Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [65]
JASON FINN Daniel asked me to join Skin Yard at a gig I was playing with a band called Paisley Sin. Matt had quit to join Soundgarden; Steve Wied had played a couple shows with Skin Yard, and Greg Gilmore had maybe played one.
We did our first-ever West Coast tour together, traveling in Jack’s truck. Jack and Daniel would sit in the front, and Ben and I sat in the back with all the gear, and then we put a mattress down. This is with the cab on. And we would just kind of scrunch into the other side there, and Ben and I were doing a lot of crystal and smoking. Jack was pretty much a teetotaler, but I don’t remember him ever saying, “Hey, guys, get your shit together.” I have to assume he was irritated by our antics more than once, but Jack is a born record producer, and more than anything in the ears, it takes a boundless patience.
After like 10 months, my girlfriend, who I was sure I was going to be with forever, moved to Europe. She was calling the shots, so I moved to Europe. And by the time I got back, Skin Yard had definitely moved on; they had Scott McCullum drumming for them by then.
Skin Yard was more of the working band. We didn’t have a Stonesy swagger—it was more of a Yes kind of swagger. Which is not really what rock and roll is about. The U-Men were definitely the übercool band. Back then, if Tom from the U-Men said hi to me, which he did a couple of times, that made my week.
CHARLIE RYAN Jonathan and Bruce begged the U-Men to record for them and be on their label. John and I drank in this bar called the Virginia Inn, which was right across the street from the Sub Pop headquarters. We’d run into Jonathan and Bruce quite often. They’d say, “You guys gotta get on our label! Would ya?” And we’d say, “No, I don’t think so.” Because they wanted it so bad, it was just more fun saying no to them.
SUSAN SILVER Larry Reid got a job as the director of COCA [Center on Contemporary Art] and needed to let the U-Men go. So I inherited them for a year or so. The difficulty was not having that much experience. How do I get them shows? I remember booking them a tour across the U.S. from my bedroom, using a phonebook, 411, and fanzines.
CHARLIE RYAN Susan tried. We weren’t very interested. Susan would offer us a show, and I’d go, “Oh, I’m not playing with them. I have no respect for them.” We were rather shortsighted.
TOM PRICE We’d wanted to kick Jim out for a while. I liked Jim personally, and I thought he was a great bass player, but the problem for me was I always got stuck having to mediate between him on the one hand and John and Charlie on the other hand. We made Susan fire Jim, because all of us were too cowardly to do it ourselves.
SUSAN SILVER That sucked. It was horrible. It was very sad to see, because Jim was the workhorse. He was the one who went and got ’em money; he was the one whose parents funded everything. One time, the bus broke down in the middle of the night coming home from Bellingham. We were there on the side of the highway until Jim’s parents came to bail the band out, like they did every single time.
JIM TILLMAN Nobody said one word to me. That’s Seattle—it’s very passive-aggressive. I first found out that something was amiss when I saw a poster advertising a show for Scratch Acid and the U-Men at the Central Tavern. I’m like, Oh, I didn’t know about that. I called Susan Silver and asked her what the hell was going on. She said, “They didn’t talk to you?”
“No, what do you mean? What’s going on?”
And she said, “They’re having Tom Hazelmyer play bass for that show.” She was sympathetic, though she was a little surprised that they hadn’t said anything. I asked her what was going on and she said, “I know they’re having a band meeting tonight at Charlie’s apartment.”