Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [68]
JOHN BIGLEY The U-Men got together and did it and it happened and it was over and then you start getting told you’re a “bridge builder” and a “gate opener.” It’s great. I’d seen press stuff saying that here and there, and back in the day, I’d be out getting tea and: “Hey, all right, Mr. Grunge Blueprint!” That’s better than a lot of aspects of the music deal that other people experienced. I’m happy with that.
DAN PETERS Mudhoney’s first show was at the Vogue, opening for Das Damen. The scene was pretty small back then, so when the dudes from Green River and Melvins are forming a new band, people are going to come and check it out. I remember it being a sloppy, drunk affair.
STEVE MANNING (later Sub Pop Records publicist) I went specifically to see Das Damen, who were from New Jersey. I didn’t know who Mudhoney was; I didn’t know who Mark Arm was. But when I saw Mudhoney, everything shifted for me. There was something about them that made me feel, This is the band that I’ve always wanted to see or hear. All three—Steve, Mark, and Matt—were really flying, launching themselves around the stage. They were unhinged.
I had a man crush on Mark Arm. He was the coolest rock guy and had a gorgeous girlfriend at the time. I wanted to be friends with him so bad. I would see him play and afterwards tell him, “Good show,” and I’d be sweating, my heart would be racing.
BOB WHITTAKER (Mudhoney manager) Steve Turner gave me their first single downtown one night. When I got home, it was late and my girlfriend was asleep and I put my headphones on and put it on the turntable, and I just sat there on my knees listening to “Sweet Young Thing Ain’t Sweet No More” over and over again. It just blew my socks off. It had so much texture to it and felt kind of tossed off, but beautiful. The other song, “Touch Me I’m Sick,” was neat, too, but it didn’t really strike me. Maybe “Sweet Young Thing Ain’t Sweet No More” was too dark, because it was “Touch Me I’m Sick” that struck the chord nationally and internationally.
MARK ARM I have no idea where the phrase “Touch me I’m sick” came from. I know I thought it was funny. It was like, “I came up with a phrase; now I gotta build a song around it.” When we recorded that first single, in my mind “Sweet Young Thing” was the A-side, though we didn’t put A or B on either side.
BRUCE PAVITT When “Touch Me I’m Sick” came out and got such an incredible response, that was a magic moment where Jack Endino really established himself as a producer. The song was funny and timely. I think there was a lot of energy around the AIDS epidemic, and in a way that song kind of touched on that, but over and above that it sounded very Stooges-inspired. It was punk without sounding like punk rock from that era. It didn’t sound like Black Flag.
MARK ARM If it was a song about AIDS, I think I would have said something about AIDS in there. It’s about a creepy character, a jerk. It’s summed up in the first two lines of the song.
KURT BLOCH “Touch Me I’m Sick” is a perfect single. Great song, it’s super-funny, you can play it over and over and over again. That, along with Nirvana’s “Love Buzz” single, pretty much encapsulated what grunge was all about.
KURT DANIELSON Bundle of Hiss and Mudhoney coexisted for about six months or a year. Then Bundle of Hiss fell apart. Our guitarist, Jamie, made this announcement out of the blue one night: He’d decided to get married and go to grad school back at Syracuse. Then Dan said, “Well, I’m playing in Mudhoney already, so why don’t we break up the band?” And then he suggested, “Why don’t you and Tad just play together, Kurt?” Because Tad had already started recording the first single for Sub Pop anyway. And so TAD became sort of a partnership between me and Tad.
Sub Pop was gonna put out