by Mark Yarm
MIKE MONGRAIN (TAD drummer) My first show with TAD was August of ’96. At that point, it was a band in decline. I liken it to stepping on the Titanic about five minutes post-iceberg. And I rode that bitch to the bottom, yeah.
It was tough on Tad and Kurt because so many of their peers—and I’m speaking here as an outsider seeing it from the inside—had done so well. All the bands that they started with were living in big houses and making their mortgages. TAD and Soundgarden and Nirvana and Alice in Chains all came up together, and TAD was always passed over for that one big promotion. I don’t think anybody was ever explicit about it, but every now and then you would see flashes of anger and resentment. It was the only thing I could attribute it to.
And there were so many crappy bands getting on the grunge bandwagon that were kind of a joke. I always had a serious distaste for bands like Stone Temple Pilots and Bush. They were capturing the essence of what was going on, at least the sound, but they were missing something. Something that was tongue-in-cheek and humorous and ironic, like TAD or Mudhoney. I never caught a shred of humor in anything the Stone Temple Pilots or Bush were doing. They were being serious rockers, copping a sound and missing the irony.
RON RUDZITIS After Kurt died, the big media thing was, “Grunge is dead, along with Kurt Cobain.” Yet the biggest bands on MTV were people like Bush, who were blatant Nirvana rip-offs. I felt a lot of resentment, going, “Well, what the fuck?” How can some bands like Bush, which is just a fuckin’ Nirvana wannabe, get all this exposure, when the bands that actually started that sound are getting left in the dust?
Our major label very unceremoniously dropped us. Maybe there’s a reason why Love Battery never made it big—because I’d be dead by now. I have to try and look at the bright side. (Laughs.) If I had all that disposable money, I really doubt I would’ve quit drugs.
KURT DANIELSON Tad and I had difficulty in communicating because we were both doing a lot of drugs. It seemed easier just to continue doing a lot of drugs than to deal with the problem of the band. My first marriage was falling apart, the band was falling apart, I had chronic pain issues, and instead of facing those problems, I just escaped. The pain that resulted from my back injuries, plus migraines, led me to experiment with all kinds of painkillers and eventually with heroin, so I became a long-term opiate addict. The heroin started about ’95 or so.
TAD DOYLE I liked coke a lot, and I found that I couldn’t afford it that much, so I went for the cheaper version of that, which was crystal meth and glass. I was taking cash advances on my credit card to go buy more. And I’d only leave at night. I was becoming essentially an addicted vampire. I had a police scanner that I bought that I’d listen to ’cause I was sure they were coming after me someday—that’s how far it went.
MIKE MONGRAIN I wanted to try to nudge us in a direction that was post-grunge. TAD had already been going in a more melodic direction, but it just didn’t have the cohesion yet. I thought, Let’s continue in that direction, with some more refinement. I remember when we were on tour in the Netherlands in ’97, we walked past a department store and there was a display in the window. It had a whole bunch of flannel shirts hangin’ in the window with a humongous sign that said 70 PERCENT OFF. I was like, “Guys! Look at that. Let that burn into your brain. That’s the reality.”
KURT DANIELSON The question of “Should we continue or should we break up?” was on the table for a month or two, and finally Tad and I had a conversation in 1999 and we decided, “Let’s just break it up.”
DAN PETERS I was actually shocked that we lasted as long as we did on Warner Bros. We knew when we were making Tomorrow Hit Today it was going to be our last record for the label. God love Dave Katznelson; he fought tooth and nail to get that record made. Warner Bros. had gone through a lot of changes, and he was pretty much told by the people that had taken over the label, “Why do you want this record to be made?” So that record was released into obscurity. They released it—I think. I do have a copy of it.
MATT LUKIN The rest of the band claims Tomorrow Hit Today was my best bass performance. And I go, “That’s kind of funny, because that’s when I cared the least about it.” But I guess a lightbulb shines brightest right before it burns out.
A month or two after we got back from Japan, Mark came over to the house for something, so I broke it to him. I go, “Look, Turner took the wind out of my sails a few years ago with the going-back-to-school thing. And I really haven’t been able to get motivated since. I’ve tried.” He goes, “Yeah, we kinda noticed.”
I started working carpentry. I remember coming home from the first job I had by myself. I thought, This is fucking great. I’m going home, it’s 5 o’clock, I get to spend the rest of the night at home doing nothing. No one’s deciding if I’m going to work tomorrow or not. Of course, that turned into just being like everything else, a big headache. I can decide what I want to do when the bills are paid. Until they’re paid, I can’t decide anything.
RICK GERSHON (Warner Bros. Records/A&M Records publicity executive) Mudhoney’s last record for Reprise, Tomorrow Hit Today, I remember nobody stood up to be counted when that record came down the pike. I put my hand very high in the air and said I would be honored to work with Mudhoney. And the two years or so that I worked with them, it was one of the most satisfying experiences of my life, musically, personally, professionally. They are such an amazing band and such bright musicologists.
I always found it very ironic and sad that Mark Arm had a day job at the Fantagraphics comic-book warehouse in Seattle. To me, it just wasn’t fair. They were the band that should’ve become rich and famous. And then written some really funny songs about becoming rich and famous.
DALE CROVER Pretty much from when we signed on to do our last record for Atlantic, everybody was gone. Danny Goldberg wasn’t there anymore. Our A&R guy, Al Smith, was gone. We made Stag, and I thought, This is the best record we’ve ever done. I don’t know why they wouldn’t be able to sell a shitload of these records! But the people at the label at that point just had no idea what to do with our band.
VALERIE AGNEW I remember us feeling like we had more problems on an independent label than we did when we were on a major label. Once we were doing a record with Atlantic, it felt easier in some ways. We learned later it was because they didn’t give a shit about us!
SELENE VIGIL-WILK Contrary to popular belief, we didn’t get dropped by Atlantic. We broke up because we were having our own internal stuff going on. Things were just really intense. There was a lot of death—other very close friends of ours who weren’t popular musicians—and a lot of freaking emotion.
VALERIE AGNEW We probably would have been dropped had we continued. But I think Atlantic would have been willing to work with us still if we had been a little more agreeable the next time around with business-type suggestions. But we really got to a point where we couldn’t agree on some business stuff and we were arguing about our creative direction, which was new for us. And we were being very ambitious, trying to work together and not be living in the same city. Selene was in L.A., and Elizabeth and I were in San Francisco. And Roisin had quit the band, so we also had a new guitar player come into the mix. I think the combination of all those things made it really hard to be on the same page.
BUZZ OSBORNE When Atlantic picked up the option for the third album, I just about couldn’t fucking believe it. The big money would’ve come on the sixth and seventh records, I believe. Not that this wasn’t good money. It was like 150 grand, you know?
I saw the writing on the wall with Stag, and we went ahead and recorded another record without them knowing. So that the second that they dumped us, that we were legally done, we could have an album come out. No waiting time, no down period where people think that you broke up, no sitting around wondering what to do. And then, if they wanted us to do another record, we’d go, “Okay,” collect the advance, sit around and pretend that we’re recording, and then give them that record. It was flawless.
Fi
nally, I got to the point where I called up our A&R guy, Mike Gitter, who’d essentially told us, “I’m in charge of all the older bands that nobody else wants to work with.” I couldn’t get him on the phone, so I told his assistant, “Tell Mike Gitter that we want him to drop us off the fucking label immediately.” Get a call back from him in five minutes. I told him, “Just drop us. We know it’s going to happen. Just drop us now. It’s fine.” A couple weeks later, we find out that we’re done. So we got dropped from Atlantic, put out the Honky record about a month later, hit the road, and toured for the next year.
And that just pushed us into the next era of our band. Today, I think we’re better than we’ve ever been. We work all the time, and we never stop.
MARK DEUTROM On Honky, which we recorded for Amphetamine Reptile after Atlantic didn’t pick up our option, there is a tune called “Laughing with Lucifer at Satan’s Sideshow,” which seemed to epitomize the major-label experience for us, and probably a few other bands, I would imagine. The voices on this are actually the band’s manager, David Lefkowitz, and a woman, I can’t remember who, quoting real statements made to us by individuals in some of the higher positions at Atlantic, after Danny Goldberg had left. Such chestnuts as “You should consider yourself lucky—any other major label would have dropped you by now” and “The people here in Radio just don’t like your band.”
I think “Laughing with Lucifer” is truly the epitaph on the tombstone of grunge. Major labels brought it to the planet, exploited it, and then killed it when it was used up, like any self-respecting corporation would do.
NICK TERZO I got to Maverick in the summer of ’96. Guy wanted me to meet with Candlebox and get the material right for the third record. Peter and Kevin definitely butted heads, and there was a lot of disinterest from the public, too. I just felt like we could never get the material quite where it should be for that third record. The album came out, and nothing really happened. I was finished by the time it came out; because of the tension between the partners at Maverick, I was out of there by the spring of ’98.
The label knew what Candlebox had done for them in a nascent part of their lives, so I think there was a loyalty there. I bet the band didn’t feel that—they would have felt neglected—but I really think any other band would have been dropped after the second record. Maverick did the right thing. I think they felt Candlebox were part of the family there. It’s a different vibe there.
GUY OSEARY When they signed, immediately I went, “Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for believing in me and giving me a chance to show you what I do and helping me build this future.” So I’m very grateful to Candlebox. A year later we’re gold, the year after that we’re triple-platinum-plus, and after that it’s lots of stuff internally with the band. I’m not really privy to all the details.
SCOTT MERCADO I got tired of all the arguing. After the Lucy tour, I walked into a rehearsal situation, and Kevin was playing drums with Pete and Bardi. And again, because Kevin’s controlling … I saw him there, and I was in a very bad mood that day. I’m like, “I just can’t do this anymore, guys. I’m sick of this. I’m sorry.” They understood. I mean, they weren’t really happy in the band, either.
DAVE KRUSEN In ’95, I took over for Eddie Vedder on drums in his then-wife Beth’s band Hovercraft. I really loved it, but I didn’t make any money and I had a daughter with my now-ex-wife to support. Then Kevin Martin called me saying that Candlebox were having some problems and Scott was leaving the band, so I left Hovercraft and joined Candlebox in ’97.
We went to L.A. and recorded Happy Pills, and once we were on the road nonstop for months, it got to where everybody was in a screaming match every day and somebody was gonna quit the band every day. It just felt like the whole thing’s gonna friggin’ implode anyway, so why am I gonna wait till the last second? So I jumped ship, and then Bardi left right after I did.
KEVIN MARTIN After the first tour on Happy Pills, which would’ve been the fall of ’98, I went to Maverick and talked to Freddy and Guy. I said, “You know, you guys got to fucking show us some sort of commitment here, because we are losing faith in you as a label.” They said, “Everything’s fine. We’re working the record.” I’m like, “You’re not.”
Maverick dropped the ball. They fired the whole promotion staff right before we released the record. I have no idea why. We never got a straight answer from them about it. I think it was egos—Guy and Madonna were trying to buy Freddy out of the company. I told them, “You’re gonna cause this band to break up.” And by ’99, the band was so imploded because of all of the shit we’d dealt with that we were like, “Look, we gotta fuckin’ walk away before we kill one another.”
Until March 2011, I didn’t get royalties from the first three Candlebox records. Before then, I was still paying for a fourth Candlebox record that was never delivered to Maverick. The label didn’t exist anymore, but they were still collecting the money. In order to get out of the contract, I had to agree to pay back my quarter of the fourth-record advance. Unfortunately, it’s usually the singer who gets stuck signing that agreement. I’m sure that Scott, Pete, and Bardi are fine with it, because they’ve been getting royalties all along.
My now-ex-wife Renee told me I should’ve slept with Madonna. It was one of the fights that we had: “If you had slept with her, your career wouldn’t be this way! You wouldn’t have to sign this agreement!” At the time, she was incredibly frustrated with the position that we were in. Yeah, that tension helped me out the door.
JACK ENDINO Gruntruck continued to play throughout the ’90s. Got a song on MTV and everything. They’d got it into their heads that if they could just get off Roadrunner somehow, they could get a major-label deal. What commenced was years of legal nonsense, of them trying to get out of their seven-album deal with Roadrunner. But by the time they did, nobody cared about them anymore. They continued playing, halfheartedly recording, but it fell apart. By the time the thing happened with Ben, which was the early 2000s, Gruntruck was not really active.
Ben had a history of increasingly heavy hard-drug use and seriously hard drinking. But, oddly enough, that was a red herring. What took him out was a blood-clotting disease that ran in his family. He had an internal blood clot that actually took out a good chunk of his internal organs—his liver, part of his spleen, a huge chunk of his intestines. Basically, blood flow cut off, and he had to have this incredibly invasive surgery. He was literally in a coma for weeks. Full, complete life support. This guy’s going to die. He is done. I remember going to see him at one point, and his body was so swelled up with fluids, he looked like a whale. You couldn’t even recognize his face.
CAM GARRETT He died there, really. They brought him back. The blood clot had killed most of his colon, and they took most of his colon and part of his pancreas out. They gave him less than a five percent chance to live, but he lived another seven years. He was always in pretty fragile health after that. A lot of people thought it was his lifestyle. He had been to rehab a couple times.
JACK ENDINO Ben was never the same. He lost a good third of his body weight, it aged him tremendously, and he literally was missing part of his diaphragm as part of the end result. He never had the full vocal power after that. Although Gruntruck tried to get back together, did a little recording with me, did a few shows, ultimately nothing seemed okay.
SCOTT MCCULLUM He’d fight alcoholism and drug abuse, deteriorate, get back on his feet. Finally, he had kidney failure in 2008. I knew that his life expectancy was greatly diminished and he could go at any time, but I was still shocked when that happened. Especially since we were going to get back together and put together arrangements for some music he’d been working out.
DANIEL HOUSE Ben died of complications of diabetes. I visited him several times at the hospital and spoke to the doctor several times. At the risk of saying things that will piss people off, the doctor told me that Ben had what was called alcohol-induced diabetes. As much as his death was officially due to comp
lications with diabetes, I think the unofficial reason is years and years of heavy drinking and doing a lot of drugs.
CAM GARRETT He was just in his forties. About a year before he died, I was doing a light show for Love Battery, and this guy came up and set his drink by my projectors, and I kind of shooed him away. What I didn’t realize at the time was that it was him. I didn’t even recognize him. He was so gaunt. He should have told me, “Hey, it’s me, Ben.” But he didn’t. He just kind of slunk away. I think he felt so terrible, and he was really miserable there at the end.
BEN SHEPHERD Was making Down on the Upside a difficult experience? Yeah. For me, the love of my life was leaving. I think we were working on tracking the day that she left me. I can’t remember what the song we were tracking is called now—it’s one of my tunes, too. The rest of the band seemed to be chugging along. But we were writing different; we didn’t jam as much as we used to. It turns out, thinking about it and hearing all the stories later on, there was a massive lack of communication going on.
SUSAN SILVER Chris and I weren’t talking to each other. Chris had definitely become a bad emotional wreck during those times. There was some sort of transition going on that unconsciously or not—I don’t know, because he didn’t say—maybe he wanted to do something different and hadn’t identified it yet. He was unhappy with how things were going on the record, and then he’d just come home and curl up on the floor in a ball and sob.
FRANK KOZIK Soundgarden, they were super-nice guys. I did a music video for them, for “Pretty Noose,” which was from their last album. You could tell that those guys were getting really burned out by the mechanism at that point. They definitely didn’t want to do the dog and pony show one more time for this fucking video.
