Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [102]
I found out while walking to a show with my then-girlfriend. I see Stuart Hallerman, Soundgarden’s sound guy, and he told me. It was pretty logical. Jason looked the part—he had long, curly hair—and he somehow knew some of their songs. And he could drink. I was 20 and couldn’t, legally.
“Yeah, that figures,” I go. “Watch, in six months they’ll come back and get me.” And almost six months to the day, they did. Why did I think he wouldn’t last? Because I knew Jason. I went through junior high and high school with him. He just didn’t seem to be cut out for touring and being part of a group. He’s more of an incompatible individual. Plus, when I said that, I was being a smart-ass. Because everyone always treated me like that. I was always the second choice.
JASON EVERMAN All those guys were about five years older than me, which when you’re 19 and they’re 25 is a big difference. So I wasn’t hanging out with them socially then. I kind of had ’em on a pedestal, as well, because they were my favorite Seattle band. There was definitely a little bit of a feeling of being an outsider.
The energy of the band? God, how do I put this? The band was being managed by Chris’s girlfriend or wife. Nice woman. So there’s Chris’s gig, and the rest of the band’s. There was definitely a two-tier system going. In retrospect, I understand it. Chris, he was the star. For me, there was a sense of inequity.
BEN SHEPHERD Kurt and Krist had asked me to try out. Chad never told them I even played guitar. That’s why Kurt was like, “Man, we would’ve never messed around with Jason had we known you played guitar!” So I went on an American tour with them, but I never played with them, because they only performed Bleach and I’d only rehearsed the songs that were going to be on Nevermind. Why? Because that’s what they wanted to practice.
Was it frustrating? Of course. I like playing music. But it was cool with me to be able to watch my friends knock people over. I was helping them load in and out, trying to sell shirts for them. I always thought they should be a three-piece anyway.
TAD DOYLE When we were touring with Nirvana in Europe in ’89, we had a 48-day schedule, of which we played 45 days. We had three days off, and they were travel days. It was during the winter, and I wasn’t the only one that was having problems with barfing and other gastrointestinal difficulties. It was probably a combination of dehydration, too much smoking, drinking, poor health, and bad water.
Kurt Cobain would hold a bucket or a garbage can for me to vomit in. We’d rate it, by chunk size and what the velocity was, what the color was, what the consistency was. “Oh, that was a good one.” He laughed a lot; he loved it. When your insides are just wrenching, it takes a lot out of you. But I was laughing my ass off, too, in between blowing chunks.
CRAIG MONTGOMERY There were nine of us packed in this small van, so we’re sitting shoulder to shoulder, all cramped on these long drives. It was the band members and me and Edwin Heath, who was our tour manager from the Dutch agency Paperclip.
The main thing about that tour was just laughing. It was always, “What could we do that would be funny?” Like somehow they got hold of some Arnold Schwarzenegger exercise video, and Kurt Cobain made a cassette tape of Arnold Schwarzenegger saying things like “Sexy, slim waist” over and over. During some of the shows, my instructions were that whenever there was a gap between songs, I would bring this cassette in, so between Nirvana songs you’d hear Arnold Schwarzenegger going, “Sexy, slim waist.”
KURT DANIELSON I grew up in a small town, and my whole thing was to get away from there, not just the physical limits of the town but the psychological limits, the mind-set of the place. And so I went to school and got my degree. And then I turn around and find myself in a band projecting this image of precisely what I tried to escape. So this white-trash aesthetic was very ironic for me. Later, as I studied