by Greg Prato
Three Whiz Kidz, early ’70s
RICK PIERCE: There was no mistaking who was in Ze Whiz Kidz or who were our hangers-on, because we didn’t leave the house unless we were wearing five pounds of makeup and had our hair ratted a foot high. There was a club called Shelly’s Leg, where the bands coming through town would go. That’s where I got to meet Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. The Seattle crowds then had a provincial attitude — they liked anything if it was from somewhere other than Seattle. In Seattle, the opening was, “You’re from here, so you can’t be any good.” We were starving — living on the glamour of it, and drinking for free at Shelly’s Leg. Brad and I knew what we wanted to do — a more conventional type of rock band.
ART CHANTRY: I was in that crew of the mid ’70s that cruised around in cars and listened to Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones — desperately channel surfing for anything. There wasn’t even any fucking oldies stations in the Northwest back then.
MARK ARM: I’m from Kirkland, a suburb northeast of Seattle. Growing up in the ’70s, I listened to Top 40 radio. By junior high, I discovered album-oriented fm radio. Rock ’n’ roll was verboten in my house — my mother is a former opera singer who grew up in Hitler’s Germany. I used to sneak into our Volkswagen Beetle because I could listen to the radio without turning on the ignition. I’d sit alone listening, hoping for “Green Eyed Lady” instead of “We’ve Only Just Begun.” So when I heard fm radio for the first time, I was drawn to the harder, louder stuff — the Nuge, KISS, and Aerosmith.
JOHN BIGLEY: I was born here in Seattle. The music thing happened right off the bat. Backwards though — Beethoven, then the Black Sabbath single, “Iron Man.” That was it.
BILL RIEFLIN: ’75, I was fifteen years old — there was no music scene. I was in a band called the Telepaths, and as far as I know, we were really the first, so-called underground, punk-inspired group. Fairly nihilistic in outlook — inspired by the Stooges and the Velvets. When we discovered the Sonics, the world became even more exciting. A very interesting combination of people, mostly teenagers, although the rhythm guitar player was a thirty-five-year-old marketing professor, from the University of Washington — Homer Spence. We were the first band of that ethos that started putting on our shows — we weren’t a bar band, we played a couple of covers, things like “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” Mostly we wrote our own songs and made a lot of noise.
KURT BLOCH: I was born here. Started wanting to be in a band in high school, in the mid ’70s. There’s no textbook for starting a band — you listened to records and saw bands on TV. It seemed so un-doable — you get together with your friends in the basement, and it’s like, “How do you do this? I know how to play some chords, but then when everybody plays together, it just doesn’t sound right” [laughs].
DAVID KINCAID: [Heart] were the Seattle band, and they were huge. This is back when they were still a real rock ’n’ roll band, before they turned into that “pop ’80s cleavage band.” They were really a great band, and [Ann Wilson] could sing her ass off.
RICK PIERCE: TKO got signed in ’77 to MCA. We didn’t release [an album] until ’79 — our first tour was with the Kinks. Right after eight weeks of getting booed off stage, we started opening for Cheap Trick — their first U.S. tour off of [1979’s] At Budokan. We were doing 20,000 seats a night — we went on to do the Japan Jam. But shortly after, MCA folds Infinity because Ron Alexenburg had cut a deal with the pope for a $6 million non-recoupable advance. It’s when [Pope John Paul II] was touring the United States, and the logic was you look at [the pope] filling stadiums, and [the pope] is a singer. So side A of the LP is his speeches, and then you flip it over, and it’s Polish folk songs. The thing tanked. Alexenburg got shit-canned.
ART CHANTRY: Essentially, you’re an island and it has this “island mentality” — this isolated mentality. The people that didn’t leave stewed and festered in their own juices. And that’s why you saw this incredibly incestuous band scene — these people had been playing music and partying with each other for ten or fifteen years before anybody took notice. It was a highly charged and fascinating time to be here. Some of the most amazing shows, people, creative acts were done by these totally obscure people in the Northwest — just trying to live.
BILL RIEFLIN: It was very “do it yourself.” If you wanted to put on a show, you had to find a hall, get a pa. God knows how any of it actually happened. But it did. In 1977, there was a guy named Roger Husbands, and he was the manager of the Enemy. Roger opened a club, initially in the Odd Fellows Building on Capitol Hill — the Bird. There were bands doing any number of things — pop tunes, maybe weirdly Beach Boys–inspired, hardcore punk, singer-songwritery guys, experimental guys, older guys, younger guys.
KURT BLOCH: There was this one store in Seattle that sold import records — Campus Music. There was definitely a “Campus Music scene” in the University District in Seattle. When we were fourteen or fifteen, me and my brother would take the bus down and spend our lunch money buying 45s. We really liked the hard bands — Blue Öyster Cult, UFO, the Scorpions, the first Montrose record [1973’s Montrose]. We always thought, “Why can’t they make records that are loud guitars — start to finish?”
CALVIN JOHNSON: I’m from Olympia, Washington. Here it was 1977, and you’re reading about the Stooges. But you couldn’t get their records — they were out of print. If you were lucky, you’d find one at the cutout bins. If bands went on tour, they often didn’t bother going to Seattle.
MARK ARM: I went to this private high school, Bellevue Christian. My friends and I were really into music, and we found this cool record store in Bellevue — Rubato Records. It was the only used record store on the east side. The people who worked there were cool and would point us in different directions. After graduating high school, I went to college in a small town in Oregon. Remarkably, the small record store in McMinnville had one copy of each of the first two Stooges records on Canadian import.
KEVIN WOOD: We were totally into Elton John and KISS — the theatrical aspect. Andy [Kevin’s youngest brother] was doing his own thing, I was doing my own thing, and Brian [Kevin’s middle brother] was doing his own thing. Andy and I were into the same stuff — anything hard-edged. We saw KISS in ’77. I was fifteen, which would have made him eleven. We found some seats as close as we could get, but at this time, they were pretty far back. The show started — Cheap Trick came on and just rocked. After that set, we turned to each other — he said, “That’s what I want to do.” And I said, “Me too.”
CALVIN JOHNSON: Punk rock came along, and I was like, “We’re going to have that teenage revolution we were waiting for.” But I always say, “Punk rock is the teenage revolution that never happened.”
KURDT VANDERHOOF: Grew up in Aberdeen, Washington. In the ’70s, it was great — it was a logging town. Lots of money — people worked and partied really hard. Then in the early ’80s, the timber industry took a dump.
TIM HAYES: I really don’t like talking about Aberdeen. If you had a funny haircut — even if you wore a pair of Converse All Stars or Vans — they’d sit there like, “What’s the deal with this?” Or if you had a little color in your hair — “Faggot!” You’d end up getting in fights, people talking a lot of shit behind you, the cops would pull you over. I ended up working at Wishkah Mall with a huge ass pompadour, and people would walk by and “see the freak.”
CHARLES PETERSON: I grew up in Bothell, Washington. Took about an hour by bus to get to downtown Seattle. At about sixteen, I discovered punk rock. I went to the nearest mall, which would have been Northgate Mall — to the Budget Tapes and Records. I bought the first Clash album [1977’s The Clash] based on the cover — and songs like “White Riot” and “I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.” I went home, put that on, and sold all my hard rock records.
CALVIN JOHNSON: I went to Europe with my German class in ’77, and I was like, “I’m going to buy some of these punk rock records” — I couldn’t find them anywhere in Olympia. This is July of ’77 — ri
ght when the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” is number one, and punk rock is really happening. When I got back from Europe a few months later, I got involved with the local radio station, KAOS. That’s when this whole world of music opened up to me.
KURT BLOCH: I don’t think we heard any punk records until the second Ramones record [1977’s Leave Home]. No one said, “This is punk rock,” we thought this was just another cool, loud band. We heard about it on TV, there was a thing about English punk bands on one of those nighttime news shows. We went to the record store the next week — they were out of “God Save the Queen,” but they had “Pretty Vacant,” and got the Saints’ first twelve-inch. Over the course of a month, all these records were coming out, and we were like, “This is the way to be.” So we started peg-legging our Levi’s and trying to find leather jackets. My first band, the Cheaters … we could get through a Saints song! In early ’78 I suppose, we tried getting some shows. Never looked back after that.
TOM PRICE: I’m from North Seattle, as are Kurt Bloch, Duff McKagan. I went to Roosevelt High School, and there was a band there called the Mentors. They would play at rental halls. Us younger kids, who still had long hair and bell-bottoms, we’d see a couple of older punk rock dudes — they would throw folding chairs, smash light bulbs. Me and my buddies were all, “How cool!” Me and my buddies really liked the Lewd — the original lineup. We’d go see them at a place called the Golden Crown downtown. I must have been a freshmen or a sophomore, and I walked into school with short hair, jeans, Converse, a plain white T-shirt. With the reaction I got, I could have been naked and painted blue.
Spiky haired punkers the Lewd, late ’70s
KURDT VANDERHOOF: The Lewd had already formed by the time I joined — I was a junior in high school. The Ramones came to town, and [the Lewd] opened. I met the lead singer, Satz, [he] said they were looking for a new bass player. I came up for an audition and got the gig. So I quit high school, moved to Seattle, and joined a punk rock band. Made a single, “Kill Yourself.” Then we relocated to San Francisco.
JOE KEITHLEY: Pretty sure it was June or July 1979 [the first time DOA played Seattle] — we had just put out the seven-inch single, “Disco Sucks.” We went down to San Francisco and did shows at the Mabuhay Gardens. [Brad Kent, guitar] decided to stay there. So we arrived in [Seattle], it was just the three of us. We played a miserable set — I hadn’t played guitar in a couple of months and forgot everything. I would qualify that show as the shittiest show DOA ever did. But the next time was far more interesting — we played at the Washington Hall, up in the U District. We had a really solid following in Seattle after that.
KIM WARNICK: Late ’70s, it was pretty much just getting going. You had to look beneath the surface. As far as the scene or community, it was super small.
STEVE MACK: They were these super cheap shows at the Paramount Theater — it ranged as far and wide as Patti Smith to the Kinks. And the Clash — that was the first honest-to-God punk rock group that I got to see live. After that, it was all over. You saw the Clash onstage and just realized, “I never want to see another boring rock enormo-dome band again — I want more punk rock.” That’s when gigs started popping up at the Showbox, the Gorilla Room, and places like that. That’s just when the whole explosion happened.
CHAPTER 2
“Seattle was the closest city”: Transplants
Although Seattle and its surrounding towns can be pinpointed as the birthplace of grunge music, many of the genre’s most renowned contributors hailed from other parts of the U.S., before settling down in the rainy city.
MATT DENTINO: Kim [Thayil], myself, Hiro [Yamamoto], and [Bruce] Pavitt grew up in Park Forest, Illinois — a suburb of Chicago. I first met Kim in Little League about ’72, and we became friends when we enrolled in an experimental alternative high school there [the Active Learning Process School]. I subsequently got kicked out for being too alternative — Bruce and Hiro also attended. I still believe that grunge was birthed in Park Forest.
KIM THAYIL: Tom Zutaut — who signed Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses — he’s Bruce Pavitt’s age, they were a grade above me. Our high school had a radio station, and I briefly worked there. Zutaut was the station manager.
BRUCE PAVITT: When I was a kid, my favorite toy was an am radio — I spent a lot of my days listening to music, spent all my money on 45s. A real shift for me happened when I was seventeen — I started dating a girl and all four of her brothers were into music. They wound up moving to Chicago — around ’77 — and they got tapped into the punk scene. So I was able to go to shows and listen to British imports right as they were coming out.
STU HALLERMAN: I went to alps — Kim Thayil was a year older than me. One of my old friends growing up was Hiro Yamamoto.
HIRO YAMAMOTO: Kim Thayil and I met in high school — he was a year ahead of me. Back then he even seemed argumentative [laughs]. He liked to talk and was introspective. He’s really into philosophy. You could tell he was thinking about where he fit in the world and what it all meant, all the time.
KIM THAYIL: When I was in Chicago, there was a handful of us who were punk rock fans. My first band formed in ’77 — Bozo and the Pinheads. We played the school sock hop talent show at the end of the year. We did a bunch of Ramones, Pistols, Devo, and originals I wrote.
BEN SHEPHERD: I was born in Japan, then we moved to Texas. When I was three, we moved up here — I’ve lived across the water from Seattle my whole life. Never really lived in Seattle until [recently]. My dad used to play guitar — the first song I ever heard was “Big River” by Johnny Cash. Then when I was eight, I heard [Iggy and the Stooges’ 1973 release] Raw Power. That was it — I was doomed. I had older brothers and sisters, so I’d go all the way from Earth Wind & Fire and Eartha Kitt to Syd Barrett and Captain Beefheart. Even though we were poorer than hell, they always had music going.
CHAD CHANNING: I was born in Santa Rosa. I moved around a lot — my dad was a disc jockey in radio. We moved to Washington in ’78. Shortly after, I met Ben Shepherd, in the fourth grade. When I met Ben, he was getting into punk rock, so I was being introduced to the Dead Kennedys, the Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Circle Jerks. I was all about soccer when I was a kid — until I got [in] this accident. It messed my legs up pretty bad. I got into music after that.
MATT CAMERON: I was born in San Diego, California. I started playing in bands when I was thirteen — I played in a KISS cover band with some neighborhood kids. By the time I was sixteen or seventeen, I had been in a bunch of different bands, and [was] playing professional gigs. I think the career chose me. I moved up to Seattle in ’83.
JOHN LEIGHTON BEEZER: Everyone who was serious about their career left Seattle for L.A. Jeff [Ament] was probably the first person in the world to leave Montana for Seattle.
JEFF AMENT: I went to college in Missoula for two years. About halfway through my sophomore year, a group of us went to see the Clash and the Who [in Seattle]. And I think X was playing the Showbox the night before. We heard that the following spring, there was going to be a punk rock club opening up, which turned out to be the Metropolis. I went to school to get a graphic design degree, and halfway through my sophomore year, they decided that they were going to focus more on the fine arts program. The fact that they were opening up this club in Seattle, I had a couple of friends out there, and a couple of people I’d met on that trip — I just decided that I would go to Seattle for a year and get my residency before I go back to school. I never went back to school — I worked in a restaurant for six or seven years.
BRUCE FAIRWEATHER: I grew up in Hawaii. I left in 1981 and went to the University of Montana. I met [ Jeff ] the first day of school, skateboarding — he had shorts on that said “Sex Pistols” and “999.” We ended up hanging out and skateboarding a lot — he didn’t play anything and I was playing. I think it was Christmas or Easter, Jeff saw Who Killed Society in Missoula. He totally dug this band, so the next Monday, he’s like, “We’ve got to start a band!” He boug
ht a bass, found a drummer, and started Deranged Diction. We played a bunch of shows out there, put a tape out, went through a couple of singers and drummers. [Bruce played guitar.] By 1983, three of us — me, Jeff, and Sergio Avenia, our drummer — decided to pursue it more. Seattle was the closest city.
JEFF AMENT: The spring of ’82 is the first recording we did, and then we recorded a couple more times in ’83 and ’84. I made a compilation tape that I sold, and traded tapes through Flipside and Maximumrocknroll. When I decided to go to Seattle, nobody else was going to go with me. And then at the last minute, Sergio decided to go. We loaded up my car with his drums, my amp and bass, and I think we each had a suitcase. We didn’t have any money — I had maybe 200 bucks, and it probably cost $100 in gas to get to Seattle. My friend, Randy Pepprock, who I’d met in Missoula, was working out there, and he said I could sleep on his floor for a couple of weeks. Right about that same time, the Metropolis opened up. Maybe a month after I’d been there [in the spring of ’83], Bruce Fairweather — who was still in Missoula — his girlfriend broke up with him, so he was looking to move out. Before he moved out, I started to look for somebody that could sing, or play guitar and sing. That’s when I met Rod Moody.
ROD MOODY: By that time, I was singing and playing along to the Dead Kennedys and Black Flag, and writing punk songs myself, so I was able to keep up with the ultra-speedy thrash that [Deranged Diction] had going on. They had a tape called No Art, No Cowboys, No Rules. Hearing it now, it was pretty generic hardcore, but at the time — “Wow, I’m in a hardcore band!” Jeff was really into D.C. hardcore at the time — SS Decontrol, Void, Faith, etc. Even then he was really motivated. He started a zine — only one issue actually went out — booked all the shows, became friends with all the players and club bookers, made posters, and was making plans to put out a full-length. We ended up playing with Hüsker Dü, Butthole Surfers, and a couple other national bands. We played the Met mostly, but also Munro’s Dance Palace, and maybe the Lincoln Arts Center. We also played an extremely redneck bar in Tacoma, and it marked the first and last time I have ever seen people swing dancing to hardcore.
