Grunge Is Dead

by Greg Prato

  EDDIE VEDDER: If Kurt or Nirvana were like … I didn’t want to be out there that much myself. I don’t know how [people] were saying we’re jumping on a bandwagon when I don’t want to be on it, y’know? I mean that was honestly the way I felt. And I felt like, how can I apologize for something that we’re not doing? I didn’t ask for that. And yet, I might have bought an “All Nirvana” issue, because I liked the band. I thought it seemed cool for them to be doing that — it didn’t feel right for me or us. And apparently, it didn’t feel right for Kurt. But I didn’t know. There were people around at that time that were probably making more of a career for themselves off of Nirvana than we ever were. By planting the idea that we were into someone’s head, and someone that might have been vulnerable at the time, or justifiably paranoid — which I feel like I was, and Kurt was justified being too — I think they could plant ideas that we were careerists, or we were trying to be opportunistic with their success, to cover up their own agendas. I think that might very well have happened.

  CATHY FAULKNER: Soundgarden and Pearl Jam were part of Lollapalooza — saw them both locally and in Irvine, California. It was nice to see how established they were, and how many of the fans were coming to see them — you feel that hometown pride.

  EDDIE VEDDER: We played second on the bill for Lollapalooza. They wanted to put us later because the record was doing well, and we just wanted to stay right where we were.

  KRISHA AUGEROT: At [Lollapalooza], the general public was just getting to see them. Every show it seemed got more and more crowd response. It just became a bigger deal to see Pearl Jam. Everyone was figuring out that this was “the show.” This was the band to see.

  COLLEEN COMBS: When the ball was rolling and [Kelly Curtis] could do stuff, his first thing wasn’t to buy a fancy car and move his office to Los Angeles. That was one of the things that I really respected and liked about him — they stayed where they came from. And the Pearl Jam guys, I always looked at it like after the heavy metal ’80s of Los Angeles, the Seattle scene was such a healthy, great place. I mean, Pearl Jam did not have strippers backstage — they had a special road case that had toys in it for the kids. And we had headphones so the kids’ ears wouldn’t get affected by the sound levels. That for me was a huge change.

  CATHY FAULKNER: They did a free show at Magnuson Park, which is a big city park in Seattle. It was on their own dime, in coordination with the city, and it was a “thank you” to the fans. Through three radio stations in town, they distributed free tickets. It was absolute mayhem. They had this kind of canopy over the stage. [Eddie] was climbing up the side, and then [moved] hand-over-hand across the front bar. We all realized that the canopy wasn’t fixed to the stage — the rock climber that Eddie was, he was able to do fine. It was pretty amazing. He had thrown the microphone cord over the top bar of the canopy, and had to go up there to retrieve it, because it got stuck — he ended up finishing “Porch” while dangling from the canopy. He hung like a monkey — his head was right above the microphone, so he just sang.

  BLAG DAHLIA: I heard Pearl Jam play, and I knew they were really terrible. And yet, when ten million people decided they were good, what are you going to say?

  Eddie Vedder hangs ten on a muddy wave, Lollapalooza ’92

  Edward E. Neuman

  ART CHANTRY: I remember the day when we were told at The Rocket that Pearl Jam finally paid off the Mother Love Bone debt. Ten had already been at the top of the charts for maybe months.

  JIM SORENSON: We all lost the business — the big merchandisers came in with giant advances. I got a call from Kelly Curtis, and he says, “Nice Man offered us a million dollars for the rights for the merchandise.” And I go, “You haven’t signed yet?” “Nah, we’re going to do it, but we’re going to wait until the end of this tour.” I grossed over $250,000 that year — ’92. For a little operation out of the back of a tattoo shop. I mean, my whole place was like 750 square feet — no windows, no ventilation. It would be 102 degrees at two in the morning. There was no name [for the company] — we were “the shirt guy in back of the tattoo shop.” I skated around because I didn’t have a business license. I used the tattoo shop’s resale number for buying stuff — I didn’t have to pay sales tax, the tattoo shop owner and I split the money. It went under my name — that’s what all the invoices said.

  KRISHA AUGEROT: They were worried about being so huge. They were not prepared for that kind of success — especially Eddie. I remember the label wanting to release “Black” as the next single — the fourth or fifth single — and the band wouldn’t let them. It would just be an over-the-top crossover song — it was too much. So they made a choice not to do that — and that was a big deal with the label. Obviously, they want them to be a super group, and they were like, “If we could shut down becoming a super group at this point, we would. We want to maintain some reality here.” That was the end of that record.

  JEFF AMENT: I remember coming back to my apartment by the Seattle Center — my little neighborhood had a coffee shop and a grocery store. All of a sudden, it was totally different. I hadn’t been home for a few months, and I remember going to the coffee shop, sitting down and reading the paper, and thinking, “Why is everybody staring at me? What’s going on?” Suddenly, this little neighborhood that I lived in for five or six years was different. As it intensified, I just bailed on it. That’s when I started going back to Montana, and reconnected with friends there. From that point on, when we had time off, I either went back to Montana, or if we were going to Europe, I would go early to Greece or Paris. I bailed on Seattle for pretty much that whole time — I spent very little time there for those two or three years. It felt like you were on tour still, even though you were home. It felt like you were under a microscope wherever you went.

  We’d all heard about “sophomore slump.” We were feeling that, and a combination of all that stuff — it was a pressure cooker. Making [1993’s Vs.] really wasn’t that much fun, even though we were in an amazing spot — north of San Francisco, in the best studio we’d ever been in. There was a swimming pool in the back, and it was in the mountains. It was kind of [like] where I grew up, so I was super-comfortable with the location. And we were recording with Brendan O’Brien — it was the first time we’d ever been in the studio with a real producer who knew his shit. If you told him, “I want the bass tone to be like Motörhead,” or “I want the bass tone to be like Funkadelic,” he knew how to dial it in. There were all these amazing things happening, but I don’t think anybody was really having much fun.

  EDDIE VEDDER: It was somebody’s brilliant idea to not record in Seattle, and to [record] in a place in Northern California that had rooms, was out in the mountains, had a view. We had been on tour for like two years straight, and it was just the wrong thing to do. I think I was the only guy in a lengthy and serious relationship — probably the most important thing in my life — even though the pressure was making the music have to be the most important part of my life. And that was wrong. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. There were times there was pressure, and at other times, it was like, “Look, this many people like the first one, if it goes to half, we’re still going to be fine.”

  I had a hard time. I hadn’t finished all the lyrics by any means, and I remember thinking being in some kind of idyllic place was exactly not where I wanted … I wasn’t going to be getting inspiration from the trees. I had this Toyota truck, and had a shell in the back, so I had a sleeping bag. Just going to the park up the street in San Francisco, in skid row, and trying to get inspiration from the conversations of crack addicts walking by or something. I remember it being really difficult — it felt like we were still on tour, and now we’re making decisions which to me were more important than “Where’s the next show going to be?” It was, “Do we cut out the bridge or lengthen the chorus?” The first record we made not thinking anybody was going to hear it. Now, it’s a little different — “Millions of people heard that last thing. I wish we would have changed it
then and I’m not going to let that happen again.” And everyone’s probably feeling that way on different things. We weren’t allowing ourselves space.

  You have a successful record, and then they want more. They say, “We’re going to do this New Year’s Eve show, but then we’ve got to go in the studio, so you’ll have four days to write” [laughs]. I mean, some bands can do it — Robert Pollard is always writing, he never stops. Now, we’ll say, “I’m going to take that month, and I’m going to take a month with my family if we can afford to.” It’s just so different. At the time, we could have afforded to take some time too, but we weren’t really advised that way. Maybe people were right, but when I think back now, of them telling us, “You’ll be back on Monday, and you don’t have to leave until Friday — you’ll have four days to write the record.” Just stupid — not a good way to not have it be traumatic.

  JEFF AMENT: I don’t know, because he didn’t really talk to any of us about it. It was a combination between, “Hey, are you doing alright?” trying to talk, and not wanting to upset the apple cart. It was a hard time. It was a time where we were all still learning how to communicate with one another. It took a couple of more records before we figured that out.

  MARK ARM: Before we toured with either band, we figured Pearl Jam was most likely to play ball with the industry, and Nirvana hung onto its underground roots. I’d known Jeff since he was a hardcore kid with a fanzine, and he had done more in the hardcore underground than anyone in Nirvana. But after Green River broke up, he and Stone had no problem saying, “We want to make it in the music biz. We want to play music for the rest of our lives. We’re going to make it.” That was such a ridiculous notion to me. You might as well go around talking about how you’re going to win the lottery. We were slated to go on tour with Pearl Jam, but after our experience on that Nirvana tour, we almost pulled out, thinking “If Nirvana is this bad, imagine what the Pearl Jam operation is like?”

  We went on tour with them anyway because it was just a couple of dates. Our minds were blown. Everyone — from the techs to the band to their management — was super cool. They’ve got Eric Johnson — who’s a great guy — tour managing them. Their manager, Kelly Curtis, used to work with Heart, and I assumed that since he comes from a non-punk old-school rock background, he’d be difficult at best. But he was great to us. You hear nightmare stories of opening bands getting fucked over on arena tours — not getting to use the full pa. Pearl Jam’s sound and monitor people worked with us and totally helped us out. Everyone got along. The band had circled its wagons and was dealing with all of that crazy hype on their own terms. It was such a fuckin’ dramatic shift from what we’d witnessed a few weeks before with Nirvana.

  JEFF AMENT: We learned to do what we did together — Steve, Mark, I, and Stone. The reason that we played together in Green River was because we had similar ideals, and we were all really coming from that “do-it-yourself ” mentality. Really being involved with every aspect of the art. When we were in Green River, we played with a ton of bands — I remember playing with Black Flag, and Henry Rollins having his own dressing room. And I remember playing with Public Image, and those guys having a $200 bottle of Bordeaux and La-Z-Boy chairs — we saw their rider. We all knew at that time — we’re never going to do that. We’re never going to treat bands like shit, the way that those bands treated us like shit. We took that stuff to heart. On the surface, people might have thought we were some careerist rock band put together, but it really wasn’t that at all. It was all about playing music and being creative, and pushing ourselves to be better at what we did. We took it very seriously. And probably so seriously at some points that it didn’t work out with Mark and Steve. I didn’t want to work in a fucking restaurant for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to be forty years old and dragging my bitter self around to the bars, talking “Back in the day.” I wanted to be an artist — whether it was in a band, or working for an ad agency.

  CHAPTER 25

  “Things change, and things change quickly”: Soundgarden, Alice in Chains

  Both Soundgarden and Alice in Chains continued to build on their success, as Soundgarden appeared on some of rock’s biggest tours, and also penned their breakthrough album,Superunknown. Alice in Chains’ success grew even larger with their second full-length,Dirt. But behind the scenes, friction set in for both bands, which ultimately resulted in their undoing.

  WHITING TENNIS: I was in New York when [Soundgarden] were huge. They sold out Roseland in New York City — it was such a trip, to see them go from the Central. It would have been a different perspective to see them from Seattle, but seeing it from New York — New York embraced that. They loved it. During that show — this is the split between “the Mudhoney thing” and “the Chris Cornell thing” — Chris stage dived, “swam” all the way to the sound guy, and all the way back. And then Kim Thayil was doing this guitar solo and doing these slides. He would run across the stage and slide on his knees — he was trying to get across that he was making fun of the whole thing. I think a lot of the kids that were at that show didn’t get it. He was doing a Spinal Tap thing, and they were looking at it going, “Cool … rock!”

  ROSS HALFIN: I was one of the photographers shooting all the rock stuff in the ’90s. So they came in — it was during Badmotorfinger. I did a session with them at Epsom Downs — there’s a big racetrack. They came and were bored with everything. I got to know them from there, and I shot them quite a lot — they were very laid back actually. They were very nice, but were one of those bands that as soon as they started drinking … when people drink, everybody becomes a wanker. Phil Collen from Def Leppard put it like, “What level of a wanker you are.” And they would be a ten plus when they started drinking. Matt Cameron, I never saw him like that. Kim Thayil would always get very morose and wanting to be your best friend — crying and stuff. Chris would be alright to a point, and then he’d start doing things like kicking doors or tables. And Ben Shepherd would just go crazy. It would be like, “Fuck you, and fuck you, and fuck you!” to whoever he could. It got to a point where they ended up getting security in England. Ben was walking across Camden Town, there was a bunch of English guys outside a pub, and he’s like, “Fuck you, assholes.” And they came over and whacked him. You never really went out [with Soundgarden]. If Chris was with Susan Silver, you never saw him. But if he was on his own — it was mainly a drinking thing with them. It was not a drug thing, ever. Once you knew them, they were very accessible. They were fairly ordinary, really.

  RON HEATHMAN: I saw them on Lollapalooza in ’92, and they were great — the transformation was pretty amazing.

  MATT CAMERON: That was our payback for opening for all these weird heavy metal bands that we had nothing in common with. Once we got to the Lollapalooza tour, we were back with our friends.

  BEN SHEPHERD: That first [Lollapalooza tour] that we did, it was a really bizarre time of life for me. You could see the Pearl Jam thing happening — that Beatles-type phenomenon. It started on that tour — seeing the crowds and the gates, and everyone running in like motherfuckers. I would hang out with Jesus and Mary Chain — I was the only guy that would talk to them. They knew I was all dark cloud and scowling — just storm in the room, share my whiskey with them, or whatever. See — that’s the problem. I started drinking too much on that first Guns N’ Roses tour. I would get really depressed, and that was the only way out — or so it seemed. A lot of touring is “hurry up and wait.” You get there and then you wait. You’d see guys that had been out for a couple of years in a row — you hit this wall where it’s like, “Why go home? There is no home, there’s nothing! Let’s just keep going, we’ll play another show!”

  Chris Cornell gets down ’n’ dirty, Lollapalooza ’92

  ROSS HALFIN: Pearl Jam, with all their anti-everything, still very much liked the trappings of being rock stars. The bodyguards, the this, the that. Whereas Soundgarden were very accessible, Pearl Jam was “Keep everyone away.” In a sense, Nirvana was ac
cessible. Soundgarden always had women around them, which is probably because of Susan Silver working for them. And the women would always wipe their asses — they were always pampered. Everyone around them was fussing and panicking — when you actually got them, they were totally fine.

  BEN SHEPHERD: [1993] was a really good year. I tried to make a home life. My life was so fun, because we did the Hater record [Ben’s side-band with Matt Cameron, which issued 1993’s Hater], did Superunknown. We were all really connected.

  MATT CAMERON: Badmotorfinger had gone gold by the time we started [1994’s] Superunknown, so there was a little more anticipation from the record company to try and up the ante. Creatively, we were peaking. All pistons were firing — we were writing really cool music, and we were playing really good together. We wanted to be prepared, and rehearsed a lot. The label suggested that Michael Beinhorn produce it. We’d never used anyone but Terry or Jack — we were always very guarded and protective with our group. We felt we knew what was best for our music, so anyone who came outside of our group and told us, “Why don’t you try this or that,” we were like, “No way! What do you know?” So I think Beinhorn was the first guy to make suggestions to us. That helped a little bit, but ultimately, it was our call.

  SUSAN SILVER: All the managers that I’ve ever spoken to who have worked with [Michael Beinhorn] loved working with him. As did I. He was just great to deal with in terms of the business end of things. And every musician who ever worked with him, didn’t like the experience at all … and came through it usually with the best records of their careers. The process was not particularly enjoyable for those guys, but goddamn, they made a good record! [Laughs.]