Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [241]
KEVIN MARTIN About two months later, we were on tour in Chicago and Courtney called a friend of mine that she knew from Chicago. He handed me his phone, and she just went off on me for two hours. She was losing her fuckin’ mind. I think she was pretty well loaded. “How dare you? You guys are posers and fucking bullshit!”
Everything that came out of her mouth went back to Kurt and how we were riding his coattails. I even made a point to her about that: “You know, you keep using your husband’s name. This isn’t about your husband. We don’t sound anything like Nirvana. You need to understand that article is, more than anything, an homage to you and your credibility as an artist in the scene. And you just need to quit being such a pain in the ass and talking shit about us.” In a way we were making fun of her, but she should’ve found it somewhat flattering that somebody would go that far to parody her.
I don’t really remember ending the conversation, just looking at the phone and going, “She’s not there.” I think she passed out.
JONATHAN PLUM On that second record, the record stores had already ordered a million copies. So it was certified platinum before we even made the record. When it got released, it did ship a million. But what none of us knew at the time was that record stores can actually ship back records. So it shipped a million and went certified platinum, but then they just started getting shipped back.
KELLY GRAY When that record came out, the whole music scene had changed again. It definitely had cycled on to its new thing. It was Green Day then.
JEFF GILBERT Among the metal guys, there was a term that we all used to bandy around. If your band was on the way out, we’d say, “Oh, man, you’re Candleboxin’.” That meant you were circling the drain, so to speak. This was when their second album came out. The second album kind of sounded like the first one, and the first one was pretty cool, but … they never really connected with everybody.
PETER KLETT Lucy flopped. Plain and simple.
BRUCE PAVITT Post-Nirvana, everyone thought the indie underground was blowing up. It was on the cover of Time magazine; Courtney Love is being taken out by major labels and discovering crème brûlées; everybody thought they could sell a million records. There was a total feeding frenzy. Major labels were approaching all the bands we were working with.
I remember specifically there was a situation—this might be a year after Nevermind came out—when our A&R head Joyce Linehan said, “There’s this group the Grifters who have typically sold 5,000 records and would like a $5,000 advance,” and I’m thinking, That sounds about right. By the time we were done negotiating, we had given them a $150,000 advance. And they wound up selling 5,000 records.
MEGAN JASPER The only time I remember Bruce and Jon really becoming furious with each other was in 1990, when Dinosaur Jr. were shopping around for a label. Both Bruce and Jon were huge fans, and Jonathan said, “Let’s offer them a big deal. Not more than the majors, but more than we typically do.” But there was no money. That’s what flipped Bruce out. He saw that as a step towards that becoming normal, and he said, “No, we can’t do that—we don’t have that money! Is this what the company wants to be?!”
And Jonathan was saying, “Yes, this is what the company should be like! We have to work with the times. This is a relevant band making great art—let’s fucking be a part of it!” Bruce walked away, doing his famous mannerism we’d always imitate, where he’d put his hand on his forehead and put his head back and his eyes would get huge.
They were yelling at each other. And that was that moment that it was clear to me that these guys had different visions and different paths they were on.
BRUCE PAVITT After the suicide, we sold half a million copies of Bleach. It was