by Greg Prato
Evidence of rampant eyeliner and Aqua Net abuse in Seattle, early ’80s
DAVE DEDERER: That scene was much more influential than it gets credit for. They’d have shows at Lake Hills and hundreds of people would show up. As opposed to the shows downtown at the time, where sixty-two people would show up.
MATT VAUGHAN: A lot of that was coming out of the east side — prior to the Microsoft boom. It was very much like an Over the Edge suburb — where kids wanted to blow up their school. I guess you could call it “the Lake Hills scene” — there was a skate rink called Skate King, and on certain nights, they would have heavy metal shows. Battle of the bands — Shadow was one of those bands. So there was a huge metal influence going on.
TIM BRANOM: The scene just kept on moving. I remember it started off in Bellevue, and it worked its way into Ballard, this little Norwegian town. A lot of really talented bands like TKO, Rail, SATO, and a lot of bands from the Lake Hills era were huge.
JOE SHIKANY: [Rail] entered the basement tape contest [for MTV] and won a record deal. But before they had done any of that — they got on a tour with Van Halen. They toured the country with them and were totally unsigned.
JERRY CANTRELL: TKO was another band that I thought was really cool. I loved Brad’s voice.
BRAD SINSEL: The second TKO album [1984’s In Your Face] led to a big part of the tragic metal scene in Seattle. We tested it out in a lot of all-ages clubs — Mr. Bill’s and the Lake Hills Roller Rink. Queensrÿche used to open for TKO, Jerry and all those guys from Alice [in Chains] were kids when we were doing that Lake Hills stuff. It was good for us, because we had a little pull, so we could headline — we could do whatever we wanted there. If you rocked and it was heavy, you were accepted.
TIM BRANOM: My girlfriend and all the girls looked almost exactly the same — really slutty, spiky blond hair with hairspray. Everyone had a leather coat and jeans.
Proof that Seattle punkers weren’t safe from mullets
ED FOTHERINGHAM: They were probably all listening to KISS, and I was listening to Devo. There’s actually not that much difference.
JEFF GILBERT: I was so entrenched in the metal scene. Metal at that point [was] more into getting out of that big “doom and gloom” crap. We had tough, lean, mean, punk rock–inspired metal bands like Metal Church, Forced Entry, Panic, Bitter End, Coven, Sanctuary. Stripped down, street machine metal.
JACK ENDINO: The Accüsed was another one that mutated from a punk rock band into a thrash metal band. The Accüsed started in ’82, and are a fairly crucial part of the scene, because they’re still around today.
SLIM MOON: The Accüsed was always a riot. They had that whole Martha Splatterhead thing — an iconic cartoon image that would be on all their records. They called themselves “splatter core.” If somebody started out punk and then got a metal influence, that was really respected. But if they were metal, and then got a punk influence, they were suspect. So the Accüsed — because it started out as a hardcore band — was taken seriously. But their shows were just crazy. I got an elbow in my face that gave me a scar on my eyebrow. The last time I ever did a stage dive was at an Accüsed show.
TIM BRANOM: The Accüsed seemed like the most powerful band I’d ever seen in my life. I would be standing right next to the singer as he was singing, and you felt like the place was going to explode. Like a volcano was going off.
BLAINE COOK: There was a point, for a year or so, the Accüsed had really garnered a lot of popularity locally. But right after I joined, things dropped out. A lot of the all-ages clubs that were in Seattle — the downtown area — closed down. So after the first show we did in Seattle, there was nobody there, literally. It actually took us quite a few years to get a good reception in Seattle.
TIM BRANOM: About this being a huge Seattle scene — it wasn’t. At all.
CHAPTER 5
“A floodgate of creativity in the Northwest”: Blackouts, Fastbacks, U-Men, Mr. Epp and the Calculations, Duff McKagan
Five artists/figures figured prominently in grunge’s formation — the Blackouts, the Fastbacks, the U-Men, Mr. Epp and the Calculations, and Seattle native Duff McKagan — the latter of which would move to Los Angeles and go on to fame as a co-founding member of Guns N’ Roses. A small and tight-knit Seattle music community created a local buzz.
JIM TILLMAN: The Blackouts were probably the best band to ever come out of Seattle. Amazing.
LARRY REID: The Blackouts were probably the forerunners to what was later known as “the Seattle sound.” They weren’t your standard punk rock band — they had a pretty sophisticated sound and instrumentation. Really influential band.
BILL RIEFLIN: I have a specific memory where Eric Werner, after the Telepaths broke up, asked if I wanted to be in a band with him and the bass player from the Telepaths. I hated that idea — being in “a rock trio.” So I said I wouldn’t do it, unless there was a fourth element in there. Roland Barker, with whom I lived, was an interesting character — played keyboards and saxophone. He was a little shy at first, and we kept at him until he agreed. So then the Blackouts formed. I remember our first show — the Cultural Center at the University of Washington, a little theater — we played with Red Dress. [Bassist] Paul Barker got involved in 1981 — he’d been living in Germany. Then the next significant thing that happened in the Blackouts is all the band’s gear was stolen. That left us as a three-piece, playing bass, saxophone, and drums. That one incident radically reconfigured and redirected the Blackouts.
PAUL BARKER: We played a show at this horrible club at Pioneer Square — Baby-O’s. This was unfortunately one of those circumstances where the club was a bar … at the time, the liquor laws were such that if you were going to serve hard liquor, then fifty or sixty percent of your income had to come from food. So you’d play at a place that was a fucking restaurant — or the owner would separate the restaurant from the bar area — but they would still be connected. I don’t remember the name of the band that we were opening for — it was one of the more popular bar bands. We felt that we were not connected to that bar bands scene, we were [part of the] punk rock scene. So we thought, “If we’re going to open for this horrible band, then let’s do something really great.” Our manager managed to get a gallon of pig’s blood from a butcher, and we decided that we were going to cover ourselves in ash and pig’s blood, wear loincloths, and perform that way. So we did, and it was incredibly nasty [laughs]. I don’t remember how well that show was attended, but it was pretty gross. In hindsight, did anybody really care at the time?
BILL RIEFLIN: There was another time that the Blackouts — for Halloween — dressed up as Hasidic Jews.
DAVE DEDERER: They’re one of the better bands I’ve seen anywhere. I first saw them in maybe 1982 — I remember going to see Killing Joke and they opened. I had heard their EP, [1981’s] Men in Motion. Bill Rieflin had this unbelievable snare drum sound — the rumor was that he had a timbale with a snare mounted underneath it. They were just unbelievable. And Eric, the singer, was an amazing front man. They blew Killing Joke away.
BILL RIEFLIN: Our manager at the time worked at the Showbox Theater, and they brought in a bunch of national and international acts. So we got the pick of shows to open for. In one way, it made us unpopular with people. We played a lot and we were a really good live band — we just didn’t do a lot of recording.
DANIEL HOUSE: Their music had this sharp, angular angst — almost like shattered glass.
JOE NEWTON: It was fully realized and full-formed — not just people scratching away at the surface. And that’s part of the reflection of the real early Seattle scene — it was just people scratching around.
LARRY REID: Unfortunately, right around the time they peaked artistically, they left town. That left a void, that was filled almost immediately by bands that would become more closely associated with grunge.
PAUL BARKER: We lived in Boston for a couple of years, played a bunch of shows there. Unfortunately, the daily grind really started w
earing on everybody, and the concerns were more towards, “You have to pay your fucking rent.” We thought, “If this is the way it’s going to be, then why don’t we move somewhere we actually want to live?” So we moved to San Francisco. Everybody managed to get jobs and we played shows. Eventually, there was a point where nothing was happening. Although everybody loved the idea of the band, the band just didn’t have any energy anymore. A fair degree of apathy set in — it just dissolved. When we were living in Boston, we met Al Jourgensen — he produced an EP for the band. I stayed in touch with Al, and after his Twitch record, he wanted to get a band together. So I asked Bill Rieflin and Roland Barker — the three of us then went on tour with Ministry in ’86.
BEN SHEPHERD: One of my favorite bands was the Blackouts. That’s a record you should find [2004’s History in Reverse].
PAUL BARKER: I was hanging out with [Kim Thayil] one time. He goes, “I remember the Blackouts played a final show in Seattle at the Lincoln Hall — it was really sad. I was there with my friends and everybody was really upset.” I said, “Really? I didn’t think anybody really cared.”
LARRY REID: The Fastbacks were around — the Fastbacks were more of a punk-pop synthesis. This is really proto-grunge era — the basis of the sound started to emerge at that point.
KURT BLOCH: After the Cheaters split up, my parents’ basement had our gear there, so, “Let’s play some music — I’ll play drums.” We played like that for a little while. “I’m not very good on drums, let me get somebody else.” And we never stopped. [The Fastbacks’] first show was in early ’80. The only thing we could do was rent a hall and put on our own shows. We weren’t twenty-one yet, and certainly none of our drummers were even close to being twenty-one. I think one of the times we tried to play in a bar, the drummer wasn’t even eighteen — he wasn’t old enough to fill out a Minor Musician’s Permit, to go in and play in a bar.
KIM WARNICK: That Fastbacks formed when we were just out of high school. We were just the worst band in the world. Lulu could hardly stand and sing and play guitar, I wasn’t even singing at that point, and Kurt was the worst drummer. It probably wasn’t until our friend decided to join — Duff McKagan. He actually could play the drums, so Kurt got to move to his actual instrument — the guitar. Somewhere around that time, I started singing. And then the drummer problems started, as we had many through the years.
EMILY RIEMAN: I remember [Kim] once saying it seemed ludicrous when the Fastbacks were playing — she was onstage, she’d look out, and everybody she knows or hangs out with was standing there watching the band. It was just this moment of absurdity to her.
KIM WARNICK: We were never the most popular band. We weren’t hard-core, but we were fast. We weren’t punk … I guess we kind of were — but we didn’t really fit in anywhere. We were just floundering around, trying to put out records, and playing shows. We did a couple of good shows — we opened for PiL and for the Ramones.
KURT BLOCH: We couldn’t get anything done. We didn’t have any money, and we barely had jobs. We put out a couple of eps and a 45, wrapped them up and sent them to people. Other than Vancouver and San Francisco, I don’t think anybody seemed to like us at all — almost least of all Seattle [laughs]. We’d play very infrequently around here — we’d play Vancouver often enough, because there was a good scene up there in the early ’80s, that you kind of felt part of. For some reason, DOA liked us — I think the first tour we did was open a bunch of shows for DOA.
JOE KEITHLEY: They were just a great band — a real pop band that had cool songs and played well. Pioneering punk-pop.
The Fastback’s Kim Warnick (Kurt Bloch in background)
CHARLES PETERSON: I remember seeing the Fastbacks, and [saying], “Wow, those are the real punk rockers.”
KIM WARNICK: The records started sounding better — Kurt was producing and it got better. People started to like it — we could actually go on tour and make enough to stay afloat out there. Stuff that never happened for us before.
EMILY RIEMAN: What was so great about the Fastbacks — there were girls in the band. That totally shaped my entire view that there was never for a minute anything weird to me about a girl being in a band. To this day, when they make “the women in rock issue” in Rolling Stone, it always seems bizarre that it’s even an issue that people talk about. Because it was just ingrained in my brain — it was perfectly normal — because Kim and Lulu were my friends.
[Kurt Bloch] was an amazing guitarist. It wasn’t just a bunch of punk rock and barre chords — he could play anything. That’s what was so great about seeing the Fastbacks too — they would whip these weird covers out of the closet. They would play “Everybody Wants Some!!” by Van Halen — you’d be standing there like, “What the fuck? Is this really what I think it is?” Kurt Bloch could play it exactly like Van Halen. It was just so funny to see Lulu sing these David Lee Roth lyrics! They were totally marching to their own drummer.
KURT BLOCH: We played “Highway to Hell” once opening for DOA in 1981, and people started spitting and throwing their shoes at us. It’s like, “Wow, what’s the matter — don’t you guys like AC/DC?” It didn’t even occur to us that people would be pissed off .
The Fastbacks’ Lulu Gargiulo
EMILY RIEMAN: I remember “the Fastback House” — Kim and Lulu lived there, and all the bands practiced in the basement. The Living — that was Duff McKagan’s band — the Silly Killers, and the Fastbacks. I’m lucky that I was surrounded by people where even though it was a rough and gritty punk scene, we would listen to Alice Cooper, Cheap Trick, and Parliament. So I always felt I can listen to anything I want freely and openly. I don’t think I realized how special that was until later when I met a guy from Charlotte, who was talking about how there was a line drawn between people that were new wave, hardcore, and metal. They did not mix. I thought, “God, what a sucky way to be.”
XANA LA FUENTE: I’ve seen all this stuff about Seattle bands, and no one ever talks about them. I don’t understand why. All I know is that Kim is a really solid, stand-up chick, who was nothing but supportive of every musician.
KURT BLOCH: Certainly, the Fastbacks and the U-Men had nothing in common musically, except that we loved each other and were great friends.
CHARLES PETERSON: The U-Men were definitely the godfathers of the Seattle music scene. John Bigley is just this giant of a man — kind of like “a Quasimodo Nick Cave.” They were so cool — they drove around in this crazy old school bus, dressed all in black, and just rocked.
BRUCE PAVITT: The U-Men pretty much dominated the scene. They were about the only thing going for a couple of years.
TOM PRICE: Me and Charlie Ryan started it — me on guitar — and we were both seventeen or eighteen, living in a rental house in the U District. Working as dishwashers and being unemployed a lot of the time. We were so poor, and we had no equipment. If Charlie broke a drumstick, we wouldn’t be able to practice for a week, until somebody got paid, and we were able to buy another pair of drumsticks. Just total cobbled together equipment. Our original bass player was a girl named Robbie Buchan, who was a runaway from Alaska, and we met John Bigley, who was more from the hardcore end of the scene. We’d see him at parties, and he was this amazing character. One of the first times I saw him, he tripped and fell through a window. Broke the window, landed in a pile of glass on the ground — four or five feet below. Charlie and I went, “Man, we should get this guy to be our singer!” We had no idea if he could sing or anything.
JOHN BIGLEY: At a Johnny Thunders show, Robbie came up and asked me. Apparently, they thought I was crazy — they were intimidated.
TOM PRICE: We had all these songs with no lyrics. He didn’t, at that time, write lyrics — we were practicing in a basement, and there was all kinds of cleansers and paint cans. He would pick up a paint can, and start singing whatever was written — all the technical information. He was always high or drunk — just out of control. We started out playing parties, and you never knew if he wou
ld actually sing or not. Sometimes he’d not feel like singing — he would just attack somebody or fall.
JOE TOUTONGHI: Bigley was an intense screamer — really intense eyes, almost a stalker-looking kind of guy onstage.
JOHN BIGLEY: Early, we made it thirteen shows that were raided by the cops or called off — or noise complaints. We got a bit infamy for that. I don’t think that any of our first shows were at an organized club or even with a pa. It was pretty crude stuff. Keg of beer, people running around on acid.
TOM PRICE: In 1982, Robbie quit the band, and we got Jim Tillman on bass. That changed everything. He was an amazing bass player — just a really great musician. He had some resources, some equipment, and he knew how to fix amplifiers. The whole level of technical proficiency went up.
JIM TILLMAN: I was blown away. There’d be a song that was total balls-tothe-wall punk rock, and then weirdo chords. Tom really liked seventh chords, so he had this signature sound with his Mustang.
LARRY REID: John Bigley came to me — I remember this phone call like it was yesterday — “We need some help.” I’d gone to see their band a couple of times, and I was just fascinated. It was this strange concoction of hard-core punk, traditional Northwest garage, rockabilly, and psychedelia — even though they didn’t know how to play their instruments [laughs]. You’d go to their shows, and didn’t know what was going to happen. So I took [the U-Men] under my wing. I guess I was managing them — they were fairly unmanageable by 1983.
TOM PRICE: Larry Reid really knows how to promote stuff — take a regular show, and turn it into an event. A lot of the shows we did, we’d have ridiculous costumes or a gimmick. I remember doing a Halloween show, and we all performed wearing Speedos and swim goggles. It made people think, “What are they going to do next?”