Everybody Loves Our Town

by Mark Yarm

  JOHN LEIGHTON BEEZER (the Thrown Ups bassist; the Blunt Objects guitarist) Todd was hemophiliac, and when kids were born with hemophilia, they used to wrap them up in cotton, like they were fine china. And at a certain point, his mom got fed up with this and said, “Even if he has to die young, he’s gonna live like a normal kid.” So this was a guy who basically expected to die at any time.

  Todd was the drummer in our band the Blunt Objects, which also featured Jim Sangster, who ended up playing bass in the Young Fresh Fellows, and John Conte, who went on to a band called the Living, which featured Duff McKagan and Greg Gilmore. Todd’s drum set was literally speckled in blood; any little cut would just bleed continuously, and he’d have to get a transfusion after every practice. His attitude was, Fuck, we’re only here so long, so let’s have some fun. I think that’s where the attitude of the Blunt Objects came from. And the irony was that Todd did survive well into adulthood, and he didn’t die from hemophilia—he died in ’96 from AIDS he got from a blood transfusion.

  STEVE MACK The word got out that we had these crazy punk-rock parties. We started intersecting with a couple of other large party houses: There was one house full of women, and then there was another house full of guys, where people like Mark Arm lived and hung out. It was like this golden triangle.

  But at the same time, there was a nasty streak amongst the sort of Seattle street punk rockers, the Bopo Boys. Here we were, these nice, middle-class suburban kids who just dug this crazy punk rock, and all of the sudden, these street kids came in, and they had speed and heroin and liked to get into fights and trash our house. I remember one night in particular, I found my television in the fireplace—on fire.

  We had a party on New Year’s ’84—by this time, we were in our third house—and after, my friend Mike Faulhaber said, “I got an idea. Let’s just stay up until our first class,” which would’ve been another two days away. “We’ll make music.”

  “That sounds fantastic!”

  “Okay, but we’re going to need a lot more drugs.”

  So Mike and I were in my bedroom, just making all this music, and at some point, I believe at two in the morning, Leighton walks in with his eyes as big as basketballs. He had decided to try a little experiment: “I’m going to try to megadose myself on psychotropes tonight.” He said, “What are you guys doing?”

  “We’re on an epic quest. We’re going to play music until our first class, in 51 hours. We’re just going to keep playing.” So Leighton joins us and we just kept going and going and going. We made it until about 4 o’clock in the morning before my first class, which was at 9:30. By this point, Leighton had collapsed. Mike and I, we both looked at each other and I said, “I can’t go any further!” He’s like, “I can’t, either!” At that point, we both collapsed.

  Leighton came back a couple of days later, and he was like, “I really think we’re on to something. We’re going to play, but we’re never going to rehearse.” Leighton kept asking me to sing, and I just wasn’t feeling it. So I let them carry on with it, and it was at one of those parties that one of our drinking buddies, Ed Fotheringham—he was the crazy Australian—stepped up to the mic, and a match was made.

  JOHN LEIGHTON BEEZER After that party, I remember we were leaving the basement and Ed said, “You know, that sounded like throw up looks.”

  So I said, “Well, I guess that makes us the Thrown Ups.” And the name stuck. That was when it became me and Ed and Mike, and we recruited a drummer from a band called the Limp Richerds, Scott Schickler. A year later, in the winter of ’85, we played our first show, opening for Hüsker Dü at the Gorilla Gardens. We had a jar of oysters, and I threw the oysters at people in the crowd. Ed always came up with the ideas for the shows.

  Mike left the band, and right after Steve quit Green River, he joined the Thrown Ups. And then Mark joined, too, replacing Scott. That was Mark and Steve’s way of staying together musically.

  MARK ARM We did one show where we all played in our boxers and the four members of the band were wearing flower heads. Apparently, the whole time Steve’s ball sac was hanging out of his boxers.

  STEVE TURNER Yeah, apparently my underwear was too short.

  MARK ARM The most brilliant thing was when Ed came up with the zit pants.

  ED FOTHERINGHAM (the Thrown Ups singer; illustrator) It was a suit that I made out of black garbage bags turned inside out, seamed with duct tape and with about 30 Ziploc bags filled with Barbasol shaving cream on the inside. It just looked like a puffy leather suit. I had a sharpened chopstick, and at the end of the show, I would pop these things and squeeze them. And to my glee and surprise, they worked so well—this stream of white liquid went out like 30 feet into the audience and actually hit the bar. It was just a mess. We got kicked out of the Ditto Tavern for that.

  TOM HAZELMYER (Amphetamine Reptile Records founder; U-Men bassist) Turner was always twistin’ my arm, like, “You gotta listen to this tape! We need someone to put the record out. It’s me, and Mark Arm on drums and Ed Fotheringham on vocals and Leighton on bass, and we just make everything up as we go.” I was like, “That sounds fucking horrible.” Somehow he got me to listen to it, and I was like, “Fuck. This actually sounds great!” I ended up putting out all their albums on AmRep.

  JACK ENDINO The Thrown Ups? Probably the best band ever. Steve and Mark and Leighton and Ed would make the most ridiculous list of song titles you could think of, and pick from the list. “Okay, ‘Sloppy Pud Love.’ What would that sound like?” They’d start jamming, and they’d look at me and go, “Okay. We got it. Roll it.” And I would just roll tape, and they’d come back, listen to it, everybody’d have a good laugh, and then they’d go down the list again. “Okay, ‘Elephant Crack.’ What would that sound like?” Ed would literally make up lyrics on the spot. We’re not talking Hemingway here, but it was always funny as shit.

  MIKE LARSON (Green River manager) When I became the manager for Green River, there was a little notice in the gossip column of The Rocket: “Michael Larson is now the manager of Green River, who are working with Joe Perry of Aerosmith fame in the studio.” I think Jeff actually put that in there. My sense is that he made up this rumor to create buzz.

  I don’t think they ever met Joe Perry. But that rumor had a life of its own. And the funny thing is, if you look at the “Together We’ll Never”/“Ain’t Nothing to Do” single that we released, it says, “Produced by J. Perry.” For the next couple of years, every once in a while someone would go, “Hey, so have you guys been working with Aerosmith?”

  BRUCE FAIRWEATHER Green River got to open for Public Image Ltd., at the Paramount Theatre in ’86. When I showed up, Andy Wood and Regan Hagar are hanging out backstage, and they’re totally out of control. I was like, “You guys seem hammered.”

  They’re like, “Yeah, we’ve been going upstairs to PIL’s dressing room and stealing their beer.” So I was like, “Hell, I’m going to have some.” Grabbed a couple of beers, and kept going up and taking a couple more. Finally, we just went up there and took everything.

  STEVE TURNER I snuck in the back with Andrew and Regan from Malfunkshun. We were throwing lunch meat onto the roof of PIL’s tour bus. We were yelling back and forth at their dirtbag roadies, telling each other to fuck off. And finally, this voice from the sky says, “Would you like to be silenced?!” And that was John Lydon. Yeah, it’s fucking Johnny Rotten. And this shut us all up.

  MARK ARM Our room was just down the hall and we could hear John Lydon fucking raising a hissy fit about the fact that there isn’t a La-Z-Boy recliner in his room. You’re supposed to be punk rock! By the time we played, we’d worked ourselves up into a tizzy about this outrageous behavior. It fed into my anger and made me want to fuck shit up.

  MIKE LARSON Here’s the founder of punk, and he’s getting pissed off and irritated, so we’ll just see how irritating we can be. We just start yelling back at him, and Mark starts yelling back in a faux British voice. We didn’t hear anything from them after that, an
d then the band went onstage.

  MARK ARM (from the stage at the Paramount Theatre, June 28, 1986) Hey, if you ever wanna know what it’s like to become what you hated, ask the next band.

  BRUCE FAIRWEATHER Four or five songs into the set, Mike comes out on my side of the stage, starts saying something in my ear, like, “Bruce, you know, you guys have to quit playing.” I’m like, “Get the fuck offstage.” And then they shut the power down on us. Apparently, John Lydon was running around backstage saying, “I want them out of the building right now!”

  MIKE LARSON After about the eighth song, I remember the promoter coming to me and saying, “You gotta tell your band that this is the last song.” I remember those guys looking at me going, “What the fuck? We’re not stopping.” They did about four or five songs after that, and the promoter just went mad. We were able to get them off just in time, so they didn’t have to cut the power.

  BRUCE FAIRWEATHER The fish incident? I remember it being Mike’s idea to do the fish. We were opening for Agent Orange at the Washington Performance Hall. Mike tells Mark, “I think for this show, you should put a fish down your pants.” Mark used to wear these silver lamé Iggy Pop tight trousers. And so Mike went down to the Pike Place Market, and found this horrible, stinky trout.

  MARK ARM The only problem was the fins were really spiny. It was worth it for the art, though.

  BRUCE FAIRWEATHER About halfway through, Mark pulls the fish out of his pants and throws it out into the crowd. Sure enough, it comes back in pieces on stage. Alex had borrowed the Agent Orange drummer’s drum carpet, and it got all over the drum carpet. The Agent Orange guys were furious.

  ALEX SHUMWAY The smell was just terrible. I’m almost positive that we got banned from there. We were banned from almost every place that we played at least once. And then they would ask us to come back ’cause we made them money.

  BRUCE FAIRWEATHER Years later, when I was in Love Battery, we played with Agent Orange, and I reminded the singer about the fish. I was like, “It was great, right?” He didn’t say anything. He just shook his head and walked away.

  DAWN ANDERSON After a while, the Green River fans knew when to step back, because there might be green Jell-O coming at you.

  JULIANNE ANDERSEN That was at the Central. I looked at my friends and all of a sudden they were taking six, seven, eight steps back. I didn’t know what the hell was happening, and I got the worst of it. My hair was bleached blond at the time, so I had green hair for a week. I still fuckin’ hate Mark Arm for that.

  ALEX SHUMWAY Mark wanted to keep the band more down to earth, and the other guys wanted it to become something bigger. There was even talk at one point, “Hey, let’s move down to L.A. and make it down there.” That was Jeff and Stone’s idea. It was more something that was thrown against the wall to see if it would stick. Mark was like, “Hell, no,” but I was a whore—I’d have gone anywhere.

  JEFF AMENT There was some shit-talking afterward, some things about me and Stone being careerists—which is basically what Cobain adopted later. I was the only guy in the band who didn’t have a trust fund. I guess if not wanting to work in a restaurant for the rest of my life made me a careerist, then that was probably true.

  BRUCE FAIRWEATHER Trust fund? God, no. I had girlfriends whose places I’d be crashing at.

  MARK ARM To be truthful, I would have been perfectly happy being in a successful band.

  The idea that I should get singing lessons was in the mix. I’m not the greatest singer. My reaction was, “I don’t want to learn the ‘right way’ to do something. I want to try to figure out something that’s uniquely mine.”

  It’s kind of unfair to characterize it as me against Jeff and Stone. By that point, it was probably me against the rest of the band. Also, to be fair, I wasn’t hanging out with those guys so much at this point. I was starting to dabble with heroin. It was partly curiosity. There was some arrogance: I can handle it. I’m smart enough. I knew I could not do this every day, and I managed to keep it on that level for a couple of years, where it was just like any other recreational drug, no different than MDA or LSD.

  ALEX SHUMWAY A couple of months before Green River broke up, Jeff, Stone, and Bruce were playing in Lords of the Wasteland, a cover band with Andy and Regan. I later learned that their side project was actually the beginning of Mother Love Bone. I didn’t really pay attention to it. I had blinders on.

  STEVE TURNER Mark did a one-night joke cover band with some friends from work called the Wasted Landlords. I thought that was hilarious, ’cause if they were thinking about using Lords of the Wasteland for real, they couldn’t anymore. That’s the way I looked at it: They just shut down that name.

  MIKE LARSON I quit right before Green River broke up. Partly because I got a real job in San Francisco. I remember thinking, This is such a waste of time. How can this ever turn into something bigger than what it is now?

  MARK ARM A night or two before our last show, we played in San Francisco at the Chatterbox. It was a great show, and we finished our set and people wanted more and we just kept playing and playing and—here’s where singing lessons might have helped out—at the end of the night, I’d just totally blown out my voice.

  Our last show was in L.A., playing with Junkyard and Jane’s Addiction. I was not a fan of Jane’s Addiction. At the time, I was really opposed to high-pitched vocals—to me that was just like fingernails on a chalkboard. Junkyard were this AC/DC-ish, Southern rock–ish, L.A. glam-metal band, but they had Brian Baker from Minor Threat and Chris Gates from the Big Boys and Poison 13. I thought, I don’t want to just be another ex-punk who plays in some shitty glam band.

  And there was the guest list issue. Jeff had put a bunch of A&R people on the list. He’s trying to make something happen, while my point at the time was, “Why can’t we get our friends in?” We ran into Anna Statman, who at the time worked at Slash, and I think she was the only A&R person on the list that showed up.

  We sucked. I sucked, in particular. I couldn’t hit half the notes. The rest of the band was probably glad the A&R people didn’t show.

  JEFF AMENT Stone and I were on the side of the stage when Jane’s was playing, totally mesmerized by the interaction between the band and the crowd.… It was the first time I had seen an alternative-music show where it was like the most reverential hard-rock crowd. That night Jane’s Addiction showed us that you could do something totally different and make it work, which basically caused Green River to break up since the other guys didn’t dig it as much as Stone and I did. Our drummer hated them. When we got back to Seattle we just knew we wanted to do something else, something with less limitations, something that had endless possibilities …

  ALEX SHUMWAY On Halloween of 1987, me and Mark were there waiting for practice. Jeff, Stone, and Bruce walked into the practice space and said, “We don’t want to do this anymore.” And Mark was like, “Okay.”

  I was a bit devastated. Stoney said something that I wanted to punch him in the nose for at the time. He said he felt that I didn’t want to practice. Stone’s like, “I’m practicing at home.” I’ve got a fucking drum set. What, am I gonna lug this back to my apartment? I think they were trying to make as clean a break as possible. And that was his way of doing it.

  JEFF AMENT Sub Pop was right upstairs from the coffee shop I worked at. Stone and I had decided we were gonna quit, and I remember Jonathan coming down and saying, “Yeah, we’re gonna buy a van for Sub Pop. You guys can tour on this record in the van.” And for me that was all I ever wanted, to tour and see the world playing music. It was tough at that point to say, “No, we’re not that psyched creatively, and we want to do something else.”

  MARK ARM I felt relief. I was tired of fighting to be heard.

  DAN PETERS I was at a show at the OK Hotel. Mark came running up to me, completely hammered, while I was standing in line at the bathroom. He’s like, “Green River broke up!” And he was totally psyched. He’s like, “Can I cut in front of you to use the bathroom?
”

  When he comes out, he goes, “All right, see you later.” I walk in, and he had puked all over the place. Obviously he had been celebrating the fact that Green River broke up, couldn’t handle it, and blew it all over the bathroom.

  KURT DANIELSON (TAD/Bundle of Hiss bassist) I grew up in a small town called Stanwood, an hour north of Seattle. My dad was a journalist, and he owned and ran the town newspaper, the Stanwood/Camano News, and he was a respected pillar of the community. He found himself having to publish stories about certain acts of vandalism that were occurring around the city—he didn’t know who was responsible, but he could make a pretty educated guess judging from the style and the handwriting. When I was 15, I got kicked out of school for having pot and had to go to school in a different town.

  I started playing bass at 17. My dad had a pressman, Gene Fleming, working for him who used to play bass with Loretta Lynn years ago. According to Gene, Coal Miner’s Daughter was fairly accurate, except that his character was completely expunged from the movie. I talked him into selling me his bass, and I began to learn how to play it. And then I formed a band with friends called Bundle of Hiss, which went through many moves and permutations. The constants were myself and Jeff Hopper, the guitar player, and Russ Bartlett, the original drummer who’d become the singer. I eventually ended up in Seattle, where I was a student at the University of Washington, and that’s where I graduated in ’86 with a degree in English.