Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [10]
LARRY REID We also did wrestling at U-Men shows. I was the Assassin, a Mexican wrestler with a mask and body leotard. I wrestled a local punk-rock guy named Slam Hate.
CHAD BLAKE (a.k.a. Slam Hate; concertgoer; posterer) Larry was a scrawny little guy, and I was a beefy kind of guy, so he was a little scared at times. I would get a little out of control, basically.
LARRY REID He’d smash a breakaway bottle over my head. And then he’d go off script and start jabbing me with it. Yeah, it cut me. Was I bleeding? Hell, yes!
TOM PRICE Some of the stuff John would do—you know, he’d show up wearing hip waders and a Speedo. Sometimes he’d wind up underneath the stage curled up in a ball just screaming. I think that was part of our appeal.
LARRY REID They were strapping, handsome young men, and there were lots of girls. As the result of all the girls coming, the boys would come. Later, I experienced that same phenomenon myself with Nirvana. Like, “Let’s go see Nirvana and look at the girls!”
NILS BERNSTEIN (Sub Pop Records publicist) The U-Men were all good-looking, in very different ways: Jim was young, very beautiful, perfect skin. Tom’s just a very handsome man, very cool. Charlie’s kinda mod, and girls love mods, especially then. And then John was just larger-than-life, kinda mysterious. It’s funny, because people probably look at a picture of the U-Men now and they’re like, “They were the hot guys at the time?” But no question, anybody who was around then is like, “God, of course those guys were.”
CHARLIE RYAN I felt that we were really too weird to attract any kind of women. But everybody has a different experience. Tom was quite the ladies’ man—that’s what I heard for a while. John was with the same gal, Valerie, through most of it. But girls liked John because he was out there, putting it out.
KERRI HARROP As a teenage girl, it was like, Oh, my God, how can I make out with John Bigley? He has got a swagger about him that is unparalleled. One thing about Bigley is, especially after enough beers, he almost has this kind of cigar-store-Indian demeanor about him, where he’ll just size up the situation and then weigh in with, “Uh-huh. Yep. Uh-huh.” He always seemed like such a mystery.
JIM TILLMAN John was a bit cryptic and a bit brooding. There was always a sense that he was tolerating talking to you, whether it was me or somebody else. But I remember a time when we were doing acid at Charlie’s apartment. And at one point, John and I were like, “We gotta get out of here.” And so we walked downstairs, and I remember this clear as day, it’s just bizarre—we’re in the hallway, walking toward the foyer of the apartment, and we’re just laughing hysterically. I don’t know what the hell we were talking about. I just said, “Times these days,” and he started laughing at that phrase, and he picked me up and gave me a huge bear hug. He’s a big guy. And we stumbled out on the street and started repeating, “Times these days! Times these days!” And we’re laughing. That particular phrase became lyrics in one of our songs.
So if he didn’t feel like he had to cultivate that sense of cool, I think John was a warm and caring person. My sense is that he’s a decent person who decided years ago that he had to have a big wall up. The reasoning for that I’d never be able to say, but I might hazard a guess that it’s because, I think, he was adopted.
JOHN BIGLEY I grew up knowing. I’m sure it did affect me, not knowing your dad or knowing you never will. You know, Do I look like him? I’m so used to it, I don’t really think about it too terribly much. That could have fueled my trip a little differently than someone else.
DANIEL HOUSE (Skin Yard/10 Minute Warning bassist; C/Z Records owner) There was just something about John Bigley, like you never knew what was gonna happen. Even if nothing happened, there was just that slight glimmer of insanity. Something I loved was that he went to the DMV to get