Grunge Is Dead

by Greg Prato

  They were such a conscientious, great bunch of guys — always trying to make a difference and be good to their fans. Always trying to press vinyl, have a fan club single, have a special show — or now, they do all the bootlegging stuff. They were always clear on who they were as people, so they were good at combating against stuff they didn’t really want to do — like during the time of not wanting to do videos. Or trying to go up against Ticketmaster. You don’t have to do any of that as a band. And I know, especially in that time period, there was a lot of stuff in the press — people expected bands to be political, and role models. And set some sort of example. Which I always thought was way too much to ask of a musician — when you think of where these people usually come from, what causes them to want to be in a band and express themselves artistically. And they’re supposed to be a political role model? It seems to be expected of Pearl Jam for some reason — I could never really understand why that was.

  DONITA SPARKS: We played quite a few Rock for Choice benefits with Pearl Jam. We were both threatened by the Christian Coalition — physically threatened. There were security issues in Pensacola, Florida, when we went down there for the Rock for Choice show. Threats against our lives slipped under our door in a hotel room.

  KURT BLOCH: We got a call to play this radio show they were doing. We go to do this, and listen to the radio on the way over there, and it’s Eddie Vedder playing records. Get up there, and there’s a satellite broadcasting, and he’s got a little mobile home with a DJ thing in it. We got to play, and it’s like, “Oh yeah, just play my guitar,” it’s Stone’s awesome ’50s Les Paul. We played, chatted, hung out with some people, had a few beers, and then had to go back to my session. Never really thought about it again.

  A few months later, the Fastbacks were in Nova Scotia playing some music festival, we’re on the way back at the airport, Kim goes to get her messages, and it’s like, “Eddie Vedder called and left a message — he wanted to know if we wanted to open a few Pearl Jam shows!” We did three shows with them and it was super fun — we got along with those guys really well, and their crew. They were really nice and went out of their way — you hear all the disasters of arena rock bands not letting the other bands have much stage, or only half the pa. And it wasn’t like that at all — we had a great time. Soon after, they were like, “Do you want to do our U.S. tour? Do you want to go to Europe for five weeks?” So ’96 was a pretty great year for the Fastbacks and arena rock — I think we [also] did a bunch of shows with the Presidents of the United States of America that year.

  EDDIE VEDDER: One of the things that I wish we could have done more of — things like Monkeywrench Radio. Getting the airwaves for the night, and having Fastbacks or Mudhoney play live. And wanting people to see what real Seattle music [was], as opposed to — not to single out anybody, but a perfect example would be a band like Candlebox, which was doing a pseudo-Seattle sound, and they weren’t really from there. A lot of that was going on. The waters were getting polluted.

  DAVID MEINERT: It really hit me — ’94 or ’95 — they were so amazing live. They played for like two and a half hours. Ed was ready to collapse onstage.

  KRISHA AUGEROT: Some of the shows I saw in the middle time were great — really more of a connection between the music and Eddie. More connection with the audience on an intimate level than before. Which, I think, is another side of Eddie which is huge.

  COLLEEN COMBS: A lot of times when people would complain, it was because they must not understand what the process was — to understand what it really took for them to do what they were doing. There’s a time where you might be exhausted or tired — touring is both addictive and very hard to do — you turn around and you realize that thirty people depend on you for a living. You can’t have a cold and take off a month. Suddenly, if you’re having a bad day, it affects this six-month schedule that’s been laid out. Pearl Jam had that pressure over and over. Those are the times where you saw things happen — whether they had to cancel dates in Europe, making decisions that they didn’t want to do festivals for a while, or when Eddie got sick and the San Francisco show [in 1995] had to be cancelled. Do you have any idea what a nightmare it is?

  We got terrible hate mail — people just complaining. I’d feel so bad for Eddie. That [San Francisco] show, Neil Young did an entire set, so it wasn’t like the people who came to the show got nothing, y’know? Plus, they got their money back. I think that was the nail in the coffin of what we were trying to do with Ticketmaster. After that, there had to be a compromise — we couldn’t do it. Which was interesting — if you look at that historically, it showed that a band that was at the top of their popularity couldn’t successfully stage a tour without Ticketmaster. And yet, the Justice Department said that Ticketmaster didn’t have a monopoly. At the same time, you got all this fallout — I guess as a fan, you only get these scraps of information. Plus, you don’t know how this industry really works. But the band got a lot of flak for it, and it was really unfair.

  EDDIE VEDDER: All the articles were talking about was, “This is the band that took on Ticketmaster, and this is why they were doing this.” They weren’t even talking about how we played, or how the crowd was. I think egotistically it was like, “Fuck. We’re getting pulled apart from why we’re doing this — which is to play music.” And I think also it was a good time to just focus on making records and making good music — maybe we’re getting too caught up in these side-things. And then we went on to make the least commercial records of our lives [laughs].

  ROBIN TAYLOR: Eddie Vedder is a saint — what he’s done for rock and the city in general.

  SUSAN SILVER: It’s worth noting that there is one that absolutely made it through and has done such incredible work — publicly, privately, and charitably — and that’s Eddie. Really taken his celebrity status and done good with it. He’s taken his position as an artist and made great art, and forged a lot of amazing relationships within the music business. People from all generations — he made an effort to pay respect to the people that he was inspired by, and reaches out to young musicians constantly. He’s been a great example of someone who’s in that pressure cooker enjoying their life, as well as doing good work in a quiet way. Pearl Jam does an unbelievable amount of charity work under the radar. They do so much good for so many organizations locally, nationally, internationally … without having to put out a clothing line.

  KURT BLOCH: I just can’t imagine any band of their stature being any better than them. Have to hand it to their crew too, for putting up with the Fastbacks in 1996 [laughs].

  JOHN LEIGHTON BEEZER: It came full circle for me in the late ’90s. I planned a trip for Hawaii, and I heard that Mudhoney was going to open for Pearl Jam while I was there. I called Mark and said, “Can I hang out with you guys?” And he said, “Sure.” So that got me into the whole “Pearl Jam entourage.” I spent a couple of days in Hawaii living “the Pearl Jam life.” I walked away from that going, “I’m the world’s biggest idiot. How could I laugh at them for setting off on the course that led to this?” They’re in really expensive, beachfront, luxury hotels. You stand backstage and you look out at the crowd, and there’s just a sea of adoring people. It’s a hard life to argue with. They got the last laugh. They’ve been really gracious to me — I made fun of them at the time, and they probably knew it. And in retrospect, the joke’s on me.

  Mike McCready and Jeff Ament, September 2004

  DAVE DEDERER: It’s pretty cool to have done what they’ve done. And to come out the other end of it, fifteen years later, go back in, and make another great record [2006’s Pearl Jam]. To have five of you in a band — just to sustain and manage the relationships for that long is a tremendous life accomplishment. The thing I love about Pearl Jam is that they had the balls to say, “Fuck you, we’re not doing any press for ten years. We’re not doing any videos, we’re not doing any interviews, so don’t bother us.” It’s really cool that Pearl Jam said, “Fuck you.” Where Pearl Jam is right now,
it’s a nice, culminating statement on that whole period. They’ve proved you can do it “the Seattle way.”

  NILS BERNSTEIN: In a sense, [Pearl Jam] have been the punkest band of any of them. When Nirvana was changing “Rape Me” to “Waif Me” to get [In Utero] in Kmart, Pearl Jam were trying to take on Ticketmaster, or refusing to make videos because they didn’t believe in a lot of MTV’s policies. Over time, it’s interesting how it’s ended up like that. To us at the time, two bands could not be farther apart musically than Pearl Jam and Nirvana. But in talking to people that are in their teens or early twenties now, they think of that as the same music. They don’t think that one is more credible than the other — they don’t even think that they sound very different.

  SCOTT VANDERPOOL: Pretty much the entire radio industry has always been pining for that first Pearl Jam album. They always wanted them to redo that. I thought the band kept getting better — especially after they got Matt Cameron. They’re phenomenal now.

  JEFF AMENT: When we made that record with Neil Young [1995’s Mirror Ball], he said some things about how if you’re in a band long enough — or if you’re an artist long enough — sometimes you sell a ton of records, and there’s a real ebb and flow to the whole thing. And that includes the creative process. Now I can look back at what he said, and it makes a lot of sense. Some records you really feel that you have a voice creatively, and other records you don’t. I think the ones that you don’t — if I feel like I don’t have some kind of voice — it’s hard for me to feel a part of it. During those times, all of us have probably felt like, “This really isn’t satiating my creativity.” Since then, we’ve all figured we do our things on our own, and do side projects. If you don’t have a bunch of songs on this record, there’s a chance that you might on the next.

  Whenever somebody hasn’t been there 100 percent, somebody else has been there to pick them up, and say, “Come on man, it’s going to be alright.” That’s the beauty of being in the band still. And not just the same person doing that, but having other people in the band pick you up. Your connections in the band get stronger with different people at different times — it’s a funny family that way. But I feel that I’ve gotten to know everybody in this band on a pretty intimate level. I really care and love everybody, and I would take a bullet for any of them. I think that only comes over ten or fifteen years of looking back and going, “Oh, OK, now I understand why that happened.”

  EDDIE VEDDER: I’m most grateful that we all survived it as people, and we’re still on the planet. But to still be a functioning band that’s probably closer than ever — I certainly know people like Stone Gossard so much better than I ever did, and that’s gone in leaps and bounds — and stumbles — and leaps and bounds. And small steps too. To think back, it’s really … I don’t know, this planet, it’s a huge, massive universe. There was this crazy thing, the big bang, and five billion years. A miracle? I don’t know. It’s beyond the odds that we exist, and beyond the odds that we’ve evolved into what we are, and who we are as a race and humans on the planet. I just happened to be around when they learned how to plug in guitars and put voices through speakers big enough so an arena full of people could hear you.

  MARK ARM: We just toured with Pearl Jam in South America and Mexico. Someone suggested that we play a Green River song from that first EP during Pearl Jam’s encore. We thought that “Come on Down” might be good. Jeff found it online, listened to it, and went, “Nah, that sucks” [laughs]. So we ended up doing “Kick Out the Jams” and “Rockin’ in the Free World” — which are much better songs [laughs].

  KURT BLOCH: I remember at one of the Pearl Jam shows we opened, seeing a couple of punkers right in the front row — one with a Ramones T-shirt, and the other with an AC/DC T-shirt. We were like, “Y’know, that makes me feel so happy to see two people at a show like that.” Because in 1981, you would not see a Ramones fan and an AC/DC fan co-mingling. It just wouldn’t happen. Everything was so segregated here.

  LIBBY KNUDSON: I never knew Eddie until he was one of my clients [through Libby’s furniture company, Buff alo Girl], and I did his couch. I was working at his house, and he comes walking through the room with both his hands out, and a bandana in his hand. It had been a headband. He goes, “I don’t know what to do with this.” He was going through storage and putting stuff in boxes. It was at an in-store or something, he met this girl, and she goes, “My boyfriend loved you guys. He died in a motorcycle crash — here’s his bandana.” And Eddie’s like, “What do I do with this? I can never get rid of this — I can’t.” And I’m like, “It goes in good memories.”

  EDDIE VEDDER: I’m talking to you staring at the ocean — I’m in Hawaii right now, we just finished a tour here. Because of being in the band, I bought a shack here maybe twelve years ago — out in the middle of nowhere. I’ll tell you, it’s probably the most incredible life I’ve ever lived — this one. The ocean — and the waves especially — I could just look at them, ride them, and paint them … it’s almost as important as music. And sometimes maybe more so, because I feel like I get a lot of music from it. Just to be able to be spending time as a surfer on the beach, and know that it was music that got me there — that you didn’t have to hurt anybody, tear up the environment, backstab, sell out, or whatever — it’s really provided me with a strong sense of well being. I know that I owe it all to the music, and I owe it all to Seattle. And a lot of it to that one day being in the water.

  CHAPTER 36

  “Finally — new growth”: Post-Grunge

  Kurt Cobain’s death, the breakup of Soundgarden, and the disappearance of Alice in Chains created a void in the Seattle music scene during the mid–late ’90s. But as with the death of any musical movement, there were new bands to emerge in their wake, and ultimately, a rebirth of the local scene.

  NILS BERNSTEIN: Kurt’s death is a handy end of a certain era. But there was [the] Sub Pop ’93 to ’97 thing, where it’s the Spinanes, Sunny Day Real Estate, the Scud Mountain Boys, and Zumpano — it’s basically like all the Sub Pop bands weren’t from Seattle anymore. They weren’t grunge bands. It seemed natural at the time, but it was also a very decisive move in Seattle — away from that all-for-one grunge scene. As different as Tad, Screaming Trees, and the Fluid are from each other — it’s coming from the same thing. Whereas Sunny Day Real Estate, Modest Mouse, and the Murder City Devils aren’t necessarily all coming out of the same scene, listening to the same records.

  MEGAN JASPER: All of a sudden, great stuff started happening again — that wasn’t derivative of grunge. When that started happening, everything started to feel like it was coming to life again. It felt like when you’re able to see the first trees and plants that come after a forest fire. Finally — new growth.

  LILLY MILIC: All the [grunge] bands were getting dropped by their labels. That was a really odd time — from having that excitement of everybody thinking they could continue their lives as musicians. Which no one expected, but once you have it, and then it’s taken away, that was really a hard thing to see. Now everybody has regular jobs again.

  LARRY REID: If it weren’t for Jon, [Sub Pop] probably wouldn’t have got the $20 million from Warner Bros.

  STEVE MANNING: It may have been closer to ’95 — when Sub Pop’s deal with Warner Bros. began. Which in retrospect, I think in Jonathan’s opinion, was “the dark days,” in that all of the bands had gone through their measure of success. Sub Pop tried to play itself as a major label. Signing bands that they thought could sell records, putting singles out to more mainstream radio, spending outrageous sums in marketing and salaries, and signing bands. And then realizing that outrageous sums for Sub Pop were still nothing compared to what real major labels were doing — those records weren’t selling, and things quickly became very difficult at the label. It didn’t feel like a family.

  KEN STRINGFELLOW: You could follow the fortunes of Sub Pop. Beginning in the mid ’90s, they went into decline — spending lots of money and not selling an
y records. That turned around with Hot Hot Heat, the Shins, the Postal Service. But for a long time, they were in serious decline. I loved Sub Pop’s aesthetic very much — they put out a wide variety of really amazing records. In the late ’90s, one thing that struck me — they actually put out records that were bad. The bands in the early ’90s, they all got to a point where they couldn’t get much bigger. All those bands had done their victory lap at that point. So things couldn’t go anywhere but up from there.

  JACK ENDINO: [ Jonathan Poneman] is the sole remaining founder of Sub Pop now, because Bruce Pavitt bowed out of the label a few years back.

  BRUCE PAVITT: It ceased to become interesting for me. The company itself, because of its success, became very large. And because of its size, it became more corporate, more departmentalized. My business partner and I just had different visions of what the company should look and feel like. I personally would have preferred it to stay more of “a laboratory for creative art.” I would have been happy keeping budgets low, selling 25–50,000 copies, and keeping things a little more edgy and interesting. I felt that my business partner was a little more interested in creating something that would ultimately compete with the major labels. That style was a little more conservative. Since then, he’s gone on to help keep the label focused, and they’ve had a lot of commercial success.

  STEVE MANNING: In 2000 or late ’99, with the dot-com explosion happening in the city, rental space became very valuable. We’d always paid our rent; we’d been a steady tenant in that building. When our lease came up, we got a letter from the management in the building, saying our offices would be better suited in a different building. There were never complaints from other tenants in the building, but the way bands looked, the way the employees looked — physically look — was probably a little off-putting to the management and owners of the building. So we moved to Belltown, which is also in Seattle — just a little bit further north, a quieter neighborhood — to a much smaller and manageable space. At the first office, I had my own office — a desk, a couch, a window. We moved into a space that was all quads — I could literally reach to my left and touch my co-worker, and reach to my right and touch my co-worker. We were really struggling. We weren’t selling a lot of records, we were redefining who we were. In 2001, 2002, 2003, business turned around for us — we started to sell a lot of records. We were quickly outgrowing the space we were in, and we moved into the space we’re in now, which is Fourth and Virginia — four blocks away from the original space. Now we’ve got a lot of space. [Sub Pop] felt like a family early on, it feels like a family now — we’re all on the same page. We all went to New Zealand together for Christmas this year — the whole staff.