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JACK ENDINO Mark Arm had gotten clean at some point before I started recording My Brother the Cow. He said, “This is the first record I’m going to do clean and sober, so I’m a little worried.” That record probably restored his confidence, because he was fine.

Mark was never any problem to deal with in the studio at any point. I never had any idea that he was doing drugs, because Mark was a very functional person. There wasn’t any of this being late, not showing up, any of that bullshit you get with junkies. He wasn’t the typical junkie, as far as that goes.

DAVID KATZNELSON My Brother the Cow is all about the movement itself. You could look at that album as marking the death of grunge. It talks a lot about not only Kurt’s death, but what happens to a scene when it is majorly marketed, when big business buys in, when a lot of the members of the scene buy into the idea of big business, when the music gets corrupted, when friends get famous and forget where they came from. It’s a very, very dark look at one band’s attempt to remain consistent with their beliefs while the world around them has changed.

The song “Into Yer Shtik” caused a lot of problems. The CEO of Warner Bros. at the time was Danny Goldberg, who was the former manager at Gold Mountain, and Courtney Love called him one day and said, “I am so destroyed at the fact that there’s that one line in the song,” which was, “Why don’t you go blow your brains out, too?” That song wasn’t about Courtney. That song was actually more about the business side, the exploiters, and it was kind of ironic that Courtney assumed it was about her.

COURTNEY LOVE I don’t think I ever listened to that song, but it just hurt my feelings. That’s really mean. Why would you do that? What are you doing? Unconsciously playing into some Byzantine notion of pre-Rome, where if someone committed suicide the widow has to get buried alive next to the fuckin’ husband? Thanks, assholes. It shocked me that someone of Mark’s intellect would do that, and even Matt Lukin and even Steve. When I toured with them, we had such a good time. I loved Dan Peters. Dan Peters and me fuckin’ broke fuckin’ Budweiser bottles over our heads together.

DAN PETERS There’s a lot of references in that song. We played in Chicago one time, and Steve Albini was at the show, probably not there to see us. I’m like, “Hey, Steve, my name is Dan, I play for Mudhoney. I hear you just recorded my buddies in TAD. Just wanted to say hi.” He gave me some offhanded dismissal. I was pissed, and I told Mark about it. And Mark, sometime later, walked up to Steve and was like, “Hi, my name is Mark. I really dig your shtick.”

STEVE ALBINI I don’t remember that incident, but I could totally imagine myself being dismissive to somebody else. I was kind of a prick back then.

MARK ARM That’s what got the ball rolling in the back of my mind—the idea of people trying to live up to something that they think they are supposed to be, instead of trying to be a natural human being. Steve Albini’s not in that song necessarily. But it applies. It applies to all kinds of people, not just musicians.

JACK ENDINO Everybody thought it was about Courtney. I remember asking, “Mark, is this what I think it is?” He said, “No, it’s not who you think it is, and I’m not going to tell you who it’s about.” And that was it. I never got anywhere asking Mark what his lyrics were about.

MARK ARM The song has three little stories, and one is about Layne. I think Emily witnessed this—supposedly Layne was at the Mecca Café and his hands were all bandaged. He’d just come out of the hospital because he punched through a window or something. If you listen to the second Alice in Chains record, it’s all songs about being a junkie. He went from dabbling with this thing to having it become a major part of his persona. That’s the one who “Made his myth/Now he’s trapped.”

DAVID KATZNELSON The hubbub started before the album came out. In fact, the way I found out about it was pretty surreal: Mudhoney was in the building at the time, and it was Mark Arm’s birthday.