Everybody Loves Our Town

by Mark Yarm

  When we moved to Seattle, around ’83, we were introduced to a drummer by a mutual friend, and he was just a little kid, 15 years old. I remember going to his house wearing clothes I’d bought at Value Village—psychedelic flares that were high-water, and these high-heel Elton John kind of shoes. I’m wearing a red, white, and blue sweater. I had a shaved head with weird chunks of hair growing out. I wanted to look like I’d been kicked in the head so many times I was brain damaged. And Dan opens the door and he took a look at me and wanted to slam the door in my face, but I wouldn’t let him. And from that point onward he was in the band.

  DAN PETERS Kurt’s from Stanwood, which was separated from where I’m from, Camano Island, by a one-block bridge. It was absolute hell. Just total hillbilly action. I was probably around five when I got my first pair of drumsticks. I would sit around in my bedroom and act like I had a drum set and was the drummer for various bands. I’d practice every day in my make-believe world until I got a drum set when I was 14 or 15.

  When my evil stepdad found out about the drum set, he threatened me with violence if he was anywhere around the house and heard it. Things got out of hand at my house, so I made the great escape and moved to Seattle to be with my dad. Then I got a call from Kurt, and he came down, gave me a tape. He had big, crazy, curly hair, and a big ol’ sweater with an American flag pattern.

  KURT DANIELSON At some point, Russ quit and we were a three-piece, with my friend Jamie Lane doing vocals and guitar, me on bass and a bit of backup vocals, and then Dan on drums. At about this time, we learned of a new band that’d moved to town from Boise, called H-Hour. And that was Tad Doyle’s band. We did some gigs with those guys, and Tad was perhaps the most powerful drummer I’d seen play, ever. He’d have this look on his face—staring straight at the crowd, as if he had literally killed, stopped the heart of everybody in the room with one hit of his drumstick against the snare.

  DAN PETERS I was way underaged. I couldn’t be in the club until it was time for us to play, and then I was allowed in the club to play, and then I was immediately booted out. Of course, I tried to hide out somewhere, but I was always found—usually with a beer in my hand. But there was this one club called the Ditto, which was a haven for all of us. We could do weekend shows there and they had a pretty lax ID man.

  While I was playing with Bundle of Hiss, I joined another band called Feast, which was quite a popular band in town in that era. Feast’s singer, Tom Mick, was a wild man, divin’ on tables and swingin’ from the curtains and whatnot. There was two females in the band, a female bass player and a female singer, and they tried to get me to wear poofy shirts and stuff. I was like, “No.” The closest I came to accessorizing was when they bought me some concho belt. I think I put it on.

  KURT DANIELSON At some point, H-Hour broke up, mainly because Tad wanted to play guitar and not drums anymore, and so he joined Bundle of Hiss, though he also played drums in Bundle of Hiss. So we had two drummers or two guitarists, depending on the song. Bundle of Hiss had been more of an art band, but at this point we started to put more humor into the music and lyrics, partly because of the influence of Tad.

  DAN PETERS By the time Bundle of Hiss recorded, we went into the studio with Jack Endino. I knew Jack because Bundle of Hiss and Skin Yard played together all the time. When Jack started working at Reciprocal, anybody who could pony up $100 could probably go in and record with him.

  JACK ENDINO I was making about five bucks an hour working at this little studio. Bands tend to trust people that they know from other bands, as opposed to producers they’ve never met, and so as a peer I had an advantage.

  In January 1988, Kurt Cobain called me up at the studio and said, “I don’t have a band name, but I’ve got the Melvins’ drummer helping me out. We just want to come up and record some songs.” I’d already been a Melvins fan for years, and thought, This is a no-brainer. Let’s do it.

  Between noon and 5 p.m., we recorded and mixed 10 songs. I thought Kurt had a really good scream and a really good melodic approach. And I thought it was good enough that I insisted they let me keep a cassette of it, and said, “Hey, can I play this for some people?”

  DALE CROVER When I first played with them, they weren’t even called Nirvana. They were in between names; they couldn’t decide. One show we did as Pen Cap Chew. Next week, we’d be Skid Row. I named the band Ted Ed Fred for a show. I recorded their first demo with them with Jack Endino at Reciprocal studios. They wanted to have their stuff on tape so they could shop it around and find a drummer. They got a record deal instead.

  JONATHAN PONEMAN I got the tape from Jack and I listened to half of the first song, “If You Must,” which later ended up being part of the box set, and I went, “Oh, my God.” I went to Muzak, where Bruce was working, and I lent him the tape.

  RON RUDZITIS I was working at Muzak at the time, and I remember Bruce playing the demo for the people who worked there. We all stood around the little blaster in the cart room. It was a little too metal-ish for my taste. I really liked Kurt’s vocals, but nothing really grabbed me. There was kind of a collective “Hmmm …” in the room.

  JACK ENDINO Frankly, to those guys, I think it was a little too metal. It wasn’t indie rock enough sounding, because Nirvana basically started as a heavy-riff rock band.

  DAWN ANDERSON I was there when Jack first called Jonathan and asked, “What did you think of the tape I gave you?” Jonathan was saying that he loved it, but that Bruce thought it was a little too arty. And Jack thought that was just incredible. I remember he got mad. He said, “He’s into mediocrity!”

  JONATHAN PONEMAN But Bruce did me a solid and joined me in seeing Nirvana play at the Central Tavern. I remember they were pretty good, but the room was practically empty. Tracy Marander, Kurt’s girlfriend at the time, was there. There was a bartender, a sound guy, and maybe like one other person. I remember when they played “Love Buzz,” which was not on the tape, Bruce looks at me and says, “That’s the single.”

  DALE CROVER I was friends with the Nirvana guys, but I’d already invested all the time in playing with Buzz, and I liked the Melvins better. I probably could’ve done both bands, but I was moving away.

  BUZZ OSBORNE We played with that band Clown Alley, and their guitar player, Mark Deutrom, asked us to be on Alchemy, the label he was starting with this guy named Victor Hayden. And we said, “Sure, why not?” We had nothing else going on. So they gave us barely enough money to get down to San Francisco and record, and paid for the recording of that first record, Gluey Porch Treatments.

  MARK DEUTROM (Alchemy Records cofounder; producer; later Melvins bassist/soundman) One of the things that Buzz and Dale used to joke about is the fact that they were gonna do this recording without drinking any beer. They did it stone-cold sober. That got laughed about frequently in the future, how they just white-knuckled their way through the whole experience. I think that contributed to the intensity of it.

  BUZZ OSBORNE And that’s where I met Lori Black. She was always a weirdo, which is what attracted me to her. And I knew, within the next year, when she became my girlfriend, that I wanted to move to San Francisco.

  MATT LUKIN When we recorded Gluey Porch Treatments, we stayed at this house in San Francisco where Lori and her boyfriend Mark Deutrom lived. I think that’s when Lori and Buzz kind of hit it off. Then she started to come visit Buzz, and then they started dating. Buzz had Dale tell me, “Buzz is moving out to San Francisco, quitting the band, going to live with Lori in San Francisco.” And I’m like, Okay, that sounds familiar, that’s exactly the same story he had me tell Dillard when we kicked him out.

  I called Buzz and I go, “So you’re moving to San Francisco to be with Lori, huh? I think you’re moving to San Francisco, and Lori’s going to be your new bass player and Dale’s going to follow you.” A month later, they’re down in San Francisco playing shows, Dale’s living in the house with them—everything that I accused him of. Fucking spineless asshole.

  BUZZ OSBORNE I didn’
t really want to go with Matt Lukin—it wouldn’t have worked. He didn’t want to leave. I think he stayed in Montesano for a really long time after he started playing with Mudhoney. I told him, “I’m moving to San Francisco. I’m either starting a new band or I’m starting this band up again.”

  MARK DEUTROM Lori and I were together for about 10 years. We split up, Lori and Buzz got together, Lori joined the band, and I moved to London at that point. Then Buzz called me up and said, “Hey, want to produce our next record?” So I came out from London, and we recorded Ozma. That was, of course, pretty much the Fleetwood Mac scenario.

  FRANK KOZIK (poster artist; video director) I remember when I got ahold of the Melvins’ Ozma record, and I was like, “This band is fucking brutal!” And they came to play at this tiny club in Austin called Cave Club, and I did this little shitty black-and-white Xerox for it. I’d never even seen a picture of them. Buzz comes out, and he had his huge hairdo, and I was like, “What the fuck, who is this faggot-looking dude? What is this, the opening band?” He looks like some reject guy from the Cure or something. But it was him, and they rocked, and I was just blown away.

  DALE CROVER Lori was a really solid bass player. She had really good meter and would bust me for speeding up, which helped me become a more solid player. I really liked her. She was really into spirituality and things like that. She really had a tough time because she assumed people wouldn’t accept her being in the band. One, being a female, and two, replacing Matt Lukin. People definitely liked Matt Lukin. We were like, “Don’t worry about that.”

  BUZZ OSBORNE When I went to San Francisco, I moved directly into Lori’s house. Now, bear in mind, I started going out with her long before I ever knew who her mom was. Months and months later, she said, “My mom is somebody famous.” I was like, “What are you fucking talking about?” It was crazy. I couldn’t believe that her mom was Shirley Temple.

  Lori’s dad was Charles Black, who came from oil money, I think. And Shirley is a self-made woman. Shirley’s parents squandered every dime she ever made as a child before she had a chance to spend any of it. She got nothing. Zero. So she’s a pretty tough broad, you know? She’ll rip your head off and eat you for breakfast. She was the ambassador to Czechoslovakia at that point, after being the ambassador to Ghana.

  Their house was unbelievable. Lots of stuff from the Hearst collection. Amazing shit—they had really great taste. And there was an Oscar sitting there. Shirley talked about her acting a lot. At one point they had her playing drums, and she had a recording of her playing drums when she was a kid, and she sounded like fucking Buddy Rich. And then she showed us how tap dancing is really just drumming. She tap-danced for us, and she was fucking amazing.

  DALE CROVER Shirley was like, “Yeah, my mom made me give away my drum set because it wasn’t ladylike to play drums.” I was like, “Oh, you couldn’t spread your legs with a dress to play drums. I get it.” She was sad about it.

  The family was kind of weird and straight and conservative. Proper. I remember we’d line up outside the dining room and all kind of walk in together for some reason. I didn’t really understand it. But they were nice to me.

  BUZZ OSBORNE They probably thought that I was some leeching weirdo and that their daughter went out with me just to screw with them. Her dad was never nice to me. Shirley was nice to me to some degree, but they’re very guarded people. I’m sure they thought I was going to write some book or something. And believe me, without going into any graphic details, there are massive skeletons in that closet.

  One thing that Shirley said to me was, “Working in the government, you can always get somebody audited.” I took that to heart. They never did anything to me personally, or even threatened me, but they didn’t need to. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. They were über-right-wing. Now, I’m not talking about Rush Limbaugh; I’m talking about the people who make life-and-death decisions. And it’s not necessarily evil; it’s more realistic. Charles was ex-CIA. It’s weirder than you can possibly imagine. I certainly never got the truth.

  Since then, everything that’s happened—from Nirvana going crazy and on and on and on—none of that holds a candle to how weird that situation was. That’s David Lynch weird.

  DAWN ANDERSON I lived with three other girls in North Seattle, and we had this big housewarming party. The Melvins had just broken up, and Matt was just wanting to really get drunk. And he got really drunk. He kept spilling orange juice and licking it off my rug, down on all fours.

  I had this huge stick of dynamite that someone had given me—I used to go out with a weird, demented nerd that liked to build explosives—and I remember this as if it was in slow-motion: Matt Lukin picking up the stick of dynamite, lighting a lighter, and moving it toward the thing. I remember, again in slow-motion, running across the room, grabbing it from him, and going, “N-o-o-o-o-o-o!!”

  I got it away from him, and he looked at me completely innocently: “Oh, that was real?”

  DAN BLOSSOM (Feast guitarist) It was really kind of strange—everyone split up the same month: Feast split up, Green River split up. The Melvins split up, sort of. And that’s when all the new bands started forming.

  DAN PETERS Steve Turner came up to me at a party and said, “Do you want to get together with me and Ed Fotheringham and do something?” I totally liked Steve’s guitar playing in the Thrown Ups, even though that band was a complete train wreck. The three of us got together at this practice space called the Dutchman and Steve started playing the riff which would eventually be Mudhoney’s “You Got It,” which he and Ed had used for a Thrown Ups song called “Bucking Retards.” We mucked around for a while, and I think that was the one and only time that Ed was involved. After that, Mark came into the picture.

  STEVE TURNER Ed didn’t wanna do a real band. He was like, “Practice? The same songs?!”

  MARK ARM Steve and Dan and I had been working things out as early as November. But the first practice with Matt is when we marked the birth of the band: New Year’s Day of 1988.

  MATT LUKIN I got a call from Mark Arm, asking if I wanted to come over and jam. I’d never met Dan Peters before the first Mudhoney practice. We just drank a lot of beer, jammed, hung out, had a good time. Something I’d learned was that you can’t drink beer and play Melvins stuff. It just isn’t going to work out. What was so great about the first Mudhoney practice was that I downed a 12-pack and was still able to play through the songs. I’m like, Oh, this is easy! Although it wasn’t as easy as I thought, because I remember at one point Mark was complaining, “How can you and Dan not get this? It’s the simplest thing, and you both come from bands that play intricate stuff.”

  MARK ARM When I was in Green River, the Neptune movie house did a night of Russ Meyer movies. The first one was Up, the second was Mudhoney, and the third was, of course, Faster, Pussycat. I decided to get something to eat when Mudhoney was playing but thought, Mudhoney, that’s a really good name, and tucked that away.

  DAN PETERS I found out we were called Mudhoney when I read something in The Rocket saying this band was forming with such-and-such people in it, and they’re called Mudhoney.

  MARK ARM I was working with Bruce Pavitt at Muzak, and I brought in a recording of one of Mudhoney’s practices. I said, “Hey, Bruce, this is what we sound like.” It was recorded on a boom box, so it sounded muffled and staticky; it was just an indistinguishable roar. So he’s like, “I can’t tell what’s going on. Why don’t you just go in to record with Jack Endino? We’ll pay for it.”

  BRUCE PAVITT Obviously it was an extremely ironic situation that the break room at Muzak would become kind of the testing grounds for underground Seattle music. Bands would come in with their demos, play them, and we’d all critique them. Mark Arm and Chris Pugh worked there. Tom from Feast and Chris from the Walkabouts. That’s where I first heard Mudhoney’s “Touch Me I’m Sick.” It’s where I first heard the Nirvana demo that Jack Endino had passed on to Jon Poneman.

  RO
N RUDZITIS I worked with Tad at Muzak, and he gives me credit for getting Bruce to put out his first single. Tad had gone into Reciprocal to record some of his songs. He did all the instruments. He played me the cassette in the cart room, and I go, “I’ve never heard such a good drum sound on a recording out of Seattle.” Tad still really didn’t know Bruce that well. I marched right out of the room and said, “Hey, Bruce, you gotta listen to this. This is Tad’s—you know, cart room Tad—and I think you would like it.” So he listens to it, and that’s how Tad got going with Sub Pop.

  TAD DOYLE (TAD singer/guitarist; Bundle of Hiss guitarist/drummer; H-Hour drummer) We were playing my demo in the department where I worked, and Bruce walked in and says, “What is this?” He was really excited about it and he asks, “Is this the new Butthole Surfers?” And I just started grinning from ear to ear.

  BRUCE PAVITT April 1, 1988, is when we quit our day jobs and moved into our tiny, original office, in the Terminal Sales Building downtown. It’s the first day of Sub Pop, with a big asterisk next to it: Except for the previous eight years.

  MARK ARM I think they got a good deal on it because the elevator stopped at the 10th floor. They were on the 11th floor, so you had to take an extra set of steps to get up there. It was a pauper’s penthouse.

  CHARLES PETERSON I was office boy for quite a while in the early days. Prior to that I was working evenings developing film for Auto Trader, the little news magazine for used cars and trucks. I was filching film from Auto Trader to shoot Sub Pop bands. But that got tiresome, so Bruce and Jon offered me a job, essentially as an office manager.

  The “warehouse” was the toilet, so you literally had to slide sideways through these stacks of record boxes, like Green River’s Dry as a Bone, to take a leak. Since Jonathan was more on the business side of things, he got his own office with a big glass window and a door so he could sit in there and make deals. Bruce didn’t really need a desk, because Bruce was always in motion—probably residual effects of MDA.