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BRUCE PAVITT In ’86, I decided to try and do a vinyl version of what I’d done with the cassettes. And by that time we had more of a name. Sub Pop 100 had Sonic Youth from New York and the Wipers from Portland and the U-Men from Seattle. And that sold like 5,000 copies, which at the time was like having a gold record in the indie scene. I used the money to go to Amsterdam and party for two weeks.

After Sub Pop 100, I put out the Green River Dry as a Bone EP, and at that time, around ’87, I became convinced, as did Jonathan, that there was kind of a unique sound happening in Seattle, and although I’d spent a lot of my time networking regional scenes, I got to a point where I wanted to focus my attention on Seattle and help the scene out, and Jon was doing the same thing with his show. We were both philosophically in the same place: We wanted to help Seattle blow up.

CHRIS CORNELL I had never really thought of Seattle, or even necessarily my own band, as being something that could become a worldwide phenomenon. I remember running into Bruce outside a show at the Moore around 1988, and I made some comment to him about how there just suddenly seemed to be so much talent in Seattle and that Sub Pop seemed to be putting out all these amazing records.

And he just put his arm around me and he had this funny look of confidence in his eyes, and he said, “Seattle’s gonna take over the world!” It was a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but it wasn’t really—it was like he was serious about it. And that was the first time that I actually believed it and felt like someone did have a vision.

JONATHAN PONEMAN There are few times where you can say, “This is an event that literally changed the course of my life.” But the first time I saw Soundgarden, in 1985, really was one of those times.

I saw them at the suggestion of Ben McMillan, who had a radio show right before mine. He knew that I had started booking these nights at the Rainbow, and he suggested that I put his band Skin Yard and this other band, Soundgarden, on the bill.

Soundgarden had this intensity—the best bands to me just are, you know? I don’t mean to sound metaphysical or anything like that. I thought, I would love to be in a band like this, but I just never will be. I continued to play in bands for a couple years after seeing Soundgarden, but in seeing them I thought, The die is cast. This is a band that’s gonna take over the world. Because even at that show, where there were maybe 40 people, you could tell there was a chemistry and a sense of inevitability.

DANIEL HOUSE Kim Thayil and I would just drink and drink and get fucked up together and spew for hours about everything and anything, philosophy and ideas. Before Soundgarden signed to A&M later on, invariably we would bandy about who was the bigger band, Skin Yard or Soundgarden: “Well, you know, we’ve played more shows.” “Yeah, well, we’ve been together longer.”

But in the end, the reality was that we always opened for them; they never opened for us. And history pretty much tells the whole story. The fact is, they had Chris. We didn’t have Chris.

JEFF GILBERT Back in the day, I would say Chris was more shy than anything, ’cause when they would play, Chris would sing with his back to the audience, or off to the side, for a good portion of the show. It took a while for him to get his confidence level up. But when he started to get into it, it was like that picture of him on the back of Screaming Life, where he’s on the club floor. That’s where you saw Chris mostly: either he was on his back or on the floor.

JAMES BURDYSHAW I remember one Soundgarden show where this girl was so enthralled with Chris that she was dancing like crazy and rubbin’ her rear end against me, all while staring at him. Did she know who she was rubbing up against? Probably not. I might as well have been a pole to her.

MARK ARM This might be coming from a place of jealousy, but the shirtlessness seemed contrived. Chris would wear tear-away shirts—clearly someone had done some damage