Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [101]
And so everybody is howling with laughter because after dealing with an entire fucking tour or two of him peeing in cups and the inconvenience of it all, and the cup getting spilled every so often, it just felt like he finally got his due. Karma’s a bitch, motherfucker.
JACK ENDINO Daniel will never let that story go. I remember it because Ben was reading one of my paperbacks at the time. My paperback had this yellow stain on it afterwards. I was like, “Uh, thanks.”
DANIEL HOUSE Then there was the Tour from Hell. It was just one of those tours that I can’t imagine things possibly being worse. Our then-drummer, Scott McCullum … how to be polite about this? He was beyond difficult that tour. He was not playing very well, he was constantly missing cues and coming in at the wrong places. The main reason was he was drinking excessively.
SCOTT MCCULLUM Oh, yeah, Ben and I were just fucking blotto on that tour all the time. I don’t remember it being that out of control, not like the way it was later on in Gruntruck—we used to call ourselves Drunktruck. No, I don’t think it affected my playing. I play rather well when I’m drunk.
DANIEL HOUSE Scott and I had one physical altercation, but it was actually on another tour. As idiotic as it seems now, looking back, it was over a girl. There was this woman that I had hooked up with kind of on and off over the course of probably a couple years. And when I’d been with her, it had been before I was with my son’s mother, and I have to admit, also after I was with my son’s mother. And I had just gotten into a place where I was like, I can’t keep doing this. This is wrong.
So I was in San Francisco and this woman wanted to get together, and I just said, “I can’t.” And rather than just accept that, she started flirting really heavily with Scott right in front of me. I confronted them both and he totally fuckin’ blew up. He basically had me pinned against the wall, with his fist cocked back, on the verge of punching me in the face.
SCOTT MCCULLUM I didn’t really know the history between Daniel and this woman other than that they knew each other. So I get there, and we end up hooking up, so to speak—you know, hanging out and stuff. I can’t remember what words I exchanged with Daniel, but I finally got so angry I pushed him into the street, and he almost got hit by a car. Not a smart move, but it was just in the moment.
JACK ENDINO Scott lasted for two years. We did have one more album in the can at the time—it’s a very angry record, Fist Sized Chunks. Bruise Records put it out, and for about 14 months there were no Skin Yard shows.
SCOTT MCCULLUM The tour definitely took its toll. But ultimately, it was the songwriting. It got to the point where I saw a different vision. I think Ben did, too. And this is when we started to collaborate on songs. Ben and I were staying down in Arizona, and we had written that song “Paint.” We meant it to be a Skin Yard song, but we thought, They’re going to fucking destroy this thing. It’s not going to come out how we want it. And that’s how Gruntruck started to form.
JACK ENDINO During the 14 months when Skin Yard weren’t a band, I tried out for Soundgarden. I just pestered them about it: “Come on. I can play bass.” I went over to jam with ’em one night. It was pleasant, but it was like, “Thanks, but no thanks.” I come to find out later that Daniel had tried out, too. (Laughs.)
BEN SHEPHERD What’s funny is that the Soundgarden guys asked me to try out the day after Nirvana had asked me. “Well, Nirvana asked me to try out before you did, so I have to try out for them first.”
I had no way of learning Soundgarden’s songs, really. I had a cassette, but I didn’t have anywhere to play music. I even had to borrow a bass to play; I’d never really played bass before. We didn’t talk at the tryout. I just walked up and turned the amp up and we jammed for two hours instead of learning the songs from Louder Than Love, which we should’ve been doing. I came back again,