Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [166]
GARY LEE CONNER We saw he was going nuts, so everybody else just went nuts. I smashed my guitar. I’d never purposely smashed a guitar before. Barrett smashed up his drums. Then Mark had to go run and hide …
DAVE GROHL We had to hide him in the dressing room. But you don’t wanna mess with that dude. Give him a microphone, let him sing, then get the fuck out of his way.
KIM WHITE The promoter said, “You gotta get Mark out of here, because if these guys get their hands on him they’re gonna beat the shit out of him.” So we took Mark back to the hotel and said, “You gotta stay, because they want blood.” But Mark put a disguise on—a wool cap and a different jacket—and went back to the festival anyway.
The promoter was like, “Oh, my God, this is fucking great! It’s like the Who in ’69, but theirs was staged. This was real.” The Screaming Trees really did make a name for themselves at that show. They walked out to crickets and when they left the stage, there were probably 60,000 people thinking that was one of the best fucking things they’ve ever seen.
BARRETT MARTIN I think the Screaming Trees corrupted me. I didn’t really start drinking until I was in the band. After Roskilde, something shifted in the way we were perceived: as being real brutish, tough, beating people up, looking for fights, fighting amongst ourselves. But it was a distortion of reality. I’m not saying that it didn’t happen on a small scale from time to time, but you wouldn’t have the energy to keep going if you did that all the time.
We didn’t go around trashing the backstage at our shows. We didn’t get in fights, unless we were in a bar. There was one brawl, later that year, in Asbury Park, New Jersey, in front of the Stone Pony. We were walking out, and we got jumped by about 10 guys.
VAN CONNER We were all so drunk that whole week. I wasn’t there for the actual fisticuffs, but how I remember it was that the fight was between Mark and Barrett and the club security guys, who were huge and looked like they were on The Sopranos.
BARRETT MARTIN It was the four of us—Van and I and Mark and one of our roadies—against the 10 of them, these New Jersey hoods. They had no idea who we were. It was full-on. We’re big guys; we can take a punch, and we can throw a punch. At a certain point, the bouncers came out and the thugs realized they weren’t gonna be able to take us, so they just walked away.
The next day, we were on Letterman, and Lanegan’s got this huge black eye. My arm was in a sling, so they had Steve Farrone play drums instead.
VAN CONNER Letterman was all excited because he likes to make jokes about fat people, apparently. So during the food segment he held up a giant ham and was like, “This is trail mix for the Screaming Trees.” Actually, for a band that’s good publicity.
KIM WHITE Letterman said, “I think I’m scared of you guys.” They got a nice shot of Mark’s shiner, too.
JIM ROSE (founder of the Seattle-based Jim Rose Circus Sideshow) Lollapalooza felt a lot like a Seattle coming-out party. That was the year everybody felt this whole “alternative” thing. So I quickly read a Spin magazine and watched an hour of MTV and said, “Okay, they want it fast, with the F-word.” That’s what I delivered.
MARC GEIGER (Lollapalooza festival cofounder; talent agent) The way the first Lollapalooza formed was organic. Each of the seven of us—meaning the four Jane’s Addiction members, myself, Don Muller, Ted Gardner—we picked the bands ourselves. The next year, it was much more Don and myself, along with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Don represented both Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, and more. Soundgarden was a band we wanted to get on the year before, but we couldn’t, because they were out of cycle. I was a huge fan of theirs. And then Don said, “We gotta put Pearl Jam on.” I said, “It’s the same thing as Soundgarden.” And he said, “No, it’s not.