by Everett True
You have a moment in 1996’s Hype! film where you describe grunge. Could you recreate that?
“OK. [Imitates a Sex Pistols-ish/Chuck Berry power-chord slide up a guitar neck thing, making the noise] . . . Well, that was punk. And then one day everybody started going . . . [imitates a down-the-neck grunge power chord slide thing. Punk backwards] . . . And that was grunge. It was funnier in the film because immediately after I said that, they cut to a guy with a hose spraying barf off the sidewalk. It’s the rim shot. For those who don’t know, those riffs were the Ramones, and ‘Come On Down’ on Green River’s first record. I remember watching Jeff [ Ament] play that and thinking, ‘That’s just the Ramones backwards! Huh. Sounds cool!’ There were always these great insights, Einstein or Da Vinci or whatever. It’s like, ‘Why don’t we do that backwards?’ ”
Addenda 2: Green River
“. . . So Mark Arm comes out with this big Styrofoam cooler and gets out a baseball bat and smashes that cooler,” begins Seattle promoter Julianne Anderson.24 “The cooler was full of green Jell-O and that green Jell-O went everywhere. Everyone was covered in it. It was the grossest thing.
“Another time, Green River played with The Mentors. The Mentors were from Seattle originally – the progenitors of shock rock, pre-G.G. Allin.25 Their lyrics were offensive to the nth degree, they had songs about locking their women up in closets and beating them. The Mentors also performed in Ku Klux Klan outfits, so when Mark agreed to play with them, he called me up: ‘Do you still have your sewing machine?’ So he comes over to my house with this gigantic, flowered sheet, a magic marker and some lace eyelet trim. So we ended up making five big KKK hoods . . . and then he painted these huge, super-happy smiley faces on. It was hilarious. Everyone was always so serious or disaffected or angry, but Green River were a hilarious band and musically brilliant. I mean, c’mon . . . flowered KKK hoods? That’s brilliant!”
“Green River was epic,” exclaims Leighton Beezer. “I saw their first show, at 12th and Yessler. I was on LSD – just a coincidence. Mark and Steve were dressed like preppies gone bad. They had short hair, but it had grown out a little and they were wearing Oxford shirts with the tails out; pretty harmless looking guys. Jeff [ Ament] had some weird shtick going on where he had three or four scarves tied to his bass, around the neck. He couldn’t make up his mind whether he was Steven Tyler or Gene Simmons. So he had his face painted white, with the star-child thing going on, and he was probably wearing spandex, with a Destroyer bass. I was totally on board with Mark and Steve. I too was a preppie gone bad. My people! And the second they started playing, it was Mudhoney. So there I was, having a good laugh at Jeff when they blew me to the back of the room. And probably changed my life.
“Green River had been through punk rock,” he continues. “They’d taken that about as far as they could, so they said, ‘We’re going to pretend we’re Aerosmith and it’s going to be really funny.’ And then, to their total amazement, it got them laid. ‘HOLY CRAP . . . IT WORKS!’ Some of them went, ‘This is horrible! I’m going to go back where I came from and be more intense than ever before.’ And the other half went, ‘Aw man. I’m calling the record labels!’ So they factionalised and there was this war, but it was not a war – they were still friends – more like, ‘You guys are so lame!’ There came a point where you just had to laugh at Pearl Jam for being so commercial. But eventually the laughter stopped and it was like, ‘ Shit. They’re rich!’ ”
NOTES
1 The Walkabouts were an early Sub Pop signing – sometimes overlooked because their powerful windswept country rock didn’t fit in with ‘grunge’.
2 The line-up on the Seattle Syndrome records included The Fastbacks, The Fartz and The Beakers.
3 Gas Huffer were a cartoon-like Seattle garage band – more Mod than grunge.
4 Three ended up on their first album Bleach, four on Incesticide and two on 2004’s box set With The Lights Out. The version of ‘Spank Thru’ that appeared on Sub Pop 200 was recorded at the ‘Love Buzz’ sessions in June 1988, with Chad on drums – not from the Dale demo, as is often assumed.
5 Ted Ed Fred were named after a friend’s mum’s boyfriend.
6 When Atlantic Records went to sign New Order from Manchester’s legendary post-punk label, they discovered that label boss Tony Wilson had never bothered tying the band to a contract so they got them for free. It was a fair exchange: New Order had financed Factory and its loss-leading Haçienda nightclub for many years.
7 From Tacoma, WA: The Sonics were prime Sixties garage rock exponents – rough, crude and wild. Standout songs included ‘Strychnine’, ‘The Witch’ and ‘Psycho’.
8 Link Wray: Fifties rock’n’roll star, king of the fuzz-tone. The Who’s Pete Townshend once stated, “If it hadn’t been for Link Wray and [1958 instrumental hit] ‘Rumble’, I would have never picked up a guitar.”
9 Pioneering UK post-punk group, Gang Of Four mixed stripped-back punk, intellectualism and political outrage with asexual funk and jagged guitar. Their first album, 1979’s brilliant Entertainment!, exerts too strong an influence on too many a weak band.
10 The Birthday Party were a late Seventies Australian band, influenced by punk, rockabilly, Iggy Pop and the blues.
11 Of course, all true punks know that Mohawk haircuts have nothing to do with music, being an invention of the English Tourist Board in the late Seventies.
12 The King Dome is Tacoma’s monstrous bowl-shaped arena, clearly visible from Interstate 5 every time you drive down to Olympia from Seattle.
13 The Angry Samoans were a politically incorrect LA punk band.
14 Huggy Bear were early Nineties insurrectionary UK Riot Grrrls, drawing equal inspiration from Sonic Youth, Bikini Kill and San Diego hardcore.
15 England’s Billy Childish is a true renaissance man: poet, musician and artist. His simple, three-chord garage howl favours antique instruments, on-stage uniform and attitude. He is a major favourite in Seattle and Olympia.
16 The source of this confusion is Courtney herself.
17 Spacemen 3 were a psychedelic, hypnotic English band from the Eighties – 1989’s ‘Revolution’ single is their finest moment: menace and repetition used to startling effect.
18 All early Sub Pop bands.
19 Blue Note was a late Fifties jazz label, notable for its almost art deco sleeve design.
20 This happened in essence, but not then – and not via Bruce. It was Jonathan who made the offer to Nirvana in a phone call a few days later.
21 Not inheritance money as has been erroneously assumed, but a US government savings bond of around $15,000 to $19,000.
22 James is exactly describing ‘Sifting’ here – which is very Melvins.
23 Thrown-Ups were a legendary chaotic Seattle ‘ fuck’ band who refused to practise. Both Mudhoney’s Steve and Mark were members. Endino reckons Thrown-Ups to be the best Seattle band ever: “Grunge in pure pharmaceutical grade form, 99.9 per cent,” he explains, “with all the bothersome impurities – like ‘songs’ – removed.”
24 The Alpha Female Booking proprietor Julianne Anderson had a Supersuckers song written about her, ‘The 19th Most Powerful Woman In Rock’.
25 Cult punk artist G.G. Allin took Iggy’s famed ‘rolling in glass’ approach to performance to deranged extremes: frequently hurling excrement at the audience and promising to kill himself live on stage – he OD’d on heroin before he could carry out his threat.
CHAPTER 6
Sub Pop Rock City
FORMER Soundgarden bassist/Hater frontman Ben Shepherd is slow moving, intense. He has a keen, skewed sense of humour, but man, can he get dark. I recall sleep deprivation nights with him in Japan, shortly before Kurt died, where he seemed rooted to the spot, such was the depth of his despair. He reminds me of Kurt, and Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan, these super-serious, kind of grouchy Pacific Northwest musicians. They showed me a lot of respect, but I never quite figured out why. Maybe it was because, like them, I was intr
overted, intense, but would explode when I got wasted, become a total goofball, drunk on anticipation and life and desire because, fuck, it didn’t really matter whether you woke up the next morning or not. Ben rarely speaks to journalists. Doesn’t trust them. Prefers to have a beer with his buddies, folk like his childhood friend and former bandmate, Chad Channing.
“I first met Kurt Cobain at this party in Olympia,” he says. “We were sitting on the ends of the couch alone, watching everyone else party. So we started talking and there was an acoustic guitar we kept swapping back and forth. We both admitted that this was where we usually wound up at parties, sitting alone with a guitar. Didn’t really know anybody and didn’t really want to. Not in the mood for it.”
Ben was one of the Melvins’ gang in the early Eighties. He lived in Chad’s adopted hometown of Bainbridge Island for a while – it’s supposed to be the first place to go if a tsunami ever hit the area, which it probably will, the way Americans are heating up the atmosphere. Bainbridge is almost heart-stoppingly beautiful: hilly winding roads lined with pine trees, a cosy village main street and marketplace, corn dogs on the ferry, sprawling mansions and homely shacks backing on to forest land. Kurt should have lived there: he’d have felt at ease with its laidback vibe, free of Olympia’s elitism, Seattle’s competitiveness and Aberdeen’s rednecks. He might have got a little bored – the pace is kind of slow – but Bainbridge has its own scene. Chad and Ben can attest to that.
“I’d met Krist via the Melvins,” says Ben in a dimly lit 15th Avenue Seattle bar, cigarette smoke filling the air. “I didn’t know he was in a band until I was playing with Chad’s band The Magnet Men1 at the Community Theater in Tacoma. Those famous photos of Kurt, dressed up in the blue satin pants, were from that show. They were called Bliss that night. Krist asked me if I thought our drummer would let them use his drum set. I was like, ‘Wow! You’re in a band? Cool man!’ They wound up borrowing Chad’s funky set. I think Mike Dillard was playing drums for them. We broke up soon after and they snagged Chad.
“Chad was the power drummer in our group,” the singer adds. “In Nirvana he didn’t really get to play in his natural style. He’s nimble. Chad can play the hell out of a guitar too. People totally underestimated him. They still do.”
It’s a couple of weeks later. We’re seated in the living room of Chad’s Bainbridge home that he shares with his wife and daughter. The house is cluttered but comfortable, open plan, low ceilings: the sort of home you go barefoot in, school drawings tacked on the fridge, signed photograph of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz on the wall, comfy battered sofa. The coffee is astonishingly strong, more Turkish than American: “Sorry if it tastes a little weak,” Chad exclaims. “I haven’t drunk coffee for years.”
It’s been 15 years since I last saw Chad. I used to get him and Kurt confused – both were tiny, sensitive and kind of goofy with long hair and Puget Sound accents: super-considerate, if shy.
“That’s funny!” the drummer laughs. “Me, I’ve always been bad with numbers and names. I’m good with sounds and I’ve a pretty good photographic memory.”
Chad looks remarkably unchanged by time. I recognise him instantly, leaning out of his car to pick me up from the ferry port (Bainbridge Island is a pleasant 30-minute ride away from Seattle), apologising for missing me on first trawl. He still dresses ‘grunge’ – lumberjack shirt and trainers, long hair and sideburns – but that’s how he’s always dressed. He’s friendly, enthusiastic about music. He talks about his current band, old groups that we share a common love of ( Talulah Gosh, The Shaggs, Marine Girls) and his plans to build a recording studio on the island.
As we drive through Bainbridge’s snaking lanes, he points out a few landmarks: “I used to climb up that tower when I was younger and eat my lunch at the top. The platform was small and there was no railing, and it would sway in the wind. It’s only about 30 yards from that to where Charles Peterson took that early picture of Nirvana in the field with all the flowers . . .”
“I’m from Bainbridge,” comments Jack Endino, “earlier than those guys, and I used to climb that tower in high school. It was a leftover WWII radio tower from the defunct Fort Ward military base, overgrown with weeds and bushes. The very top was 212 feet. The place where Charles took the photos was the fort’s former airstrip, now a field, which during the Seventies was one of the best places on the island to pick psilocybin mushrooms. The indigenous psych mushrooms, present nowhere else in the US as far as I know, have never gotten their proper credit for grunge.”
Chad was born to Burnyce and Wayne Channing on January 31, 1967 in Santa Rosa, California. Wayne was a radio DJ – rumoured to have known Elvis Presley – whose job took him across the country, from Hawaii to Alaska to Anacortes to Minnesota. His family was constantly relocating, leaving their son unsettled and unable to make friends: “I always knew that whomever I met, it was temporary,” he says. “It puts you off meeting people.” He had hoped to be a soccer player but – in a similar twist of fate to Mark Lanegan, who leapt off a moving truck when he was 16, broke both his legs and thus ruined a promising basketball career – he shattered his thigh bone in a freak gym accident. It took him seven years to recover. Like Lanegan, he turned to music for solace, learning both drums and guitar.
“The first band I played drums in was with some school friends in 1982, in Anacortes,” he begins. “We were totally a punk rock band. No covers. I never wanted to play covers because I had too much coming out of my own head. In Yakima for a time, I was in a band that played messed up, dark New Age stuff. Then I was in Mind Circus – me on drums, Ben Shepherd on guitar, very Melvins-ish. When I was 17, I was in Stone Crow, who were a speed metal band that played with hardcore [punk] bands like DRI and COC.”2
Like Kurt and Krist, Chad’s parents were separated and he took odd jobs to make a few dollars here and there. When he met the pair he was a sauté chef in a Bainbridge Island seafood restaurant. His interests were similar: pot, acid, hanging out, punk rock and the burgeoning Olympia scene:
“Kurt liked checking out local bands like Beat Happening. Krist was more into old-time Seventies music. Those guys turned each other on to different kinds of music. I turned them on to Shonen Knife. In ’85 I found this cassette tape, Burning Farm.3 I kind of turned them on to David Bowie. I found a copy of The Man Who Sold The World in perfect vinyl condition that I recorded on to tape and played in the car. Kurt was like, ‘Who’s this?’ They turned me on to The Vaselines. I was familiar with Shocking Blue. The Smithereens had an album in particular I thought was pretty cool.4 Kurt appreciated what Calvin was doing. We all did. Olympia, man. A lot of cool stuff was going on.”
First, though, came the discovery of several Seattle bands through contact with the irrepressible Mark Arm (who was then fronting the fucked-up Mr Epp): “Later on, I’d go out and see Soundgarden, Melvins and The U-Men, stuff like that,” Chad recalls. “I saw Soundgarden’s second show. They were really cool: not so much full metal as way more weirded-out guitar. It was much trippier. We ended up getting a case of beer and going down to the railroad tracks on 5th and Jackson.”
Chad met Kurt and Krist at Malfunkshun’s last show, at the Community World Theater, May 6, 1988 – Lush5 and headliners Skin Yard also played. A mutual friend who was studying at Evergreen, Damon Romero [Lush, Treehouse6] made the introductions. Kurt remembered seeing Chad’s band from the show they played with Bliss: he’d been impressed by the fibreglass drum kit, the way its flared shells towered over the drummer. “It was heinous looking,” Chad comments, “but it was loud.” Plus, The Magnet Men – who only existed for that one gig – had recorded a radio session with John Goodmanson that Kurt taped. So Krist and Kurt told Chad to check out their next show at Evergreen.
“They were like, ‘Hey, want to get together with us?’ ” recalls Chad. “I was like, ‘That’d be cool.’ I hit it off with those guys. They seemed bubbly and excited. We hung out afterwards by their white stub-nosed Dodge van. It was one we ended up
using for touring in the early days.
“I thought their show was pretty cool,” he adds. “I recognised a lot of the songs, because they were still playing stuff like ‘Mexican Seafood’. I was watching Dave, figuring out why they were interested in getting a different drummer. He was doing pretty well. Maybe he had a personality that didn’t correlate.”
“Chad they liked because he had the cool drums with the scoop7,” comments Slim Moon. “He was the first guy that fit. There were problems because he wanted to write songs: kind of poppy and kind of prog. They didn’t want that. Plus, his timing was suspect. He wasn’t perfect, but he was good enough for them to take it out on the road.”
“The first time I played with them was in Krist’s basement in Tacoma,” Chad says. “It was probably about the size of this room here, maybe a little smaller. There was a bunch of foam rubber for soundproofing, and some of it was hanging off the ceiling. I think they had a four-track in there. It was kind of dank – totally dank, but then again, those rooms always get that way. We had my drums, and we might have had some old beat-up drums in the corner, like a snare. And we had Krist’s big red amp. I think Kurt had his Randall head, but he wasn’t playing off the 212 sound techs that he had.”
Although it was the giant drums that attracted their attention, Kurt and Krist made Chad strip his kit down – just like they had with Dave. The three musicians began practising in earnest: songs from the original demo, plus newer material such as ‘School’ (a very Olympian song) and ‘Big Cheese’, a Melvins-esque dirge, the title character of which was based on Jonathan Poneman: “I was explaining all the pressures I felt from him at the time because he was being so judgemental about what we were recording,” Kurt told Michael Azerrad.