Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [120]
So after we parted ways with Jason, Chris said, “You know, I keep thinking about Ben. He’s from Bainbridge, like Andy. They knew each other. There’s nobody like Ben.” Ben’s not a regular guy; he’s an intense, creative person. I thought Chris’s reasons were fantastic.
JASON EVERMAN Oh, I was destroyed. I stayed in my room for three days, brooding. It was like being dumped by this woman that you’re totally in love with. It was probably one of the defining experiences of my life, for sure. It put me into a definite sink-or-swim situation, existentially. Was I going to stay in Seattle and start my revenge band, or was I going to travel? The decision I came to was to move to New York. I joined some other bands.
BEN SHEPHERD The phone rings, and it’s Kim: “Hey, Ben, we’re back in town from tour. You want to hang out and get a beer or something?” By then I’d turned 21. We went and hung out, and the next day we all went over Chris and Susan’s house to meet Chris’s new Pomeranian. And that’s when they asked me to join.
I spat on the ground and said, “Fuck, yeah!”
KIM THAYIL The fit with Ben was immediately a little bit better. He was certainly more outgoing and willing to contribute creatively. Now, I’m not going to say that Ben healed the wound that was left when Hiro left the band. But the band regained some of the spirit that it had in the good days of Hiro, as well as transformed the band into what it became on Badmotorfinger.
BEN SHEPHERD The first tour I did with them was in Europe. Played Roskilde Festival as my first show. I remember going on stage to the chants of “Hiro! Hiro!” I don’t think they knew that Hiro left the band. It’s probably the only performance where I ever stood still. When I joined Soundgarden, I was thinking, I gotta do this exactly like Hiro. I gotta do this exactly right. Had no fun the first show. That’s bullshit. So I decided to change that and the next day, go for it.
JEFF GILBERT Ben is a punk rocker. When he played his bass, he looked like he was trying to murder it. He has a very aggressive spirit, which is what I think Soundgarden really needed after Jason Everman.
JANET BILLIG I understood why Jason couldn’t be in Nirvana. He just didn’t quite fit in. He really fit in way more with Soundgarden. I was surprised that didn’t work out. I got him a plane ticket to come out to stay at my place in New York so he could recover from the madness of it. He was a buddy. I had a lot of love for Jason Everman. He’s an intense dude. He was a guy who was like, “I want to know what it feels like to kill people,” and he went and joined the Army and has been in Iraq.
JASON EVERMAN After I quit the band Mindfunk in ’93, I did two periods of service, starting in 1994. Joining the military was one of the most punk-rock things I’ve ever done, this “Fuck everyone, this is what I’m going to do” type of ethos. Becoming a warrior is huge.
Did I join the Army to find out “what it feels like to kill people”? No. There’s nothing cool about being in a gunfight. This notion that it’s some kind of sociopathic desire to kill people is absurd. I don’t know where that came from. People project whatever they want to project, you know? I have no problem with the notion of destroying the enemy, but … no. I would like to think I’m a gentle soul, and for the most part, I am.
JENNIE BODDY (Sub Pop Records publicist) Steve Turner was always going back to college, supposedly. Mudhoney was really on the road to breakup, because Steve was so nervous going back to college, and at a certain point, even as their publicist, sometimes I didn’t know what was true and not true. Was he going back to college, or did they just keep saying that because it became so funny?
STEVE TURNER I went back to school a lot. (Laughs.) I didn’t see a straight line through college, but I told my parents I was hoping to be done with college when I was 30. When I