Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [82]
One night, me and Layne and a few other friends were in West Seattle, and we’d imbibed quite a bit that evening. We ended up going down California Avenue, and A Clockwork Orange comes to mind—we were kicking over garbage cans and someone broke a window or the antenna off of a car. The cops got involved. The rest of us got away, but they were chasing Layne. Like I said, Layne was cocky, and he was a smart-ass to the wrong cop, who actually sicced his dogs on him. They chewed up Layne’s legs a little bit. When the rest of us were driving away, by 7-Eleven, there he was, handcuffed in the back of the car, nodding to us. We picked him up from jail the next day.
MATT VAUGHAN (Gruntruck manager; East Street Records stores owner) My mom was the manager of Queensrÿche their first three records, so that would have been from like ’81 to ’86 or so, right before Operation: Mindcrime. I had a stepdad at the time that was a record collector. They managed Queensrÿche together. My folks would take three months off at a time to go on tour and leave us at the house with a maid or housekeeper. Sometimes that was pretty fun—I lost my virginity to my housekeeper.
My sister and I were super-tight. She was a good-looking girl, and she was friends with Layne Staley. I remember him comin’ to our house, and he wanted to talk to my mom because he wanted to be a rock star. He was standing in front of the mirror doing his hair and he had his Capezios on, and he was trying to show how he’d make his stage entrance. And I remember him pointing at my mom and saying, “I will be the biggest rock star in town.” My mom just kinda laughed. She walked away and said, “Goddamn, he might just have it, but he’s an egomaniac.”
JEFF GILBERT The metal guys were very business-savvy, whereas the grunge guys—we didn’t call them grunge, we’d call them “Sub Pop guys”—they clearly weren’t, because Sub Pop didn’t have any money back then. The Sub Pop guys would rely on playing a little circuit of downtown dive shithole clubs. Where the metal guys, they knew where their fanbase was, so they were renting out large grange halls, bingo halls, VFW halls, and putting on their own shows. And doing very well.
RICK FRIEL Shadow went from playing high schools to these huge shows that were packed with people you didn’t know, and we instantly became really well-known. Some of the attention was because we were so young; my brother Chris was this little kid with a mouthful of braces, playing a giant drum set.
CHRIS FRIEL (Shadow/Goodness drummer) We were like 14, 15 years old, just tearing the place up with total abandon. Shadow was a five-piece group then: my brother and myself, Mike McCready, Danny Newcomb, and Rob Webber.
RICK FRIEL There weren’t really a lot of places to play back in ’82, but they were doing concerts at Lake Hills Roller Rink. What was genius about it was they had a stage on each end of the rink. The minute one band would be done, all the kids ran down to the other end, so there was no downtime.
We were pretty much the only band there from Seattle; all the other bands were from the Eastside. There was a band called Myth, which eventually became Queensrÿche. There was Wild Dogs from Portland, and Overlord and Culprit, who we became really good friends with. Everyone was super into metal and dressing up in spandex.
CHRIS FRIEL Eventually, we became a three-piece—just Rick and Mike and myself—and we started practicing at this rehearsal space called the Music Bank, where we met Sleze, who became Alice N’ Chains.
JEFF GILBERT “Queen of the Rodeo” was one of Alice N’ Chains’ glam hits, about a gay rodeo guy. It’s actually a very good song. It’s funny as hell. They looked like Seattle’s answer to Poison, to be real honest. Just Aqua Netted hair, eyeliner, rouge on the