Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [155]
JONATHAN PLUM (producer/engineer; now London Bridge Studio co-owner) I started working at London Bridge after Ten came out. Pearl Jam came back a few times—they came back to do some soundtrack work on Singles and to rerecord “Even Flow” for the video.
I was 19 or 20 and nervous and excited. Mike McCready was a very friendly guy and he was able to say, “Hey, dude, what’s going on?” and be normal. I had conversations with Eddie Vedder and thought he was very weird and complicated. We’d sit and have breakfast together, and I’d ask how his day was going and his answers sounded like he was getting interviewed for a magazine. He was very careful about what he was saying, and he was always making these big, blanket political statements. Where I just was like, “Hey, man, how are the waffles?”
I sensed that he was not comfortable being himself. It’s like he needed to project something, rather than just relax and have a normal conversation. I remember Jeff and Stone talking about wanting to do certain PR things and Eddie being kind of pissed off and uncomfortable because he was pushing for more of this punk, Fugazi approach. It seemed like every argument the band was having, he would always ask, “Well, what would Fugazi do?”
MARK ARM You want to hear a little bit about our label search? Sub Pop at the time was distributed by Caroline, and we thought that we would cut out the middleman and go straight to Caroline. So the president of Caroline, Keith Wood, met with us. At our little business lunch, he said, “We’d love to work with you guys but there’s just a couple things. You’re gonna have to tour for nine months out of the year.” We’d just done a nine-week tour of Europe, which drove us fucking crazy. And then he was like, “You gotta sweeten up your guitar sound.” It’s like, “Fuck, if we sweeten up our guitar sound, what do we have?” And then he says, “You can’t do any side projects.” Steve and I had just done the Monkeywrench record.
And we’re like, “If this is the kind of shit we’re gonna get from an independent label, we might as well start talking to the majors.”
BOB WHITTAKER When they were leaving Sub Pop, I told the band, “Listen, I know we’re not really fans of management companies and managers and big powerful lawyers.” But we had a couple of good, relatively connected lawyers who weren’t too obnoxious, and I said, “With those two lawyers, I could easily step in and be the hub of communication and help you guys, be your manager and see to it that you are all very involved in the decisions.”
DON BLACKSTONE (Gas Huffer bassist) Gas Huffer toured with Mudhoney in ’91. Certainly Bob was the type of guy who would put a couple of holes in a can of tuna fish and hide it under the seat of your van—or worse. I thought he was a hilarious guy, but I gained some respect for Bob on that tour when I saw what he actually did.
GARRETT SHAVLIK Bob taught me how to road manage. I remember at the 9:30 Club, me and Lukin and Bob and Peters are wrestling all over the place, doing body slams, and the promoter walks up and says, “Hey, you guys wanna get paid?” And Bob just snapped out of his whacked-out Warner Bros. cartoon persona and grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and went right into full-on business mode.
BOB WHITTAKER The guys agreed to it, and then we shopped independent. Then we went to majors and did the obligatory fly to New York and L.A. and meet with people, to varying degrees of disgust.
MARK ARM We had this meeting with John Silva about potentially signing to Geffen through Sonic Youth. We were in this restaurant, and he positioned himself so that he could see this TV screen showing MTV. He’s telling us that by signing to Geffen through Sonic Youth, he would essentially be our A&R man. Our backs were to the TV, and he kept his eyes up there—he wouldn’t even look at us and focus—and then, all of a sudden,