Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [178]
PETER KLETT There was the perception that we got it fuckin’ easy, man. “Madonna’s label—oh, dude.” But Madonna didn’t have shit to do with breaking the band.
KEN STRINGFELLOW (the Posies singer/guitarist) Candlebox suddenly appeared in our practice place, and they’re already signed to Maverick. First I just saw in the loading area of our rehearsal complex like 57,000 road cases stenciled CANDLEBOX. I was like, Candlebox? Geez, Louise. Not that our band has a great name, either.
I don’t even know if they’d played a show. They had gotten their deal straight out of the rehearsal room, more or less. That’s the kind of frenzy that was ensuing at that point. I knew the drummer, Scott, from another band, but I was like, “Where the hell did these guys come from?”
It was like “the old immigrants always hate the new immigrants” kind of thing.
JONATHAN PLUM I worked on the first two Candlebox records, and the band was very kind to me. I was still the house engineer guy—clean the toilets in the morning—but they actually gave me a coproduction credit on a song ’cause I’d gotten so involved in it.
The very first conversation I remember in the studio was people in the band bitching about them being compared to Pearl Jam and how much of a drag that was. And I remember the moment Kevin got on the microphone to warm up he started singing Pearl Jam songs. It was like, Dude, no wonder why!
KEVIN MARTIN The big misconception is that we had moved from Los Angeles to Seattle to get signed. I, to this day, don’t know how that came about. I think it had something to do with our CD saying our management was in Los Angeles.
KELLY GRAY Courtney Love kept saying Candlebox were from L.A. She didn’t know where the fuck the band was from. People like her were saying that just because Nirvana was huge, Candlebox should’ve just never been a band. They should’ve just quit. It’s fucking ridiculous.
BARDI MARTIN It’s kind of funny because we were probably one of the most Seattle Seattle bands around. Pete, Scotty, and myself were all born and raised in Seattle. Kevin moved to Seattle when he was like in 10th grade, and that must have been a good five years before Nirvana formed. We were supposed to have been from L.A. and moved up to Seattle to cash in. That was the kind of shit-talking I’d hear second- or thirdhand.
SCOTT MERCADO There was a rumor going around that Mommy and Daddy gave us a loan to go into the studio. I wish we could’ve said that, but the fact is we sold almost everything we owned to get the $1,500 to get in the studio. I’m like, “Why are people saying this stuff?” A lot of people were jealous that we became successful and they didn’t.
DAVE KRUSEN People thought that Candlebox were a put-together band. Back then, I was in a new version of Son of Man, and we were doing demos for Epic. But the band never got signed. My bandmates were bitter towards a lot of bands. Especially a band like Candlebox, who came out of nowhere as far as they were concerned, when Son of Man had been playing all these shows with Soundgarden and Mother Love Bone. The attitude was, “Who are these guys? Rich kids from the Eastside.”
What was a really cool, tight-knit scene, changed to a lot of backstabbing and shit-talking because some people were getting signed and some people weren’t.
KEVIN MARTIN We’d been a band for a year and a half. And some people felt that wasn’t long enough, which never made sense to me. The biggest detractors? The young bands that weren’t successful. Not Alice or Soundgarden—none of those guys were talking shit about us. It was Sweet Water, Green Apple Quick Step, Easy, Satchel. They felt like we didn’t really deserve it.
We took a lot of shit in the city, and nobody ever fuckin’ stood up for us.
LOS ANGELES TIMES (“POP MUSIC: The Ruckus over the Vanity Fair Profile,” by Steve Hochman, August 16, 1992) The 20 words that shook the record business are found near the end of Vanity Fair magazine