.”
MATT DRESDNER Daniel seemed friendly enough, but he had a reputation for being out for himself more than for the bands—and whether or not that was deserved, it gave us pause. There was a lot of internal conflict within the band about whether or not to go with C/Z, and some of us were very distrustful. They came to us with this nine-page contract, and we were like, “Nine pages?! What the hell is that?” ’cause we had done everything with a handshake before that.
ELIZABETH DAVIS-SIMPSON I felt like Sub Pop was the shit and everyone else was trying to be as good as Sub Pop. Rathouse was really sub-sub-sub-Sub Pop. What I’m trying to say is, that to some people, Sub Pop was really establishment.
STEVE MORIARTY We felt separated from the Sub Pop scene because we were kind of punk purists. We felt more like we belonged in England or in Europe, and we found that people were more welcoming of our sound in Europe. The Gits represented more of the underbelly of Seattle. More of the homeless teenagers—as opposed to the college frat boys and young upwardly mobile cool kids in nice, cool clothes—because we played a lot of all-ages shows. Mudhoney were glamorized in such a way by Sub Pop that a lot of our fans hated them, hated those other bands, and were looking for something different.
SELENE VIGIL-WILK We were constantly called grunge or Riot Grrrl, because that’s what was going on in Seattle at the time. It’s hard to put yourself into a category or perceive yourself as that, ’cause it’s like, “Well, yeah, maybe a little bit, but not totally. Kinda, sorta … but not.” We made aggressive, punky, in-your-face music. They gotta call you something. I get it now.
VALERIE AGNEW We never got labeled grunge that I can remember. That would have been a nice relief. We definitely were considered Riot Grrrl, which was really frustrating for us at the time. Not because we had anything against Riot Grrrl, but we didn’t have anything to do with them. We certainly had feminist ideals and ideologies. We knew those people, loved their bands. Allison from Bratmobile did our very first interview in one of her zines, and I think that’s probably where it started.
DANIEL HOUSE The Gits also didn’t seem to trust the press. There were a lot of opportunities they just said no to. 7 Year Bitch were incredibly friendly and very willing and very eager to talk to the press. T
hey got their asses out there, they did the work, they went to radio interviews.
STEVE MORIARTY 7 Year Bitch were sort of socialites. That’s what you have to do to get popular in music. We were the opposite. Mia would hide in her room and write poetry and songs and was more like Patti Smith than Madonna. Matt was into motorcycles, and Andy was into books. We were more into music for music’s sake; they were into music for the love of the scene. We hated the scene in a lot of ways. Our bands were very different, but we complemented each other. That’s why I think we ended up being such good friends.
DANIEL HOUSE I remember when 7 Year Bitch was on the cover of The Rocket, Steve came to the office and was rather upset with me. He in all seriousness asked me why the Gits hadn’t been on the cover of The Rocket, and I had to explain to him that we try to get all our bands on The Rocket. I had pushed really hard and our publicist had pushed really hard to get The Rocket to pay attention to the Gits, and they just wouldn’t.
COURTNEY MILLER (The Rocket newspaper advertising manager) Whoever got the cover of The Rocket was a big deal in those days. The Rocket’s office, when it moved to Fifth Avenue, was down the hall from C/Z Records and I was good friends with Daniel, so I would get earfuls all the time. Of course, Daniel always thought that Sub Pop got everything and he got nothing. He was like the redheaded stepchild—no pun intended, because he’s got red hair.
DANIEL HOUSE The Gits felt that we were just giving all our attention to 7 Year Bitch and completely ignoring the Gits, which could not have been further from the truth, ’cause within the offices of C/Z not everyone was a 7 Year Bitch fan. But within the offices of C/Z everybody was a Gits fan.
MATT DRESDNER We were always really tight with 7 Year Bitch and very supportive, and when all of a sudden they started getting a lot of attention, we were absolutely thrilled for them. I felt like they felt a little bit guilty because we had sort of been their mentors. And they went out of their way for us. When the documentary Hype! came out here to film, Hype! wasn’t gonna include us, and those girls said, “You guys are blowin’ it if you don’t get the Gits on film.” So it was a very supportive, very collaborative, loving relationship between those two bands.
STEVE MORIARTY Stefanie and Mia were great friends and drinking buddies. They both had tempers. They both liked to get fucked up and cause havoc. They both were total misfits. They were both lovely people, and they were both really kind of naive and accepting, almost to a fault. Mia was often taken advantage of by people. They’d go, “Oh, it’s so cool, I’m hanging out with the lead singer of the Gits. Let’s get her wasted and see what she does.” And the same went for Stefanie.
SELENE VIGIL-WILK I remember a boyfriend of Stefanie’s started dating another girl and she just lost it. She grabbed him off of his chair at the Crocodile and punched him. Crazy stuff, throwing beers on people. Wild outbursts in public places. But she was a sincere, good friend to people.
VALERIE AGNEW Stefanie had a shitload of charisma. She could talk you out of your pants, man. When we first started playing shows, she would get guys to come up and tune her guitar. I was like, “Stefanie, you know how to tune your guitar.” She was like, “I know, I don’t care. He’s cute.” We would be out on some road trip and she’d manage to get someone to carry all her gear for her or give her a ride really far away. We were so deep into our feminist all-girls-playing-rock thing at that time that we were like, “Stefanie! You’re fucking with our image!” (Laughs.) She didn’t give a shit.
If she was missing at a show we’d find her with some boy in the back of a van. Some would say she was a little bit reckless. She referred to herself as the punk-rock Marilyn Monroe. She was a huge Marilyn Monroe fan, and she identified with her. I never asked her why. I didn’t get to know her long enough.
LORI BARBERO Everyone always said, “You need to meet Stefanie Sargent. You two are identical. Both of you look similar, both of you have dreadlocks and you both blah blah blah.” It just so happened we both had a salamander tattooed on our forearm even. We shared our energy and our passion for music. And we love people. We met in Seattle when 7 Year Bitch played, and we got along famously.
I was dating a gentleman named Chris at the time, and she was dating … what was his name? From Young Fresh Fellows, I think it was. She worked at Piecora’s, a pizza place on the Hill, and we ended up getting “married” there. She gave me a ring. I gave her a ring. I still have the ring. “Let’s get married!” I have no idea why we decided to do that. I mean, it wasn’t like any kind of lesbian love affair, it was just best friends. Our boyfriends gave us away, and it was at Piecora’s upstairs, and it was just really funny.
JAMES BURDYSHAW When I was in 64 Spiders, Stefanie and I dated for a little while. It wasn’t like we were a couple and people would see us together all the time. It was more like she had a big crush on me, and I hung out with her. This was back in the day when you didn’t really have a girlfriend. You’d go to shows, go over to somebody’s place late at night after drinking, and end up in their bed or they’d end up in your bed.
Stefanie had always been a girl who was like the groupie chick. Like she was Soul Asylum’s little groupie—not sleeping with them, just hanging on. She loved to follow bands. She was a real tomboy, but she was a real soft girl, too, and she didn’t like being called Sarge.
ROISIN DUNNE I knew Stefanie from hanging out on the Ave, goin’ to the Grey Door and the Gorilla Gardens; I maybe even met her as early as the Metropolis. Whenever we found each other at shows, we would hang out, watch the band together. Right up front.
I’d moved to L.A., but once when I was visiting Seattle, I saw Stefanie at a party. I hadn’t seen her in years. She was like, “You gotta come see my band! I’m doing great!” And she put me on the guest list at RKCNDY. It was a really fun night. Stefanie gave me the single for “Lorna,” and I recall being really happy for her.
ELIZABETH DAVIS-SIMPSON There was something about Stefanie where there was a lot of fun and a lot of smiles and a lot of laughter, but there was also some kind of a cloud. She seemed to have had a really troubled past. She moved to Seattle from San Francisco, oddly enough, to get away from dope. Seattle seems like a ridiculous place to go if you’re trying to avoid heroin.
It’s hard for me to imagine Stefanie being a middle-aged woman.
JAMES BURDYSHAW I rejected her because I thought she was doing too much dope, and I thought she was too obnoxious, but I stayed her friend. She was workin’ the pizza places and I’d show up and she’d feed me, and then we’d talk and we always would kiss, and we were very close. I shoulda been her boyfriend, because she was a wonderful girl.
MATT DRESDNER I hated heroin usage. I hated junkies. I was very, very, very anti, and while Stefanie and I were dating, part of the platform of our relationship was she could not be involved in any of that stuff or I was gone. And as far as I know, she was clean during that time. It made it all the more painful for me that that’s how Stefanie finally did herself in, because she had been doing so well.
VALERIE AGNEW We had been looking for her that weekend. We were supposed to have a meeting at the OK Hotel about going on tour. It was really weird that she was MIA, but we weren’t terribly worried at that point. I remember Selene and I going by her house and looking up at her apartment window, and her light was on and she had a red lightbulb in it. I remember having this premonition. I was like, “Oh, shit.” I had a really bad feeling because it was in the middle of the day and the sun was shining, and I started freaking out. Then we got a call the next day saying she hadn’t shown up for work, which was really unlike her.
When we got home to our apartment, we got a call from her roommate, who’d gotten back from her camping trip at the end of the weekend and found Stefanie.
SELENE VIGIL-WILK It was devastating because I’d never experienced that before. Stefanie’s roommate called me, and Valerie and I just jumped in the van, and we actually hit a parked car while driving up to her house on Capitol Hill.
VA
LERIE AGNEW We got there, and Stefanie was still in her room. Selene and I both went into her room and sat there with her for a little while, and I remember surveying the scene and trying to piece it together. We didn’t suspect foul play, but it didn’t make any sense. She was supposed to meet us that night at the OK Hotel. Why was she alone? Was somebody here and they left? Those kinds of questions were going through our head. I just remember it being really hard to think. You feel like you’re underwater.
ELIZABETH DAVIS-SIMPSON Valerie called me and I just got in a cab. I went up to Stef’s place and met Valerie and Selene there and it really seemed fake. Have you ever had a friend die? It really feels like you’re sleepwalking, like you’re in a dream and you just want to wake up.
STEVE MORIARTY I took a cab up to Stefanie’s house, and she was dead in her bedroom. What do you do when somebody dies? You have all this energy and horror and there’s nothing you can do about it except wait for them to come and take her.
ELIZABETH DAVIS-SIMPSON When the coroner or the EMT or whoever took her away, they had her in a body bag on a stretcher and one of her dreads came out of the bag as they walked past us. And seeing that was like, Okay, that was really real, this is Stefanie’s shell. She’s not here anymore.
DON BLACKSTONE I was a really good friend of Stefanie’s. She introduced me to my first wife. I talked to our booking agent Julianne Andersen on the phone and she said, “Stefanie OD’d.” And I didn’t put OD’ing and dying together. I thought, Okay, so she’s in the hospital. And I called my friend Lisa, who’d found Stefanie, and she was like, “She’s dead.” And I just lost it. I was standing at a pay phone in a parking lot in the QFC or some shit, and for the first time somebody that was really close to me died, and it just bowled me over. Stupid misadventure death. Just a waste. Makes you mad at them to a large degree, like, What the fuck were you doing?
