Grunge Seattle by Justin Henderson

Author:Justin Henderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Roaring Forties Press
Published: 2010-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

chapter 4

the end of the innocence

The End of the Innocence, the title of a multimillion selling 1989 album by rock star (and former Eagle) Don Henley, aptly describes what happened in the grunge world at the tail end of the 1980s. Several home-grown Seattle grunge bands began competing with big-time rockers for spots atop the international pop music charts.

the british invasion, reversed

Toward the end of 1988, Sub Pop impresarios Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman, both serious students of the indie rock scene, made a fateful promotional decision. They recognized that one path toward success lay across the country and the pond, in Britain, where coverage from that country’s rambunctious and lively musical press—Melody Maker 2nd the New Musical Express being the main players—had in the past been the ticket to success for American musicians such as Jimi Hendrix and Blondie. Seeking a similar buzz for their Seattle bands, they paid for a British rock-and-roll journalist named Everett True to fly over to Seattle and report on the music scene for Melody Maker.

Everett True, born Jerry Thackray, published his first article about the Seattle scene—a story about Mudhoney—in March 1989 in Melody Maker. He raved about the Seattle scene, describing it as “the most vibrant, kicking music scene encompassed in one city for at least ten years.”

True went on to spend years documenting the grunge scene, befriending many of the musicians, and generally immersing himself in the Seattle musical world. He lived in Seattle on and off. He introduced Kurt Cobain to his future wife Courtney Love at a Butthole Surfers concert, and wheeled Cobain out on stage as a prank to open a show in England. He wrote a book about Nirvana, and among the many insightful quotes he got from both Cobain and Courtney Love, this short one from Love offers a sharp psychological snapshot of Cobain: “Kurt was pure and he was also insanely ambitious. He just couldn’t handle [fame].”

Not wanting to be outdone by the competition, the New Musical Express (where True had worked prior to his stint at Melody Maker) also went nuts over Seattle. And so, though the real explosion was still a ways off, the spring of 1989 marked the moment when grunge went international and Sub Pop began its transformation into a money-making record label.

One of the main events in this transformation was the release of Nirvana’s Bleach, which came out on Sub Pop in June 1989. By then the band had been touring for a few months with Chad Channing on drums. Ironically, since Nirvana’s later records helped define the sound of grunge to much of the world, most Seattle musical insiders consider this first album to be the grungiest-sounding of all the band’s albums. As Michael Azerrad explains it in his Nirvana book Come As You Are, for this first effort Cobain suppressed his pop musical instincts and made an album that would please the Sub Pop crowd.

Sub Pop also began promoting and putting on concerts. In June 1989, the label threw its first Lame Fest at the Moore Theatre in Belltown.

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