Nirvana

by Everett True

  Why did you pass the tape on to Sub Pop?

  “I thought it was great.”

  Were you in the habit of passing on tapes to Sub Pop?

  “Well, Sub Pop hadn’t existed for very long at that point, and I was in daily contact with them. This was literally days after I recorded [ Mudhoney single] ‘Touch Me I’m Sick’ . . .”

  Does Dale really hit the drums harder than anybody else?

  “No, not harder than anyone else,” smiles Jack. “He’s just a unique player and has a very good self-taught, oddball style. It’s like he grew up with the stick as his limbs. Anyways, the band went to leave and I said, ‘I really like this, can I make a copy?’ so as they drove off I made my own copy of the mix. They came in at noon, left at six, drove to Tacoma, played a show and then Dale was out of there, off to join Buzz in San Francisco and re-form the Melvins.”

  “Seattle, like the other extreme corners of America, is a magnet for transients and the dispossessed,” says Jonathan Poneman. “A lot of them move here and become serial killers or right-wing militia extremists. So you have this very progressive city that’s got a tradition of socialist activism and academics, and these crazy backwoods radicals. It makes for a very combustible and unique environment.”

  Originally from Toledo, Ohio, former musician Poneman moved to Seattle in the mid-Eighties. He got a job as the DJ on the local scene show at KCMU. In 1986, Jonathan joined forces with Bruce Pavitt to start Sub Pop records after a mutual friend, Kim Thayil of Soundgarden, introduced them.

  “The first time I heard of Bruce was when I bought one of his cassettes,” Jon recalls. “It was amazing. He had an elegant and brilliant way of being able to give context to the American independent rock music being made in small cities – bands like The Embarrassment from Lawrence, Kansas, or Pylon from Athens, GA . . . to say nothing of The U-Men. We later became buddies. We were different in most ways, but we shared a similar gallows humour.”

  Seattle in 1988 had little to distinguish it from the outside world: rain, good coffee, Boeing, a fish market and a beautiful skyline, at the centre of which was the Space Needle built for the 1962 World Fair. It was a remote big city with a small-town attitude, sheltered by the Olympics and the Pacific Ocean on one side, the Puget Sound on another, Canada on a third, and cut off from the rest of America by the Cascades and 2,000 miles of badlands, cornfields and the Rocky Mountains.

  Like any metropolis it had its hangers-on and a handful of cool places: Capitol Hill, 1st Avenue’s red-light district, home of the OK Hotel and The Vogue where Pavitt would spin muscle car rock against hip hop DJ sets. The first vinyl release on Sub Pop was the 1986 compilation Sub Pop 100. It featured only a couple of Northwest artists (Wipers, The U-Men, Steve Fisk). It wasn’t until the following summer, with the release of Green River’s Dry As A Bone EP, that Bruce became excited about the potential of local bands.

  How is it that Bruce Pavitt got so rich?

  “He’s got dumb luck,” sighs Fisk. “Really, really dumb luck. He’s not that smart. He’s not stupid, but he’s not that smart.”

  Who had the business sense?

  “No one,” the musician/producer replies. “Bruce had great ideas. He was willing to take chances, but he’s Tony fucking Wilson. Bruce wanted to create this giant monstrosity with no paperwork. Sub Pop was a clone of Factory records.6 Bruce is an entrepreneur, but he’s not Donald Trump smart. Bruce is a communist. Back then it was like a really fucked-up rock family.”

  The factor that differentiated Seattle from a dozen other American cities was its self-belief. Being so distant from the rest of America, musicians in the Pacific Northwest didn’t feel such a need to follow the fashions of LA or New York, so they were free to develop on their own terms. Literally, they thought no one was paying attention, outside their own immediate peers – a feeling exacerbated by the dismissive attitude towards local music propagated by editors such as Charles Cross at The Rocket. Seattle groups listened to the same records: Iggy Pop, The Sonics7 and The Wipers, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Flipper. Few of these artists had much time for punk’s brevity or holier-than-thou elitism.

  “Mostly, these musicians had been in jokey hardcore punk bands,” explains Rich Jensen. “After a few years they reacted against the lazy pseudo-rebellious posing of their peers – too many Mohawks and too many leather jackets covered with shallow political slogans, no guitar solos allowed – and started riffing out, growing their hair and acting like pre-punk gods of rock.”

  Unlike metal, which had degenerated into a lame LA ‘hair’ parody of itself, this music had an impassioned urgency. Seattle musicians learned well the lessons of US punk pioneers like Black Flag, Minutemen and San Francisco’s female-led The Avengers. The Northwest already had a sound of its own: “Hard music played to a slow tempo,” was how Kurt Cobain described it to me in February 1989. It was a sound that took equally from hard rock, punk rock and psychedelic rock, infused with a freshness that made it sound unique. A word was needed to describe what was happening: self-deprecating, steeped in garage lore and disposable. You didn’t need to look far to find something that matched the dirty, abrasive sound of Mudhoney: grunge.

  Looking to discover who invented the word? Rock critic Lester Bangs described The Groundhogs as “good run-of-the-racks heavy grunge” in the April 1972 issue of Rolling Stone. Mudhoney guitarist Steve Turner says he’s seen it used much earlier than that, on the back of an album released by rockabilly pioneer Johnny Burnette, and also in connection with Link Wray.8 Even as early as Dry As A Bone, Sub Pop were promoting their label’s sound as, “Gritty vocals, roaring Marshall amps, ultra-loose GRUNGE that destroyed the morals of a generation.”

  “Yes, people did use the word ‘grunge’ in 1988,” confirms Dawn Anderson. “It’s only when people outside Seattle started saying it that the term became a joke.”

  “Grunge happened because Seattle had a perfect confluence of good bands, good indie-marketing efforts, camaraderie and people making good recordings and taking good photos, all working for very little money,” believes Endino. “It was the right time. Commercial rock had become so pathetic and formulaic.”

  “Usually something like Seattle kicks open because there are a lot of influences converging,” Amphetamine Reptile records boss and ex-marine Tom Hazelmyer explains. “Seattle had a good mix of hardcore people and metalheads, with indie folk more into Gang Of Four9 and The Birthday Party.10 Seattle was a small city, not like LA or NYC where the kids could go off into their own clubs. They had to converge. [ Jeff ] Ament from Green River was a straight up metal kid. Steve Turner was a straight up hardcore kid. Also, no one had even heard of Seattle. I’m not completely ignorant and I had to look at a map to see where it was when I heard I was being stationed there.

  “Seattle was not big on the tour circuit,” he continues. “It was too out of the way. The city itself was a weird mix. It was big enough to have metropolitan stuff – antique stores, cool furniture houses, best record shopping I ever saw in my life – but it was also backwards, blue collar, redneck: a convergence of more cultured types and the old port city. Since then, it’s turned into big yuppie-ville. Back then, a lot of bands would work on shipping vessels, take that three-month tour up to Alaska and have enough money to live off for the rest of the year.”

  “People who go to these centres like London or LA or New York to make it big, they want to play ball,” explains Mark Arm. “They want a career as a rock musician. No one in the late Eighties, with maybe the exception of the guys in Mother Love Bone, thought you could get anywhere by being in Seattle. It wasn’t about being a rock star – it was about being in a band and having fun.”

  “We were determined not to take ourselves too seriously,” agrees photographer Charles Peterson. “Otherwise music becomes sport.”

  Before he returned to California, Dale recommended Kurt and Krist try out another Aberdeen kid, Dave Foster: Foster was a metal kid with a moustache and a pick-up truck, another working-
class dude who liked his alcohol; he studied jazz drums at high school. Kurt told him to forget his tutorage and just hit the drums. Hard.

  Kurt also insisted Dave pare his kit down from a 12-piece to a six-piece.

  “Dave was a lot closer to what they wanted,” insists Slim, “because he was a Dale Crover wannabe. But he had ridiculously huge drums and used two kick drums instead of a double pedal. We used to make fun of drummers who used two different kick drums because the only reason they have the second one is so that the audience can see it. All his friends wore Coca-Cola clothes. They were very preppy, that white middle-class girl-next-door kind of thing. We thought they were just awful. Me and Dylan referred to him as Anger Problem Dave because he would blow up and scream at Kurt or Krist or at the audience or grab you and throw you against the wall. Then he got into some kind of legal trouble and had to go to anger management workshop.”

  The first gig the new line-up played was a party at Olympia’s Caddyshack house: the place was full of Evergreen students. Kurt dressed in a ripped jean jacket with his toy plastic monkey ( Chim Chim, from the cartoon Speed Racer) on one shoulder, with a Woolworth’s tapestry of The Last Supper sewn on to his back. Foster was in typical metal attire: stonewashed jeans and a wife-beater. Before the set even began, an Olympian ‘punk’ with a Mohawk11 grabbed the mic and shouted, “Gosh, drummers from Aberdeen are sure weird-looking.”

  Nikki McClure saw them play in the library at Evergreen: “The first time I saw them,” she says, “I immediately saw the King Dome12 and the lighters. They had ‘it’. I knew they’d be totally huge.”

  Soon afterwards, the trio played another Community World Theater show – for the first time billed as “Nirvana: also known as Skid Row, Ted Ed Fred, Pen Cap Chew and Bliss”. The name was Kurt’s: he told Dave Foster he’d drawn upon the principles of Buddhism to come up with it. “It means attainment of perfection,” Kurt said when Foster noticed a flyer for the show at Kurt’s house. He later explained to Azerrad: “I wanted a name that was beautiful or nice instead of a mean, raunchy punk name like The Angry Samoans.”13

  “I always thought it was a dumb name,” says Slim Moon. “It didn’t fit with how they sounded at all. Maybe that’s what Kurt thought was cool about it. At the time they were asking all their friends for names, trying them on for size. If Sub Pop hadn’t offered them a seven-inch, they’d have had a different name a week later.”

  Foster’s aggressive attitude and attire proved a problem: he thought the other two had a downer on him because they perceived him and his friends as rednecks – they didn’t like the way he’d get into fights. On one occasion, someone spat on his truck so Foster kicked him in the head; more seriously, when Foster discovered that his girlfriend was cheating on him, he beat the crap out of her lover, who turned out to be the son of the mayor of neighbouring Cosmopolis. Foster spent two weeks in jail and got his licence revoked: consequently, he was no longer able to drive to Tacoma for rehearsals.

  Fed up with ‘Anger Problem’, Krist and Kurt had started rehearsing with Burckhard again. He didn’t last long either. There was an incident wherein Aaron and Kurt were drinking together after practice. Aaron borrowed Kurt’s car to get more beer, and hit the bars instead. A black cop called Springsteen pulled him over for driving under the influence; Aaron made fun of the cop’s name and allegedly called him ‘a fucking nigger’. Kurt’s car was impounded and Krist had to go bail Aaron out, embarrassed.

  Next day, Burckhard was out of the band after refusing to come over to practise because he was too hungover.

  “Aaron was terrible,” grimaces Slim. “They kicked him out because he ended up in jail one weekend when they had a show. I remember Kurt being really grumpy about that, but Aaron always felt like a fill-in. It felt like they were constantly talking about how Aaron sucked, but Aaron had a car. That was big because Aaron could move equipment around and get them all to the practice space.”

  Let’s take a momentary diversion.

  Mudhoney fail virtually every criteria of the Ramones Rule. Keep your songs brief. Keep the solos to a minimum. Don’t revel in showmanship. Stick to the instruments you know. Root your sound in the girl group lore of the Sixties. Image is vital. Image is all. Don’t overstep the 1.15 minutes mark. Don’t overstep the 2.15 minutes mark. Don’t overstep the 3.15 minutes mark. Keep the same haircut. When founder members leave, replace them with fans. Argue with each other constantly for 23 years and stonewall anyone who dares publicise the fact. Run off with one another’s partners. Don’t play lead on your own records. Never abuse a guitar. Never resort to spontaneity. Punctuality is next to cleanliness.

  Matt Lukin retired from Mudhoney in 2000 after 12 years of service – they don’t give out gold watches in rock, just the illusion of a pleasant house in the suburbs. Mudhoney have always been about indulgence, showmanship, spontaneity and great rock’n’roll. Oddly, they never seemed to give a damn for that most motivating of factors when it came to people who chose to live and breathe and queue up for that golden carrot in Seattle – fame.

  Steve Turner is the American equivalent of Blur guitarist Graham Coxon. That’s not to say he falls about drunk at the front of Billy Childish shows while trying to cop off with members of Huggy Bear.14 It’s more that, through Mudhoney’s career, he’s exhibited a willingness to experiment that goes far beyond the expected boundaries of his music. Plus, he’s been known to fall down drunk at the front of Billy Childish shows.15 Mark Arm, meanwhile, has an English degree and works in the Fanta-graphics Comics warehouse.

  Kurt idolised Mark Arm. Before Courtney Love met Kurt Cobain in 1991 – not 1990, as has been extensively and wrongly reported16 – she tried to get it on with Mark. Back then, the Mudhoney singer was the star of Seattle, no question. What didn’t he have? Fearsome stage presence, incredible songs, energy, deadpan caustic humour, lashings of rock knowledge, a drug habit, a massive nose . . . He was Seattle personified. Courtney even told me she’d been driven to name her band Hole after Mark Arm – “The hole at the centre of his being” or something.

  “When Mark and I broke up, Kurt was devastated,” says Mark Arm’s former girlfriend Carrie Montgomery. “I saw him out one night and he was like, ‘But you’re going to get back together, right?’ I found it so interesting that he had such a sensitive reaction. He bet me a fifth of tequila that I’d get back together with Mark. We’d lived together, so I had some boxes with Mark’s stuff in, some notebooks where he had started to write songs. One night Kurt was like, ‘Hey, would you be comfortable letting me look at Mark’s notebooks?’ There’s one part of a Nirvana song I always thought was about that. I’m not telling which one,” she laughs. “I might be wrong.”

  Did Kurt look up to you and Mark as surrogate parents?

  “A little bit,” replies Carrie, “but we were the same age! Plus, there were already people around like that – like Kim Gordon [Sonic Youth], who was very maternal towards Mark and Kurt. One time, Kurt came over to our apartment and I was colouring my hair dark red. Somehow it had formed a little bit of a ‘V’ on my eyebrows so I looked like Eddie Munster. And he’s nervous coming over, like it’s going to be really hip and cool. When he sees me answer the door, he’s so scared he literally jumps right back. I laughed for two weeks after that. It’s hard when you’re a person in a new environment trying to fit in.”

  “Mark was a funny, goofy guy that grew into his persona – him and Steve were nerds!” exclaims Cat Butt’s James Burdyshaw. “They were ultra-nerds! We toured with Mudhoney, and Steve thought we were the biggest group of assholes. We fucked with him. Hard. There was a party going on and Steve rolled out his sleeping bag . . . but he wasn’t getting to sleep. All he did was encourage us so we danced on his bed and stuck beer in his face. He was eating pizza so I grabbed it out of his hand and ate it.”

  Mudhoney formed Halloween 1987. Their sound was – as I wrote back in 1989 – Motörhead meet Spacemen 317 meet Blue Cheer meet Iggy on a stroll back from an MC5 concert. The
first practice took place on January 1, 1988. Mark Arm was 29 years old. The first Seattle show took place on April 19, five days before Nirvana’s debut at The Vogue.

  “I didn’t even know our name until there was a picture of us in The Rocket,” Dan laughs. “I called up Mark and was like, ‘So, we’re called Mudhoney?’”

  Mudhoney’s debut single ‘Touch Me I’m Sick’ is the record that encapsulates . . .

  “It is grunge, isn’t it?” interrupts Jack Endino. “It was their first session. We did five or six songs and they ended up using two of them for the single. On the first song they played, ‘Twenty Four’, the two guitars were wildly out of tune so I politely made them tune up. It took all of one afternoon to record those five songs.”

  When you recorded the song were you aware of how powerful it was?

  “No. I knew it was a cool song, but it’s basically ‘The Witch’ [by The Sonics] . . . not that I knew that at the time. I was young and not far into my career so I had not yet become jaded to the idea of somebody singing through a guitar amp.”

  Superfuzz Bigmuff (Sub Pop, 1988) and Mudhoney (Sub Pop, 1989) followed. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how to headbang or crowd-surf or drink kegs of beer or have yourself a damn good time. I first met Mudhoney at the Virginia Inn opposite Sub Pop World Headquarters, February 1989. In retrospect, they gave me a warped view of what all American bands were like – it was my first visit to America, and already it seemed like everyone had a brilliantly developed, evil sense of humour and endless stores of energy. Mudhoney spent the majority of their first overseas interview making shit up, and I loved it.