Grunge Is Dead

by Greg Prato

MARK IVERSON: I thought Ultramega OK captured their live sound better than Screaming Life. At Fallout Records there was this poster that had been put up, because the Fluid had been robbed — their van had been broken into and they had lost a lot of equipment. It was a fundraiser put on the next day. We went and saw them at a super-small theater in Seattle, it was used more for plays than for live music. I remember hearing two of my buddies from KCMU who were standing behind me, and one of them said, “This’ll be the last time we’ll ever see them in a club even close to this size.” He was right.

  Soundgarden caught in Charles Peterson’s trademark “flash and drag shutter effect”

  CATHY FAULKNER: Performance-wise what totally stood out was [KISW] did “a rising star show” at the Paramount Theater. Jane’s Addiction was headlining — we put Mother Love Bone and Soundgarden in to open. Combine all three of those bands, and there was a magic in that — beyond words. You could cut the energy in the room with a knife.

  DUFF McKAGAN: I remember hearing a lot about Soundgarden. They finally came down and played L.A. — I want to say ’88. Maybe they played while we were on tour for Appetite, but the first time I saw them was at the Scream in downtown L.A. That was a rock band. There wasn’t many gigs of bands I wanted to go see at that point. ’88 was a pretty shitty time for music — a lot of White Lion, Whitesnake, and Warrant. It was terrible. So when I heard Soundgarden was coming down to play, I went, and I was really hoping that it would still be the Soundgarden that I remembered and heard such great things about. And they just fucking blew my mind. For some reason I always look at the drummer — if the drummer is good, the rest will follow. And Matt was just insane; playing all those different meters. And Kim Thayil, wow — what the fuck is that? And Cornell’s voice was fucking Robert Plant on acid. They were menacing, beautiful, musical — the whole thing.

  HIRO YAMAMOTO: That was exciting — going around the whole country. What an adventure. I remember [being] crammed in the van, getting hotel rooms — someone would always sleep in the van to watch the gear, and it was four or five of us crowded in the room. It was always like, “Man, I need a break from these guys” [laughs]. We went all the way down to Florida, touring the South, and up to New York. The thing with the South I remember is that they weren’t as into us — they didn’t know as much about us. But the big cities, like New York and Los Angeles, we were pretty well-known. There was the whole Los Angeles/music industry deal, because every time we went towards Los Angeles, the wining and dining started.

  JACK ENDINO: Soundgarden may have been the first to actually get the deal. By the time of their second record, they were already talking with A&M. Well before anyone else. Their [third] record came out on SST, and A&M said, “Why do you want to do this?” And they said, “We don’t want our career to stop for a year while we’re negotiating with you. So we’re going to continue and release this other record on an indie label — to have something out.” Because most bands would start negotiating with a major label, and it would take six to eight months. Then they would record, and the label would sit on it for three or four months, and then a year goes by. Suddenly, the band lost all its momentum. Soundgarden, very cleverly, said, “We’re going to release one more indie record.”

  KIM THAYIL: We’d do ten-week tours — we’d be gone for two and a half months. I was in Pioneer Square — I went to see some band, I don’t know if it was the Melvins. Kurt was there — I think Kurt was by himself and I was by myself. I went over to tell him how much I loved Bleach. He was very quiet and subdued. He said, “Thanks — that means a lot coming from you. Consider yourself our biggest influence.” I was like, “Whoa!” We’d always been a “younger band” — we’d always been an “up-and-coming band.” Now, we’d made a record on SST and were playing nationally, and to have a guy you consider a peer put out a record that you absolutely love, and to have him say, “You’re a big influence,” was head-spinning for me at the time. It was one of the many things that gave us a new perspective about ourselves.

  SUSAN SILVER: We were in negotiation with A&M. They really wanted to have an album on SST, so that happened.

  HIRO YAMAMOTO: Faith No More was one of the big reasons we got signed. Those guys had just gotten signed, and they were really into us. I think they were in their record label’s office, saw a demo of ours, and were like, “You should check this out.” And then once that started, everybody was interested [laughs].

  JOHN LEIGHTON BEEZER: The first time I ever heard the words “bidding war” was with respect to Soundgarden.

  SUSAN SILVER: A&M — as its reputation — was a really artist friendly place. People were genuine and cared. There was no bullshit. They had a way of hiring people there that were genuine and music fans — that had a history of doing cool things in the music business. Everybody was really supportive. We met with Geffen several times, and then negotiated with Epic for quite a while — but nobody felt the same as they did about A&M. There were days where we thought Epic would be the way to go — and I probably wouldn’t be here today telling you the story if that had been the case, because I’m sure they would have knocked me out for a bigger manager somewhere in the early days. Whereas A&M was really supportive of young bands and managers.

  MARK ARM: When Soundgarden got signed, there were basically two paths you could go if you were a rock band on a major label. You could take the “metal route,” or this “alternative rock route” — defined by the Cure and REM. For some reason, Soundgarden decided to take the metal route. If they’d waited a year or two and Nirvana broke through, they could have taken the third path. They could’ve stayed true to themselves. Soundgarden recruited their friend Eric Johnson to be their tour manager — Eric’s a great guy and he knew where they were coming from. But for some reason, he got canned when they got more pro. By the time they were doing bus tours, they had this big, gross dude with laminates, who had tour-managed Aerosmith. He was the kind of guy who would trade blow jobs for backstage passes. It’s like, why would you get rid of your friend Eric, and hire this gross asshole with this old-school-music-biz attitude?

  Eric was [later] snapped up by Pearl Jam, and he worked with them for years until that period when they backed off of touring. Last I heard, Eric was Neil Young’s personal assistant. It seemed so weird to me that Soundgarden would surround themselves with a crew of rock-pigs, dudes [who] would just as soon go out with Bon Jovi and Poison — and probably even prefer that, because those bands pull hotter chicks. I never understood why Soundgarden let themselves slip into that world. I mean, Kim is nothing like that. The thing is, in the end you make the final decisions for yourself. You don’t have to go out on a certain tour because some manager or label flack thinks it’ll be good for your career. And you don’t have to hire unlikable people just because they have touring experience. There are plenty of good people out there.

  MATT CAMERON: [1989’s] Louder Than Love was produced by Terry Date, and we recorded here in Seattle at London Bridge, which was in Lake Ballinger. It was a good experience, probably our first time in a professional studio — a real big-time studio with a 24-track machine. We didn’t want to fuck up — we were well rehearsed. We knew what songs we were going to do. So we treated every recording session as a chance to bust it out quick, and try to get our live sound down as much as possible. I think later on we tried to use the studio more as a composition tool.

  TERRY DATE: There’s a lot of quirky little memories — convincing Kim to buy a second guitar, which was difficult. Trying to decide if we were going to go with the equipment he was using, or if we were going to buy some new stuff. As far as my production memories, we experimented with layering guitars. I think the band felt like it led to too smooth of a sound. We were also doing that record at a time when Metallica’s .. . And Justice for All was coming out. So there was a very different sound in “heavy metal.” Soundgarden, Metallica, and Mother Love Bone were all being lumped into heavy metal — they’re about as different as I can imagine.

 
HIRO YAMAMOTO: Terry Date could make things … things just shimmered. It boomed and it shimmered at the same time. I remember being skeptical about Terry, because his big thing was metal bands, and I was always like, “Are we a metal band?”

  TERRY DATE: They all got along great. I think the only argument I can remember is when I finally did get Kim to get a new guitar, and somebody picked it up to play it in the morning, after they’d been eating powdered donuts. They got white powder all over the guitar. Kim kinda got pissed off.

  ART CHANTRY: They didn’t have a name for the record. We were talking about it and joking — I said, “You should really call this record ‘Louder Than Shit.’” They go, “That’s a great name!” I go, “No … call it ‘Louder Than Fuck.’” “Oh, that’s great!” And Susan Silver goes, “My band isn’t putting out a record with ‘Fuck’ in the title.” That’s where Louder Than Love came from.

  GRANT ALDEN: Susan Silver was the most difficult manager I dealt with and most controlling. She and I banged heads repeatedly with Soundgarden. But I don’t mean that negatively — if I were in a band, I would have loved to have her manage them. She was a really competent, aggressive person. And she got what she wanted. The problem she had with me is I’m hardheaded too. I can’t remember specific arguments, but they would be about what photograph of her band we were going to use on the cover. And she would want to exert her right to make that choice. She was not the art director of the magazine — it’s not her place. Well, we’d bang heads on that — life goes on.

  ART CHANTRY: Susan Silver is an EST head. That was her powerbase, and she ran that band with an iron fist. She was “the fifth Soundgarden member,” and was married to Chris Cornell — who was a doormat, oh my God. I remember when I was working on the Louder Than Love record cover, Chris wouldn’t talk to the band. He talked to Susan, who in turn talked to the band. And when they would talk to Chris, they would talk to him directly, but he wouldn’t respond — he’d respond to Susan, and Susan would talk to the band. And that is the way communication worked.

  Soundgarden was a monster, and Susan Silver was Dr. Frankenstein. It was another one of those astonishing things to watch. Watching the way these organizations emerge and the dynamics. Like, the dynamics of the Nirvana camp were so “junkie.” The mechanics of the different labels, and the way they instinctively began to structure their organizations were always dependent upon the personality foibles. Like any organization. It’s like Ken Lay and Enron — their personalities dictate everything down below. And Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and all these bands, no matter who they were — Mudhoney, the same thing, in a different way.

  Watching the structures work, it was like sociology at its finest. Basically, it was “the Susan and Chris dynamic,” with these three guys that were sitting around following them, because they had no choice. This is back when Hiro was in the band — I never met Ben Shepherd. There were these three guys that were obviously the band, and then you had “the lead singer syndrome” in the corner. They were stuck. That was the dynamic — resignation. But at least they were getting money. So it was resignation with cash.

  MATT CAMERON: After Louder Than Love, we were going to start promoting our record. Hiro decided he didn’t really want to be a part of that machine. He left on good terms.

  HIRO YAMAMOTO: I guess the reason why I left was the whole deal about metal — “I don’t want to be in a metal band.” To me, that’s still the most embarrassing thing in my life. We were a hard rock band, but I don’t know if we were ever a metal band. We got bigger than I ever imagined we could have — I wasn’t really ready for that at the time. That wasn’t what I wanted out of music. I guess promotion scared me — advertising and promotion are things to me seem very foreign. Mixing music and the two of them was something that was hard for me to grasp at that point. I was unhappy before we left for Europe. And then halfway through Europe, I was like, “I can’t keep doing this.” A&M was telling us to tour 350 days a year, and I was like, “I’m not doing this, you can’t make me!” [Laughs.] I remember being in Italy somewhere — that was pretty much near the end of the tour. That was it. [Louder Than Love] had been recorded, it just hadn’t been released yet.

  KIM THAYIL: It was certainly heartbreaking for us, because he was a founding member, and such a significant creative part of the band — in our sound. What we were about, and the style that all our peers and friends had come to love was founded on certainly a creative interaction between Hiro and I. And definitely the three of us working together — not leaving Matt out of that. With four people in the band, there are six different two-man relationships, there are four different three-man relationships, and there’s one four-man relationship. So that’s eleven relationships, I guess. Having Hiro leaving the band, you have now changed the nature of seven relationships.

  HIRO YAMAMOTO: I keep in contact with Kim every once in a while. I haven’t talked to Chris, except for running into him a couple of times since then. I’ve seen Matt a few times.

  JIM TILLMAN: I played with them several times — trying to figure out if it would work. They had a tendency to tune everything down — way down. They’d take an E string and tune it down to a C. I promptly blew up Hiro’s bass cabinet. So we went bowling instead.

  BEN SHEPHERD: They were crunched for time, they had deadlines — they had these make up tours they had to do. Once we got to the rehearsal room, I didn’t say anything; I just walked over to the amp, turned it up, and started playing. Then we jammed for three hours, we didn’t play any of their songs. They went, “The next time we get together, we’ve got to work on the songs.” And they took Jason [Everman] because he knew the songs. He was more connected and on-beat with it.

  MATT CAMERON: [ Jason] was the best guy at the time. We had seen him play in Nirvana — thought he had a cool look.

  KIM THAYIL: We chose Jason because he knew a number of the songs, so we thought he could learn them really quick. He was a good player and had a good attitude. When Hiro left, it was a big hole in the band. Hiro leaving the band could have broken the band up, and we certainly needed stitches or a Band-Aid. What was unfair to Jason is we were unaware of what we needed, and the demands that we were going to put on him. And he was certainly unaware of it. We didn’t realize that we needed some major surgery on the band — to keep the band together. That’s a lot to put on one guy. We needed a creative and emotional presence to hold the band together — we didn’t realize we needed that.

  MARK IVERSON: They’re the band I saw grow the most. To be honest, I think Soundgarden and Mudhoney were better than Nirvana live. Mudhoney and Soundgarden were more energetic and charismatic onstage. And Chris Cornell would do his thing — like on the cover of Louder Than Love. Seeing them at the Central, then they played the Moore Theatre when they were doing the Voivod tour, then they played the Paramount. At the Paramount, some people were handing out these flyers, and if you’re familiar with the poster of Rattle and Hum by U2, they doctored the photo so [the spotlight] was shining on Chris Cornell. It implied that they were local — putting together this hand-made flyer. But they were on A&M Records.

  JACK ENDINO: I was pretty disappointed with everybody’s first major label record, to be honest. I don’t think Louder Than Love is a very good record — it’s not produced well, it’s not mixed well. The later records blow it away. The problem with all the indie bands — they had come up making records in a week, two weeks. Suddenly, you’re presented with two months to make a record. What you wind up doing — if you’re not familiar with the process and have never done it before — is basically instead of using the technology, the technology uses you. You wind up making a record with all the rough edges removed. You wind up making everything perfect. That’s alright if you’re making a Radiohead or Police record, but not if you’re trying to make a rock ’n’ roll album. So you ended up with Louder Than Love — a fairly safe-sounding, not very exciting-sounding record. But they were the first to get “the nod.” And then you had Alice i
n Chains.

  JEFF GILBERT: Alice in Chains — who is the evolutionary link between grunge, hard rock, and metal up here — started out as a glam band. And I’m not kidding — they wanted to be Poison. In fact, when they finally grew their hair out, quit bathing, and put on flannel shirts and Doc Martens, they took a lot of grief. People used to call them “Kindergarden,” because they tried to copy Soundgarden so much. The irony is that Alice in Chains got more airplay than anybody once they got their sound down.

  JERRY CANTRELL: It was my dream to be one of the guys that I dug, and to play music for a living. It appealed to me from an early age. I actually started playing guitar fairly late — about seventeen. That was out of I never could afford a guitar — we didn’t have a lot of excess cash around. My folks were divorced, and my mother and grandmother raised me. My cousin scored a shitty Mustang copy [and] a Sound Design stereo — an eight-track tape, a turntable on top, with a couple of speakers that had a guitar plug in the back. You could record onto the eight tracks as well, so it was kind of my own little studio. He brought it over, and I convinced him to loan it to me for a weekend — I never gave it back! [Laughs.] There was stuff going on in Tacoma too — some of the Seattle bands would come down and play. I’d seen Layne [Staley]’s band, Alice ‘N Chains, at the Tacoma Little Theater.

  NANCY LAYNE McCALLUM: I’m a second soprano, so Layne learned harmonies. Our friend had a drum set, and offered to let Layne use it. Layne became a drummer — drums in the living room, in the bedroom, in the garage. He loved it. Then our neighbor sold him a drum set. That was what he played the last couple years of high school. He was in a band with his friend, Tigger Giles. They’d get dressed up in their rocker costumes, and be in somebody’s basement or bedroom. He wasn’t in choir in school, and our church didn’t have a choir. The whole congregation would stand up and sing. Every Sunday and every Wednesday our family attended — so, he heard lots of good, non-professional singing.