Grunge Is Dead

by Greg Prato

  BLAG DAHLIA: Mudhoney came down, and we had a party at my place in San Francisco. I told everybody, “We’ve got to be cool, my landlord lives upstairs — everybody be quiet.” And Lukin did something like fucking set off an air horn.

  GRANT ALDEN: They were the band I have seen play live the most out of any band, ever. They were capable of being the best band you ever saw, or the worst. But they were — for forty-five minutes — phenomenal. That they didn’t reach a broader audience baffles me. Although, one of the things that happens in music is what works on a small stage doesn’t work on a big stage. I’m not sure what they did was ever going to work in an arena.

  MARK ARM: After we recorded [Mudhoney], Steve was like, “Dude, no more songs about sickness or dogs!” [laughs] Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge was largely saved by Steve. At this point, I was getting heavier and heavier into heroin.

  STEVE TURNER: Anyone with a drug problem is going to be kind of out of it, secretive, and weird. I always maintained the position that if someone wants to do drugs, they have every right to do it. It’s not like we were pressuring him to stop, really. On tour, he was fine, it was just the first few days would be a disaster, because he’d be sick. It was when we were home that it was a problem — he would disappear. We made him go into rehab once, because we had a tour booked. We were like, “Either you go into rehab or we’re not doing the tour.” I think you have to solve those problems on your own, in a certain way. He solved his problems on his own, and then it got a lot better [laughs].

  MARK ARM: Steve kept the band rolling for Every Good Boy. He grabbed the helm and steered the SS Mudhoney in a new direction — in [a] more stripped down and, for lack of a better term, “garage rock” approach. Steve was really into Billy Childish — he had been for a long time. Most of the songs on Every Good Boy have more of a ’60s punk feel. The song “Who You Driving Now?” was originally written for an Estrus comp — Estrus is a garage label. Our aim was to try to write a fake Sonics song. Then we decided it was too good to put on a comp, and that we had to put it on our next record [laughs]. We decided that our first single had the best sound of anything that we had recorded, and since that single was our only record done on an eight-track, we should find another eight-track. Steve called Conrad Uno at Egg Studio — which is in the basement of Conrad’s house — to tell him that we’d like to record at Egg. Conrad burst out laughing and asked, “Why?!” Of course, we went to Egg.

  STEVE TURNER: That record, I think we were on top of our game. That’s still one of my favorite ones of ours. We were trying to do different things — we brought in this Farfisa keyboard. It was more stripped down, and less of “the big grunge sound.” Whatever it was, I wanted to get away from it.

  SCOTTY CRANE: Mudhoney’s set [opening for Nirvana at the Paramount on Halloween 1991] was amazing — they kept making jokes about how poor they were compared to Nirvana. Mid-song, someone in the audience threw coins at Mark’s head, and the band kept playing — as Mark scampered around to collect the change. This became the big joke — soon, the band was being pelted with change, while Mark and Matt picked it up.

  STEVE TURNER: [The release of Every Good Boy] was delayed again, and [Sub Pop was] always struggling financially. It was getting argumentative, and we didn’t want it to go totally sour. So we decided we had to move elsewhere.

  NILS BERNSTEIN: In Tad, they brought in some more overt ’70s metal sounds.

  KURT DANIELSON: We hooked up with Steve Albini in Chicago. Recorded [1990’s] Salt Lick, which was done very quickly and rawly. The songs weren’t really done — we had the opportunity, Steve had the time, Sub Pop had everything set up. We just jumped at it, and let the chips fall where they may. It ended up being a live record in the studio.

  TAD DOYLE: I think we spent two or three days on it. I remember Steve telling me not to sing because I can’t, and don’t even try. I remember saying, “Fuck you, I’m going to” — I wound up doing it anyway. But [Albini] brought a lot of energy out of us — he got us fired up. He was not of the mind of experimentation in the studio as much as Jack Endino on the first record. So after Salt Lick, we just toured — it seemed like we toured nine months out of the year.

  BEN REW: I’ve toured probably one-tenth or one-twentieth of my life. Tad always had really good shows — people used to adore him. The one thing about that guy — out of everyone in this scene, he is the only person that would talk to every single person after a show that wanted stuff signed and wanted to talk. You’d be screaming at him out the door, “Dude, we’ve got to leave!” He would always stand in the front row of the openers. No other band — Seattle or anywhere else — did I ever see the main dude of the band standing front row to watch his opening act. He was so grateful to other bands. He’d have these parties at his house that were just frickin’ hilarious. It would be his birthday — all of a sudden, he would walk out of his bedroom with huge oversized diapers and a Mickey Mouse hat on. Tad was a force to be reckoned with.

  You had all these other guys that are really good-looking and really skinny, and Tad was just pure talent. He would get up there and rock harder — he would jump around more than skinny guys. And his between-song-banter was hilarious. That was one thing he really prided himself on — he actually did give you a show. I think he fell into … you had all these really good-looking bands that sounded like crap. L.A., the record industry was still in control of what was getting out to people — they still wanted people to buy records on looks and style. Tad was just a guy from Boise, Idaho, that would rock your skull into the ground.

  NILS BERNSTEIN: 8-Way Santa is a great melodic rock record, and was definitely the record to beat in 1991 … until that other one came out in the fall.

  KURT DANIELSON: We drove to Madison, Wisconsin, and recorded 8-Way Santa at Smart Studios with Butch [Vig]. We’d always wanted to work with Butch — Butch’s work with Killdozer was really important to us. One thing that Butch was great at was working with singers, and he had a really great pop sensibility — as you can tell by his work in Garbage. But nobody knew that then — it was just a lucky coincidence. And Butch was like a child in the studio — I’d never seen anybody with so much childlike energy. Loved gadgets and working. We toured for that record, but first, our drummer quit; it took us like a year to find a replacement. In the meantime, the record comes out, and we get sued.

  ART CHANTRY: The band were putting out 8-Way Santa. It was the best thing they ever did — their breakthrough record. Everybody expected them to be at the top of the charts — the next Soundgarden, the next Mudhoney. I got this call from Kurt Danielson, and said, “We’re working on this record cover. We want to use this photo that we found at a garage sale. It was in a photo album that we bought, so that means it’s ours and we have the right to use it, right?” And I went, “No, don’t do it. Don’t fucking use it. If you use it, alter it so dramatically that nobody can be recognized. My advice is don’t do it.” So, they went ahead and used the photograph anyway — of this guy with sort of a Fu Manchu ’70s greaseball haircut, and this petite little woman, with his hand on her breast. Somebody at a record store recognized the dude in the photo and said, “Hey Fred” — or whatever his name was — “Look, you’re on a record cover!” That was his wedding photo from back in the ’70s. So he showed it to his ex-wife, who had become a Christian singer, and the shit hit the fan. They had to pull the record off the shelves and change the cover.

  In the meantime, Bruce decided that he was going to promote the “Jack Pepsi” single — a song about driving drunk in a monster truck, having a wreck, and killing people, or something like that. [Bruce] thought it would be hilarious to do a CD single and use the Pepsi-Cola logo and put the word “Tad” on it — take out the word Pepsi, and put in the word Tad. And [someone] sent several copies to Pepsi Corporate Headquarters. They listened to the single, looked at their logo. They went nova and sued the shit out of the label. Bruce had no money, so his response was to bend over and say, “Do you want it like this, or
do you want it like that?” So the record got pulled from the shelves and had to be reissued. Any kind of promotional value was ruined, and any kind of incentive or push the record had, had been dragged out over several months. Pulling it off the shelves and reissuing it killed its momentum.

  ANONYMOUS: As part of the settlement, Tad agreed to change the title of “Jack Pepsi” to “Jack” on all subsequent releases. Pepsi did not like their product being associated with drunk driving, natch. Secondly, they also demanded that Tad not talk about the suit or the contents thereof to the press or anyone else — in other words, they slapped a gag order on Tad. There was no financial settlement; these two things constitute the main terms of the lawsuit.

  As for the cover art, yes, they demanded that be changed also — that is, the cover art for the single that features the Tad/Pepsi logo. A disgruntled former Sub Pop employee — who had been fired — leaked the whole story to Pepsi’s legal division, thereby notifying them of the existence of this so-called copyright infringement, something they never would have known about otherwise, because it would have normally gone below their radar. It took a fink/traitorous bastard to bring it to their attention. Makes for a pretty good story — and a helluva lot of trouble for Tad and Sub Pop.

  ART CHANTRY: By this point, Bruce was afraid of this record, the band was pissed off because they were touring a product they couldn’t support. Also by this time, Bruce started having bands sign contracts. Because he had already lost Nirvana and Soundgarden, Tad was one of the first bands he had a big release clause in the contract. If the band wanted to sign with another label, the label had to pay Sub Pop something like $60,000. So Tad was stuck — they couldn’t jump labels, because no other label out there that would pick them up could afford to pay Sub Pop the release price. The result was Tad was pissed at Sub Pop and Bruce — they would not release any more material on the label. They couldn’t release [it] on anybody else’s label either. Because of the release clause, they lost all their momentum and lost lots of money.

  KURT DANIELSON: We finally went out on the road again, still playing the 8-Way Santa songs, but with Rey Washam on drums, with Primus. A great drummer — one of my favorite bands, Scratch Acid, Rey played drums for. It was fun — we toured for more than a year in the States, in Europe also. And then things fell apart with Rey — we never recorded with Rey, although we wrote songs that were never recorded with him. That’s one of my great regrets.

  VAN CONNER: [The Screaming Trees] did Buzz Factory, and then after that we did an EP for Sub Pop.

  MARK PICKEREL: I’m proud of [Buzz Factory], but even more proud of the release we did right after it, which unfortunately is not a full-length. It was a co-production — Steve Fisk producing two or three songs, and Jack Endino producing two or three songs — that would eventually come out as a double single on Sub Pop [1990’s Change Has Come]. I think that is our best- recorded moment — that period. We must have been fresh off a lot of touring — probably had just come back from Europe. Our confidence in ourselves was at an all time high — we really felt like we were fulfilling our vision. We were being courted by Epic Records. So that, in combination with all the other great things that already existed about the band — Lee’s songwriting, and Mark had developed his talents into something that was truly unique — that was the magical moment for us. That was when everything fell into place for us musically.

  STEVE MANNING: One of my favorite bands of all time. One really memorable show … I was naive at the time, and didn’t realize that people were using. I knew heroin was a big deal, but wasn’t cognizant enough to know that it was actually happening. I would be hesitant to say that I knew when anybody was using, but I remember a Screaming Trees show where I was sitting on one of the speakers on the stage, and nobody could find Mark Lanegan. They looked and looked, and finally [found him], I think he was sleeping behind a couch upstairs, where the bands hang out. So the band had begun playing without him, and finally, somebody found him, and brought him to the stage. Jim Morrison came to mind, because during the song, he could not have been more on, and have that amazing voice. The band was all over the stage, you’ve got these near-300-pound dudes playing guitar on both sides of him, and then him — this really thin guy, just really interactive and into it. But between songs, he would sink down, behind the speaker I was sitting on, and again, I wouldn’t want to say that he was nodding, but seemed to lose consciousness. As soon as the next song would start, he would step out from behind, and be completely going full bore again.

  MARK PICKEREL: Mark Lanegan’s first solo record was one of the best experiences of my career — [1990’s] The Winding Sheet. I really hoped that would develop into a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds kind of environment. I didn’t want to abandon the Screaming Trees, because I thought that the Screaming Trees had a lot to offer and were very exciting. But I did picture Mark’s record and talents evolving into something that would have been more of a working band/working environment — rehearsals, tours. But that was not meant to be. Now, it has developed into something — it’s more palpable than it was at the time.

  ROBIN TAYLOR: I don’t think [the Screaming Trees] were overlooked, but were one of the best bands that aren’t rich.

  Screaming Trees (L-R: Van Conner, Gary Lee Conner, Mark Lanegan, Barrett Martin)

  MARK PICKEREL: Lanegan and I had become big fans of Lead Belly. And several other blues artists — Lightnin’ Hopkins, Robert Johnson. I know that Kurt was a big fan of Lanegan’s — they traded a lot of tapes and had conversations about different artists they liked. Apparently, I don’t know if Mark turned Kurt on to Lead Belly, or if Kurt was already a fan, but at some point, Mark approached me about playing drums for a project that he and Kurt wanted to start, which would really focus on blues — particularly Lead Belly’s catalog. I believe we were also talking about playing songs by all the great bluesmen. I got really excited about it, and was envisioning this super group that was bound for success — sort of be the modern day, Northwest version of Cream. It was funny, because having been in a band with Mark for so long, his personality in the Screaming Trees was he couldn’t help but really be the bandleader. He just is a natural leader, is very outspoken, and can be very aggressive. The couple of rehearsals we had, I saw a different side of Mark — one that was much quieter. He seemed to have a great deal of respect for Kurt and Krist. At the same time, Kurt seemed intimidated by Lanegan’s talents and vision.

  I remember it was my own cassette of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” that we used for the example for that particular song. It was really exciting, because I felt like it was a collaborative effort. Funny that it should be easy for me to voice so many opinions to Mark and Kurt simultaneously. I guess because I saw this moment of vulnerability on Lanegan’s part, it was a great opportunity for me to finally get excited about all these different ideas. Unfortunately, this was right around the Screaming Trees being courted by Epic, and Nirvana was getting ready to leave for a big tour. We just didn’t have the time to make this thing evolve into something bigger, or into more recordings. I think we went into the studio with six ideas, and recorded maybe four or five of them. At the time, there wasn’t really a name for the band. Kurt wanted to call it Lithium, and I wanted to call it the Jury. I don’t think we ever really arrived at a name, and eventually, the project got shelved, and Lanegan asked Kurt and Krist how they’d feel about using “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” for Mark’s solo record.

  VAN CONNER: We all wanted to quit, because we thought we’d done everything we could musically together. And we were all starting to do music with other people — I had that solo album, [1990’s] Solomon Grundy, Lanegan did his solo record, Lee did his solo record [1990’s Mystery Lane, credited to Purple Outside]. I think we were sick of each other. When we got together, the stuff was sounding kind of same-y.

  MARK PICKEREL: [The Screaming Trees] did the record on Epic [1991’s Uncle Anesthesia], that Terry Date and Chris Cornell co-produced. There was sort of a se
lf-imposed pressure to produce a record that was exciting, but also radio friendly. We had already seen Chris Cornell and Soundgarden achieve this, so we knew that having him there would benefit us. The problem was I don’t think Terry Date had really experienced what made the Screaming Trees so great outside of that experience — nor had he followed us as a fan. I felt like he viewed us as “a project.” I think I even viewed ourselves at the time like that. Like, “OK, here’s our chance to impress the parents.” That doesn’t help the creative process, when you don’t believe enough in yourself to do what’s instinctive. And you’re not really feeling that you’re getting the encouragement to be yourself from the control room. There’s some great songs on it, but it just feels a little awkward. It doesn’t breathe the way Change Has Come breathed, or even the SST stuff .

  VAN CONNER: Pickerel wanted to stay at home. We thought we’d try this major label thing, because we got an offer. So we did that and recorded the record. Then Mark decided again that he didn’t want to tour anymore. We all wanted to quit at that point — but he was the only one brave enough to do it.

  MARK PICKEREL: The demands from the band when they signed to Sony increased. Now not only did we have to make sure that everyone in the band was getting paid and a manager — now it was [also] a booking agent, and making sure the record label’s expectations were being met. And their expectations of us were not in line with our own career vision. I wasn’t ready to do the amount of touring that they wanted at that time. I met this guy, Robert Roth, through a friend, who had some original songs that he asked me if I’d be willing to develop with him to record. I heard the songs, and thought they were great. They had a lot of the same classic qualities as the Screaming Trees.