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Overview
Grunge Is Dead weaves together the definitive story of the Seattle music scene through a series of interviews with the people who were there. Taking the form of an “oral” history, this books contains over 130 interviews, along with essential background information from acclaimed music writer Greg Prato.
The early ’90s grunge movement may have last only a few years, but it spawned some of the greatest rock music of all time: Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden. This book contains the first-ever interview in which Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder was willing to discuss the group’s history in great detail; Alice in Chains’ band members and Layne Staley’s mom on Staley’s drug addiction and death; insights into the Riot Grrrl movement and oft-overlooked but highly influential Seattle bands like Mother Love Bone/Andy Wood, the Melvins, Screaming Trees, and Mudhoney; and much more.
Grunge Is Dead digs deeper than the average grunge history, starting in the early '60s, and explaining the chain of events that gave way to the grunge movement. The end result is a book that includes a wealth of previously untold stories and insight for the longtime fan, as well as its renowned story for the newcomer. Grunge Is Dead collects the whole truth of grunge music in one comprehensive volume.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781554903474 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | ECW Press |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2009 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 478 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Greg Prato is a Long Island, New York-based writer, who regularly writes for All Music Guide, Billboard.com, and Classic Rock Magazine (among others).
Read an Excerpt
Grunge is Dead
The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music
By Greg Prato
ECW PRESS
Copyright © 2009 Greg PratoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-55490-347-4
CHAPTER 1
"It was mainly isolation": 1960s–1970s
Think that grunge began with Soundgarden, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam? Think again. Grunge's roots stretch back to the'60s and'70s, as evidenced by such garage-punk bands as the Sonics, the Wailers, the Telepaths, and the Lewd, among others.
KENT MORRILL: [The Wailers] started in '58. We played teen dances mainly — there were no such thing as clubs. High school dances, armories, a famous place here called the Spanish Castle. We were all from different schools; so all the schools followed us. When we played dances, we drew like 2,000 or 3,000 kids — we were very popular, especially in the Northwest. We were influential on a lot of groups — we have quotes from the Beatles, that they got some of their original ideas from [the Wailers], because our records were bootlegged over in England. "Tall Cool One" was a Top 30 hit. Twice.
BUCK ORMSBY: [ Jimi Hendrix] used to come to our dances at the Spanish Castle. He wanted to jam with us, but we didn't know him that well. He really liked our guitar player — our guitar player was an innovator. Jimi used to say to Rich [Dangel], "If your amp goes out, I've got mine in the car." But it never did happen. He was a big Wailers fan. One of his songs, "Spanish Castle Magic," was written about that place we played.
I joined the Wailers in '60, after they came back from their East Coast tour. Their label was Golden Crest Records in New York. Golden Crest wanted them to stay there and make records. They decided they were going to come back — their parents wanted them to finish high school. When they returned, they asked me if I wanted to join the band. They said Golden Crest was not happy with them, and they decided, "Well, maybe that's the end of the story." I said, "I don't think this is the end of the game. The Wailers could be a great, great band. If the label is not going to do anything with you anymore, let's start our own label." Three of the guys said, "No, we're too young and we don't know anything about it." We worked that weekend. I took money out of my pocket, put it on the table, and said, "Who's in?" And Kent Morrill and Rockin' Robin did the same thing.
KENT MORRILL: [Etiquette Records'] first release was "Louie Louie," which became number one all over the Northwest — actually two times. Then the Kingsmen picked up on it and got the big hit. We had groups like the Galaxies, the Bootmen — probably close to a dozen acts we produced. We had about ten albums that [the Wailers] did. Some of our best-known songs were "Tall Cool One," "Roadrunner," "Dirty Robber." ["Out of Our Tree"] was pretty close to being a national hit. We opened for the Stones and just about every group.
BUCK ORMSBY: We opened an office in Tacoma, Washington, on Sixth Avenue. We started getting tapes from all over the Northwest. This one lady called and said, "You've got to go hear [the Sonics]." So I went over to this garage. They played this real raucous rock 'n' roll song that Gerry Roslie wrote. Remember all the dance songs like "Do the Chicken"? I said, "That was the best thing I heard all day. I don't want to date anything here by having it a dance song that's going to come and go. Rewrite the lyrics, and I'll come back." I went back and it was the song "The Witch." I said, "That's it — we're going to record that."
So we took them into the studio, recorded that, but they didn't have any other songs — that was the only original song they had. So we put "Keep A-Knockin'" — the Little Richard song — on the other side. I took that record up to the radio stations, and nobody would play it, because it was so outrageous and different. I talked to Pat O'Day [a DJ at KJR], and he said, "This is a little outside of what we're doing here. Get some charts — see if somebody else will play this record." So we kept pounding this thing — it took us about six months to get the charts. We got it played on independent radio in the Northwest into Canada and down into Oregon. There was this one station in Seattle that was a small am station — I think it was KEW — they gave us a chart and some of the other cities in the Northwest. I took those charts in. Pat said, "I'll go see the group." He was knocked out, came back, played the record. In about a week, it went up to number two on the major station.
ART CHANTRY: The Sonics were astonishing — they were, like, the best rock band. There was always this jealousy between the Wailers and the Sonics, because the Wailers wanted to be big stars, and the Sonics were becoming big stars — even though they couldn't play their instruments. Now, the Wailers are a great band, but the bulk of their output was pretty drecky — they had a lot of bad records and bad songs. But the Sonics were much more consistently great. It was the difference between musicianship, the Wailers, and passion, the Sonics.
KENT MORRILL: Basically, it was geography. In those days, people thought the Northwest still had covered wagons and Indians. So if something was popular in the Northwest, they didn't look at it the same as if it were number one in New York or Hollywood. It was mainly isolation. But that isolation was the reason why we could come up with such an original sound.
BUCK ORMSBY: We released several singles from the Sonics and two albums — [1965's] Here Are the Sonics and [1966's] Sonics Boom. I was always in the studio; Kent was always in the studio. Sometimes background singing on the Sonics was the Wailers. We basically ruled the roost here for a while — until '69.
KENT MORRILL: They had a little dissension amongst [the Sonics]. The Parypa brothers didn't get along. Gerry is a very shy person, so he had all these reservations before he would perform — he wouldn't go on an airplane, he wouldn't go on a boat. He's still that way. In 1969, [the Wailers] decided that "if we want to make it, we have to move to Hollywood." We moved and got nowhere. We wound up having to commute to San Francisco to even work. The guys wanted to go back — I decided to stay in L.A. and do production work. We took a sabbatical for about ten years.
BUCK ORMSBY: The one thing that slowed us down was the British invasion. Everybody — even American bands — started talking with an English accent. The label was dormant for a while, and then I started it back up again. We started reunions with the Wailers in the '70s. Kent dropped out of the label, Rockin' Robin was killed in a car wreck in San Francisco.
ART CHANTRY: I'm a little older than a lot of the guys. The first concert I went to was Jimi Hendrix — I was of that generation that was too young to be a hippie and too old to be a punk. I was an outsider no matter where I stood.
BRAD SINSEL: It was basically tavern-based — club scene cover tunes. Hideous. By the time I got there, we found one band that was able to combine their original tunes with a lot of "butt rock" stuff — Mojo Hand. Some of us from my hometown of Yakima glommed onto that, and took that band over. But before we got there is where it gets confusing. Our lead guitarist, Rick Pierce, joined up with Ze Whiz Kidz. I remember in '73 hearing tales of him doing some festival with Aerosmith — with Ze Whiz Kidz at the bottom of the rung — in Eastern Washington. Next thing I know, we start our own band, Ze Fabulous Pickle Sisters — glam rock/Bowie stuff. We sucked. But we got absorbed with Ze Whiz Kidz — we opened for the New York Dolls at the Moore Theatre.
ART CHANTRY: Ze Whiz Kidz are extremely important. They were a musically glam gay theater troupe that lived in the Northwest, and most of the guys in the band were at one point or another part of the Cockettes, in San Francisco. A lot of really interesting people came out of Ze Whiz Kidz. For instance, Satz from the Lewd, and Tomata [DuPlenty], who was in the Screamers and the Tupperwares. Tomata is a fascinating character, because he was the one who pioneered Northwest punk. He was producing honest-to-God DIY punk posters in 1972 for Ze Whiz Kidz. And he put on the earliest punk shows in the Northwest.
RICK PIERCE: There was no mistaking who was in Ze Whiz Kidz or who were our hangers-on, because we didn't leave the house unless we were wearing five pounds of makeup and had our hair ratted a foot high. There was a club called Shelly's Leg, where the bands coming through town would go. That's where I got to meet Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. The Seattle crowds then had a provincial attitude — they liked anything if it was from somewhere other than Seattle. In Seattle, the opening was, "You're from here, so you can't be any good." We were starving — living on the glamour of it, and drinking for free at Shelly's Leg. Brad and I knew what we wanted to do — a more conventional type of rock band.
ART CHANTRY: I was in that crew of the mid '70s that cruised around in cars and listened to Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones — desperately channel surfing for anything. There wasn't even any fucking oldies stations in the Northwest back then.
MARK ARM: I'm from Kirkland, a suburb northeast of Seattle. Growing up in the '70s, I listened to Top 40 radio. By junior high, I discovered album-oriented fm radio. Rock 'n' roll was verboten in my house — my mother is a former opera singer who grew up in Hitler's Germany. I used to sneak into our Volkswagen Beetle because I could listen to the radio without turning on the ignition. I'd sit alone listening, hoping for "Green Eyed Lady" instead of "We've Only Just Begun." So when I heard fm radio for the first time, I was drawn to the harder, louder stuff — the Nuge, KISS, and Aerosmith.
JOHN BIGLEY: I was born here in Seattle. The music thing happened right off the bat. Backwards though — Beethoven, then the Black Sabbath single, "Iron Man." That was it.
BILL RIEFLIN: '75, I was fifteen years old — there was no music scene. I was in a band called the Telepaths, and as far as I know, we were really the first, so-called underground, punk-inspired group. Fairly nihilistic in outlook — inspired by the Stooges and the Velvets. When we discovered the Sonics, the world became even more exciting. A very interesting combination of people, mostly teenagers, although the rhythm guitar player was a thirty-five-year-old marketing professor, from the University of Washington — Homer Spence. We were the first band of that ethos that started putting on our shows — we weren't a bar band, we played a couple of covers, things like "I Wanna Be Your Dog." Mostly we wrote our own songs and made a lot of noise.
KURT BLOCH: I was born here. Started wanting to be in a band in high school, in the mid '70s. There's no textbook for starting a band — you listened to records and saw bands on TV. It seemed so un-doable — you get together with your friends in the basement, and it's like, "How do you do this? I know how to play some chords, but then when everybody plays together, it just doesn't sound right" [laughs].
DAVID KINCAID: [Heart] were the Seattle band, and they were huge. This is back when they were still a real rock 'n' roll band, before they turned into that "pop '80s cleavage band." They were really a great band, and [Ann Wilson] could sing her ass off.
RICK PIERCE: TKO got signed in '77 to MCA. We didn't release [an album] until '79 — our first tour was with the Kinks. Right after eight weeks of getting booed off stage, we started opening for Cheap Trick — their first U.S. tour off of [1979's] At Budokan. We were doing 20,000 seats a night — we went on to do the Japan Jam. But shortly after, MCA folds Infinity because Ron Alexenburg had cut a deal with the pope for a $6 million non-recoupable advance. It's when [Pope John Paul II] was touring the United States, and the logic was you look at [the pope] filling stadiums, and [the pope] is a singer. So side A of the LP is his speeches, and then you flip it over, and it's Polish folk songs. The thing tanked. Alexenburg got shit-canned.
ART CHANTRY: Essentially, you're an island and it has this "island mentality" — this isolated mentality. The people that didn't leave stewed and festered in their own juices. And that's why you saw this incredibly incestuous band scene — these people had been playing music and partying with each other for ten or fifteen years before anybody took notice. It was a highly charged and fascinating time to be here. Some of the most amazing shows, people, creative acts were done by these totally obscure people in the Northwest — just trying to live.
BILL RIEFLIN: It was very "do it yourself." If you wanted to put on a show, you had to find a hall, get a pa. God knows how any of it actually happened. But it did. In 1977, there was a guy named Roger Husbands, and he was the manager of the Enemy. Roger opened a club, initially in the Odd Fellows Building on Capitol Hill — the Bird. There were bands doing any number of things — pop tunes, maybe weirdly Beach Boys–inspired, hardcore punk, singer-songwritery guys, experimental guys, older guys, younger guys.
KURT BLOCH: There was this one store in Seattle that sold import records — Campus Music. There was definitely a "Campus Music scene" in the University District in Seattle. When we were fourteen or fifteen, me and my brother would take the bus down and spend our lunch money buying 45s. We really liked the hard bands — Blue Öyster Cult, UFO, the Scorpions, the first Montrose record [1973's Montrose]. We always thought, "Why can't they make records that are loud guitars — start to finish?"
CALVIN JOHNSON: I'm from Olympia, Washington. Here it was 1977, and you're reading about the Stooges. But you couldn't get their records — they were out of print. If you were lucky, you'd find one at the cutout bins. If bands went on tour, they often didn't bother going to Seattle.
MARK ARM: I went to this private high school, Bellevue Christian. My friends and I were really into music, and we found this cool record store in Bellevue — Rubato Records. It was the only used record store on the east side. The people who worked there were cool and would point us in different directions. After graduating high school, I went to college in a small town in Oregon. Remarkably, the small record store in McMinnville had one copy of each of the first two Stooges records on Canadian import.
KEVIN WOOD: We were totally into Elton John and KISS — the theatrical aspect. Andy [Kevin's youngest brother] was doing his own thing, I was doing my own thing, and Brian [Kevin's middle brother] was doing his own thing. Andy and I were into the same stuff — anything hard-edged. We saw KISS in '77. I was fifteen, which would have made him eleven. We found some seats as close as we could get, but at this time, they were pretty far back. The show started — Cheap Trick came on and just rocked. After that set, we turned to each other — he said, "That's what I want to do." And I said, "Me too."
CALVIN JOHNSON: Punk rock came along, and I was like, "We're going to have that teenage revolution we were waiting for." But I always say, "Punk rock is the teenage revolution that never happened."
KURDT VANDERHOOF: Grew up in Aberdeen, Washington. In the '70s, it was great — it was a logging town. Lots of money — people worked and partied really hard. Then in the early '80s, the timber industry took a dump.
TIM HAYES: I really don't like talking about Aberdeen. If you had a funny haircut — even if you wore a pair of Converse All Stars or Vans — they'd sit there like, "What's the deal with this?" Or if you had a little color in your hair — "Faggot!" You'd end up getting in fights, people talking a lot of shit behind you, the cops would pull you over. I ended up working at Wishkah Mall with a huge ass pompadour, and people would walk by and "see the freak."
CHARLES PETERSON: I grew up in Bothell, Washington. Took about an hour by bus to get to downtown Seattle. At about sixteen, I discovered punk rock. I went to the nearest mall, which would have been Northgate Mall — to the Budget Tapes and Records. I bought the first Clash album [1977's The Clash] based on the cover — and songs like "White Riot" and "I'm So Bored with the U.S.A." I went home, put that on, and sold all my hard rock records.
CALVIN JOHNSON: I went to Europe with my German class in '77, and I was like, "I'm going to buy some of these punk rock records" — I couldn't find them anywhere in Olympia. This is July of '77 — right when the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen" is number one, and punk rock is really happening. When I got back from Europe a few months later, I got involved with the local radio station, KAOS. That's when this whole world of music opened up to me.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Grunge is Dead by Greg Prato. Copyright © 2009 Greg Prato. Excerpted by permission of ECW PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments,Foreword,
1960s–1970s,
CHAPTER 1 — "It was mainly isolation": 1960s–1970s,
CHAPTER 2 — "Seattle was the closest city": Transplants,
Early–Mid '80s,
CHAPTER 3 — "It was so easy to freak people out in those days": Early–Mid '80s,
CHAPTER 4 — "'79 through '84 was hopping": Power Pop, New Wave, Heavy Metal,
CHAPTER 5 — "A floodgate of creativity in the Northwest": Blackouts, Fastbacks, U-Men Mr. Epp and the Calculations, Duff McKagan,
CHAPTER 6 — "Church was really in session": Venues, The Rocket, Record Stores, Radio,
CHAPTER 7 — "The punk rock David Lee Roth": Malfunkshun,
CHAPTER 8 — "Godzilla knocking over buildings": The Shemps, Soundgarden,
CHAPTER 9 — "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should": The Melvins, Green River, Screaming Trees,
CHAPTER 10 — "The next logical step is to start a label": K Records, Sub Pop Records, C/Z Records,
Mid–Late '80s,
CHAPTER 11 — "If we can just keep it a secret": Mid–Late '80s,
CHAPTER 12 — "How do three guys sound like nine?": Nirvana,
CHAPTER 13 — "The sloppiness was essential": The Thrown Ups, Mudhoney,
CHAPTER 14 — "GET OUT OF THE WAY!": The Melvins, Screaming Trees, Skin Yard, Tad,
CHAPTER 15 — "Dark, black, and blue": Soundgarden, Alice in Chains,
CHAPTER 16 — "He's going to be one of the biggest rock stars in the world — no question": Mother Love Bone and Andy Wood's Death,
1990–1991,
CHAPTER 17 — "OK, this thing is going to happen": 1990–1991,
CHAPTER 18 — "If you can sell 40,000, they'll let you make another one": Pearl Jam, Temple of the Dog,
CHAPTER 19 — "A 'testosterone period'": Alice in Chains, Soundgarden,
CHAPTER 20 — "You guys will be bigger than Hüsker Dü": Nirvana and Nevermind,
CHAPTER 21 — "That they didn't reach a broader audience baffles me": Mudhoney, Tad, Screaming Trees, Truly, Melvins, Jesse Bernstein,
CHAPTER 22 — "Rebelling against the predominant macho grunge scene at the time": Riot Grrrl,
1992–1993,
CHAPTER 23 — "Be careful what you wish for, you might get it": 1992–1993,
CHAPTER 24 — "It was on the radio, people were talking about them, people had shirts on and their posters up": Pearl Jam,
CHAPTER 25 — "Things change, and things change quickly": Soundgarden, Alice in Chains,
CHAPTER 26 — "We might as well start talking to majors": Mudhoney, Tad, Skin Yard, Screaming Trees, Melvins, Brad,
CHAPTER 27 — "If you were there, you were part of it": Riot Grrrl,
CHAPTER 28 — "Everything is not OK anymore": Nirvana,
1994 and Beyond,
CHAPTER 29 — "It felt like the world had gone seriously wrong": Kurt Cobain's Death and 1994,
CHAPTER 30 — "Where I go, you go": Kurt Remembered,
CHAPTER 31 — "The demise of the entire scene": Drugs,
CHAPTER 32 — "Preparing for the worst": Alice in Chains and Layne Staley's Death,
CHAPTER 33 — "The final magic": Soundgarden's Breakup,
CHAPTER 34 — "There was definitely a big Seattle backlash": Mudhoney, Tad, Screaming Trees, Melvins, Truly,
CHAPTER 35 — "Standing up for something they believed in": Pearl Jam,
CHAPTER 36 — "Finally — new growth": Post-Grunge,
CHAPTER 37 — "Maybe I'm a geezer": How Will Grunge Be Remembered?,
Cast of Characters,