Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [93]
I had a semicircuit of clubs that was interested in Sub Pop bands and we would put Nirvana into all those places. At the Sun Club in Tempe, Arizona, they were supposed to get 50 bucks and a case of beer, and I don’t think they got either. But sure enough, when I walk into the club years later, the photo that someone took of Nirvana playing on the stage is proudly displayed over the cash register. So I went to the owner and gave him some shit: “Oh, are you ever going to pay us for that show?”
ANTON BROOKES (U.K. music publicist) I was working for a British distribution company called SRD, and Sub Pop was just one of the new labels that we had taken on. I was trying to find some journalist to champion Mudhoney and the label, and already there was a little buzz about Sub Pop here because on the radio the DJ John Peel had been playing the hell out of Sub Pop 200 and any piece of Sub Pop vinyl.
The legendary Stud Brothers at the Melody Maker—they weren’t actual brothers, just two friends who wrote together—wanted to write about Mudhoney. Over here, it’s usually the labels that have to pay for the journalists to travel. Obviously Sub Pop didn’t have a lot of money, so in the end Everett True got to go out because it was cheaper to send him and a photographer than two writers and a photographer.
JONATHAN PONEMAN Anton said, “Would you guys consider flying over a journalist and a photographer from the Melody Maker, put them up, and introduce them to Mudhoney? In exchange, Mudhoney will get a cover and they’ll throw in a story about Sub Pop on top of it.”
That was a paradigm: exporting American talent, letting the British hype it up, and then reimporting it back over here. It’s popular lore that Jimi Hendrix started off as a local musician in Seattle, went into the military, came out, went to England, and became a pop star there. And then the music was exported back here.
BRUCE PAVITT There was a genuine chemistry between Everett True, Jonathan, and I. We supplied him with lots of alcohol, I remember that. Spin later listed flying Everett over as one of the Top 100 sleaziest moments in rock and roll. Whatever.
EVERETT TRUE (Melody Maker newspaper writer; Nirvana biographer) The only purpose I had in my writing was to make people jealous of me. So I would talk myself up and talk up the people around me any way I could. And that’s why it was a stroke of genius getting me over, because I totally bought into the hype.
Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman were some of the most charming, eloquent liars that I ever met. I just thought it was hilarious that everybody lied. Like Krist Novoselic, when you first met him, would say he was a competitive tree climber. And I printed it because that’s funny. If they wanted to portray Tad Doyle as some kind of chain saw–toting, dope-smoking, backwoods redneck who didn’t wash and used to be a butcher—I met him, and he was clearly an incredibly intelligent, witty fellow—that was cool by me, because why the hell not?
TAD DOYLE I was a journeyman butcher for a number of years. It was fun to play on and effective, but at the same time the lumberjack, 300-pound ex-butcher image painted my band into a corner.
KURT DANIELSON Here we are, trying to make music that we really believe in, and on the other hand, we’re being marketed as these redneck lumberjacks who live in the woods and eat raw meat and drink and do God knows what, emulate Ed Gein and other serial killers.
At some point, people began to come see the band play for the freak-show factor—to see the fat man cavorting on stage, to see the crazed bearded rednecks—rather than to listen to the music. Now, who was responsible for this? It was all of us, really. We were trying to be as obnoxious as possible in flaunting the fact that we were not your average, everyday chicks with dicks, like in Poison. We heard that somebody at MTV had rejected our “Wood Goblins” video on the basis that the band was considered too ugly.
KIM THAYIL