Grunge Is Dead

by Greg Prato

  ALLISON WOLFE: I got the impression that his girlfriend, Tracy, wiped his butt — he seemed like he needed a girl to take care of him at that time. She drove him everywhere, cooked for him. That made a big impression on me, as far as thinking of feminism within the punk rock scene, and how can we change these roles so it’s not like the girls taking care of the guys who are the big “musical geniuses?” That scenario is not my idea of fun [laughs]. I think the main thing is that he was human — just a normal guy in a lot of ways. He’s never been afforded that reality. He was just a guy with flaws who’s a musician.

  He was great, but to be honest, I don’t think the music is that brilliant. I think the guitar playing is great and the performance is great, but when I listen to the lyrics, to me, they’re kind of stupid. I also don’t feel like it’s a music that has necessarily aged that well. But I think he was great at what he did — he was an incredible person and very beautiful. And I don’t mean just in the way he looks. You could see sometimes this sort of boyish pureness coming out of him. I think he was a good person, but he wasn’t infallible, he wasn’t godlike — like the little boy genius that everybody tried to make him out to be. I sometimes wish people would remember those elements — not to tear him down, but just to humanize.

  BEN SHEPHERD: They like to say that he had charisma. Bullshit. He didn’t have any — he was just ‘Kurt,’ and that was that endearing quality. He was just Kurt. I met him in Olympia; I don’t even think he’d started Nirvana yet. I met him at a party — we were both sitting on the end of a couch and I go, “You’re like me, huh? You always wind up at this spot at the party?” And he says, “Yep.” Everyone else is partying, and we’re sitting there, being loners on the end of a couch. There was thankfully a guitar, and we’d swap it back and forth. Smoking cigarettes, talking, and kicking back.

  TRACY MARANDER: I’ve read stories where supposedly he’d done some heroin around [the late ’80s]. But if he did, I never knew it. There were no symptoms or signs. Ever since I met him, he could fall asleep anywhere easily — he’d be watching TV and fall asleep. Once in a while, he’d smoke pot or drink — but he really didn’t smoke pot that much.

  ROBERT ROTH: He would tell me about his severe stomach condition — how he couldn’t hold down food, and was in a lot of pain. He really didn’t understand what was wrong, and apparently no one else did — doctors either. I’m fairly sure this was prior to any heavy drug use. I know that eventually getting high made the pain go away, and allowed him to enjoy eating, and be able to keep down food — and be able to work.

  CHAD CHANNING: Sometimes he’d just beat the crap out of himself, out of his chest, like he was trying to dislodge phlegm. Every now and then, he’d talk about it. He’d be like, “I don’t know what it is, just sometimes it feels like it’s over-congested.”

  JIM TILLMAN: I’d see Kurt at parties, and you could just tell he was depressed. I’d had friends that were clinically depressed, and turned to drugs. You could just tell — he’s sitting on the side of the room, against the wall, watching people, and not interacting. It was obvious that he was suffering internally and mentally — which helped his songwriting abilities. But ultimately, was his demise.

  LARRY REID: When he got involved with junk, it was so sad. I remember seeing him at this bar, Linda’s, just before he died, and he was nodding out. I was going to say, “Hi, how’s it going?” — but it was pretty obvious it wasn’t going too well. It was the last time I saw him.

  KATHLEEN HANNA: He was a really special person. It makes me sad the way he’s been exploited after he’s dead. It’s upsetting, and I hope rather than people getting into heroin, they investigate that, and that that could be part of the legacy — that people look at drug addiction in a better way. Because a lot of people died of heroin in Olympia — it’s really awful and sad. And unnecessary.

  KURT DANIELSON: Just because he killed himself doesn’t mean he wanted to, really. I mean, you can say, “He wanted to, he did it.” If he’d have lived another second longer, he may not have done it. [Drugs] isolated him, as chemicals do. I’ve been through it all myself, and I know for a fact, that there is a time you come to, where if you have access to a gun, you will use it. Unfortunately, he had access to one. It’s just really terrible luck. Kurt had the best luck and the worst luck — both at the same time. He was the most gifted and cursed. And also the most ferocious, innocent, and nicest. A bundle of extremes and opposites. They either [put Kurt on a pedestal], or they Satanize him. “Oh, but how could anybody who has a child kill themselves?” Well, I’m sorry, but the world is full of horrible things. Sometimes we’re only human.

  JOHN BIGLEY: I saw him after the last show they did in town [in January 1994]. We spoke, and he said some real flattering things. He was very much into lineage, and how things — musically, especially — got to where they are. He had this huge entourage, walking down this hallway, stopped, and [said], “Oh, John, it’s nice to see you. Did you enjoy the show?” Same sweet guy. “I just want to thank you for being part of this, and you’re part of me — where I go, you go.” Weeks later, I got the phone call. How do you describe that? I had this heartwarming chat in the hallway a few weeks ago…

  CHAPTER 31

  “The demise of the entire scene”: Drugs

  Heroin addiction proved to be a major contributor to Kurt Cobain committing suicide. But like any city in the world, drug use was a problem for many, and was nothing new to Seattle’s music scene.

  ART CHANTRY: I don’t know if you’ve ever had to deal with junkies before — particularly ones that have money. Walls are built around them. It’s like the people that are inside protect their junkie — especially if the junkie has the earning power of a Kurt Cobain. What you end up with are layers of … it’s like concentric circles. That’s why that Nirvana T-shirt with that diagram of layers of redemption was so perfect, because that’s the way that the structure of the Nirvana camp worked. It was very, very difficult for outsiders to work their way through the various layers to get at people that could actually make decisions. It was all designed as protection. And it was true of any junkie — that’s the way junkies operate their lives. That’s the way the Alice in Chains camp worked, that’s the way Lanegan worked. Nobody got inside the Nirvana camp — it was like a compound. It was even hard for the other band members to get through the layers sometimes.

  It’s like heroin defined the scene. Seattle’s always been “a heroin town.” It’s a port city. Portland has always been a heroin town. But like all culture explosions since World War II, when the German high command started to use methamphetamines, every major cultural scene in Western civilization — and we’re talking bikers, beatniks, hippies, glam rock, punk, funk, Warhol factory, the surfers, hot-rodders, truckers — were all speed freaks. It has a huge impact on our culture. And in Seattle in the early days, it was no different — crystal meth was the drug of choice. For the longest time, cheap crystal meth was where it was at in this town. There were a few people who took heroin, but usually it’s because they got exposed to it in other cities. It wasn’t until money rolled in — and this is true of every culture explosion you see in these towns — it’s followed by heroin, and there’s a heroin epidemic. Heroin follows the money. This is the way these things always work — Seattle fell right into it.

  TIM BRANOM: Just pot isn’t enough — it had to be heroin. It rains all the time, it’s so depressing — what can you do? You can go to a movie, you can go to a party, you can go to the Space Needle, or that’s it. The climate’s changed — see that’s the funny thing. When I moved [out of Seattle] in 1990 — maybe it’s global warming or whatever — the climate completely changed. But for most of my life there, which was like twenty-some years, it seemed like it rained every single day. I think it is the suicide capital of the world. I’m telling you, if I stayed there, I probably would have killed myself like Kurt Cobain. It just does it to you — the darkness, the cold, and the attitude.

  JOE TOUTONGHI: There w
as a lot of addiction and alcohol abuse involved in the Bopo Boys, Jak’s, and the whole punk rock thing in Seattle. For me, it was a heroin thing. By ’82 or ’83, I was pretty dedicated to being a full-time heroin addict. All the Bopo Boys used — everybody’s clean now and pretty much made it through it. There’s a couple of guys that od’d and died, but for the most part, there were no bad car wrecks or anybody died. The drug scene probably killed the underground punk rock club scene — it moved it into houses at one point. It had a huge part with the local music scene — fading from punk rock to grunge. Cheap heroin arrived — when I started using, you couldn’t buy a ten dollar bag of heroin. You bought thirty-five dollar bags. In 1980, that was a lot of money for a twenty-year-old. It was obtainable — cocaine, heroin, and alcohol. Pretty much everybody, at some point or another, got involved in it to a pretty extreme level.

  JOHN CONTE: I remember going to the IOOF Hall, up on Capitol Hill. The kids wore colors, and everybody was pogoing. By 1981–82, cocaine entered the scene, and everybody ended up wearing black. Once cocaine got involved, and the way these people got involved with it, it was shooting up. They just skipped doing it dry, up the nose. I remember people shooting up, and it was just cocaine. But at some point, that got even darker for people.

  LIBBY KNUDSON: I was totally clueless if people were doing drugs. I was a person who didn’t do hard drugs, so a lot of time, you’re not included in that world. I know in the mid ’80s there was a dance club called the Monastery — MDA and MDMA was very popular, as was acid, and living in the great Pacific Northwest, [marijuana] was always around. And mushrooms, that wonderful fall harvest of mushrooms. One guy that was living at our house at one point, it was like, “Where are all our spoons?”

  KYLE NIXON: I split from the punk scene and everyone was doing heroin. I mean everyone — all my friends. I didn’t want anything to do with that. I was offered heroin in ’86. It’s sad to see all those good guys go down that way. A lot of those guys still struggle with it today. Some have overcome it, some are dead.

  ROD MOODY: The combination of smack, major label interest, and the metal influence pretty much put the nail in the coffin of the close-knit scene that was going on in the late ’80s. I was living in the closet of a friend’s apartment about 1989, and he was a facilitator — while he didn’t deal the stuff directly, he knew how to get heroin on a regular basis. There were always people coming around to cop — from scenesters, to prominent musicians, to regular Joe’s. I saw a lot of shit go down in that place, and I am truly thankful I never had the nerve to try dope. Otherwise, I would probably be six feet under with all those other poor people.

  VAN CONNER: I’m still recovering. There was just so much drugs around — usually free. I mean, at first … then they start charging. And since we didn’t work nine-to-five jobs, it was easy to get caught up. It became that was the main thing — the partying — and the music thing was just getting you along. Paying for the partying. I know that had a lot to do with the band not going on anymore, and people dying. I don’t blame any one person in the band, because I dealt with it by just getting more wasted. We used drugs and alcohol for “stress reduction.” It didn’t work.

  LARRY REID: Drugs eventually led to the demise of the entire scene. It took a lot of the energy and creativity out of it.

  ART CHANTRY: Like any punk scene, it’s amazing how many people die. When you treat rock ’n’ roll as salvation and then you get all this money, a lot of these guys — especially if they come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds — they can’t handle it, and it kills them. Usually through self-indulgence — not being able to spend their money right.

  STEVE MANNING: In some ways, it didn’t fit what was going on — at least my perception of what heroin does to you. The way the shows were — the energy that everybody had — the two didn’t really jive.

  LILLY MILIC: It just spread — to the point where you’d hear one death after another. We became so hardened by it. I remember sitting down at some bar downtown — someone walks in crying, saying so-and-so died. And people that I was with weren’t upset with it. It sounds hard and cold, but one guy said, “I’m not going to shed a tear for her. The last time I heard, she was shooting up in her toes.”

  BEN REW: I took a hiatus for a couple of years, because everyone was getting addicted to heroin. All my friends — Mark, both Kurts. I hated all that stuff. It seemed like you were either in these huge bands, or you weren’t getting a break. So me and a couple of my friends had this total “poor me syndrome,” which was bullshit. We’d all get loaded — I was addicted to [heroin] for about a year and a half. All of us were hardcore alcoholics — fueled on beer and pot. And then there was a lot of cocaine at the beginning of the scene.

  I remember the Butthole Surfers came up and played — it must have been 1988 or ’89. It was almost like their sole purpose was picking up mushrooms and weed, because those were the two things you could get in Seattle that were hard to get everywhere else. I had a friend of mine that sold both, and I remember sitting down with Gibby [Haynes] and J.D. [Pinkus]. They’re like, “We want a quarter pound of green bud and all the mushrooms you can get.” And then they proceeded to eat enough for about forty people. It was insane. I’m not kidding — two or three ounces of dried mushrooms. A lot of times, the first thing that bands would do when they knew you were up here, they were like, “Can you get that Seattle green bud?”

  ART CHANTRY: Heroin doesn’t do any physical damage to your body — if you have enough money, you can take heroin the rest of your life, and not do any physical damage to your body. As long as it’s pure. It’s all the stuff that cuts it. The people who make the money off the junkies are the ones that kill them, by cutting the thing. And it’s the same thing with how they protect junkies.

  MARK IVERSON: I remember a rumor that Mark Arm did heroin. I was like, “No way.”

  MARK ARM: I don’t go around flaunting my years of blowing my brains out on hard drugs. It’s not something that I wear as a badge of cool. I’m not proud of it — in fact, it’s an embarrassing cliché. The rest of the band was not into it, and they were very bummed with me. One thing that actually helped me when I decided I wanted to quit was we went on tour a lot. There was no way I was going to be able to do heroin on tour. I used to do it in New York because it was easy to get, but I couldn’t just take off looking for drugs everyplace we played. The rest of the guys wouldn’t have stood for it. When I came home from tour I would go back into my little fucked-up world, with my fucked-up girlfriend, and a couple of other fucked-up friends. But because we did a lot of little tours, I was well practiced at quitting. Most people who get strung out fear going through withdrawals. I went through withdrawals fairly regularly. I was used to feeling flu-like symptoms for the first couple of days on tour. I finally realized around ’92, the whole heroin addiction thing was not going so well. It’s really expensive. It wasn’t so much fun anymore — in fact, it got pretty fucking boring.

  I made moves in late ’92 to get away from it, but I didn’t fully stop until the summer of ’93. I began enjoying heroin as a recreational weekend activity in ’87. I rarely took it two days in a row because I didn’t want to get strung out. I thought I was smart and strong enough to avoid that trap. When I came home from our nine-week European tour in ’89, my girlfriend informed me that she’d been doing it every day. I was just like, “Holy shit.” I knew what that meant. We were living together so it was an easy trap to fall into. My habit was at its worst from ’91 to the fall of ’92. When we went on tour again that fall I gained enough clarity to realize that I would have to quit on my own. So I called my girlfriend from Europe — this isn’t the same one from ’89, but my second junkie girlfriend — and told her to move out of the house before I came back. I’ve gotta say that Emily saved my ass. When we started going out in the summer of ’93, she asked me if I was ever going to do heroin again. I responded with a wishy-washy line like, “Well, you never know what the future holds.” She came right
out and said that if I ever did it again, she’d be outta here.

  BEN REW: I bailed after ’91. This sounds so cliché — I went up to a cabin in the mountains, and started bike riding a lot, and got off that stuff. Came back down, and started up an agency — had Tad on my roster.

  ART CHANTRY: Rich junkies are as good as dead. Rich junkies don’t live.

  CHAPTER 32

  “Preparing for the worst”: Alice in Chains and Layne Staley’s Death

  Despite scoring two hit releases in the U.S. — Jar of Flies and Alice in Chains — and the formation of a popular Alice in Chains side-band, Mad Season, drug addiction effectively brought an end to the Layne Staley–led lineup of the group. But most important, it also proved catastrophic to Staley’s life.

  JERRY CANTRELL: [1994’s] Jar of Flies was crazy man. We had already done Sap, so we had set a precedent. Between Dirt to the dog record [aka 1995’s Alice in Chains], we were going to do another EP. I think it was after we had planned on having a vacation. Before the vacation, the guys were like, “We want it to be more of a band thing — so don’t write a bunch of shit to bring in.” I’m like, “OK, that’s cool — no problem.” I went on vacation and didn’t play my guitar at all. We booked a week and came in off of vacation. Everybody gets in, and they’re like, “OK, what have you got?” Walked in with nothing, and walked out seven days later with that record — pretty much from scratch. I think I might have had “Don’t Follow” from the Dirt tour in Europe, when we were just burned — you can feel that in the lyrics. Everything you hear on that record was written, recorded, and produced in a week. To this day, it’s the only EP to reach or debut at number one.