Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [42]
ALEX SHUMWAY I like to call it the Prema-Tour, because it was premature for us to go out. Our record, Come on Down, was supposed to come out about a month before we went on tour. Then it was supposed to come out three weeks before the tour. Then it was supposed to come out a week before the tour …
STONE GOSSARD (Green River/Pearl Jam/Mother Love Bone/Temple of the Dog/Brad/Satchel/March of Crimes guitarist) We put up our own money to go out to tour in New York. We played six shows in frickin’ six weeks, which is a joke. We were just pretending. Or we were doing it, but it was like we were making three or four fans. Someone behind the bar would go, “Hey, you guys are pretty good.” Or not.
ALEX SHUMWAY We played Cincinnati, opening for Big Black, and across town the Red Hot Chili Peppers were playing that night, which meant we weren’t going to draw anybody. In the middle of our set—boom!—all the power went out onstage. We thought they had cut our power. And Mark was like, “Fuckers! Motherfucker!” and he went over and grabbed every mic off the stand and threw them into the audience.
MARK ARM Actually the show was in Newport, Kentucky, across the river. I can’t even recall what my motivation would have been for acting so stupidly, but I just decided for some reason to take the microphone and throw it as far as I could.
BRUCE FAIRWEATHER It turns out that the club had just blown a fuse. The guys in Big Black said, “You guys should leave,” because somebody called the soundman and he was probably coming to kick our asses.
STEVE ALBINI (singer/guitarist for Chicago’s Big Black; recording engineer) I was looking forward to playing with Green River because I was into a cassette of them I’d gotten. But they were acting like fucking rock stars. They were kind of petulant.
I remember the singer, Mark, smashing a couple of microphones, getting pissed at the monitor or something like that. And there were just 10 people there at that point. He was being a total crybaby, and it really bothered me. Everyone I had grown up admiring in the punk scene thought of all that rock-star behavior as stupid and offensive. I don’t know how to describe it, except maybe like going to a vegetarian restaurant and seeing them slaughtering hogs in the lobby.
MARK ARM They were threatening not to pay us, and I remember Steve Albini going, “ ’Course they don’t want to pay you—you just fucking destroyed a mic,” and me feeling admonished, and rightfully so. What I did wasn’t calculated. Maybe I was spoiled by being able to get away with really stupid shit in Seattle.
BRUCE FAIRWEATHER When we made it to Detroit, we played this place called the Greystone, out in a sketchy part of town. The show was on November 1, after Hell Night.
MARK ARM We were driving into Detroit, we put in the Stooges tape, and we’re like, “Fuck, this is gonna be so great. Detroit.” But everywhere you looked were these buildings with the windows smashed out, just totally desolate. You’d see a lone figure huddled near a fire.
ALEX SHUMWAY Buildings were burning. It looked like a war had been through there.
MARK ARM The next morning we went to eat breakfast somewhere. The waitress, who was probably about our age, finally just asks if we’re all gay. We’re like, “What?” It could’ve been the way some of us were dressed, sure. Jeff’s hair was a little big at that point. And Bruce Fairweather, his jeans had holes in them and he’d wear his girlfriend’s fishnets. But the waitress’s reaction was a signifier of what Detroit was gonna be like: If you’re not totally tough, you’re gonna be considered gay.
ALEX SHUMWAY We were opening for Samhain, one of Danzig’s bands. Everybody there was grrr-grrr, ruff-ruff kind of fans. People were calling us fags, throwing shit at us. I remember Jeff came onstage and he was wearing Capezio dance shoes and a T-shirt that said SAN FRANCISCO in pink letters.
MARK ARM Jeff is wearing a pink tank top that says SAN FRANCISCO