Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [11]
JOHN BIGLEY I had a lot of personal issues that would have probably fueled some of my attitudes and behaviors. No deep, dark secrets—just big, corny, Reagan era, state-of-the-world, teen angst, existential stuff. The band was a big deal. It wasn’t a yahoo-let’s-have-fun-TGIF-rock-and-roll experience for me. I was really uncomfortable in front of people, so it was move around or break shit or lash out. It was very intense.
Every show, that was the real me.
BUZZ OSBORNE (a.k.a. King Buzzo; Melvins singer/guitarist) I never hipped my parents that much to what I was doing musically. But that’s okay—they had their own shit going on. They dealt with being parents with the tools that their parents had given them, which was none. My father was born in a West Virginia hovel with no power or running water, and his father was a coal miner. My grandfather left home when he was 12 years old because his father couldn’t feed him anymore. He was a hobo. My mom was 15 years old when she had me. My parents never would have fucking gotten married if it wasn’t for that.
My parents did exceptionally well with what they had, which was nothing, and their parents had nothing, they came from nowhere. That’s the way that lots of families are: death and destruction and every bad thing that you can imagine.
I have a distrust of humanity. I lost my faith in all those kinds of things a long time ago, probably as a teenager. But that’s okay. I understand I’m not normal. I’m just a weirdo walking around like Bozo the Clown.
MATT LUKIN (Melvins/Mudhoney bassist) I was born in Aberdeen, but I grew up in Montesano. It was pretty redneckish and just simpleminded.
BUZZ OSBORNE I was born in a town called Morton, Washington, which is approximately an hour and a half from Aberdeen and Montesano. Middle of nowhere. My parents were poor people, lower-middle-class at best. My dad worked in the timber industry.
When I was about 12, we moved to Montesano. Around then, I started buying Creem magazine. This was about ’76, ’77. I got interested in the Sex Pistols solely because of the way they looked in those magazines. At the same time, I was getting into David Bowie.
MIKE DILLARD (Melvins drummer) I was a sophomore when I met Buzz. He was a year ahead of me in school. I can distinctly remember being in his bedroom. He had this big console stereo system that his mom and dad had given him, and he put the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks on the turntable. At that time, he’d already completely worn the record out—it was all scratched and staticky and popping. I was going, “Oh, my God, this is the greatest thing I’ve ever heard!”
MATT LUKIN I met Buzz in high school. He was just this freaky guy that played guitar. He was different from everybody else as far as his attitude—and his hair. He had a big Afro. Another good friend of mine that I knew since first or third grade, this guy Mike Dillard, just happened to be friends with Buzz, and they’d get together and jam. Mike had a drum set, Buzz had a guitar, and then Dillard’s cousin had a bass. They tried to recruit me as a second guitar player ’cause I had a Les Paul and a guitar amp. But Dillard’s cousin didn’t show up very often, so they let me play bass.
BUZZ OSBORNE Matt Lukin had a guitar at school, which was an oddity. He was from certainly more of the jock element. And more established. I was an outsider, because I moved there when I was in seventh grade. You gotta understand, you’re going to school with kids whose parents went to school together, who dated each other, who give each other jobs. You can just forget it, you know? I might as well have been from fucking Mars.
MIKE DILLARD Buzz and I both worked at the Thriftway. We bagged groceries and brought ’em out to the cars for the old ladies. We’d always close up the store at night, and we’d have to take these big boxes of garbage