Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [90]
STEVE TURNER Bob didn’t give a rat’s ass about equipment or any of that stuff. He was like, “It’s your own damn amp—you carry it!”
MARK ARM That first tour we went from Seattle to the East Coast and back. Then we played with Sonic Youth and the Screaming Trees in Seattle, and just went down the West Coast and over to Texas with Sonic Youth. Sonic Youth had played with Green River almost every time they came here. We ended up becoming pretty good friends on that level. Like, “Hey, you guys again.” It was a great opportunity. Sonic Youth and the Butthole Surfers were the biggest underground bands at the time, at least in my mind.
JAMES BURDYSHAW We were watchin’ Mudhoney just skyrocket past us, and then TAD. These are both bands that started after Cat Butt had been together for more than a year. Mudhoney went from playin’ a sloppy show in Pioneer Square with Blood Circus to like three or four months later goin’ on tour with Sonic Youth. It was like, What the fuck? Even with Mark’s cachet, to just instantly have this big push, it seemed like, Whoa, wait a minute. Besides being jealous, we felt like we were gonna be left out if we didn’t do something, so we went out on a tour and then got Sub Pop to green-light doing our record.
DAVID DUET On the record’s jacket spine, we thanked the girlfriends of Mudhoney, TAD, and Nirvana. I said it as a joke, and Bruce Pavitt insisted that we put it in there. It was very much based on reality, though, except for Nirvana. Kurt’s girlfriend came up to me at one of our shows and said, “Why did you guys put that on the record? None of you have ever done me.” (Laughs.) I said, “It was just to balance it out, honestly.” It sounded better with Nirvana in there.
BOB WHITTAKER Mudhoney and myself would sheepishly sneak into Sonic Youth’s dressing room to make off with the beer on their rider because they were almost teetotalers. Sonic Youth would get to a city and want to go to a bookstore and the thrift store, and Mudhoney were like, “Where’s the grog?”
THURSTON MOORE Mark used to try to mythologize Sonic Youth’s profile. I remember him being in my hotel room on tour and calling up different bands staying in the same hotel at 3 in the morning, saying he was me, asking people to come up and hang out. They’d be asleep, not very into it, and he’d be yelling into the phone, “Don’t you know who I am? I’m Thurston Fucking Moore from Sonic Fucking Youth, and I demand that you come up here and hang out with me!” And then hang up the phone. I’d be like, “Mark, please don’t do that!”
MATT LUKIN I got into all kinds of trouble that tour. A few running-around-naked nights. There’s nothing funnier than a drunk naked guy, if you’re the drunk guy. But it is kind of sad, thinking back. I do remember one night, playing in the L.A. area with Sonic Youth, and the Redd Kross guys were there. We all came out onstage and played “I Wanna Be Your Dog” with Sonic Youth, and I had my pants around my ankles while playing Kim Gordon’s bass.
The next night, Kim’s doing sound check with that bass, and I pointed to it and said, “Hey, Kim, my penis was touching the back of that bass last night!” And she’s all, “Really?” She took it off, and I don’t think she ever played it again. I’m like, Damn, am I that repulsive?
MARK ARM I can pinpoint when Matt became a cartoon character, like Yosemite Sam or something. It was when we were on this short West Coast tour in 1989. We played a show with Cat Butt in Davis, California, and afterward we all went to someone’s condo or apartment where everyone crashed. It seemed like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but with boozed-up punks instead of fairies and wood nymphs. There was lots of craziness and a complete lack of reason.
DANNY BLAND It was kind of a funny, fundamental difference between the two bands: Mudhoney were all on the pull-out couch trying to get some sleep, and we were just raging and keeping them awake.
Dean Gunderson, the bass player,