Grunge Is Dead

by Greg Prato

  MATT CAMERON: We’d done the Lollapalooza tour with Metallica around that time, and that was a total nightmare. We weren’t playing good — sounded bad, really bad shows. Kind of embarrassing.

  ROSS HALFIN: I was in Paris, and I saw them do a great show — this was the beginning of Down on the Upside. Afterwards, I remember being in a room with [Chris] drinking, having a good time. And Chris ended the night by throwing a lamp through a window. What’s the point of drinking if you can’t enjoy yourself with it? Maybe it’s the Irish in him — just wants to start fighting and being stupid. There’s no point in being like that if you can’t fight.

  KIM THAYIL: On tour, Chris did the best job of anyone in trying to communicate. He was grossly inadequate in that department in previous situations — but I think he really took a leadership role on our last tour. In terms of communicating, and trying to get the band on the same page. And I applaud him for that. It might have been too little, too late. I didn’t see the band as breaking up — I just saw myself and Ben as being unhappy. Matt was also unhappy. Probably why Chris took a leadership role in trying to direct communication and bring the band together — I think he saw that there was a lot of dissatisfaction. He was definitely ballsy and courageous in trying. But like I said — too little, too late.

  ROSS HALFIN: The bass player kept walking off stage halfway through the last few shows — you got an idea they weren’t getting on! You’d be in Australia, and they’d be holed up all day — Chris would just stay in his room, you never saw him. The Hordern Pavilion in Sydney — when the band was falling apart — Ben Shepherd got fed up, threw his bass down, and walked off. I remember they did five songs without him, and they sounded like the Doors. The last song of the set they played was a song called “We’re Better Without You,” which was just Cornell chanting it over the pa. This was the end of the road for them — everybody was just not enjoying each other.

  BEN SHEPHERD: That last show we played in Hawaii was the night that I found out it was our last show. Because our bass tech, I’d gotten him out of rehab, which is another harsh thing about our family that was going on. I got him over to Hawaii, because they were the last shows we were going to do [on the tour]. I thought we’d do “the Beatles thing” — take it easy for a while. Not fucking break up. So we played our last show, and he called a band meeting. He’s the only guy besides one of us that can call a band meeting, because he had seniority — he was on tours before I was in the band. He goes, “What’s this shit I hear — this is your last show and you’re breaking up?” Everyone didn’t rebut that, they just sat there. I was like, “What the fuck?” And of course, my equipment died that night. The opening band had already left, so there was no other equipment in the building. I got pissed and smashed my bass. I was totally out of my head — angry and pissed off. Drunk. And I was lividly sad, because that was the end of the tour after my honey had left me. And that was it, the last show of the tour that she should have been with me on. The last tour was the most creative and destructive music that I’d ever heard or been part of. The final magic.

  Second to last ever Soundgarden show, February 8, 1997, in Hawaii

  MATT CAMERON: I think we’d done about nine or ten months of touring for Down on the Upside. So we took a little break after. At the time, I was trying to get some songs going for the next one. One morning, I took my dog out for a walk, came back, and Chris’s truck was in my driveway. I was like, “Cool, Chris never comes to visit — we’ll play songs together, work on some stuff. What a great opportunity!” So I go into the house, and my girlfriend at the time, April — who’s now my wife — goes, “Chris is in the basement.” I go down there, and he just reeked of alcohol. I think he’d been up all night drinking, and he looked a little odd. We started talking. We never really hung out that much, so I was like, “OK, why is he here?” [Laughs.] And then he was like, “Well … I’m here because I’m leaving the band.”

  BEN SHEPHERD: Chris Cornell shows up — he’s got a bottle of, I think, Canadian Club. We’re all standing in my living room, and my friend goes, “Today’s the day the Beatles broke up.” And Chris goes, “Here man,” and hands me the bottle. I take a swig, we go down to my car, and he says, “I’m quitting. I’m breaking up the band. How do you feel about that?” I looked down at the ground, spit on the ground, and went, “Alright.” That’s how I joined the band — when they asked me “Do you want to join the band?” I looked down at the ground, spit, looked up, and said, “Fuck yeah! ” It was kind of fitting for me.

  KIM THAYIL: One of the first things I told [Chris] was I felt relieved. And he was really surprised — he said that was the same thing Matt said. I think Ben took it the hardest. It bummed me out, but I did not shed a tear. Ultimately, we were a band for thirteen years — that survives most relationships or most people’s employment periods.

  SUSAN SILVER: Chris kept it away from me — for reasons of protection, and what he thought would be legality. He consulted with someone else — got another lawyer, and was very thorough about making sure everybody would be safe and protected. Once he got all that in line, [he] let me know what he was intending to do, and then did it a couple of days later. Came home absolutely distraught. There wasn’t any overt hatred between them — it was that dysfunctional relationship, where they’re figuratively living together and not talking to each other. Which literally is the way Chris became as a husband. Here we are living together — not in this period, but later years — but he’s not talking. That became the seat of dysfunctionality. There are these guys that have a career that could continue to grow, they can make it on their own terms. They’re unhappy with things about each other, but nobody’s saying what they are, or talking to each other about what they are. So it decayed from within. And Chris just kept getting more depressed.

  JEFF GILBERT: I asked [Kim], “Twelve years, is that it?” And he said, “We did everything — we took Soundgarden as far as it could go.” He felt that Matt and Chris were getting frustrated, because they seemed trapped in “the Soundgarden sound,” and wanted to do other stuff. I thought they could have easily gone the Zeppelin route, like with Physical Graffiti, and just do everything.

  CATHY FAULKNER: They were stepping out on top. A lot of bands continue going on and on, and the public knows that they need a break farther ahead than the band knows themselves.

  MATT CAMERON: I was hoping that we’d go on for another twenty years. We’re all on good terms. It’s not like we’re bitter about it. I consider the time I had in Soundgarden as being incredibly fortunate. I feel really lucky to have been in that band.

  SUSAN SILVER: Once Soundgarden broke up, [Cornell] went off to start a solo career. Not having partners to … not necessarily to write with, but to bounce ideas off of, he started to waver in his confidence about what he was doing. The beauty of having the creative tension between band members had helped him solidify his belief in his own songs. When he didn’t have that, he started to become unconfident about his own creations. He started to become more depressed, and at that point, he started to self-medicate. Unbeknownst to me, he started using pills, and became addicted — which led to a deeper drug addiction, and ultimately, our parting.

  JEFF AMENT: I don’t think anyone in Seattle has heard from Chris in a long time. I do think he’s the best songwriter to come out of Seattle since Hendrix.

  ADAM KASPER: I’d gone on their last tour to record a lot of their live stuff — there’s a whole great album’s worth of live Soundgarden stuff that’s just been sitting. Cool covers like “Helter Skelter.” There’s a couple of [studio] songs that we did that haven’t come out that are killer. There’s one, “Christi,” from the last record — incredible. Real dirgey, slow — tuned to C. Long, maybe eight minutes long. The “Black Hole Sun” demo is super cool — things like that.

  JACK ENDINO: As far as Soundgarden, there are enough rarities and outtakes that they could do a very nice box set. They’ve just never gotten around to doing it. They did [1997’s] A Sid
es, and they were going to do a record called B Sides. They have a million B-sides, tons of stuff that never got released, demos. There’s enough for two or three CDs of just weird shit.

  BEN SHEPHERD: I’d feel like a total fucking idiot [if Soundgarden reunited], because I’ve dissed that stuff for so long. If that situation ever happened, that philosophy of everybody getting to hear Soundgarden again — that philosophy would have to be in on the decision. But right now, I would say no, because I’d be too damn embarrassed. Definitely I think we could rock out, but I would tell them to go find Hiro [laughs]. I think we could fall back right to where we were, actually.

  MATT CAMERON: I don’t know, I’d feel it out first. It would have to be the right thing.

  KIM THAYIL: I don’t see it. I’d imagine it could, it’s perfectly within the realm of possibilities — everyone’s still alive [laughs]. But I don’t see it happening.

  MATT CAMERON: Ultimately, we took our music real seriously, but we weren’t humorless fucks like most people think the whole grunge scene was. Kim and Chris are two of the funniest guys I’ve ever met in my life.

  ROSS HALFIN: Soundgarden were probably my favorite band of the ’90s — they were the most original out of all of them. I like them better than Nirvana. They wrote doomy love songs with a heavy edge. Soundgarden albums improve as they go, where, like, Metallica albums don’t. Kill ’Em All is probably their best album … then it goes all downhill from there.

  CHAPTER 34

  “There was definitely a big Seattle backlash”: Mudhoney, Tad, Screaming Trees, Melvins, Truly

  Many predicted that Mudhoney, Tad, the Screaming Trees, the Melvins, and Truly would all follow Nirvana and Pearl Jam up the ladder of commercial success. But several things prevented this from happening — and resulted in the dissolution of three of these bands.

  GRANT ALDEN: Mudhoney didn’t take the money early enough to have the shot at being as big as some of the other bands. Maybe what they did wasn’t as catchy, as poppy. That seemed to me like a band if you saw them, you were going to be knocked over. But … I’m the patron critic of lost causes.

  MARK ARM: After recording [1995’s] My Brother the Cow, we went down to the label to meet before the record came out. By this time, Lenny Waronker was gone — replaced by Danny Goldberg. Mr. Goldberg had been the head of Gold Mountain Management, which managed Nirvana, and his wife, Rosemary Carroll, was the lawyer who represented Courtney Love. We had a song on My Brother the Cow called “Into Yer Shtik,” which takes pointed jabs at out of control egos, their pathetic behavior, and the sycophants who make it all possible. The examples I used in the song come straight from people in the Nirvana camp, as well as Layne Staley. There’s a line in the song that goes, “Why don’t you blow your brains out too?” which a lot of people take as being specifically aimed at Courtney. That line wasn’t strictly aimed at her — the attack of the song is more scattershot, but she definitely falls into the group of people that it would fit. Anyway, Danny Goldberg was not very happy with that song, and refused to meet with us. It’s really weird to go to your record company and have the president refuse to meet you because of a song. Danny Goldberg didn’t stay there very long, he was there maybe a year — but the label had definitely shifted.

  STEVE TURNER: In ’95, we did My Brother the Cow — we hooked back up with Jack Endino. We made a record we liked a lot better — there’s some really great stuff on it. It was right after the “new punk” hit really big — Green Day and Off spring. So the kids were moving to that. I argue that nothing ever changed — we started out as a punk band and continued. We were touring the States, we did two European tours in ’95, and then everything changed there — we couldn’t really go over there. Even Germany would say, “Everything is dance clubs now.”

  MARK ARM: Reprise had hired David Kahne to be head of a&r. He had produced the breakthrough Sugar Ray album, which was a hit that year [1997’s Floored]. He wasn’t hired as head of a&r because he had any experience in a&r, but because he had produced a record by a band that had a hit. [Kahne] wanted to clean house. But the thing was, our contract was for two albums firm, so even if Warner Bros. wanted to drop us after the first record, they theoretically couldn’t. And the third record was an option. Reprise barely released [1998’s] Tomorrow Hit Today. They just put it out, but didn’t do any promotion whatsoever. That record feels virtually unreleased. We were on tour and people would come up to us saying they couldn’t find it. It’s on a major label for Christ’s sake, the whole point of being on a major label is that your record is supposed to get everywhere! Steve released the LP version of Tomorrow Hit Today on his label, Superelectro. Vinyl was at its lowest point in ’98 — he sold more copies of it than Reprise did.

  STEVE TURNER: That might have been what made Matt realize he was over it. He just wasn’t that involved in the process. Then we went on tour, and that tour was pretty shitty. We toured America, and it was smaller shows than we’d played in years. Which isn’t a bad thing, necessarily. I think Matt figured he could make more money being a carpenter, having a better time, than slogging it on the road. Mark had been really frustrated by [Matt’s disinterest] … he wouldn’t bring anything to practice.

  Mark Arm live at KEXP, 2006

  We thankfully got dropped from Warner — as we knew we would — right after that record. Then we took a break after touring and Matt saying he was done. We shut down camp and said, “We’re not going to say we’re done, we’re just not going to do anything.” The one thing we did — to make everyone think that we broke up — was to do a “best of ” [laughs]. Slowly started pondering the idea of doing Mudhoney again, when we had to do one song for a compilation. Wayne Kramer was doing a compilation of bands, and he ended up playing bass on a song.

  The idea at first was, “Why don’t we try to make a record — the three of us — and get some friends, like Guy [Maddison], to help on bass?” The other guy that we were thinking was Steve Dukich who was in Steel Wool — we got him to fill in when we went to Brazil. But he had no interest in being in a full-time band or a part-time band like us. Once that was over, we realized if we were going to do anything, we had to have an actual bass player. And the only other guy on the list was Guy — he was excited about doing it. Since then, he’s really helped keep our energy up and excitement. Having a fourth member actively into it again is great. We went back to Sub Pop for the “best of ” [2000’s March to Fuzz], and stayed there.

  MARK ARM: We went back [to England] in ’98 and played one show in London at the Garage. The kids were rabid. We didn’t go back again until 2002, and it was crazy. The people were really into it. We’ve gone back a couple of times, and it’s just been great. The shows are getting bigger each time we return. I wonder how long that’ll last?

  LILLY MILIC: I thought about doing a Mudhoney documentary. All of the guys are really nice — there’s no drama there! They all get along, they’re all sweet. We were laughing — after I watched the documentary Dig, I’m like, “I can’t do a documentary; there’s no drama!” I always feel like Mudhoney will be that band that kids will be going to and discovering. They’ll be like us and the Stooges, like, “Oh my God, here’s this band that makes your ears bleed!”

  EDDIE VEDDER: Chuck Klosterman said something that was really good, about how I always wished Mudhoney had more success. But if I’m saying that, at the same time, I’m saying I held success in complete disdain and accused it of ruining certain parts of life. So it’s right, I did wish that upon Mark! [Laughs.] Even just to see how they would have handled it. I think they weren’t really going to try, but they deserved it anyways. Their shows were as exciting as anybody’s — as a Fugazi show, just in a different way. I remember Dead Moon and Mudhoney on New Year’s Eve in a smaller venue — it was, like, earth-shattering. I’ll never forget it. You thought if nothing else, they should at least share in the record sales. At least then we had record sales.

  TAD DOYLE: We spent a good amount of time [on 1995’s Infrared R
iding Hood]. We had a blast doing it, and recorded it in this studio that was buried in the side of a hill, underneath this guy’s house in a residential neighborhood. It was bizarre to come in at noon and out at five in the morning, and never see sunlight for five months. As a three-piece, I was really excited about that. I was able to step out, and just be the guy that had the vision for the guitar alone. Just the things that I heard in my head, to actually put it out on tape the way I really wanted it.

  KURT DANIELSON: Finally, what we did was return to working with Jack. That’s a record that never got enough attention, because the label dropped the band right away. It didn’t get much promotion, not a lot of people knew it existed — not even our friends. To this day I don’t think it’s a well-known record. That marked the last record we did with Josh on drums — we played a little longer with a new drummer, Mike Mongrain. We did a session — some of that came out in single form, and a lot of those songs are yet to be released, and will be released as the last Tad album. Whenever that time comes.

  TAD DOYLE: There were a lot of personal things going on with everybody. We all seemed to be going in a different direction with our lives. [Breaking up] seemed like the right thing to do. The last thing I wanted to be was one of those bands that overstayed their welcome. We had a good jaunt, and it was fun as hell. We got to do a lot of things that a lot people dream of, so I’m very blessed. I got a lot a pictures, and a lot of memories. And a lot of good music.

  KURT DANIELSON: I hesitate to say [if Tad could reunite]. I wouldn’t rule it out — let’s put it that way. But there’s no plans. I would like to hope that it’s possible, but that’s just me.

  BEN REW: Tad was really like the “chunk chunk, chunk chunk” kind of thing. I saw tons of bands say, “Soundgarden’s a big influence, and Faith No More,” and it’s Tad riffs — straight ripped off.