Grunge Is Dead

by Greg Prato

  ALLISON WOLFE: After high school, I was an exchange student for a year in Thailand. I came back in time for the summer of 1989. I sort of felt separated from my friends — it was like I started over again. I started hanging out a lot more at punk rock shows. And that was the summer I got into Beat Happening and all these K Records tapes. I got really interested in the idea of people making music in their own apartment for themselves and their friends.

  Also, Reko Muse was having shows, so I was going to a lot of shows there. I would see Kathleen Hanna on the bus a lot, and at different parties and shows — I was really intrigued by her. She looked like Tank Girl — her hair was all shaved, but she had long bangs. She looked really tough and cool. One time I went by Reko Muse, and she was onstage playing — in Viva Knievel. They were kind of rock, but she was singing and was so powerful — she seemed so crazy onstage. I was really impressed by that. And also, that same summer, I went to see Calamity Jane. That really made a big impression on me. Those were maybe the first girl bands I’d ever seen.

  I went off to school in the fall, to the University of Oregon. And Molly [Neuman] was my neighbor in the dorms. She really stood out to me, because she was always loud, bratty, and yelling at people — she seemed really tough. We started doing everything together — I turned her on to all these K tapes. And she got me interested in bands like Public Enemy. She was very politicized for that time, about racism and things like that. We really influenced each other. And this combination of politics mixed with do-it-yourself music got us excited about the Olympia music scene, and the idea of doing our own thing.

  We’d go visit Olympia a lot, because my mom and family still lived there. We’d go hang out at all the cool shows. Hang out with Calvin [ Johnson], and we got to know Tobi and Kathleen. They were big influences on us too. We started getting more into the idea of, “Maybe we can do this.” Molly had started taking guitar lessons, I was writing poetry, and we started telling people we were in a band. It was more like we would hang out on the weekend and make stuff up. It was around the time of the Batman movie, with Prince and the “Batdance.” We thought, we’re brats and we want to be mobile, so we called it Bratmobile.

  KATHLEEN HANNA: We were really obsessed with this band, Nation of Ulysses. We went on tour with them and they lived in D.C., so we ended up staying in D.C. for a couple of years. While we were there, in between tours I got bored, and me and my friend Allison and Sharon Cheslow were talking about feminism a lot. We decided to have a meeting. Molly and Allison were from Bratmobile, and they had a fanzine called Riot Grrrl. The meeting started, and it wasn’t called anything, it was just like a feminist consciousness meeting — in the punk scene. Somehow, even though we weren’t in New York or Los Angeles, we got a ton of press. And then other girls started having meetings. Somehow, the way the press called grunge “grunge,” the press called Riot Grrrl “Riot Grrrl.”

  Bratmobile’s Allison Wolfe

  ALLISON WOLFE: Tobi Vail had coined the term “Angry Grrrl.” So she would talk about Angry Grrrl zines. And then this girl Jen Smith, who was from D.C., would talk to her about a lot of ideas, and she told us about this riot that had happened in the neighborhood where all the punk rockers lived — Mount Pleasant, in Washington, D.C. It also had a high Salvadorian population there, and this population was being really oppressed by police, anti-immigrant laws, and treatment.

  On Cinco de Mayo that year, which I believe was 1991, there was a shooting — a cop shot a Salvadorian man on the main street corner. People freaked out, and burned down the Church’s Fried Chicken. I think it really made a big impression on a lot of people that lived here, and the punk rockers in the neighborhood too. She was talking a lot about the riots and the upheaval in the neighborhood and the city, and she was like, “I think we also need a girl riot.” Somehow, between Jen Smith and Tobi, we made this word, Riot Grrrl. We jumped on that, and started having fanzines and meetings in D.C that summer.

  TINUVIEL: I was in Olympia then. I remember Kathleen, Tobi, and Allison returning with this wealth of information, like, “This is what we were doing on our summer vacation” [laughs]. And it just exploded.

  KATHLEEN HANNA: I lived in a house with Calamity Jane, and they were always practicing — they were living in Portland for the summer too. And Kathi [Wilcox’s] boyfriend was always at the house. So Kathi started hanging out at the house. Tobi knew who Kathi was, and said, “We have to get that girl to join our band” [laughs]. And she didn’t want to — she was like, “I don’t want to be in a band, I don’t know how to play anything.” I just slowly worked on her, and her and Tobi became friends. Finally, she joined [on bass]. We went through a bunch of different guitar players. We really wanted to be an all-girl band, and Tobi used to be in a band with Billy [Karren] — Go Team. He one day showed up, and he was in the band [soon called Bikini Kill].

  ALLISON WOLFE: I think Kathleen Hanna and Bikini Kill was the main impetus. Those girls would hang around and talk about feminism and politics a lot. And then the more we would go to Olympia and hang out, we’d all get together and talk. We’d talk about sexual abuse, and not necessarily regarding ourselves — but the problem of it among girls we knew. And also domestic violence — I know Kathleen was volunteering at a domestic violence shelter in Olympia, and I later volunteered there.

  STEVE MANNING: It seemed very different than what was going on in Seattle at the time. For a lot of people, [Bratmobile] are considered that first Riot Grrrl band. Bikini Kill came after them — I don’t know if there’s any contention between the two about who was doing it first.

  ALLISON WOLFE: At some point, Calvin Johnson heard about this, because we were probably bragging to him that we had a band, even though we didn’t really. And he said, “Why don’t you come play this show?” on Valentine’s Day 1991. And it was just a month before. He was saying, “This new band, Bikini Kill, is playing, and Some Velvet Sidewalk — why don’t you open?” And we’re like, “What? We can’t — we’re not a band!” And he says, “You always say you’re a band.” We’re like, “Oh … OK.” We get off the phone and we’re like, “Shit — what the fuck are going to do? We’ve got to write some songs, play instruments or something!” Also we were influenced to start a band because we were rebelling against the predominant macho grunge scene at the time that was so big in the Northwest. Even though we loved a lot of those bands, there was really a girl element lacking. It was so macho and, “Yeah, I fucked that girl, blah!” It seemed like putting a new face on sexism — but it was still guys stomping on girls, and being gross. We felt like, “Hey, we’ve got something to say.”

  And lyrics are so stupid in most of these bands, I’m sure we can do something that’s at least more interesting — with a feminine or feminist touch. I already had some stuff written in notebooks, so we put tunes to them, and Molly would go back and forth between drums and guitar, because she learned a little bit of guitar and wanted to play drums. She bought a car used for $400, and we drove up to the first show. It was really scary — we had never been onstage before, and we really had no idea how people could take it. So we were paralyzed onstage, but we played, and it was cool. Bikini Kill was up front, cheering us on. Then Bikini Kill played — that was really great.

  I know that Corin Tucker from Sleater-Kinney [was there]. By then, she [had] moved to Olympia, was attending Evergreen, and was a film student. She had asked all of us if she could film that show for her school project. Slim Moon came up to us before we left the show, and asked if he could have one of the songs for a compilation he was going to put out. And this was before [Moon’s label] Kill Rock Stars existed — he just had this idea that he wanted to put out a compilation record of local bands. He had asked for “Girl Germs,” that we had played that night, we were like, “OK, fine.” We were flattered. Kurt Cobain came [to Bratmobile’s first show], but showed up right after we finished playing. I gave him our first fanzine, Girl Germs.

  KATHLEEN HANNA: Speaking of Kurt, he was super-supportive of
feminism — he was reading all these feminist books.

  TINUVIEL: He loved Bikini Kill. That show at the OK Hotel — when he debuted “Smells Like Teen Spirit” — he had them open. He was very faithful to the people who were his friends and neighbors. Would do his best not to let these people down. Olympia is a small town — you stick by each other as much as you can.

  TRACY MARANDER: I remember Kurt kind of making fun of them at the beginning — the Riot Grrrl movement — so I thought it was funny that later he embraced the feminism of it. It wasn’t that he felt like feminism wasn’t valid, he felt like they took themselves too seriously. He thought they had a very good point about how there weren’t enough girls up front being able to be in the pit, because it would be too much of a macho thing. Some shows were so full of testosterone that you couldn’t get any girls in the front of the stage. And he thought that was a valid point, and he didn’t think there were enough female photographers taking pictures at shows either. But he just thought that they took themselves too seriously.

  ALLISON WOLFE: I think one of the main goals of Riot Grrrl was to make punk rock more feminine, but simultaneously, make feminism more punk rock. We were also at the same time taking women’s studies courses in college. While we were totally into progressive politics, sometimes the academic nature of those classes didn’t necessarily speak to us either. If we would speak in class, everyone was correcting you — “It’s not girl, it’s woman .” We’re like, “Yeah, but don’t you value girls too? Are you saying only women have rights and should speak up?” It’s like, we’re young, we’re still teenagers — we just feel like girls, and we want to use our own terminology. I felt like there were ways in which academic feminism was not speaking to common people at times. I think that was trying to find that intersection between punk rock and feminism, or alternative culture and feminism.

  DONITA SPARKS: We were not a Riot Grrrl band. I remember once seeing one of those bands passing out flyers, but not passing out any of the flyers to the men in the room. Other than that, I don’t really know completely what their agenda was. It was never really my bag.

  MEGAN JASPER: The thing that drove me crazy about it — being a woman — was that I hate thinking like that. It’s just fucking bogus to constantly think about your sex, what it means, overanalyze, and think of the things that aren’t right in society because you have boobs. It kind of grossed me out on that level. I loved that it was happening — I just didn’t want to deal with reading another person saying, “What’s it like being a woman in the music industry?”

  KATHLEEN HANNA: We didn’t want to feel like weird outsiders, like the only feminist band on the planet. We didn’t, because we were around bands like L7 and 7 Year Bitch — we didn’t know the Gits so much, but we knew they existed.

  DANIEL HOUSE: The Gits were signed after 7 Year Bitch. A bunch of the folks in the Gits — and some of the seeds of other bands — moved out to Seattle together. The Gits had been a band back in Ohio. A bunch of Antioch students moved to Seattle together as a collective — it was the Gits, and it was Valerie [Agnew], the drummer from 7 Year Bitch, and Ben London, who was in Alcohol Funnycar. When Valerie moved out here, she basically started a band with a bunch of women whose primary influence was the Gits. 7 Year Bitch practiced in their basement. We’re talking about a bunch of young women who really didn’t play, and this was their first real band. They were barely able to master their instruments and write these songs — sort of “the naive little sisters of the Gits.” But whereas the Gits did build a pretty substantial following — they were a great band — 7 Year Bitch hit the scene due to a number of different circumstances.

  One — the fact they were all women. Two — they were writing about things that were truly incendiary and very topical. Things like “Dead Men Don’t Rape” really hit quick with a lot of people — people stopped, stood up, and paid attention. And they kind of eclipsed the Gits in a large degree in terms of popularity fairly quickly. So we signed them early on. I was really good friends with Stefanie Sargent, their guitar player, before she was even in the band. I saw them and it wasn’t necessarily because I thought they were great musicians or had great songs — but they definitely had an energy and a force. It was very clear what it was that people loved about them.

  The Gits (Mia Zapata second from left)

  Their big break was getting the opportunity to open for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Pearl Jam was on the bill to open for the Chilis — they had to cancel two or three Northwest dates, and offered it to 7 Year Bitch. That became the real springboard for everything that followed after that. After that, their first record [1992’s Sick ’Em] came out on C/Z — it was just explosive. It was amazing how much attention the band was getting, how much more honed their live show was becoming, and how much more confident they were becoming as a band.

  BEN LONDON: We were constantly playing together — 7 Year Bitch, the Gits, and Alcohol Funnycar. In a span of about six months, all signed to C/Z Records.

  DANIEL HOUSE: The Gits were still playing, still popular, but did not have the same weight that 7 Year Bitch had. 7 Year Bitch, I think a lot of them felt guilty about that. And the Gits felt very angry about that — it wasn’t fair. Very few people would disagree that the Gits were a better band. They wrote better songs. And in terms of being able to play their instruments — they were more adept. But 7 Year Bitch, for different reasons, they were the ones that graced the cover of The Rocket, and the Gits got angry at me, because we didn’t get the Gits on the cover. But it’s not that we didn’t try. The Gits, I had to spend a lot more time being convinced to sign them. I saw them a bunch of times before finally saying, “Yeah.” I totally understood that they were a better band, but I also understood that it wasn’t going to be as easy to sell them as a band. 7 Year Bitch was a no-brainer — from a marketing perspective, it was so much simpler. But the Gits’s music was undeniable and powerful.

  Mia [Zapata] in particular — she was ultimately the reason why I signed them, because she was so much the personality and charm. She really did have a great set of pipes, and she could live in that blues and punk world simultaneously. But they were also a very difficult bunch — one of the most paranoid bands I’ve ever dealt with. Very mistrustful. So much so, that while we were trying to negotiate a contract, I said, “If you’re this mistrustful of me as a label, maybe we shouldn’t do this, because there has to be trust. Otherwise, there’s no point.” They finally signed, but they never did become very trusting. They wanted to approve and control every little thing — no matter how small. The sad part is they were ultimately their worst enemy in terms of their career. They were very tied into who was doing what, and if there was some kind of exploitation going on — what the politics of this other band that they might be playing with would be, and the fairness of the situation. Which in the music business, doesn’t exist.

  1992–1993

  CHAPTER 23

  “Be careful what you wish for, you might get it”: 1992–1993

  This two-year period was grunge’s most successful, as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains sold millions of albums, played sold-out shows, appeared on the covers of magazines, and were all over MTV. But success came with a heavy price for most grunge bands and the region that spawned them.

  JACK ENDINO: ’92 was the year Nirvana knocked Michael Jackson off the charts. Pearl Jam started selling a million records, Soundgarden was doing better and better. The shows were selling out, you had Lollapalooza. The whole thing intensified — went up to another level. It wasn’t just the British press talking about it anymore, it wasn’t just college radio anymore, it wasn’t the indie scenes talking about Seattle. It was suddenly the cover of fucking Time magazine. At that point, it was like, “Oh my God, what have we done?” [laughs] Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.

  KIM THAYIL: We all went platinum. We were the last ones — we eventually crept up to platinum. We were the horse to bet on for a few years before that. Then
all of a sudden, there was a whole bunch of us. We hadn’t even gone gold yet, and Nirvana was going multi-platinum. We went gold around the same time as Pearl Jam, and then they just skyrocketed. Alice in Chains … there was so much going on. With those four bands, with Sub Pop’s growing success, I was expecting the Screaming Trees and Mudhoney to follow suit. That sense of pride in community and regional identity — and happy for the success of our peers.

  EDDIE VEDDER: I was a little freaked out about being, like, “the guy on the side of the bus.” All of a sudden, they had billboards with Chicago radio or something, and your face on it — giant. This happened fairly quick. It’s like, “Do they need our permission for that?” And then they say, “Well … no.” And then you think, “Well, that’s strange — I thought people needed permission for stuff like that if they’re going to use your image to sell something.” And they’re doing “All Pearl Jam” or “All grunge” issues of a magazine. “Do they need our permission for that?” “No, they don’t.” And you’re thinking, “We should have some control over that stuff — I don’t think that’s a high quality product right there. Who are these people? And they’re associated with porn magazines?” I felt like getting spun around in a washing machine.

  JEFF GILBERT: Once the media co-opted the word “grunge,” it all went down the shit hole. Horrible. It wrecked everything.

  STEVE MANNING: I can remember distinctly being at a show at the Crocodile, looking around, and going, “Wow, I don’t know anybody here.” Mark and I talk about this a lot — noting the change. All of a sudden, it wasn’t our same core of people — it was people from the suburbs.