From The City’s Early Proto-Grunge And Punk Bands To The Groups Like Mummy Love Bone And Green River Which Came Directly Before The Flannel-Clad Explosion, Yarm Traces How And Why The Grunge Phenomenon Came To Be.

Saturday, February 4th, 2012 at 12:21 am

The book ‘Everybody Loves Our City : An Oral History of Grunge’ could not come at a rather more apropos time, what with both Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ and the band Pearl Jam turning 20 years in age. But the big 592-page tome, which was written by previous Blender mag senior editor Mark Yarm, is far more than merely a reworking of those two acts : It is a Seattle music-history lesson. From the city’s early proto-grunge and punk bands to the groups such as Mother Love Bone and Green River which came directly before the flannel-clad explosion, Yarm traces how and why the grunge phenomenon came to be.

Of course, ‘Everybody Loves Our Town’ covers rock titans Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Nirvana in engaging, exhaustive detail and, in several cases, somehow manages to bare things about the bands that haven’t surfaced before. But what’s most fascinating about the book is how inclusive it is. Through interviews with all of the scene’s major players (and masses of less well known musicians, business associates and scenesters, too), readers get a total sense of what it was truly like in Seattle in the ’80s and ’90s. Yarm lately called Final Classic Rock from his Brooklyn home to talk about the book.

We have heard many of the stories included in ‘Everybody Loves Our Town’ before, but when they were told in the book, there had been always a tiny bit of something new in every one of them. In all of the interviews that you conducted, who or what stunned you the most?

There were some real surprises there, I believe particularly when I came to Nirvana. (I was shocked) there was anything new to expose. There are such a lot of books written about Nirvana only a few them are good, but there were a lot and particularly now with the (twentieth) anniversary (of ‘Nevermind’), there has been so much ink spilled on them. But (there were) small moments, like (Seattle record label Sub Pop co-founde) Bruce Pavitt telling me about Kurt Cobain backstage at Nirvana’s first ‘Saturday Night Live’ (appearance, and how) Cobain was musing about opening a petting zoo. Entertaining tiny yarns like that, that somehow haven’t ever been spoken of before.

We have all heard, clearly, that before his ultimately successful suicide attempt (Cobain had) tried to kill himself in Rome and then (Courtney Love) asserted that he had attempted to kill himself and left a note in December of the previous year, which hasn’t been written about in other Nirvana books. And Pearl Jam’s trip to the White House (the day following Cobain’s body was found) I had heard parts of that story, nonetheless it always intrigued me. Like, what did Eddie Vedder and President Clinton discuss on that day? It turns out that according to Kelly Curtis, who is Pearl Jam’s boss, Bill Clinton asked Eddie Vedder if he should address the nation to speak about Kurt’s suicide. Vedder reputedly was certain that (the gesture) would just inspire copycats, giving it such a high-profile. President Clinton never did actually address the nation re that. I don’t know if he was the person that swayed Clinton not to do it completely or not, but he might have altered the course of politics, as far as grunge goes.

It’s peculiar hearing those things now. Grunge had so much mythology around it, even if it was going down. So much about the genre was blown up and hyped, and you never knew what was true or not. Reading the book really deconstructed a large amount of those fables for me, though not in a bad way ; it made everything more real. The characters appeared a lot more human.

Well, that has been the problem with lots of the previous grunge books, maybe some of the ones on Nirvana particularly. There (might have been articles), way back in the start, in which someone stated something that was not necessarily true, and it just becomes fact because it was cited in a magazine or book or an interview somewhere. Because I was going back and not depending on other printed sources, I was asking folks to tell me these stories and frequently they would differ from the accepted state of play on the initial years of Nirvana, or any other band. Actually, there had been the deconstructing of these myths but also, you never know how truthful folk are being (in an oral history particularly). There were some (myths) that (were) created as well (in this book), so it’s ripping them down and building them at the same time.

I was very pleased to see the inclusion of Heart in the book, because I think Ann and Nancy Wilson are two of the more underrated musicians to ever come from Pacific Northwest. After talking to them and doing research, what role did you see Heart playing in Seattle’s overall music history?

I talked to Nancy, who was actually pretty integral in some ways. First of all, she and Ann were kind of elder stateswomen and very influential on bands, Alice in Chains in particular, who were probably a little bit more open to a classic-rock-style band. But (until recently) Nancy was married to Cameron Crowe, and she was kind of the connection that brought him to Seattle and introduced him to some of these musicians. So there was a very strong link. And she’s very grateful: There’s a quote of hers in the book, that she’s just glad these bands didn’t see Heart as dinosaurs, and she embraced this music. In the ’80s, it was the hairspray era (and) I think all of the singles the record company wanted them to release, they wanted them to only do songs written by other people. They felt very disenfranchised by the system then. And then this younger generation of Seattle bands came up and kind of upended that. [Heart] were really important and obviously close with a lot of these bands. I think Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam are two in particular.

One thing that struck me in the book is that the bands had a really love / hate relationship with classic rock.

Well, apparently Black Sabbath was a key influence. In the book, I trace how the Melvins learned this drop-D (guitar tuning) trick from a friend who had learned it from Black Sabbath and then passed it on to Kim Thayil of Soundgarden, who passes it on to Jerry Cantrell. But for all intents and purposes, Pearl Jam is a very classic-rock-sounding band. Mike McCready was in a Stevie Ray Vaughan-esque band right before he was in Pearl Jam, and obviously, Eddie Vedder is a big fan of the Who. So they wore their classic rock influences on their sleeve. I guess there’s the infamous Kurt Cobain quote about wanting to make a tie-dye T-shirt out of the blood of Jerry Garcia and the urine of Phil Collins or something like that, so there’s this kind of disrespect for certain classic rockers, certainly.

But a lot of the grunge guys, even though a lot of them were punk rockers, they did have this respect for Creedence (Clearwater Revival), Black Sabbath (and) Neil Young, of course, the godfather of grunge. I guess maybe certain classic rock bands were cool and certain were contemptible in some of these guys’ minds. But I guess now they’re all classic rock. I guess that’s an inevitable rite of passage for any band: Eventually, you stick around long enough [and you become classic rock]. I don’t know what the margin is, but I guess 20 years definitely makes you classic rock.

Look at the Foo Fighters — they’ve been around 15, 16 years, they’re almost there. Sure, they’re still on modern rock radio stations, but they’re creeping in there. Give them another 5 years.

At some particular point, the lines blur and I do not know when a classic radio station decides [a group is classic rock]. It’d be interesting to hear the thinking behind that. When does Nirvana become classic rock? Is it when it’s part of an accepted canon or when the folks that are listening to it turn a certain age? I do not know. At some point, you turn on classic rock radio and there’s Soundgarden, so it happens.

When everything was happening, I know I actually never would have anticipated that these bands would become the classic rock guard. Now, looking back, it makes total sense, but when it was happening, it felt so colourful and contemporary.

I think all the divides of 20 years ago, a lot of them have softened. Back then, there had been obviously this contention between Nirvana and Pearl Jam, which appears kind of mad in hindsight. At the time for most folks, either you liked Nirvana, who were seen as more punk and more “authentic,” and then you had Pearl Jam, who were supposedly the company sellouts. And perception of the bands has changed over a period and glaringly Pearl Jam have persevered and are seen as a very important band, one that played by their own rules and didn’t cave in. (They) fought Ticketmaster and did their band their way on a scale that made them cosy [and] pulled back from press and things like that. Definitely, the perceptions of the time were sort of skewed in the thick of it. Now, it doesn’t seem like a big deal to like both Pearl Jam and Nirvana. You don’t have to choose a side anymore, writes tagza.com.

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