Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [41]
TOM PRICE The second of the U-Men’s three tours was called the Miserable Sinners tour. Every night, something weird would happen. One night, we all took some very powerful LSD in Indianapolis, Indiana, and boy, things got really out of hand. A couple windows on the tour bus got broken out, one of us wound up flailing around in the mud in the rain outside. People screaming, minimal clothing. It’s all a little hazy.
JIM TILLMAN The goal of that tour was opening for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at Danceteria in New York. Some people compared us to Nick Cave’s old band, the Birthday Party, but I think the comparisons are more due to people’s ignorance. If you listened to everything we did, it would be harder to compartmentalize us.
CHARLIE RYAN We’d get paid $75, and we’d want to run to the liquor store, and Jim would be like, “You know, we should go buy some gas. Buy some food, maybe?” We’d say, “Fuck you! No money goes to food! Absolutely not!” That was our rule. Jim wasn’t as much of a raging alcoholic as the rest of us.
JIM TILLMAN I was not a teetotaler by any stretch, but when everyone else was getting really loaded, I wasn’t. Somebody had to drive. When I was in the U-Men and later in Love Battery, I was the mom and the cop. And it’s not the most enviable position to be in.
MIKE TUCKER I remember arriving in New York for the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds show and parking on Eighth Avenue near 14th Street. John was the first one to go off the bus, as if we had landed on the moon or something. It was like he was Captain Kirk, and he went to go check it out. Came back and reported that everything was good, and it was exciting.
That was the big-deal show, because they definitely worshipped Nick Cave. I remember being on some steps near the stage, and Blixa Bargeld from the Bad Seeds stepped on me. I was thrilled: “Blixa Bargeld stepped on me!”
JIM TILLMAN So we’re standing outside the club. All of the sudden, we look up and my mom is standing there with John’s parents. And we’re all, “What the fuck?” She had elected to call John’s parents, unbeknownst to me, and said, “Let’s go to New York and see our kids play.” Immediately, everybody looked at me and said, “Dude, what are they doing here?”
John actually came from a little bit of money, but he never wanted that to be known. And being the singer and the center of attention, he was even more mortified when his parents showed up. It was all on me that our parents showed up. It certainly seemed like a nail in the coffin of my relationship with the band.
JOHN BIGLEY Jim’s mom invited them? Oh, really? I never figured out how the fuck my parents knew. We were on our bus, power-drinking, and they showed up with a bottle of champagne. It’s the first time to my knowledge that they had seen the band. They were taken aback. Blown away that that many people would want to see the show and by the life forms there, as well—all the fuckers crawling from Alphabet City to go to Danceteria to see Nick Cave.
JIM TILLMAN John was so nervous that he got wasted beforehand. I recall Larry elbowing him, saying, “Dude, wake up, you’re sitting next to Lydia Lunch!” And John’s like, “Huh?” He was so wasted he didn’t even realize he was sitting next to her.
LARRY REID The craziest thing was the U-Men playing in front of 1,500 people in New York City at a sold-out show with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and the audience knowing the lyrics to the U-Men’s songs. And singing along with the band—what the fuck?
CHARLIE RYAN The show was unbelievable. The place was huge, four floors, and it was absolutely packed. That was one of the highlights of the band. That was as big as it got for us.
BRUCE FAIRWEATHER We went out on our first tour in October 1985, and if anything should’ve broken up Green River, it should’ve