Here We Are Now (5 page)

It was odd seeing a copy of my magazine in a film, but it was even odder to watch how much impact
Singles
had on how outsiders perceived Seattle. The cutoff-jeans outfit that Matt Dillon wore in the film became what many thought of as the de facto uniform of Seattle music. These were not Kurt Cobain's clothes, or his look, but Kurt got stuck with the image nonetheless. One of the oddest things about
Singles
is that Nirvana isn't on the soundtrack, or in the movie, and yet Nirvana, and Kurt, are forever linked to it in public perception. In 1992, a Montreal television reporter asked the three members of Nirvana why they didn't appear in
Singles.
“Are you part of it at all?” the reporter asked. “Definitely not,” Kurt said emphatically. Later in that same interview, Krist Novoselic said they weren't asked to participate, but Kurt corrected him, saying they were solicited but he wanted no part of
Singles.
“I said ‘no,' before even asking you guys,” Kurt told his bandmates. “That's because I'm the leader of the band.”

By 1992, Kurt, the leader of Nirvana, could say “no,” but he and his band were still going to be part of
Singles
in the public's perception, whether they were in the film or not. The phenomenon of Grunge had become a monster that overtook everything in its path, including Kurt Cobain. It could not be corralled.

The word “grunge” first appeared in
The Rocket
in the late eighties as an adjective to describe a certain sonic musical style, a raw and unpolished sound, with distortion, but usually without any other added studio audio effects. Grunge, pre-capitalization, was almost always applied to a Sub Pop band, and almost always applied to a band produced by Jack Endino. In that context, it meant a mix of garage rock and slowed-down punk. Sub Pop did most of their albums at a low-rent studio named Reciprocal. That studio's acoustics, combined with Endino's production aesthetics, created true capital-G Grunge albums by bands like Mudhoney, Tad, Blood Circus, and a dozen other groups who have now been lost to history.

While I'd classify some of Nirvana's early tracks as Grunge, their music always had more pop elements than, say, the output of Mudhoney, who were absolutely a band that played Grunge. In my music-critic hair-splitting, the term didn't really fit most of Nirvana's music, or Kurt's Beatles-influenced melodies. Nirvana's Krist Novoselic also doesn't believe that Grunge, adjective or noun, fits much of Nirvana: he once told me that “School,” off
Bleach,
was their Grunge moment. “Kurt bought that riff in,” Novoselic told me, “and I said, Oh my God, that is the most Seattle fucking riff I'd heard in my life . . .
That
was the quintessential Grunge song.”

The word “Grunge,” as an adjective and not a noun, had been kicked around in rock 'n' roll for decades before it came to describe a generation. Lester Bangs used it in an October 1972 record review of a metal band in
Creem
. Before that, it appeared in liner notes to a reissue of a 1957 Johnny Burnette Trio album, where the rockabilly guitar playing was described as “grungy.” Mark Arm of Mudhoney is often credited with coining the term, but he says he heard it from friends in Australia where edgy singer-songwriter Tex Perkins was dubbed “the high priest of grunge.” The first print use of “Grunge” in the Northwest can be traced to a letter to the editor by Mark Arm that appeared in the Seattle fanzine
Desperate Times
in 1981. In it, Arm complained about the band Mr. Epp and the Calculations: “Pure grunge! Pure noise! Pure shit!” Arm just so happened to be the lead singer for Mr. Epp.

Sub Pop Records first used the word in promotional materials describing Green River, a group that included Arm—plus Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard, who later formed Pearl Jam. “Ultra-loose GRUNGE that destroyed the morals of a generation,” the release read.

That Green River record was produced by Jack Endino, who could have trademarked the Grunge sound as well as the name. Kurt hired Endino to produce early demos in 1988. The result of that first demo tape, and a few other lucky breaks, caused Sub Pop to sign Nirvana. With that deal in hand, Nirvana recorded their debut,
Bleach,
at Reciprocal, with Endino producing. Most of that album would qualify as Grunge, yet “About a Girl” was “pure pop,” in Endino's words. Kurt told Endino he had listened to
Meet the Beatles
for three hours straight before writing that song.

The sessions for the entire
Bleach
album cost just $600, an indication of both how basic the studio was and Endino's low rates. Sub Pop was so poor they couldn't front that small sum, and Kurt didn't have it either, of course. Kurt had to borrow the money to pay the studio from Jason Everman, who played bass in Nirvana briefly. Everman told me Kurt never paid him back. But
Bleach
would earn Nirvana mostly positive reviews and garner them airplay on college radio stations. It was a start.

By 1989, Sub Pop bands were generating a lot of attention in Europe, and specifically in the UK. There were several competing weekly music publications in England that were always searching for the next big thing, and it was there where “grunge” became a term to describe a movement, instead of one style of music. In a British newspaper, Mark Arm described the streets of Seattle being “paved with grunge.” Almost overnight, “grunge” became “Grunge,” as the British music press began using the name in headlines. Looking for something to write about now that punk had faded, they grabbed hold of Seattle bands, and “Grunge” appeared in nearly every headline. Mark Arm hated that he'd started the trend, but he couldn't stop it. “It seemed a way to pigeonhole every band from Seattle,” Arm said. “These bands didn't sound alike, but suddenly, what had been an adjective became a noun.”

The media in the US also needed a way to describe the fashion, music, and lifestyle shifts that were embodied by youth in Seattle, and so “Grunge” made its way back home. As with every cyclical youth-cultural trend—from greasers to hippies to punks—there was a shred of truth to the trend, but also much projection, exaggeration, and amplification in how the press reported it. If the eighties had been an era personified by yuppies, blue-collar no-nonsense Seattle was the antidote. Seattle was a city of bookstores and coffee shops that helped support a lifestyle that was contemplative. All those espresso shops needed baristas—the job Matt Dillon's character had in
Singles
—and those positions were perfect for musicians. Still, the only person I knew in Seattle in 1991 who dressed like Matt Dillon in
Singles
was Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament. That should come as no surprise, as Dillon wore many of Ament's clothes in the movie.

But the media has always fed on trends and movements, and when a handful of Seattle bands gained international attention—and when one of those bands (Nirvana) sold thirty-five million albums—something had to be made of it in the press. As these Grunge “trend” stories began to appear in magazines and newspapers over the world, there was the inevitable backlash in Seattle where many, including Kurt Cobain, felt that a varied and diverse music scene with hundreds of bands had been condensed to one word. Kurt was a good enough music critic—he had once imagined himself as a fanzine editor—to know that there were major differences between the sounds of Nirvana and the more metal-leaning Soundgarden, but both were now classified as Grunge. In nearly every interview Kurt or Nirvana did henceforth with radio or television, they were asked about Grunge. While Kurt was happy to have his music influence other bands, and to also be able to wear a T-shirt adorned with the logo of his favorite indie band when he was on television, he didn't want to be seen as the leader of a youth movement. He usually refused to answer questions about Grunge, or responded with sarcasm. He never specifically addressed why he hated the term so much, but many other Seattle musicians told me why they disliked it—because it diminished their individual artistry and turned their art into a commodified and marketed trend.

Evidence of the Seattle backlash toward the use of the word “Grunge” came with one of the most delicious spoofs ever pulled on a major newspaper. In 1992, New York–based magazines had begun to regularly send writers to Seattle to document “the scene” and capture the essence of Grunge. They would fly into town, hang in local clubs, try to catch the “flavor” of “the scene,” and look for juicy quotes. As a result, locals, particularly musicians, became resentful when asked about Grunge by out-of-towners.

Sub Pop was ground zero for anything related to Grunge, at least in the media's mind, and reporters were desperate to try to break a Grunge exclusive. In November 1992, a
New York Times
reporter was assigned to write about “Grunge culture.” The writer phoned Sub Pop, and Megan Jasper answered the phone. When the reporter asked her if fans of Grunge had a lingo, Jasper informed him, sarcastically, that there was a secret “Seattle Grunge language.” The writer took the bait. On the spot Jasper made up several nonsense sayings, telling the reporter they were Grunge code words known only within Seattle culture.

The list was titled “Grunge Speak” when it was published in
The New York Times
the next day. “Lamestain” was what a Grunge musician would call an “uncool person” and a derogatory term, the
Times
reported. “Wack slacks” was the name for now-fashionable ripped jeans like Kurt's. When rockers in Seattle said they were “swingin' on the flippity-flop,” it meant they were hanging out. “Bound-and-hagged” was staying home on a weekend night. What made “Grunge Speak” even more strange was that in the same article, Sub Pop's Jonathan Poneman was quoted on how people in Seattle resented the intrusion of media attention: “All things Grunge are treated with the utmost cynicism and amusement . . . because the whole thing is a fabricated movement, and always has been,” he said.

Seattle howled at the “Grunge Speak” piece, including Kurt Cobain. This was truly the funniest thing that had ever happened in the Seattle music scene, but it also illustrated the insanity of the phenomenon of Grunge. Seattle was being treated as if it were some newly discovered tribe, with its own customs, dress, and language.
Entertainment Weekly
wrote the next year, in a true moment of hyperbole, “There hasn't been this kind of exploitation of a subculture since the media first discovered hippies in the sixties.”

While everyone in Seattle laughed at the
New York Times
story, and we even wrote about it in
The Rocket,
several weeks passed before the rest of the country caught on. Finally, the Chicago magazine
The Baffler
reported that
The New York Times
had been had. Rather than admit they erred, the
Times
declared it was actually
The Baffler
who had been hoaxed, and that the “Grunge Speak” list was real. The
Times
went so far as to demand
The Baffler
apologize. They didn't, of course, but it is worth mentioning that
The New York Times
has never run a correction, and twenty years later “Grunge Speak” is still posted on the newspaper's website without any indication that it's a hoax. Either someone at that paper truly believes that people in Seattle used (or still use) the term “bloated, big bag of bloatation” to describe a drunk, or Grunge is responsible for the longest-running prank ever pulled on
The New York Times
.

Around the time of “Grunge Speak,” I hit my own apex of how crazy Grunge had become when another gullible out-of-town reporter phoned
The Rocket
. He was from an eastern Canadian newspaper and claimed a story had just come over the Canadian wire services about how officials were concerned Seattle would be overrun with teenagers. Public-safety leaders, this guy said, were quoted as predicting that a million youth were headed for Seattle, like the influx San Francisco saw during the 1967 Summer of Love. This reporter claimed his wire story said Seattle police had already installed barricades to control crowds. I laughed and told him he'd been had.

But this tenacious reporter wouldn't let go. He kept calling back, thinking he was on to an exclusive, and that I could help him confirm it. He insisted I “look out my window” to make sure this army of flannel-clad teens hadn't already arrived. For a half second I wondered if I was the one getting hoaxed. But things had been so crazy that year, and so beyond what I'd ever imagined, I did look out the window. There was, of course, no mass of teenage runaways filling the streets of Seattle.

If I was living with this kind of nonsense, imagine Kurt, as the supposed “leader” of a nonexistent “movement,” and the amount of absurdity he was dealing with. He was pestered by reporters everywhere he went. When he was asked about the “Seattle scene” by a journalist, Kurt said, “All scenes are relevant, but they all phase into nothing, or go away. . . . They are claiming we finally put Seattle on ‘the map.' What map?”

That silly Canadian wire-service report about the masses of kids did contain a tiny bit of foreshadowing, however. Out my same window, seven years later, there actually were hordes of kids, thousands instead of millions, fighting police behind barricades. Clouds of tear gas drifted up into my office during one wild week in November 1999. That month Seattle's streets were filled with angry youth for protests that would be known as the Battle in Seattle, the WTO riots.

If during the Summer of Grunge reporters were looking everywhere to land the ultimate Seattle story, Kurt was the biggest game of them all, and they hunted him in every nook of the Pacific Northwest. He wisely chose to spend that summer living in Los Angeles awaiting his daughter Frances's birth and did not return to Seattle until the fall. He couldn't hide completely, however. The September issue of
Vanity Fair
captured both Courtney and Kurt. It was the single most controversial article ever written about them. The headline read:
STRANGE LOVE: ARE COURTNEY LOVE, LEAD DIVA OF THE POSTPUNK BAND HOLE, AND HER HUSBAND, NIRVANA HEARTTHROB KURT COBAIN, THE GRUNGE JOHN AND YOKO? OR THE NEXT SID AND NANCY?
The story contained allegations of drug use, of Frances being born in poor health, with Courtney described as a “train-wreck personality.” When Los Angeles County's child protective services stepped in to threaten to take Frances away, Kurt was beside himself. Just a day after Courtney gave birth, Kurt went to the delivery room with a loaded pistol, intending for the two of them to commit suicide together. He was talked down by Courtney, and Eric Erlandson of Hole helpfully whisked away the gun, but the incident shows how on the edge Kurt was. Guns and suicide were already established parts of his world, even with a one-day-old daughter next to him.