Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [100]
I liked Terry Date, who did Louder Than Love, but he was a metal producer. The label wanted to sell us to heavy-metal stations. I thought we were different than that. Sure, I’d like to sell a million records and live in a castle and not have to work, but at the same time, I want to be able to say, “This is me. I’m not just part of a mass-marketing machine.” Maybe I’m being naive, but when we got to that point where we’re on the major label, you’re a product. You might as well be Ivory Snow or Clorox bleach. We were just another product for the heavy-metal market. I like metal and all. It’s way more complex than “Hiro didn’t like metal.”
It affected my friendships with everyone in the band a lot. It really hurt Kim that I would leave.
KIM THAYIL His reasons for leaving would probably be different from what we saw. The band and friends of Hiro’s perceived that he was very heavily involved in this relationship with his girlfriend at the time, who he later married and had a couple of kids with. He really hated touring. That kind of discomfort with being with a bunch of beer-drinking, guitar-wielding guys in a van when he’d rather be with his girlfriend was sometimes expressed in an agitated manner, which caused friction with the band.
I didn’t want him to quit. Chris didn’t, Matt didn’t. He had been threatening it enough: “I want to quit. I want to go home.” Eventually, Chris said, “Fine. You keep voicing your dissatisfaction. I’m tired of hearing it. Just leave.” But Chris didn’t want him to leave at all. Chris just wanted him to stop complaining. We didn’t take what Hiro was saying too seriously. Hiro liked to bitch. But Chris calling him on it forced his hand. I think everyone was bummed out, but I might’ve been the most bummed out, because I moved out to Seattle with the guy.
DANIEL HOUSE Ben was definitely the resident alcoholic in Skin Yard, and that was a point of contention between he and I. Maybe for me, that tied back to the fact that my father had been an alcoholic, so I had limited capacity for that sort of thing. On any tour that we ever went on, the first order of business was stop by 7-Eleven and get a six-pack or a half case of beer. So within the first half hour of any trip, Ben was drinking. Initially we’d have to stop every 30 minutes so he could go piss. Eventually we said, “If you’re going to drink, you need to arrange something different.” So he’d pee in in a Big Gulp cup, and every couple hours, he’d either throw it or dump it out the window.
One time we were in Chicago, after our last show on a tour, and we decided we were gonna make a straight-shot drive home. It was a 42-hour drive, and it was like 2 or 3 in the morning and I agreed to take the first shift of driving, and Ben had managed to get some meth. So I did a little line of crystal, and he did some crystal because he was gonna stay awake with me. And he was all excited because he got a half case of beer from the bar. It was like 35 degrees out or something and our heater didn’t work, so me and Ben are both wrapped in our sleeping bags as best we can.
Maybe an hour into the drive, Ben unrolls the window to throw out his cup and this blast of cold, cold air comes rushing into the van and everyone’s like, “Roll up the fuckin’ window, Ben!” He throws the cup out and the next bit is basically one of those slow-motion moments where I remember looking over and seeing the cup do like two 360s out of the window. The top comes off, the entire contents of this Big Gulp cup come rushing in through the window, hitting Ben squarely in his face, completely drenching his hair and the top quarter of his sleeping bag. And there was nothing he could do because it was freezing