Everybody Loves Our Town

by Mark Yarm

  JEFF GILBERT Seattle never liked them—let me back up … Seattle fans loved them. But they were sneered at by the local rock journalists, and even the established grunge bands. They came on the tail end of grunge, and it looked like they were just trying to copy everything else before it. But, you know, they could knock out a good set of songs.

  KELLY GRAY People just loved the band so much. They weren’t as crazy-serious as those “integrity-driven” bands like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and Nirvana. Candlebox was doing a more normal, middle-of-the-road type of rock.

  KEVIN MARTIN We got thrown on a BMI [Broadcast Music Inc.] showcase at the Off Ramp at the last minute. They said, “We need one more band. We’ll give you the 7 o’clock slot.” It was us, Sweet Water, Green Apple Quick Step, the Fire Ants—which was Kevin Wood’s band—and Blood Circus. Maybe one other band.

  BARDI MARTIN It was like a “find the next Nirvana” sort of thing. The industry people descended on Seattle like flies on shit, and so there were just a ton of people from L.A. and New York there.

  KEVIN MARTIN EMI saw us there, and they flew us down to Los Angeles in October of ’92. We played a show at Club Lingerie. We were supposed to meet with Fred Davis, who was the president of EMI at the time, but he never showed up.

  Guy Oseary, who did A&R for Maverick, was there, and Guy saw us and called Freddy DeMann and said, “I want to meet this band.” Guy was 19 at the time; he went to school with Freddy’s daughter. Freddy was the president and owner of Maverick and Madonna’s manager at the time. Madonna was the money.

  GUY OSEARY (Maverick Records A&R scout–turned–partner) It’s by luck, really, how it all came together. I had heard about Candlebox a few nights earlier—there’s this band from Seattle and they’re playing at Club Lingerie. I actually attended a party a few blocks away the same night, and luckily for me, it was a terrible party. I said, “You know what, why don’t we go check out that band that’s a few blocks away at Club Lingerie? This place sucks.” So I went over there, and as soon as they started, I was just in love.

  KEVIN MARTIN Now, everybody knew that Madonna was looking for a band from Seattle. They weren’t looking at us specifically. She’s not stupid. She knew that she could find something from Seattle that would give her a great opportunity to start her label.

  GUY OSEARY That’s absolutely one million percent not true. She never told me what she was looking for. I was there, I was a young kid at the company, and this is what I liked. I gave you the story: I walked into the club, and if the party around the corner was great, I would’ve never made it over. It was one of those fortuitous moments.

  KEVIN MARTIN And this is where it got really fucked up. Green Apple Quick Step was being managed by Kelly Curtis. Green Apple had been flown down by Maverick. We were staying at the Holiday Inn Regent Plaza Suites, which was right on Hollywood Boulevard. Green Apple was staying there, as well. We ran into them and said, “Hey, what are you guys doing?” They’re like, “We came to do a showcase for Maverick.”

  We had just gotten a phone call that Guy and Abbey Konowitch are on their way to come meet us to talk to us about signing to Maverick and we’re like, “That can’t happen. These are our friends.” They were flown down by Maverick, that’s just not going to work. They’re gonna fuckin’ think that we’re trying to take the deal from them, which wasn’t our thing.

  We knew what was going to happen, and it sure as shit did. Kelly Curtis called up Maverick and said, “How fuckin’ dare you? You can’t have both bands. Who the fuck is Candlebox, dah dah dah?”

  GUY OSEARY I was looking at Green Apple Quick Step, and they were meeting with a lot of people at the time, as well. We were given an ultimatum, if I recall, from someone in the Green Apple Quick Step camp. An “us or them” sort of thing.

  I’d been lucky to spend some time with Jeff and Stone from Pearl Jam, and I thought, These are two of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Candlebox reminded me of that vibe. Good, quality people. Candlebox knew we were looking at Green Apple Quick Step, and they didn’t give us an ultimatum. I wanted calm, easygoing guys who don’t care that we may sign two bands from Seattle. It just felt right.

  KRISHA AUGEROT We were just not down with having them sign two bands from Seattle. Green Apple Quick Step wanted their own thing, and found that more with Kevin Patrick at Medicine, which was part of Columbia Records. In our minds, it was more of a decision based on Guy or Kevin. Maverick was a really new label at that time. Guy was super-young. He couldn’t even drink. There were pros and cons for both. Madonna was really the pro for going over there, ’cause she had so much muscle. But we felt like Columbia was tried and true, and Kevin Patrick’s a real music-head. So I think our decision was based more on that than on Candlebox.

  PATTY SCHEMEL (drummer for Los Angeles’s Hole) I moved from Seattle to San Francisco in ’91. I was there for a bit, and I got a call from Dylan Carlson, who said, “Hey, Kurt’s wife is looking for a drummer, and I suggested you.” So I went to L.A. and tried out and Courtney called me and said, “We want you to play drums in the band.”

  When I moved back up to Seattle, it was totally different. It just seemed like everybody had a record deal. Even the smallest bands. No offense to this band, but there was a band called Green Apple Quick Step, which is the dumbest name I’ve ever heard, and they have a record deal.

  GUY OSEARY The first artist that I ever tried to sign was Hole. I was 17, 18 years old. The second band I tried to sign was Rage Against the Machine, and the third group I tried to sign was Candlebox. Both Rage and Hole were down to the wire—both didn’t sign with us—and here comes Candlebox, who had other people interested and signed with us.

  KEVIN MARTIN We got a ton of shit for being on Madonna’s label. Everybody thinks that you sleep with her. She had just released her Sex book. It’s like, “Did you fuck her?” We didn’t meet Madonna until a year and a half after we signed. No one had sex with her.

  PETER KLETT There was the perception that we got it fuckin’ easy, man. “Madonna’s label—oh, dude.” But Madonna didn’t have shit to do with breaking the band.

  KEN STRINGFELLOW (the Posies singer/guitarist) Candlebox suddenly appeared in our practice place, and they’re already signed to Maverick. First I just saw in the loading area of our rehearsal complex like 57,000 road cases stenciled CANDLEBOX. I was like, Candlebox? Geez, Louise. Not that our band has a great name, either.

  I don’t even know if they’d played a show. They had gotten their deal straight out of the rehearsal room, more or less. That’s the kind of frenzy that was ensuing at that point. I knew the drummer, Scott, from another band, but I was like, “Where the hell did these guys come from?”

  It was like “the old immigrants always hate the new immigrants” kind of thing.

  JONATHAN PLUM I worked on the first two Candlebox records, and the band was very kind to me. I was still the house engineer guy—clean the toilets in the morning—but they actually gave me a coproduction credit on a song ’cause I’d gotten so involved in it.

  The very first conversation I remember in the studio was people in the band bitching about them being compared to Pearl Jam and how much of a drag that was. And I remember the moment Kevin got on the microphone to warm up he started singing Pearl Jam songs. It was like, Dude, no wonder why!

  KEVIN MARTIN The big misconception is that we had moved from Los Angeles to Seattle to get signed. I, to this day, don’t know how that came about. I think it had something to do with our CD saying our management was in Los Angeles.

  KELLY GRAY Courtney Love kept saying Candlebox were from L.A. She didn’t know where the fuck the band was from. People like her were saying that just because Nirvana was huge, Candlebox should’ve just never been a band. They should’ve just quit. It’s fucking ridiculous.

  BARDI MARTIN It’s kind of funny because we were probably one of the most Seattle Seattle bands around. Pete, Scotty, and myself were all born and raised in Seattle. Kevin moved to Seattle when he was like in
10th grade, and that must have been a good five years before Nirvana formed. We were supposed to have been from L.A. and moved up to Seattle to cash in. That was the kind of shit-talking I’d hear second- or thirdhand.

  SCOTT MERCADO There was a rumor going around that Mommy and Daddy gave us a loan to go into the studio. I wish we could’ve said that, but the fact is we sold almost everything we owned to get the $1,500 to get in the studio. I’m like, “Why are people saying this stuff?” A lot of people were jealous that we became successful and they didn’t.

  DAVE KRUSEN People thought that Candlebox were a put-together band. Back then, I was in a new version of Son of Man, and we were doing demos for Epic. But the band never got signed. My bandmates were bitter towards a lot of bands. Especially a band like Candlebox, who came out of nowhere as far as they were concerned, when Son of Man had been playing all these shows with Soundgarden and Mother Love Bone. The attitude was, “Who are these guys? Rich kids from the Eastside.”

  What was a really cool, tight-knit scene, changed to a lot of backstabbing and shit-talking because some people were getting signed and some people weren’t.

  KEVIN MARTIN We’d been a band for a year and a half. And some people felt that wasn’t long enough, which never made sense to me. The biggest detractors? The young bands that weren’t successful. Not Alice or Soundgarden—none of those guys were talking shit about us. It was Sweet Water, Green Apple Quick Step, Easy, Satchel. They felt like we didn’t really deserve it.

  We took a lot of shit in the city, and nobody ever fuckin’ stood up for us.

  LOS ANGELES TIMES (“POP MUSIC: The Ruckus over the Vanity Fair Profile,” by Steve Hochman, August 16, 1992) The 20 words that shook the record business are found near the end of Vanity Fair magazine’s eight-page profile this month on rock provocateur Courtney Love.

  Talking about a day last January when her husband Kurt Cobain’s band, Nirvana, appeared on Saturday Night Live, the 26-year-old singer is quoted as saying, “Then, we got high and went to SNL. After that, I did heroin for a couple of months.”

  The shocker is that Love, the lead singer of the group Hole, was pregnant at the time.

  Could she have knowingly put her future child at risk by taking drugs, especially heroin?

  EVERETT TRUE Courtney would phone me up and tell me all this stuff she was telling Lynn Hirschberg from Vanity Fair. I’d be like, “I’m not sure this is a good idea. You can tell me that. I’m a music critic. This woman isn’t a music critic; she’s a professional journalist, and there’s a very big difference.”

  JANET BILLIG I don’t want blame it on my age, but I didn’t have experience in this, I didn’t know. Vanity Fair is doing a feature article, it might be a cover—she has music, she has movies, she’s pregnant, and she’s married to this big rock star. All is good, why would it be bad? Courtney of all people is always so good at the spin, I never thought twice about, Should we or shouldn’t we?

  COURTNEY LOVE Janet said to me, “You may never get another shot at Vanity Fair,” when I knew I’d get all the Vanity Fair covers I fuckin’ wanted. I’m gonna get 20 fuckin’ Vanity Fair covers if I want. But there was this haunting voice in my head: “You’ll never have this chance again.”

  DANNY GOLDBERG Why even be in Vanity Fair? You’re a punk-rock singer. Courtney had this yearning for mass-culture acceptability and just couldn’t say no to something like that. I had a sense of foreboding about it, but I had no idea it was gonna be as bad as it was.

  Courtney’s done a lot of stupid, self-destructive things, but I don’t believe that she screwed around with her pregnancy. All those allegations were anonymous. They were “Sources say …” and “Friends say …”

  SUSAN SILVER Danny Goldberg called me at one point, saying, “I’m just calling on Kurt and Courtney’s behalf. They really want you to stop talking to people.” He didn’t specifically say Vanity Fair. Somebody else told me that I was supposedly a quote-unquote source, which I wasn’t.

  There was one time when I spoke to an English female journalist that had come to Seattle. I can’t remember her name, Victoria something. She was so lovely and disarming that it felt like I was just talking to a girlfriend, saying, “I’ve seen some crazy shit that doesn’t make any sense to me.” After Courtney hooked up with Kurt, it was the first time that anyone had ever publicly trash-talked anybody in the community. It was really awful to have somebody with this addict behavior of conquer-and-divide. We had this really lovely, cohesive, supportive community, and this tornado came and started blowin’ things apart.

  LOS ANGELES TIMES (“POP MUSIC: The Ruckus over the Vanity Fair Profile,” by Steve Hochman, August 16, 1992) In a statement by Love and Cobain that was released through the couple’s management company, they declare:

  “The Vanity Fair article … contains many inaccuracies and distortions, and generally gives a false picture of both of us, including our attitude about … drugs.”

  Addressing the allegation that she was using heroin after knowing she was pregnant, they continue, “We unequivocally deny this.… As soon as Courtney found out she was pregnant, she immediately contacted an obstetrician and a doctor specializing in chemical dependency and has been under their care since then and has been assured that she can expect to have a healthy baby.”

  ERIC ERLANDSON I was known as a “chipper” for 10 years. Not all heroin—I was never a big fan of heroin—but just a bunch of different things. I was just dabbling. I was the guy who didn’t get strung out. Unfortunately, people around me didn’t have that capability. So that’s why I was more like the glue, the stable person in that craziness.

  I was there at the hospital when Courtney was giving birth. It was an intense time. I was the only one around. I was the caretaker. Courtney’s there and they’re inducing labor, and then Kurt’s upstairs in another room, for his stomach problems, and I’m running between the two.

  DANNY GOLDBERG I remember visiting Courtney in the hospital after Frances was born, and the article had just come out. She was sobbing. She said, “Things will never be the same, this is terrible. Don’t give me your optimistic shit!”

  The social services got involved and there was a question of whether they were fit parents, and Courtney had to go to the welfare office a few times and show that she wasn’t on drugs. Her sister had to be flown down to temporarily help look after the baby. It was three or four weeks of tremendous anxiety.

  JANET BILLIG Courtney never shared drugs with me; I never saw her doing drugs. I don’t know. She was pregnant, she had her baby. I have no idea. I know she smoked in front of people when she was pregnant.

  When Franny was like two and three and developing, whenever she dropped a pencil, we were like, “Oh, my God, was Courtney doing drugs?!” You’d question. But Franny’s fine. She’s smart. She’s a great kid.

  AMY FINNERTY The Lynn Hirschberg article came out, and the MTV News department was going to run a piece on it. I took it to John Cannelli, who at that point was my boss, and I said, “We can’t run this. You have to bury this. This is not a story about music, it’s a gossip story, and this is gonna be detrimental to the relationship between us and this band.” He said he would talk to Dave Sirulnick, who was running the news department at that point, and see what he could do. The story ran, and it made them mad. MTV just rereported what was in the Vanity Fair piece, but it was on MTV, which all the band’s fans watched, so it made the story bigger than it initially would have been.

  Now I look back and realize that, of course, my position was skewed by my personal relationship with the subject, but at the same time, my position was always, “This isn’t a music-based story.” If we decided not to run it, it’s not like we were gonna miss the biggest music story in the world. At that point, I don’t think that Kurt Cobain understood that Kurt Loder didn’t really make those decisions, and so he placed the blame on Kurt Loder.

  KURT LODER (MTV News anchor) I read somewhere that Kurt hated Lynn Hirschberg and me more than anyone else in
the world, and I got that book, his notebooks, and I just didn’t find that in there. I know Lynn Hirschberg. She’s a really good reporter, and maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not, but Lynn Hirschberg’s not some hack. You can’t just say, “I’m not gonna cover this because Nirvana might be mad.” And, you know, it could have happened—let’s be honest.

  COURTNEY LOVE It’s not about the paragraph about the heroin. I don’t give a fuck. Forget that I did heroin in the first trimester of my pregnancy, because I did, that’s no big deal. I didn’t do it knowingly, of course. That would be a pretty vile thing to do. I don’t think I’d be capable of it. I did it within the first trimester, until I took a pregnancy test. After that, I did not do it again. It’s that simple.

  I don’t give a fuck, but the rest of it involves fucking my child, it involved fucking my husband. The tone of it was irresponsible, that tone was incorrect, and that tone emasculated a man. Read it. It makes Kurt look like a fucking two-foot-tall, small-cocked beta male. I would have never married a beta male. Do I sound like the kind of bitch that would fuckin’ marry a beta male? I don’t like somebody that I can boss around. If I’m gonna fuck you, throw me around the fuckin’ room. If you can’t do that, then sorry, son, you’re out.

  I don’t know what would happen if I ran into Lynn Hirschberg in polite society. I’m very, very good under pressure and in polite society, and generally I can’t even remember who I hate. I don’t hate that many people. But I mean, I’d knuckle-sandwich her if I saw her. She wouldn’t be able to walk.