Grunge Is Dead

by Greg Prato

  JEFF AMENT: I was kind of a straight edge guy. Between my work and trying to get the band going, I was pretty focused — I didn’t really have a lot of time to screw around and party. Mark, Steve, Alex, and I had been playing together for a couple of months at that point. At some show, Mark and I were standing with some folks, and Stone came up with his friend, Chris Peppard, and just started talking a mile a minute. He and Chris were kind of like Laurel and Hardy — going back and forth. Super high-energy. He goes, “Who are you?” I go, “I’m Jeff.” He goes, “Oh, Jeff Diction — I’ve heard about you. Cool name, man.” Being a smart-ass. I was a Montana kid — if somebody said something smart-ass, you’d hit them. I had no sense of humor and fighting was kind of the way you got to know people. I think Mark sensed that I was about to punch him — “Oh no, he’s cool!” Mark mentioned Stone might be a great second guitarist. I wasn’t so sure because I didn’t know him, but Mark said, “He has a Les Paul and a Marshall half stack,” so that won me over. We both wanted the band to be heavier.

  MARK ARM: Stone went to high school with Alex and Steve. Steve had been playing with Stoney and two other guys in a band called the Ducky Boys, but they never got far because their singer was too shy to sing at practice. So Stone joined Green River, which was good, because we got to practice at his parents’ house. We had been practicing over at Steve’s parents’ place on Mercer Island, which was a bus trip out of town. Stone’s parents lived up on Capitol Hill, which was much easier for everyone to get to. I’m sure all these parents just loved it [laughs].

  JEFF AMENT: I was excited about being in a band with those guys, because I saw in their respective bands, they were the guys putting up the flyers and doing the networking. We got big shows right off the bat — I think we played with Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys [within] the first four or five months we were a band. It was killer — we rehearsed all the time and wrote a ton of songs right off the bat.

  DAVE DEDERER: I had a funny moment — it was my sophomore year of undergraduate school. I was going to U Dub, it would have been ’84–’85, and Stone Gossard — who’s a family friend, our dads had been good friends since they were young men — was going to the U. I think he was just a freshman — two years behind me. I’ll never forget hanging out with him one lunchtime, and he was basically getting ready to drop out of school. He had his full-on Johnny Thunders look going on. That whole thing was starting then — people wanted to have bands that were the New York Dolls meets Pere Ubu meets Def Leppard [laughs]. Stone was listening to Pyromania, KISS, and the New York Dolls. They started to put it all together, and it didn’t work very well [laughs]. Green River is an example of that — “Hey, let’s mash all this stuff together and see if it works!” People figured out how to make it work [later]. Alice in Chains and Soundgarden figured out how to make it be something that was new that sounded good.

  Green River’s Mark Arm and Steve Turner see God!

  JOHN LEIGHTON BEEZER: It was like a lab experiment that went horribly wrong. “What happens if we mix this with this? Oh shit!” They were the band that galvanized everybody.

  LIBBY KNUDSON: Green River — the name itself, they always joked, “It’s a drink.” But at the time, it was kind of heavy because what was going on with the Green River killer. That was kind of punk.

  JOHN LEIGHTON BEEZER: Everyone in Seattle knew they were talking about a serial killer. That right there really sets the tone for a lot of things — the whole thing was easily misunderstood by outsiders. And that’s probably one of the reasons why [when] Green River toured nobody was enthusiastic. It was like, “What, a Creedence cover band?” I remember going to their first show — August of 1984 — there were probably forty people there. I later told people I was blown to the back of the room — I really could not believe what I was seeing. Steve was quoted at the time as saying, “We were trying to get the sound of a jet aircraft taking off,” and it was the same sort of effect. It wasn’t a wall of noise; it was a barrage of noise. When I saw [ Jeff ], he was dressed like a combination of Steven Tyler and KISS. He had these chiff on scarves tied to his belt, had face paint on, and his hair was all teased up. And he was playing a Destroyer guitar. He might have even had spandex — I don’t know if he went that far. The other part of them — Mark, Steven, and Alex — all looked like delinquent preppies. They had Oxford shirts with the collars out, and their hair just a little bit too long.

  DALE CROVER: A couple of guys in the band had Mötley Crüe haircuts.

  MARK ARM: Jeff was on a really big KISS kick, so at this first show, Jeff shows up with white makeup. I remember Steve and I going, “That’s weird — where did that come from?” [Laughs.] I vaguely recalled Jeff talking about the possibility of makeup, but I thought he was joking. I’m sure the fact that Landrew from Malfunkshun wore white face paint played into Jeff ’s decision.

  The first batch of Green River songs were pretty simple, but our music became increasingly complex. “Tunnel of Love” probably has twelve parts and nothing repeats. We were trying to stretch our abilities, to try things out, and push ourselves. And to tell you the truth, it wasn’t very good. Steve could see that at the time, whereas the rest of us were caught up in the fact that we were doing this. Which brings up one of my favorite adages when it comes to music — “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” Just because Yngwie Malmsteen can play as fast as he can, doesn’t mean he should. It turns music into a totally soulless exercise of technique.

  CHRIS HANZSEK: Mark Arm was what I liked to see in a singer — somebody wild, playful, sometimes serious, sometimes not. But all the time, very “stretch it to the limit.” He would stage dive with the minimum number of people.

  TOM PRICE: Every time I saw them, they would have some sort of accident, and somebody would be bleeding. They bled a lot. Once, I went to see them — I’d gotten off work late, and Mark was always fucking with the audience. They were playing and I was pushing my way through the crowd at the Central Tavern. Right as I got up to the front of the stage, the crowd parted like the Red Sea — Mark had a pitcher of beer, and launched it directly into my face. I didn’t see what was coming — he just douched me from head to toe.

  ED FOTHERINGHAM: Metal crept in from other places, and I think Mark liked it. Steve certainly did not. He was like, “Fuck this.” I’ll never forget, they had a photo shoot, he had pretty long hair, and they were begging him not to cut his hair for the photo shoot, and he cut it very preppie short. It’s a great photo — he’s in his Brooks Brothers shirt, little prep jacket, and clean, short hair, when everyone else is wearing eye shadow. It’s very wrong and cool.

  STEVE TURNER: It was a great experiment at first, because we had such diverse tastes. Then as we got better, the songs had gotten just too complex. I couldn’t remember them, I couldn’t play them [laughs]. And I slowly really didn’t want to — they were just not my thing. I had discovered the Milkshakes and Billy Childish, on top of already really liking the ’60s garage stuff. And things like the Replacements were one of my favorite bands at the time — Meat Puppets had just done [1984’s] Meat Puppets II. And they were heading [into] the other direction of post-hardcore, into the more hard rock/metal thing.

  JEFF AMENT: We made the first record at Crow. Crow had a sixteen-track; we thought that was going to be better. We saved a couple hundred dollars and knocked that record out in three or four days. I remember we went in, set up, and I don’t think there was a lot of overdubbing. We started sending tapes around and there was a little bit of interest — which was kind of shocking. This guy, Steve Pross, who worked at Enigma, wanted to put the record out. I think Enigma and Homestead were the first two letters that we got back. Enigma sent us, like, a sixty-page contract and Homestead sent us a two-page contract — so we went with Homestead.

  CHRIS HANZSEK: Green River were spending their parents’ money when they were making [1985’s] Come on Down, so there was a little bit more leisure time. By the time we got to the Deep Six compilation, you could
hear them starting to bicker a little bit about what direction the band was supposed to go. Jeff seemed to be the spokesperson for the contingent that said, “Let’s get organized, let’s make this slightly more commercial, let’s put this in a widely accepted arena rock thing.” Whereas Mark was like, “Let’s be Iggy Pop, light ourselves on fire, and run around.” So there was a strain between “Let’s consciously try to sell records” or “Let’s consciously try not to sell records.”

  STEVE TURNER: The first record had a couple of good songs on it, and also some pretty bad stuff. I decided I had to quit, and they got better after I quit. The replacement was more fitting, when they got Bruce. Made much more sense. I figured I was done in a certain way — I was kind of over it. I scared some of my friends, because I re-enrolled in college and gave away all my clothes. They really worried about me for a few months.

  BRUCE FAIRWEATHER: A lot of guitar players play the exact same thing — punk rock bands especially. We worked at trying to be different. We tried to play off of each other and tried to be dynamic, although it was loud and fast. Some of it sounds dated now, but it’s definitely some intricate shit we worked out.

  MARK ARM: Our first tour — which was supposed to coincide with the first Green River record — ended up being a seven-show tour across the United States. Seattle to New York and back. We drove out to Boston, called up Gerard Cosloy at Homestead, and he’s like, “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, there’s no show in Boston” [laughs]. This was in ’85. We played two shows with Big Black — one in Lexington, Kentucky, and that was really weird. Big Black had two eps by then and I figured there’d be tons of people there. There were less than thirty. We played with them again in Columbus, Ohio, and there were maybe seventy-five. We stayed in Columbus for a couple of days, and played a pickup show with Decry. We saw the Necros and the Minutemen, which was fantastic. I’m so glad we did, because [Minutemen singer/guitarist] D. Boon died a few months later.

  We played Detroit a couple of days before Halloween — it was the big Halloween punk rock show starring Samhain, which was Glenn Danzig’s band right after the Misfits. I remember driving into Detroit, and we’re like, “This is going to fucking rule — home of the Stooges, the MC5!” We popped a Stooges tape in, and we’re ready for a real cool time. As we drove into Detroit, we realized that there’s really no place for us to pull over. It was a bombed out, burned out, shell of a town, with these shadowy figures huddled in corners. We ended up finding a hotel that looked safe enough to us milk toasty Seattle kids. We went to breakfast the next morning and the waitress asked us in a thick Michigan accent, “Are you guys gay? You guys talk gay” [laughs]. This was an indication of how the show was going to go for us that night. Jeff had poofed up his hair, and was wearing this pink tank top that said San Francisco in cursive, purple lettering. And all these people in their black leather were fucking livid. I thought we were rocking hard — rolling around on the ground and playing the shit out of our songs — but people just couldn’t get past the way we looked; Jeff in particular. There was this one girl who kept spitting, yelling, “Faggot, faggot!”

  JEFF AMENT: At one point, I put my foot in front of her face, and her boyfriend reached around, grabbed my foot, and pulled me into the crowd. At least three guys jumped on my back and started pounding me. All I remember is having my bass on, facedown — I could hear my bass making this growling noise. When the security guy finally came over and pulled the guys off me, everybody in the band was just standing onstage watching me get my ass kicked [laughs]. I remember being a tad disappointed by that. Like, “Hmmm, my crew just watched me get my ass kicked.”

  BRUCE FAIRWEATHER: Mark jumped into the crowd, and I think Alex went running to the front. Stone and I just looked at each other and backed up, like, “Fuck that!” [Laughs.]

  MARK ARM: I’d gotten pulled into angry crowds before, like when we opened for Black Flag and Saccharine Trust in Seattle. Jeff would always be the first to jump in the crowd to help me out. So I’m like, “Oh great, I’ve got to go help Jeff now.” So I jump into the crowd, and the next thing I know, we’re surrounded by the biggest, fucking scariest dudes — ready to kill us. The only thing that saved us was that the security guy was a cop with a gun. He saved our asses. We were packing our stuff up in the alley afterwards, and some guy is walking around with a skinned goat head [laughs]. A couple of kids came up to us and said, “I totally get what you’re doing — you’re doing the Stooges and Alice Cooper. Right on, that’s great!” But to most people in Detroit in ’85, we were not punk enough. Gerard Cosloy got us two shows in the New York area. We played clean up at CBGB’s in front of the staff and a couple of Japanese tourists. I still had a blast. I was stoked just to be at CB’s. We also opened a CMJ Homestead showcase at Maxwell’s. I had saved up $700 from my shitty job to go on this tour. Basically, it was my summer vacation.

  BRUCE FAIRWEATHER: It was hit or miss, but we were generally pretty tight — unless we were really drunk. Mark was pretty entertaining. We would always do something crazy. We had this guy, Mike Larson, who was our manager — we did this one show opening for Agent Orange in Seattle, and Mike’s like, “You guys got to do something crazy this time. I think you need a fish, Mark … [put it] down your pants! But not like a fresh fish — a really old fish.” So he went down to the market and all the fish vendors, asking them for old fish. He finally found some old stinky fish and put it out in the sun. Mark put it down his silver lamé pants. Alex had borrowed Agent Orange’s drum rug. Halfway through the set, Mark reaches down into his pants, pulls out this fish, spins it over his head, and throws it out into the crowd. Immediately, it comes onstage, and gets mashed all over the place. Agent Orange is on the side of the stage, and it’s all over the drum riser — they’re not happy at all. I think one of the guys grabbed the fish, went up to Stone, and scraped it down his arm — cut him open with the scales. When I was in Love Battery years later, we played with those guys, and I’m like, “Hey, I used to play in this band Green River, we had this stinky fish onstage.” The guy just glared at me.

  SCOTT VANDERPOOL: Onstage at Bumbershoot, Green River had this cooler filled with green Jell-O, that they threw out into the crowd. Made a god-awful mess.

  ED FOTHERINGHAM: [Mark] was definitely more active than he is now onstage. Plus, he wasn’t saddled to a guitar. It was a different experience — he’d jump around a lot. He was younger and more spry [laughs]. He’s still fairly spry, but it hurts when you hit the ground.

  KURT BLOCH: It was Mark Arm at his most unhinged.

  BRUCE PAVITT: Mark Arm, I remember one show in particular — him climbing up the pa stack and leaping on some lights there. Basically, endangering himself physically.

  JEFF AMENT: The first record that we put out through Sub Pop, [1987’s] Dry as a Bone, was kind of a weird deal. It came out through Sub Pop, but we ended up paying for most of it. We paid for the recording of it, some of the pressing of it, and some ads. Which is fucking crazy — we were giving Bruce Pavitt money to put out records! I’m happy to say that when I finally got paid back for all that stuff about seven years ago, I got it all in ten-dollar bills, and every single thing I bought, I thought about it. “Oh yeah, this is from Bruce Pavitt — a slice of pizza” [laughs]. I relished every bite of that $200 I got paid back.

  JONATHAN PONEMAN: Even though they were doing a completely original revisionist take on it, it made me uncomfortable, until I saw them do their Dry as a Bone record release show. To this day, one of the greatest shows I’d ever seen in my life — completely blew me away. For a long time, I felt like, “I love Green River … but I love Soundgarden.” But after I saw that record release party, Green River was indisputably the coolest band in Seattle. That show — it was a hot July day in 1987 — blew my mind apart.

  REGAN HAGAR: They drew so many people — it was a scene that was more than just what the Showbox scene used to be — a lot of old punks. Green River drew in a lot of college kids — people that came from the suburbs.
r />   BRUCE PAVITT: I think the records did a pretty good job, but it was a better live show.

  MARK ARM: We made two more attempts at touring, both down the West Coast. Our plan for our ’86 tour was to go down to L.A., and then cut over and go to Texas — we were supposed to play with Scratch Acid and Poison 13. So we bought this broken down, dilapidated school bus from Jeff ’s dad. It didn’t take us as far as we wanted to go — we ended up ditching it in L.A. [Earlier] Jeff and Stone went out to Montana to pick it up, and it barely made it to Seattle. This should have set off alarm bells. Our first show was in Portland. Portland had a really gnarly group of skinhead Nazis then. A couple of them went to prison for killing an Ethiopian man — they were just retarded assholes.

  We played at the Satyricon, and there were a couple of skinheads, just hating us, giving us all kinds of grief — yelling at us and throwing shit. I guess our hair was too long. The last song of the set was a cover of the Dead Boys’ “Ain’t Nothin’ to Do,” I remember doing this really quick forward bend, and at the same time, Jeff was going in the opposite direction with his bass — so my forehead hit one of his tuning pegs and split open. I ran into the bathroom right after the song to wash the blood off my face, and this skinhead comes in, and goes, “Oh, I guess they already got to you,” turned, and walked away. It seemed to me that this guy was new and his initiation was to go beat up one of those “hippies” from that band.

  We played a killer house party in Medford, Oregon, and maybe two shows in San Francisco. We had two shows in L.A. that were two weeks apart. The second was for our return trip from Texas, but the bus went tits up in L.A., so we never made it to Texas. We had to call our parents, at least I did — “Hey, uh, I need a plane ticket home” [laughs]. Because we didn’t make any money on these tours. That tour was cursed. Come to think of it, all our tours were cursed. Most of the band stayed in Hollywood, but I went down to Laguna Beach with Bruce to ride those two weeks out at his folks’ house. They were super nice, but two weeks is a long time to stay at someone else’s parents’ place.