Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [77]
FAITH HENSCHEL-VENTRELLO (KCMU music director) I was the music director at KCMU, so I talked to people from all around the country and in Europe, and I keep trying to tell them that there was amazing stuff going on in Seattle, and people would be like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” ’cause nobody visited. So I did the Bands That Will Make Money tape, which had a piggy bank on the cover, to send to A&R people. I didn’t know if they would make money or not; I was just trying to get the A&R guys’ attention. It was like Soundgarden, H-Hour, Chemistry Set, Skin Yard—because Jack Endino is the one who helped me put it together.
I sent Brian Huttenhower, who was Aaron Jacoves’s assistant at A&M, the tape. They listened to it, and they wanted to come up and see H-Hour. H-Hour was about to implode, and so I said, “Oh, you’ve really gotta check out Soundgarden. They’re playing at the Vogue” on this day. So Brian came up and saw them, and he ended up going back to L.A., saying, “You gotta check this band out.”
AARON JACOVES (A&M Records West Coast director of A&R) The band I showed interest in was Soundgarden. What struck me was the energy. The rawness. And Chris Cornell’s voice. I got hold of Chris and said, “Here’s 600 bucks, do more songs.” Later, Chris called me and told me about this label up in Seattle that I didn’t know about. He said, “They’re friends of ours. We wanna put out a record through them. Do you mind if we use these recordings?” And it was my thought at the time, Hey, anything we could do to build an underground swell would make it easier for me to get them signed. And that was the Sub Pop record.
As far as what was used on the Sub Pop records, I can’t fully say for sure. I know Chris recalls it differently. I know others are gonna argue, but the truth is, we were the first onto the Seattle scene.
KIM THAYIL Sub Pop did not have the money to make another record for us. They wanted us to stay with them, and we would’ve loved to stay with them, but we were ready to make another record. The Sub Pop single came out in ’87, and at that point there was some interest expressed by Bob Pfeifer at Epic. SST had the money and wanted to put us in the studio, so we recorded Ultramega OK for them. It was a one-record deal. And at that time, we were also getting interest from Geffen, Slash, Capitol, and A&M.
AARON JACOVES Brian and I flew up to see Soundgarden. There was a show in Vancouver, at a club called Graceland. The show was like this acid trip. The club was dark, there was a lot of smoke. Chris was undressing onstage. Girls were lapping it up.
When Susan was driving us back to the airport, she asked me about managers and I remember kinda biting my tongue and saying, “I would never recommend this to anybody, to have a girlfriend manage a group, but I think you’re doin’ a great job. You should do it.” And I think that was fully her intention anyhow.
SUSAN SILVER I’d had some managerial experience with this band called the First Thought and with the U-Men, so it just sort of segued into managing Soundgarden. I wasn’t necessarily interested in being the real enactment of Spial Tap, but it just happened.
CHRIS CORNELL It put the other three guys in the position where maybe when you want to call your manager and say, “Fuck you,” they don’t feel like they could do that. And there was often what felt to me like an assumption that I should know everything that’s going on in the business side of it ’cause I’m married to the manager. Most of the time I didn’t ’cause I didn’t have that kind of communication with her. It created a situation that was more difficult than what other bands might have had, but I always felt proud of the four of us individually and how we dealt with that.
AARON JACOVES Later on, Susan came over to my parents’ house and said the band had reached a decision: “We wanna sign with A&M.” And the next thing I know, I hear that Bob Pfeifer from Epic was meeting with them, and it kinda ticked