Everybody Loves Our Town

by Mark Yarm

  ELIZABETH DAVIS-SIMPSON I remember Andy from the Gits telling us, “Don’t be mad at Stefanie.” That was really wise, because I never would have thought, I’m going to be angry at this person, but then you do reach a point where there is some anger. I tried to take his advice and fight that anger.

  JAMES BURDYSHAW I was pissed at her. Two months before Stefanie died, I spent the night at her place. I was just gonna sleep on the couch, and she asked me to come in her room. At that point, I had given up everything except beer and pot. That night she swore up and down that she wasn’t using and she was through with it. She even picked up a copy of Rolling Stone and said, “That motherfucker lied! He’s a liar!” Talking about Kurt Cobain saying he wasn’t using. She knew. Probably ’cause she was gettin’ it from the same fuckin’ source.

  After that conversation, I saw her at the Off Ramp and she wouldn’t talk to me. I said, “Hey,” and she looked at me and then she looked away. Then she was talkin’ to somebody who I knew was into drugs. I was like, Oh, my fucking God.

  SELENE VIGIL-WILK Stefanie had been drinking, and if you’re on your back and throw up and you’re so fucking out of it … Yeah, she choked. It wasn’t like, bam, she shot heroin and OD’d, but that was part of what killed her. I learned not to judge people around situations like that. People who didn’t know us assumed things. They’d say things they had no business saying. Stefanie wasn’t a junkie.

  RON RUDZITIS Love Battery and 7 Year Bitch were close friends. Stefanie wasn’t really known as a druggie. I think she was on the fringes, messing with stuff. It’s usually those people who OD ’cause they don’t have a big resistance. I think I was into it at that point, but I’d never done it with her. Everyone was pretty damn private about it. It was pretty taboo back then, especially after Andy Wood passed away.

  LORI BARBERO It was sad, too, that when she died, we were on tour. I didn’t get back to go to the funeral.

  Her drug issues? We never really talked about it. It was kinda like, What can I do? We don’t even live in the same city, and that’s when we were touring hard. And I was trying to take care of Kat 24/7. I was fightin’ demons in my own band. Kat was a demon. A demon with a demon. Taking care of one is more than enough. I don’t know how many times we had to go to the consulate to get a new passport for Kat. I had to keep an eye on her ’cause she liked to kinda get screwed up at night and she’d do this thing where she’d shriek at the top of her voice and smash a glass so she could get attention. Between her and Courtney, it was kinda like, Who can get the most attention all the time? They were both exotic dancers. I don’t know where the hell “exotic” comes from, but you know, they both had a need for attention.

  BARBARA DOLLARHIDE PRITCHARD (C/Z Records public relations and marketing director) Before Stefanie passed, I wasn’t dealing with the major media. They didn’t care that much about us. But when that happened, all of the sudden they did. To have media zero in because of that kind of an incident—that was a frustrating period.

  ROISIN DUNNE I was furious when I read that Rolling Stone article. The first line was about Stefanie, but it wasn’t about her, it was about her death. I was like, You’ve never written about this woman in the entire existence of this magazine and now all of a sudden you choose to put her name in there based on her heroin overdose?

  MATT DRESDNER Once Stefanie died, there was one less personality to rally around. With these clone bands trying to get signed and what seemed like an influx of thousands of musicians, the cohesiveness of the scene was really fracturing and the loss of people like Stefanie precipitated an even faster fracturing.

  ELIZABETH DAVIS-SIMPSON That whole time following Stefanie’s death is really hazy to me. I remember the three of us going from place to place to place, hanging out with different people and drinking and being really, really sad. I don’t even remember, was I going to my job? What was I doing? I can’t even remember it.

  SELENE VIGIL-WILK After Stefanie died, Eddie Vedder really helped me through it. One night, when I was really distraught, I was at the pier downtown with him and I was way too drunk, and I either fell or I slipped off the dock. And I was so drunk I would’ve just drowned. It’s a blurry recollection, but I remember sliding into the water and him grabbing me and pulling me up. I was drinking Crown Royal, and I don’t normally drink whiskey like that. I was gone. I was crazy.

  VALERIE AGNEW I lived in a studio apartment by myself, and I kept this altar up of Stefanie for a really long time. I’d set up candles and photographs of her and things that she’d cared about. The rest of the band was like, “You have to take that down. It’s not healthy anymore.”

  We only had six or eight songs recorded for our first album when Stefanie passed away. So the CD ended up being this weird mishmash of recordings. Stuff we wouldn’t have put on there had she still been there to rerecord some songs or write new ones.

  The decision to go on was like a survival instinct. To not would have been like a whole other loss. I don’t even remember us having a doubt. It was never “Should we?” It was “When will we?” or “How will we?”

  ROISIN DUNNE I was friends with Kim Warnick, and she recommended me to the band. I showed up for an audition, and I remember I went into it feeling very nervous and awkward and weird out of respect for their loss. They were like, “You can plug in to that.” And it was Stefanie’s amp. They had clearly done a lot of processing together. It was time for them to play again.

  They had sent me a tape of the songs ahead of time. So I pulled out my guitar, and we played. They were great. Then Selene said, “Okay, let’s go to the Comet.” And that was the audition.

  BARRETT MARTIN (Screaming Trees/Mad Season/Skin Yard drummer) The irony was, by the time that the whole Seattle thing was catching on and major labels were starting to call us, Skin Yard had run its course. When Dan Peters went back to Mudhoney, Van Conner called me and said, “Hey, I heard Skin Yard broke up, do you want to come audition?” They offered me the job when I hadn’t even met Lanegan yet, ’cause Lanegan told them, “Well, if he’s good and you like him, then just offer him the gig.”

  The first time I met Lanegan, I remember he was kinda being surly with me, and I just sort of laughed it off, because he’s a big guy, but so am I, and I wasn’t physically intimidated by him. And I didn’t know what his reputation was, because I can’t say that I was reading the fanzines and gossip columns about the band.

  KIM WHITE (Screaming Trees manager) I was at the Gorge for Lollapalooza and a couple different people had come up to me and said, “Mark Lanegan wants to have a meeting with you.” At that point, they were being managed by Susan Silver, but she really wasn’t doing anything for them; Soundgarden and Alice in Chains were the priority.

  I went to Mark’s apartment, and we talked for about three hours and by the end of it he asked me to be their manager, and I said yes. They had the reputation of being a little wild, but I had worked with some of the most difficult bands out there, including the Chili Peppers. This is the funny part: He said, “You have to say it out loud in order for it to be real. I want you to say, ‘I am the new manager of the Screaming Trees.’ ”

  I said, “Okay. I am the new manager of the Screaming Trees.” When I said those words out loud, I kind of felt like, My life is over.

  BARRETT MARTIN Once the bands all started to get on major labels and were touring around the world, we would see each other more commonly backstage at some gigantic festival in Europe or Australia than we would see each other in Seattle.

  GARY LEE CONNER Roskilde was the biggest show we’d ever played; there were probably 70,000 people there. We had a great time hanging around with the other bands. Nirvana’s playing, Pearl Jam’s playing.

  KIM WHITE I think everybody in the band was intimidated by the crowd, so everybody continued to drink all day. Denmark was playing the World Cup and they were showing the game on the big screen. When Denmark won, the crowd was going crazy. Right after, Pearl Jam played.

  BRETT ELIASON (Pear
l Jam soundman; producer/mixer) Ed went into the crowd, and security had been facing away from the stage, so when he went to climb back up onto the stage, they didn’t recognize him and one of them grabbed him and was manhandling him pretty good. Our tour manager at the time, Eric Johnson, went down there, got Ed behind him, and was just swinging at security guards. All the other band members jumped down and had a tussle until they finally got things worked out and the show could go on.

  JEFF AMENT It made us feel like playing those huge shows maybe wasn’t as important as we thought it was. We packed our bags, and we left the next morning.

  VAN CONNER That was the first time I ever hung out with Mike McCready. He came in our dressing room after Pearl Jam played, and he was pretty drunk. And we were like, “We’re gonna teach you how to drink, McCready!”

  KIM WHITE Because Kurt and Mark were best friends, Kurt’s like, “I want you guys to headline the show.” And we were like, “That’s not a good idea.” Kurt’s like, “No, I really want to help you out. I think it would be great if you guys played after us and close the show.”

  And we were like, “No, no, no, that’s really not a good idea.” But for some reason, it ended up happening. So, picture this: Denmark wins the World Cup, the crowd is going crazy. Pearl Jam plays, the crowd is going crazy. Then Nirvana plays, and the crowd goes crazy.

  DAVE ABBRUZZESE Courtney was near the stage, yelling to security, “Don’t let those Pearl Jam fuckers up here!” And then she saw me and said, “Except him.” For some reason we got along. We watched Nirvana together.

  VAN CONNER We had Jägermeister, vodka, and beer. Our dressing room was very fancy, but by the time we were set to go on, because of McCready and Lanegan—and I might have had a hand in it, too—there was literally nothing left to the room except for a pile of rubble two feet deep. Everything that could be broken was broken into little pieces. Lanegan was super-hammered.

  KIM WHITE And then: “Ladies and gentlemen, the Screaming Trees!” And you hear crickets. You can hear the band’s footsteps as they walked onto the stage. That’s how quiet the crowd was.

  GARY LEE CONNER We started playing a normal set. At one point, I heard Krist Novoselic, who was off to the side of the stage, say, “Play the one about the devil!” I said, “They’re all about the devil!” And then all hell broke loose.

  BARRETT MARTIN We’re playing “Change Has Come” and Mark’s trying to sing, and it’s not coming out right, so he throws the mic stand down and then he sits on the drum riser, just sits in front of my hi-hat stand, and keeps drinking. We just keep playing the riff and wait for him to go back to singing.

  KIM WHITE The two brothers came and sat down by his side and were like, “Come on, Mark, you can’t do this to us.” They got him a new mic and a new stand, and he got up to sing “Ivy.” And again, the mic wasn’t working, and the monitors weren’t working. He knocked one monitor over successfully and then the stage crew came to try to get him.

  BARRETT MARTIN He runs to this corner of the stage and throws one of those big TV video cameras—destroyed a $50,000 camera. The security came after him, and they were throwing punches, but not landing any.

  KIM WHITE The last monitor that Mark threw over landed on top of one of the Denmark television station’s cameras and broke it. One of the mic stands hit a guy in the audience wearing glasses, broke his glasses. Afterwards, I had to call our insurance company in the States and say, “We just broke a $100,000 camera, and this guy got hit in the head and his glasses are broken, he’s bleeding.”

  GARY LEE CONNER We saw he was going nuts, so everybody else just went nuts. I smashed my guitar. I’d never purposely smashed a guitar before. Barrett smashed up his drums. Then Mark had to go run and hide …

  DAVE GROHL We had to hide him in the dressing room. But you don’t wanna mess with that dude. Give him a microphone, let him sing, then get the fuck out of his way.

  KIM WHITE The promoter said, “You gotta get Mark out of here, because if these guys get their hands on him they’re gonna beat the shit out of him.” So we took Mark back to the hotel and said, “You gotta stay, because they want blood.” But Mark put a disguise on—a wool cap and a different jacket—and went back to the festival anyway.

  The promoter was like, “Oh, my God, this is fucking great! It’s like the Who in ’69, but theirs was staged. This was real.” The Screaming Trees really did make a name for themselves at that show. They walked out to crickets and when they left the stage, there were probably 60,000 people thinking that was one of the best fucking things they’ve ever seen.

  BARRETT MARTIN I think the Screaming Trees corrupted me. I didn’t really start drinking until I was in the band. After Roskilde, something shifted in the way we were perceived: as being real brutish, tough, beating people up, looking for fights, fighting amongst ourselves. But it was a distortion of reality. I’m not saying that it didn’t happen on a small scale from time to time, but you wouldn’t have the energy to keep going if you did that all the time.

  We didn’t go around trashing the backstage at our shows. We didn’t get in fights, unless we were in a bar. There was one brawl, later that year, in Asbury Park, New Jersey, in front of the Stone Pony. We were walking out, and we got jumped by about 10 guys.

  VAN CONNER We were all so drunk that whole week. I wasn’t there for the actual fisticuffs, but how I remember it was that the fight was between Mark and Barrett and the club security guys, who were huge and looked like they were on The Sopranos.

  BARRETT MARTIN It was the four of us—Van and I and Mark and one of our roadies—against the 10 of them, these New Jersey hoods. They had no idea who we were. It was full-on. We’re big guys; we can take a punch, and we can throw a punch. At a certain point, the bouncers came out and the thugs realized they weren’t gonna be able to take us, so they just walked away.

  The next day, we were on Letterman, and Lanegan’s got this huge black eye. My arm was in a sling, so they had Steve Farrone play drums instead.

  VAN CONNER Letterman was all excited because he likes to make jokes about fat people, apparently. So during the food segment he held up a giant ham and was like, “This is trail mix for the Screaming Trees.” Actually, for a band that’s good publicity.

  KIM WHITE Letterman said, “I think I’m scared of you guys.” They got a nice shot of Mark’s shiner, too.

  JIM ROSE (founder of the Seattle-based Jim Rose Circus Sideshow) Lollapalooza felt a lot like a Seattle coming-out party. That was the year everybody felt this whole “alternative” thing. So I quickly read a Spin magazine and watched an hour of MTV and said, “Okay, they want it fast, with the F-word.” That’s what I delivered.

  MARC GEIGER (Lollapalooza festival cofounder; talent agent) The way the first Lollapalooza formed was organic. Each of the seven of us—meaning the four Jane’s Addiction members, myself, Don Muller, Ted Gardner—we picked the bands ourselves. The next year, it was much more Don and myself, along with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

  Don represented both Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, and more. Soundgarden was a band we wanted to get on the year before, but we couldn’t, because they were out of cycle. I was a huge fan of theirs. And then Don said, “We gotta put Pearl Jam on.” I said, “It’s the same thing as Soundgarden.” And he said, “No, it’s not. You’re an idiot.” Perry Farrell didn’t want either of ’em. Yeah, Perry had broken up Jane’s Addiction, he was completely out of his mind on worse drugs than he had been before, and he wanted to do a rave.

  I didn’t want two Seattle bands on the bill. But Don was a hundred million percent right, and I realized it quickly. I remember going to the first show, and Don’s standing next to me as Pearl Jam’s playing. Eddie’s climbing up on the scaffolding, people are going fucking bananas. Don’s like, “In your face, bitch!”

  KELLY CURTIS Around Lollapalooza, it was just starting to blow up for us and there were a lot of arguments about placement on the bill or how big our backdrop was. And the band decided collectively that we should go
on as early as possible. Because at the top it was so heavy with Soundgarden and Ice Cube and the Chili Peppers, we just thought, Let’s not even worry about our position, let’s just make it early. And it paid off really well for us.

  MARC GEIGER Lollapalooza was the tour that catapulted Pearl Jam, because it showcased them in a way that they could just kill everybody else. They were sandwiched between Lush and the Jesus and Mary Chain, so it wasn’t exactly a fair fight, from a rock standpoint.

  BEN SHEPHERD After their MTV hit, the fans were just—whoosh—storming the stadium once the gates opened to see Pearl Jam.

  MARK PELLINGTON (video director) The “Jeremy” video just became this monster. As a viewer, you were saying, “Fuck, it’s on all the time.”

  I had maybe an hour-long phone call with Eddie about what the real story was behind it, about him reading this article about a kid in Texas who shot himself in front of his class. The vision tapped into my own childhood pain and my parents arguing, and an eight-page treatment came pouring out of me.

  Eddie wanted this to be a story. “Okay, but let’s have Eddie sing.” Embedded still in my skull is the memory of walking behind the camera with a little handheld monitor. Eddie was sitting, we were moving around him, so I’m keeping an eye on him and an eye on the monitor. And I still can feel the chill when we come around and Eddie’s head was down, but his eyes were up. Just watching his catharsis, his performance, gave me shivers.