Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / 1991: The Rise of Grunge Rock and Its Impact on Music and Culture [Episode 254]

Transcript

1991: The Rise of Grunge Rock and Its Impact on Music and Culture [Episode 254] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We're totally booked rock and roll.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: I think I'll leave you. You're reading.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Little Hands says it's time to rock and roll. Bag
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: roll Up, I Totally booked. Welcome back to Booked on Rock.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: It's the podcast for those about to read and rock online.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: At Booked on rock dot com. Every episode there in
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: both audio and video. Exclusive video highlights from episodes, a
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: blog the latest rockbook releases, and check out the all
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: new Booked on rockstore hat t shirts, toad bags, sweaters, hoodies,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: and more. All at Booked on Rock dot com. Author
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Rob Janikey is our guest. He's here to discuss his
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: book Slacker nineteen ninety one, teen Spirit, Angst and the
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  Speaker 1: generation it created. Rob explores the role of music and
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  Speaker 1: culture from the early nineties alternative and grunge movement and
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  Speaker 1: the impact it had on the generations that followed. Comprised
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  Speaker 1: of history research and interviews with musicians, industry execs, writers, sociologists,
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  Speaker 1: therapists in Rob's point of view as a writer, indie
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  Speaker 1: record label owner, and fan, this is an intriguing look
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  Speaker 1: back and an amazing year and time in rock history.
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  Speaker 1: Find Rob's curated Slacker songs playlist in this episode. Show notes.
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  Speaker 1: Rob has also included a QR code to the playlist
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: in his book Great to Have You on, Rob.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you, Eric, I really appreciate this opportunity.
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  Speaker 1: There's a particular mixtape a friend of yours gave to
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  Speaker 1: you in nineteen eighty nine that I think we can
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  Speaker 1: thank for this book being written, right, tell us about that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we can, And I thank him for kind
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  Speaker 2: of changing my life. Actually with that mixtape, I'm sure
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  Speaker 2: you and other great music fans can probably remember a
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  Speaker 2: time where, you know, like maybe the light switch went
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  Speaker 2: off right, something just started to make sense musically, and
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  Speaker 2: that cassette changed my life because I was already listening
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  Speaker 2: to what I thought was very good music. I still
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  Speaker 2: love it too, you know, to this day. I was
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  Speaker 2: listening to heavy metal, I was listening to punk rock
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  Speaker 2: and in some rap. You know, I grew up in Brooklyn,
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  Speaker 2: so there was a lot of rap in the mid
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  Speaker 2: eighties that was happening in New York. But the mixtape
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  Speaker 2: it sounded different. The songs were different. They didn't have
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  Speaker 2: the metal sound or the you know, classic hard rock sound.
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  Speaker 2: It was something different about the music coming from this tape.
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  Speaker 2: And I don't know if it was my age at
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  Speaker 2: the time. I don't know if I had just listened
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  Speaker 2: to all the other stuff enough where I was ready
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  Speaker 2: for something new. But man, when I heard you know, Nirvana, Soundgarden,
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  Speaker 2: Violent Femmes, Sonic Youth, Jane's Addiction all for the first time,
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  Speaker 2: I didn't know what any of it was. I didn't know.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's a few years ahead of when these
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  Speaker 1: bands became big.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and my friend Pat He's and you know, maybe
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  Speaker 2: you have one of these folks in your life, or
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  Speaker 2: maybe you're that guy for other people. But there was
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: always somebody in a group of friends that just seemed
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  Speaker 2: to know right. They just for whatever reason. I don't
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  Speaker 2: know if they had Back then, we didn't have the Internet.
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  Speaker 2: You know, we didn't have very simple and easy ways
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  Speaker 2: of researching these things. And this guy just dug into
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  Speaker 2: magazines and into books and you know, independent film and documentaries,
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  Speaker 2: and he just found this stuff.
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  Speaker 1: No, I had that guy. I wasn't the guy I
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  Speaker 1: had that guy. My friend Chris, who was my roommate
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  Speaker 1: in college.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know how he knew about all these bands,
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  Speaker 1: but he knew about these bands. He knew about Nirvana,
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  Speaker 1: He had never mind before it blew up. He had
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  Speaker 1: the cure. He had Jane's He loved Jane's addiction. He
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  Speaker 1: loved Jan's addiction. Turned me on to them. And somehow
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  Speaker 1: he knew about these bands. I don't know how, but
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  Speaker 1: he was that guy that had all the cool stuff
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  Speaker 1: that was ahead of its time. And he also was
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  Speaker 1: that type of guy like once they became popular, it
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  Speaker 1: bummed him out.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my guy too.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I didn't like when it became commercial.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, to put it in perspective a little bit,
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  Speaker 2: my friend at the time in the eighties, his favorite.
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  Speaker 2: One of his favorite bands was Pink Floyd, but it
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  Speaker 2: was the Sid Barrett Pink Floyd. Yeah, yeah, so it it.
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  Speaker 2: You know, anything mainstream sort of lost its appeal for
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  Speaker 2: him after a while. He liked finding the odd, new,
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  Speaker 2: different sound and back in the mid and late eighties,
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  Speaker 2: that's what this stuff was.
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  Speaker 1: Tell us about the title of the book. What inspired
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  Speaker 1: that title, particularly the word slacker.
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  Speaker 2: So I'm very I guess people who know me well
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  Speaker 2: would would call me sarcastic. I kind of like to
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  Speaker 2: jab people a little bit here and there. And slacker
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  Speaker 2: was a term that in the nineties, we were we
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  Speaker 2: I say, you know, Generation X, we were labeled as slackers, losers.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, look at that. You know, Beck wrote a
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  Speaker 2: song called loser. We had a generation above us that,
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  Speaker 2: for whatever reason didn't think we were going to a
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  Speaker 2: mount too much, and probably not across the board, but
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  Speaker 2: we heard it enough where it was a term or
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  Speaker 2: terms like slacker were something we took to heart. So
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  Speaker 2: when I was writing the book, I was writing it,
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  Speaker 2: I didn't have a title. I tried a few different ones,
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: and I hadn't settled on one for a while. And
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: I don't remember exactly when the name came to me.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: What I do remember, I wrote down at a list,
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  Speaker 2: and I wrote down a bunch of names that could
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: be titles, not just one word names, but just titles
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  Speaker 2: in general that might work, and slacker just happened to
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  Speaker 2: be one of them. And as time went on, I
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  Speaker 2: kept looking back at the list and I'm like, you
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  Speaker 2: know what, this is a slap in the face to
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  Speaker 2: all the people who thought we couldn't do anything. You know,
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  Speaker 2: So I did it sarcast like, yeah, here we are,
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  Speaker 2: we're slackers, we can't do anything. But look at what
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  Speaker 2: this generation did. Uh, and even in my little tiny
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  Speaker 2: part of the world. I wrote a book about it.
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  Speaker 2: So I guess we turned out okay.
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  Speaker 1: I think we're almost exactly the same age. I was
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: born in seventy two. I was born in seventy three,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: three seventy three. Yeah, we're right around that time. But yeah,
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  Speaker 1: that's slacker. I always think the first time ever heard
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  Speaker 1: that was back to the Future, you're a slacker, McFly.
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  Speaker 2: That's right, right, And that was that was probably what
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  Speaker 2: eighty four eighty five something around time, So the term
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  Speaker 2: had been around for a while, and it was it
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: was it was you know, pointed right at us.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Booked on rock podcast. We'll be back after this.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Look we go take a what a call.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: You're the founder of Generation Riff. Tell us about the blog.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: When did you launch that?
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  Speaker 2: So Generation Riff started, oh wow, in its earliest form,
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  Speaker 2: probably in two thousand and fifteen ish twenty sixteen. I
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  Speaker 2: had worked in corporate America for graduating college, but I
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: had always I was always interested in music and writing.
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  Speaker 2: It's something I had done for a very very long time,
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  Speaker 2: but on a freelance basis. My very first real blog,
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  Speaker 2: I guess it was a column for a website all
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  Speaker 2: the way back in two thousand and three or two
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: thousand and four called The Truth Magazine, and I ripped
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: off the title from a Fugazi album and I called
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: it a steady diet of nothing, and I just wrote
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  Speaker 2: about music. And so when this idea for a new
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  Speaker 2: blog came around, I was recently laid off from a
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  Speaker 2: job in the corporate world and I wanted to focus
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  Speaker 2: on writing again. And I was very in tune to
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  Speaker 2: the nineties, to my what I you know, our generation
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  Speaker 2: Generation X. I listened to a lot of that music
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  Speaker 2: often and I just wanted to write about it. And
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: in my mind, the first thing that when you think
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: about that time, it's guitar music. It's heavy riff guitar music,
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: sort of like what metal or hard rock might be.
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  Speaker 2: So really it's just a combination of two things I
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  Speaker 2: was thinking of when I wanted to start writing again
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  Speaker 2: about music. I wanted to write about my generation. I
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  Speaker 2: wanted to write about, you know, music, and I just
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: combined the two words and it sounded okay to me,
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: so I went with it.
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  Speaker 1: Blogs are fun. I have a blog on the website
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  Speaker 1: and there's no pressure to it. Just write it. If
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  Speaker 1: people connect with it great, but it's not It's still
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  Speaker 1: just the release of writing about it is music that
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  Speaker 1: you love, you know.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a nice outlet. I writing has always been that.
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  Speaker 2: I think for anyone who writes, I think it's it's
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  Speaker 2: an outlet, it's therapeutic, it's something that you can maybe
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  Speaker 2: look back on someday over time, even if a lot
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  Speaker 2: of people don't read it or they don't connect with
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: it's it's yours. You know, you you you did that.
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  Speaker 2: Those are your words, your thoughts, and it's it's not
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: a terrible way to you know, maybe get a little
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: introspective and you know, self reflective. So I would encourage anybody,
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  Speaker 2: you know, as long as you've got an idea and
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: a story to tell you, you could be a writer.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: And as with writing songs, the best music, the best
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  Speaker 1: writing involves really opening opening up and being honest. And
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  Speaker 1: this is what you do in the book. It's very personal.
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  Speaker 1: Took me a long time, but come to terms with
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  Speaker 1: the idea that not everybody connects with music the way
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  Speaker 1: you and I do, in the way those who are
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: listening right now, who listen to this podcast and music podcast,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: and it's covered in the first chapter, there's a there's
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: a wonderful story about this and it all ties in
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: with you becoming a parent of two and also my
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: two of my all time favorite bands, Blind Melon and
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  Speaker 1: Pearl Jam talk about that first chapter.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Well, I have to give it a little bit of not
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: a little bit. I have to give a lot of
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: credit to my publisher and the editors, because when I
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: first sent in early drafts of the book, I was
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: hinting towards some vulnerability. I was hinting towards some personal stories,
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: but I wasn't going all out, and they can tell
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: that when they when they were you know, they were
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: able to sense that when they were reading what I
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: was sending in and they were like, we see what
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: you're doing. We know you want to go in a
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: certain direction, but you're stopping short. Go back, yeah, and
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: tell the story. And once I heard that, maybe I
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: just needed some confirmation from somebody else to do it,
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: it opened up my ability to go a little bit further.
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  Speaker 2: And that's kind of where that initial story came from,
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  Speaker 2: the Blind Melon part. When my daughter, when I found
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: out that we were going to have our first child,
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: I panicked like most first parents probably do. For many reasons. Right,
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: it's a very scary, exciting but scary time. But I
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: did immediately go to thinking like, wow, Okay, now I'm
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: going to be responsible for this person, and I've got
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: my own demons and my own things to deal with
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: that I probably haven't really faced or faced enough for
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: my own satisfaction, let alone somebody else's. So I need
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: to figure this out. I need to get to a
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  Speaker 2: place where I'm comfortable being a parent. The Blind Melon
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  Speaker 2: story that you know, the song that I referred to
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: in the book, and why I wanted to speak to Nico,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: whom you know, Shannon's daughter in the first place. I
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: wanted to convey that story. I wanted to talk about how,
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: you know, upon hearing I'm going to be a parent,
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: I need to shape up, I need to change, I
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: need to get a little bit better. And it just
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: it was quick. It was a quick like Okay, publisher
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: says this is okay. They think I need to go
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: a little bit further. They're probably right. And Blind Melon
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: was the first band that came to mind because of
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: I remember, you know, thinking those thoughts when I when
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: when I found out we were going to have a baby, and.
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  Speaker 1: It's the blind Melon song, New.
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  Speaker 2: Life, New Life, Yes, yes, uh. And Shannon had obviously
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  Speaker 2: most people who are fans know he had a very
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: difficult and life all during drug addiction, which I didn't have,
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: but we but we had two things that were gripping us.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: And let's talk about that a little bit. What that
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: being as a child your parents divorced and that really
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: hit you hard?
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: And did we have that?
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: In comment to who my parents divorced, I was fourteen
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  Speaker 1: and that was tough. Yeah, that was tough.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: It's it's not an easy thing to go through at
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: any age. Every age has its own challenges. You were fourteen,
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: so I would imagine, you know, you just starting to
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: become a man, you know, a young man, and for
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: that to happen at that point must have been devastating.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Had my first ever panic attack at my dad's apartment.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Moved out of the house. He's in an apartment, cardboard
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: boxes everywhere, sitting in a lawn chair, right, and You're
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: just like, what is going on?
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: And then I said to him, I said, I'm not
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: feeling something's weird. I feel weird. I think was the word.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel weird.
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  Speaker 1: Something's weird. It put doubt in your mind as to
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  Speaker 1: whether you wanted to get married, let alone have a child.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, I was only five, and I have a
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: younger sister two years younger, so she was three, and
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: at that age I have I just to fast forward
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: just a bit so it's easy to understand. I have
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: an eleven year old daughter and an eight year old
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  Speaker 2: almost nine year old son, and I cannot imagine not
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: being in their lives on a daily basis and seeing
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: them grow and help them. When I was five, I
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: lost that. I didn't have that ability, you know, as
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: a father figure. My mom did the best she could,
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: but suddenly we went from you know, a relatively normal
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: working class family to a single parent household with a
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: mother who didn't have an education necessarily, not a college
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: one for sure, and had to go out and get
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: two and three part time jobs. And my sister and
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: I were maybe not right then at five and three,
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: left to our own devices, but soon enough, you know,
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: while my mom was out working all the time. So
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: I went from what was what I was told was
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: a very happy little kid to someone who, by the
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: time I was nine, was not thrilled with being alive anymore,
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: and I expressed that to my mother, to her shock,
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: she was like, oh boy, okay, we've got to fix this.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: And yeah, to your to your point about not wanting
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: to get married, let alone have kids, it was because
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: I saw nothing but failure, you know, heartbreak, sadness, difficulty.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: It was tough. It was really really rough, and on
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: top of it, didn't have a good relationship with my
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: dad after the fact, like you can divorce, you can,
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: relationships end. We all know that they you know, they
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: don't all always last forever. It's okay, but when children
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: are involved and you don't do right by them, that
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: changes everything, you know, And that's the kind of childhood
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: I experienced with with with that situation, and so my
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: mom put me in therapy at nine, which is wild
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: to think now because.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: On Rock podcast will be back after this.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: There will be an intermission.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: I mentioned Pearl Jam, So there's a part of the
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: story that has to do with Pearl Jam. That's a
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: great story as well, if you.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Could share, yeah, the Mike McCready story.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Mike McCready story.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: So this blew my mind, man, I had and as
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: you know, because you're you're a tremendous music fan, music
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: brings people together, right, And so I met somebody who
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: lived in Seattle at the time, this was early late nineties,
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: early two thousands through music. It might have been a
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: you know, one of the fan club board you know
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: chat rooms, or.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: I was on the cure the cure was an AOL
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: or yeah, who I can't remember.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, message, I was looking for her. So a friend
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: lived in Seattle, and over time, you know, we really
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: bonded over over music and Pearl Jam being being the
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: biggest for the two of us. As you may know,
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: or it's in the it is in the book. Mike
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: McCready has Crohn's and colitis. He is, you know, a
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: very debilitating disease, and he is one of the spokespeople
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: for that foundation nationwide, particularly in Seattle of course. So
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: every year he puts on this benefit and you can
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: get tickets to charity and you can go and meet them,
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: and it's the whole thing. And I was going to
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: go my friend who lived in Seattle. This was two
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: thousand and five. A friend who lived in Seattle said, Hey,
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: just get a plane ticket and I'll take care of
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: the ticket ticket for the event, and you know, we'll
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: do this. So, yeah, definitely. Long story short, I got
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: hurt in between agreeing to that and then the date
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: of the event, and I had to have spine surgery.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: And I'm pointing to the top of my neck because
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: it was up in the front. It was cervical spine.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: So I had this surgery and then I had this
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: big brace on and it was a whole thing. And
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: I asked my doctor. I said, hey, I have something
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: in Seattle. I was living in Brooklyn, New York, and
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: I said, have something in Seattle? Can I go? Doctor's like, no,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: you can't get on a plane. You're not You're just
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: out of surgery. You have this thing on, You're not going.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: You're not flying. So I had to turn it down. Unfortunately,
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: the day of the event, comes the phone rings. I
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: see the name on the phone is my friend, my
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: friend Gwen. Wasn't going to answer it, just because I figured, like,
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: this is just going to bum me out, and I do,
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: and I'm glad I did answer it. I do decide
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: to answer it, and it's a man's voice and he says, hey,
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: is this Rob And I said, yeah, it was, Hey, Bud,
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: It's it's Mike McCready. Time still and all I didn't
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: know what to do. And this is split second. It's
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: a live phone call. So I was like, oh, hey, Mike, dude.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Like you know, the first thing to come out of here. No,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: that's it.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like you know, we're lifelong pals. So he goes
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: on to tell me. He's like, hey, Gwen told me
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: what happened that you know, had the surgery. And well,
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: first of all, I hope you're okay, and I can't
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: believe you're going to come out here all the way
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: from New York. And we have this conversation and it
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: lasted about ten minutes. And this is on a day
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: where he has this massive responsibility for this, this this
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: big charity event, but he took time to call a
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: fan who was going to come out and be a
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: part of it, and we talked about music. We talked
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: about asked me how many times I had seen the
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: band live. Back then I forgot what the number was,
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: but now I'm up to about I don't know, thirty
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: two or thirty three times seeing them. He asked me,
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: you know what my favorite record was, and I think
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: I said Verses and he said, oh, well, then you're
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: really going to like the new record. This was the
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Avocado record, the self title. When they were working on
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: it hadn't come out yet, and he said, there's a
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: lot of you know, harder fast songs on it. And
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: then phone call ins and a couple of weeks later,
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: I get a box. I get a package in the
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: mail and it was guitar picks, a couple of signs, CDs,
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: a pedant like a baseball pennant, like a triangular flag
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: that says Crones and Coliitis Foundation to Rob get well soon,
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Mike McCready. You know, like it was really really cool.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: He was obligated to do none of that, you know,
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: and he went so above and beyond. It was great. Yeah.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: I think he and the rest of the guys in
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: that band, I think they understand the importance of music.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: They're fans as much as they are musicians who have
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: fans always got that feeling. I think that's why they're
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: still going strong today. I think they're pretty grounded, and
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: they think they understand. They didn't let it get through
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: their heads. They understand the power of music and what
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: it does for people. It really I can't imagine a
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: day without music.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I agree with you, but I agree with
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: you about what you just said. I don't know what
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: a day without music it would be like. And also
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: about Pearl Jams specifically. I remember I also went to
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction because it
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: was in New York, and I, you know, I went,
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: and you know, Jeff Meant was wearing a T shirt
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: that had the names of bands that hadn't been elected
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: yet or well maybe we'll never get in, but a
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: lot of his favorite bands, you know. And Eddie's always
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: talked about the Who and the Ramones and the Clash
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: and you know, Mike with Iron Maiden and other bands,
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: and they're they're all fans. They all understand the importance
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: of music and they now know and they knew for
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: a while. I'm sure that their fans felt like that
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: about them, so they felt that responsibility. So you're you're right,
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: and and that's a lot of bands in the nineties.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: It feels like to me anyway, they seem to have
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: come at making music from a fan's perspective. First, they
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: loved it so much that they want to make it themselves,
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: and then they respected how we felt about them. It
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: didn't seem contrived where coming out of the eighties, not
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: all eighties, but what was popular seemed to be like, eh,
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: is this really for us or for them?
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Book on Rock podcasts will be back after this.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: You're on our all like to ask for a recess.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Nineteen ninety one was the year. That's the year that
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: everything blew up. That's the year that those who weren't
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: living in Seattle discovered so many of these bands, and
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: the term grunge became popular. But this movement began back
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: as far as nineteen eighty four. Yeah, this is covered
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: in chapter two and a band called Green River. Who
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: is Green River?
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: So I started it in eighty four. I could have
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: gone further back. I mean, you can go to the
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: seventies iggy pop, you know, Iggy and the Stooges maybe,
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: or even the sixties garage rock bands for that visceral sound.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: But I started in eighty four because at least in Seattle,
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: you have these guys and girls that were making this
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: music underground, heavy, dirty, not really commercial, nothing like what
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: was happening on radio at the time. So I felt
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: like Green River I had to start with them because
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Green River, the guys in Green River are like almost
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: ground zero for the popular grunge movement because they became
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Mud Honey and Mother love Bone, and then Mother Lovebone
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: became Temple of the Dog and Pearl Jam. And so
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: the players, the pieces if you will, that were in
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: Green River really became, you know, the launching off point
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: I think for the popular runge bands at least early
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: and Jeff and Stone, you know, from Pearl Jam, We're
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: in Green River and they then went on to fore
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: Mother love Bone and the Pearl Jam. Like I said, so,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: I felt like it was the right place to start.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: And it was early enough because Soundgardens started in eighty
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: four also, but it was an early enough starting point,
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: and I was hoping to convey this where nothing about
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: grunge was an overnight success. Nirvana in ninety one, yes,
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: seemed to come out of nowhere, but the seeds were
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: planted long long before, you know, And I wanted people
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: who maybe were casual fans of the era or new fans,
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: like maybe young kids now, to read about some of
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: the bands that didn't get the notoriety that some of
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: the big bands got, like you and I know Green River, right,
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: but I don't know how many current eighteen year olds
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: know who they are now.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: It's interesting to see the latter half of the nineties
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: where these bands were manufactured by labels. Whereas these bands
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: were organic, they were real. They formed out of just
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: a simple love of music, whether it was growing up
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: on Sabbath or early Aerosmith or garage rock or whatever
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: it may be, and it became something all on its own.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Soundgarden was always surprising when I heard that they go
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: as far back as nineteen eighty four. It's like, wow,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: that's really going back, because they you know, that's what
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: good six seven years before we start to see them
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: on MTV. So these bands were I would say they
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: were probably settled with that reality that maybe we'll just
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: keep doing this and just get by and somehow figure
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: out a way to get three meals a day and
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: you don't pay the rent if we can. And then
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, because of Nirvana, that just blew
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: the door open. Pearl Jam actually, timeline wise, was Pearl Jam.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Nirvana blew up in September of ninety one, and then
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Pearl Jam was what by January of ninety two? Did
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: they because because I remember seeing the live video on
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: MTV in my dorm, and I just don't remember if
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: I saw that before. I think Spells like Teen Spirit
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: was a hit before that.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if if I and I'd have to, I'd have
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: to look back. But I the programmer Ten came out first.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Ten was released before Nevermind, but only about within a month.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: But never Mind hit first. You know, Ten didn't make
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: a lot of noise until never Mind hit. But I
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: think the video for a live may have coincided with
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: the video for Smells Like Teen Spirit, you know, kind
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: of right around the same time. So I don't think
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: it's that far fetched that you could have seen it.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: I don't know before I don't I don't remember the
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: dates of the video shoots, but it was around the
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: same time, I believe, and Nirvana kicking that door open.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: It did start not right away, but eventually it did.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Because of it, everybody then started looking back and seeing
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: who was in that scene first, how all these these
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: musicians kind of like melded together. They all knew each
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: other for the most part, they all played with each
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: other in various bands or played on the same bills
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: that shows. So once Nirvana became, you know, the cultural phenomenon,
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: it did everybody else then, you know, started to get
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: lifted up.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Well, this is a question I'm really interested in because
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know how many people I've spoken to on
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: the show. They're almost exactly the same age as me.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: We were old enough to be fans of bands in
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: the eighties, and then all of a sudden, this new
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: way of music comes in the nineties. What I mean
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: is it took me a little while to embrace these
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: bands because I was still I was still into the
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: bands that I followed in the eighties. I was still
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: into def Lebert. I was still, you know, still and
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: still am to this day. Van Halen is an exception
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: to the rule, but I was, you know, still wondering
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: what Cinderella is going to do next. No, I mean
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: I was still into that. Like Warrant had an album
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: out in ninety one and I'm trying to remember the
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: name of it, but I had a song called Bitter
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Pill and it was on the radio. These bands were
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: still getting on the radio. Mister Big to be with
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: he was a hit, So I really wasn't ready to
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: embrace it. My roommate, as I told, you, had all
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: that stuff, and I was kind of like, oh, you
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: used to make fun of Van Halen and David Lee
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Roth and then but then it just you couldn't stay
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: away from it. And I remember one of the floormates
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: in my dorm had ten and I said, you know what,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: let's just do it. So I got the CD ten right.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: In fact, it took me a long time to get Nevermind,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: to be honest, I got Pearl Jams ten first, and
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: I became a Pearl Jam fan really first before Nirvana. Yeah,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: but yeah, once I got it, once I grabbed onto it,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: then I was in. But I was still a fan
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: of the bands of the eighties. So what was your
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: process going in your head? Were you ready to just
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: forego all the bands that you liked in the eighties
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: that may have been pass a where you just still
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: kind of following both? Were you Winger and.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: Well, it's it's very funny like we had we did
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: have similar paths because I was it prior to the
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: tape we talked about in the beginning of the podcast,
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: the mixtape that I got before that I was listening to,
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Like I mentioned, some metal, not some metal, metal, hard
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: rock all the way back to sixties, you know, Beatles
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: and Stones and Who and all that.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: But you grew up on classic rock radio like I did.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Probably absolutely yeah, yeah, and had older cousins and people
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: in my life who would you know, turn me on
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: to like the Doors, and you know, obviously Zeppelin and
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: all the classics. David Bowie was a big one for me.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: But Bowie didn't fit into a category. He was just
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: every album was different. But I did you know, Space
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: Oddity was one of the first songs I remember really
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: falling in love with, and it was in the early
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: eighties that I found it. But Ozzy Osbourne, like I
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: loved Sad, but Ozzie solo, I had, you know, the
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: records on vinyl up until probably Bark at the Moon.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: It was probably the last one because she had you know,
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Lizard of Oz and Diary of a Madman.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: You know, Tears was big in ninety one.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no more, but by then they're like the change
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: had already happened. But leading up to it, I mean,
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: one of my favorite albums of all time was Pyromania
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: High and Dry on Through the Night. I had all
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: of that stuff. I had it on vinyl, I had
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: it on cassette, so I did still like that. Then
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: I was getting I was hearing some some some early
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: rap you know, Public Enemy, BacT Boys, Run, DMCLO, Cool Jay,
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: things like that were again being in Brooklyn. It was
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: it helped Wu Tang. They were a little later later.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: I was able to appreciate them because of some of
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: that early rap that I had heard. Then the mixtape
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: happens in the late eighties, and I did not throw
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: away the earlier stuff. I just was more excited about
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: the new stuff I was hearing. You know, but I know,
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: and Oh, Motley Crue. Motley Crue was a big one
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: for me too. Shout Out the Devil was one of
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: my favorite albums. Kiss Kiss, I never know Kiss.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: I know this because I heard you on a band
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: abandoned albums with Yeah.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: I never got into the kids.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you guys. I think both were saying, you'reada.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The thing about Kiss, I never I was never
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: like a horror movie fan necessarily or a comic book guy,
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: so that the the the look actually I know, the
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: look brought in most kids our age. The look actually
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: turned me off. It looked silly to me, so I
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: never I never took it seriously, but I did appreciate.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: I understood why everybody liked them. And you mentioned another
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: one that I loved Van Halen still do How do
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: you not? You know Rush? You know, like I still
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: like a lot of that music. But I think I
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: was ready, and again I'm gonna give credit to the
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: tape for my ears onto something a little bit different.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: I was ready and excited for something new, but I
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: did not throw the other stuff away. As a matter
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: of fact. That's the reason I interviewed the comedian Don
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: Jamison for the book, because he was one of the
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: co hosts of that metal show on VH one, and
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: he was exactly like you. He said to me. It's
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: in the book. He hated what happened in the early
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: nineties because he blamed them. He blamed those bands for
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: getting rid of all his favorite bands, which were all
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: the metal bands and the hair metal bands. But then
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: he goes on to say that I had to step
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: back and listen, and when I would hear Soundgarden and
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Alison Chains, he said, how can I hate this stuff?
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: This is great metal, This is great heavy music. So
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: some people it was a blow if you liked heavy metal,
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: if you liked you know, what was popular in eighty eight,
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: eighty nine, ninety and then this other stuff is taken
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: over it hurts, you know.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you had to actually be like a closet
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: listener of some of those bands where a few years
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: before you could play it at a party, but now
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you're gonna listen to mentioned Winger,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: you know, you're gonna listen to You're gonna listen to Slaughter,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: you know. But no, I remember thinking, yeah, but you know,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: I get it, but you know, Warrant and those bands.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: I mean there was a part of me that was
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: kind of in on the on the laughter, like you know,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: it was silly. But yeah, I just think it's interesting
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: because our age, that's it's a weird period. It's it's
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: a fascinating time to look back, just seeing it all
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: happen before your eyes, just seeing everything change, culture change,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: which leads to the next question. The year in nineteen
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: ninety one. Yeah, that year specifically talk about that because
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: in the book you explain why it's such an important year.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: It's one of those rare years when culture and music
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: collide in a way that we hadn't seen since late sixties.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think music and culture are always going to
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: be attached at the hip they informed, Like, you know,
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: music informs culture, culture informs music. It they are tied together.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: And I think the and I don't remember the chapter,
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: but I think the biggest shift. I mean, it's the
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: chapter of ninety one, I believe, going into ninety two,
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: but I don't remember that chapter number is what I'm saying.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: But when never Mind knocked Michael Jackson's Dangerous Off the
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: out of the number one spot, it was January of
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: ninety two, so ninety one had completed itself. All of
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: this new music was starting to take over. And the
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: cultural significance of seeing Michael Jackson, who was in our lifetime,
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: in our childhood and our formative years, the biggest star
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: on the planet, I mean absolutely, and it was not
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: even you. If someone said to you back in nineteen
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: eighty three, eighty four, eighty five, whatever, that you know,
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: Michael Jackson is going to get hicked to the curb
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: by a couple of greasy haired punk rock guys from Seattle,
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: someday you would have been laughed out of that conversation.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: And that's exactly what happened. And it was a sign
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: of the times too, Like you know, the eighties was
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: something out of indulgence and prosperity, there was a lot
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: happening with the stock market and the Reagan Thatcher thing
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: was very prevalent. The political climate was all for these
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: older people that we were growing up being controlled by,
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: and it didn't resonate with us. And then the music
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: was all happy and poppy and flowers and sunshine that
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: didn't resonate with us. So I think it was you know,
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: it was a perfect storm of many things that allowed
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: this music to take over. And ninety one really was
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: ninety one ninety two. We say ninety one because that's
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: when you know, ten came out, never mind Soundgarden's Bad,
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: motor Finger, Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic from Chili Peppers, the
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: Black Album from Metallica. So many of these beers came
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: out in ninety one, but it was late for the
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: most part, late in.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: The late ninety one. Yeah.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, by ninety two though, everything had really, really, really exploded,
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: and ninety one was just the year everyone referenced because
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: that's when it all, you know, really did come out.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Man, you bring it and I'm just seeing it all
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: in my mind now. It's taking me back to that
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: was sophomore year I was. I went to Southern Connecticut
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: State University and New Haven, and by the time we
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: came back from Christmas break, it was like all of
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: music and culture was grunge and wrapped right. It was
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: like it was like we went back to school in
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: September of ninety one and we're still kind of sort
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: of still in the eighties. And then and then within
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: six months, Yeah, it's all great. And I was watching
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: there's a new special on Peacock fifty years of SNL Music, Okay,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: and there's that clip of Nirvana when they were on,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: and Charles Barkley was the host, right, and so they
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: have some rare footage, and the footage is of the
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: three guys, Chris Nova Selk, Dave Grohl and then Kurt
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Cobain and they're just waiting and you can hear the
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: people in the background saying three two one, and then
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: it's that promotion that they would do during the week.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: You know, Hey, this is Charles Barkley. I'm going to
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: be the host of Saturday Night Live. My musical guests
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: are Nirvana. And then you see the three guys just
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: make the funny faces and I'm looking at him like, wow,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: there's kirkicle Be because now he's like a mythical figure.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: It's almost as if I watch him now and it's
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: almost as if he didn't even really exist, kind of
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: like when we were that age and I thought about
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Hendrix or Morrison and those guys. But we were there
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: for it. We were there when he was alive and
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: it was happening. People were talking about him good and bad.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: And it's hard now to wrap my head around that
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: because it all just that news came down in April
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: of ninety three, ninety four, the Kurricle Bank committed suicide.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, I remember where I was when that happened.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: That's when everything changed.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, you're you're not wrong, And that is.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: Like, and you brought up a great point in the book.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: That's when everything changed in the sense that the labels
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: were looking for someone to replace that what's the word
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: you use to describe them, cash cow? Right? Oh okay, yeah,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: so let's manufacture another cash cow, Like he's the guy
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: all the teenagers are looking to. So we have to
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: replace him now, which is just so sick, you know.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: It's like, let's let's find some some depressed twenty something yeah,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: and having sound like Kurt and Nirvana, you know.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: That's that. That is major label you know, major label business,
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: one oh one. It was never about the emotion, it
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: was never about the connection. It was about what's going
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: to bring in the most revenue. And they felt that, Okay,
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: we have to cash in on this because the guy
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: we were using is obviously never going to do it again,
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: so we have to find his replacement immediately. But they
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: didn't understand that it wasn't just the sound of the music.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: It was the connection that he made and that band made,
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: and other bands made with the fans. You can't recreate that.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: They came from an organic place, a place that was
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: not created, and then later on people were trying to create,
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: you know, the replacements of those people. And you made
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: a really good point about that. We lived in a time,
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: We grew up in a time where he was alive
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: and doing these things, and we got to watch it
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: in real time. And I think that's part of his mystique.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: You know, when you hear his name, I know what
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: I do. The only thing we can see is a
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: twenty six, twenty seven, maybe twenty four, twenty five year old,
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: depending on when you first found them, young men with
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: his face, the way he looked his hair, his clothes.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: He never got old, right, he never got to get old,
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: so we can't see him. Like when I hear Mick
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: Jagger's name, I don't think about sixties Mick Jagger because
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: I wasn't alive. I think about the eighty year old
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: guy I see now on the news, and it's okay,
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: he's amazing and he's still doing it. But that's not
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: like Cobaan's myth. Part of it is because he's frozen
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: in time as a kid, essentially.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Like Marilyn Monroe, like Frendricks, like Jim.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Morrison twenty seventh Club.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, what was your first impression of smells like
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: teen Sparra when you first heard it or saw the video?
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: It blew me away? I think the video had more
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: of an impact. Not I shouldn't say more of an impact.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: It had a different impact on me. I thought the
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: song was amazing the first time I heard it, there
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: was this, well, I guess it's kind of familiar because
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: you know, the main guitar riff is essentially more than
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: a feeling from Boston. You know, it's so yeah years later, Yeah, yeah, right,
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: that's a bit of an earworm. Like we kind of
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: knew it. It felt familiar.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: But interestingly enough though, right there's classic rock radio staple
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: Boston more than a feeling.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And Kurt was a pop music fan. He was
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: a hard rock fan, a punk fan. He liked the Beatles.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, there there was no end to
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: his music fandom and that all became part of his
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: influence when he was writing. But the song Blew Me Away,
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: it just, you know, it's that, It's that Pixies thing
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: where it's the you know, the soft and the heavy,
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: you know, the slow, the fast, that dynamic that really
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: does something to you when you hear it, because there's
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: that anticipation you know something big is coming and you
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: get ready for it, and then they deliver. They absolutely
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: deliver on the promise. The video, though, to me, was
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: the thing that really captured what teenagers and young people
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: were feeling at the time. It was dark, it was dingy,
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: we wanted to release Kids are Crowdsurfing, moshing. It was
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: just it was like decadent. I don't know, it was
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: just it was the visual the song perfectly. It's probably
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: the most iconic video, maybe that and Thriller. You know,
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: Michael Jackson's thriller. Those two videos might be the two
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: most iconic videos of my lifetime, you know, or in
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: all of our culture from our generation.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: The beginning of the song, it starts heavy, well, it
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: starts off with the riff, but then it gets heavy.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: But I remember the part that really pulled me in
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: first looking back that that's why it works so well
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: in the radio is and this is why Kurt was
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: so great when you get into that. The bassline, yeah,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: the guitar yeah. But I didn't think it was going
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: to blow up like it did, which I asked you
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: the question is why do you think Nirvana? Why why
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: did Nirvana have the most impact then other bands?
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: Well, not to diminish them, but timing played a huge
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: role because they were signed to Geffen and there was
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: a little bit of buzz with them, not a ton,
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: because all they did is I think Geffen pressed about
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: sixty thousand CDs, like the first batch of CDs that
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: only sixty thousand of them. But they thought that, Okay,
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: here's this new band. You know, they have a little
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: buzz out of Seattle. We're gonna we're gonna market them.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: There's new money behind them with Geffen, and we're gonna,
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: We're gonna try and make this work. So that had
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: something to do with it. The timing as well, both
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: in terms of when they released their record and what
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: was happening again culturally, like we were talking before, kids
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: just ready for something different. But my next answer, I
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: think is, and I don't know if this is gonna.
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm gonna be able to explain
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: it the way it sounds in my head. But Kurt
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: was one of those figures that everything just seemed right.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: His look, his voice, you can almost see the hurt
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: and the pain and the vulnerability in him. Whether it
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: was his the way he dressed, the attitude on his face,
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: the snarky look he would have sometimes, I don't it
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: was there's something about him. You ever, you know, you
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: ever meet somebody and you're like, well, I don't really
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: know why, but there's something about that dude, for that girl.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: There's just something that you can hone in on, like
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: that person's gonna do something.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: It just Kurtus felt like that to me.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: I just yeah, I think you're right. It's the interviews
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: that he did also played a big part of it. Thankfully,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: he did do interviews because he was he was always
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: fun to watch in interviews. But yeah, he was self deprecating.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: He didn't think he was all that much. But he
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: had that snarky humor. Yep, and there was something there
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: that along with the music. But I have I've said
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: back at that time, the joke was what is he saying?
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: Nobody could really understand the lyrics, and it didn't matter
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: because you're feeling that angst, like whatever, that rage you
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: had inside he as a nineteen eighteen, nineteen twenty year old. Yep,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: I felt it when he's sang.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, I did too, and I think.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: I still do today When I listened to it, that
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: youthful angst and rage comes out of me. Sometimes I
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: feel like it takes me back to that time. Yeah,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: where am I going with my life and all of
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: these things that are swirling around in your late teens
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: early twenties brain?
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: You know? Yeah, No, absolutely, And he had there's a
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: quality to whether you want to call it his voice
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: or his his cadence, like how the words came out,
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: how he presented his lyrics. It was just it was perfect,
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: like the timing, the punch he knew when to you know,
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: accent certain words, or when to use that gravel, you know,
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: when to pull back on it, when to get soft,
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: when to get loud. It was just it was an eight.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: It was an eight for him. It was intuitive, It
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: was it was something that a lot of singers just
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: don't have and chemically, you know, whatever music does to
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: us from the inside out. He struck those chords. And
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: you're right about the lyrics, a lot of them. Now,
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: some of his songs obviously tell stories, but he admitted
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: in interviews that sometimes he just strung words together that
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: sounded good, just the sound of the words and how
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: they fit into the structure of his melody, so it
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: didn't really matter. It's the way he delivered them that
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: made you feel the way you felt. And another thing
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: about Smells Like Teen Spirit specifically that I love, and
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: I think one of the reasons it resonated so much
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: when you asked before about why that song. Now, you
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: mentioned van Halen earlier, and obviously Eddie van Halen was
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: probably the greatest guitar player of all time. But when
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: you listen to the solo and Smells Like Teen Spirit,
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: the solo is the vocal pattern, it's the vocal line
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: and to me, anytime as song does that, it just
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: enhances and reinforces what you like about it. So it's
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: almost like he's not singing anymore, but he's playing what
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: you like and what has grabbed you. It never ends
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: the song. It like the great part of the song
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: never ends. Does that make sense?
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: Like? Yeah, well to that, I've had more and more
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: of an appreciation of him as a guitarist over the
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: years because I needed to distance myself from this idea
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: that you had to be technically proficient to be a
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: quote unquote good or great guitarist. But yeah, you're right
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: what he did with the guitar, just having that as
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: the solo, Yeah, you know, and the risks that he
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: that he came up with, they're damn good. I mean again,
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: technically proficient. No, but that comes from like the Neil
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Young school. I mean Neil Young, great guitarist, not technically proficient.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: It kind of brought us back to that because it
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: went way too far. Even Eddie himself used to say,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: don't blame me, man, I this was this came naturally
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: to me.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: I didn't intend for all of these guys now to
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: ape my solos and try to look like me and
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: sound like me and play a ton of notes and
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: do that whole look what I can do with my
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: guitar thing. And so he brought it back to really
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: what the essence of the guitar was, like, go back
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: to Chuck Berry and those guys and those riffs were.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: They're iconic, but again, technically proficient, rock and roll is
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: about feeling. So that's why I love Eddie so much.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: As Yeah, he can blow you away with the things
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: he could do technically, but still at the at the
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: heart and soul of it is that you're feeling something
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: from the music that he wrote, right.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: And that's that's that was Eddie's genius. Eddie Van Helen
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: had the ability to play incredibly well, better than just
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: about anybody probably technically, but he had feeling. He had energy,
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: He had a vibe that you couldn't I. I would
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: hear and read interviews with other guitar players who were
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: lucky enough to play through Eddie's rigs and with Eddie's guitar,
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: and they would say, it sounds nothing like him, right y,
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: you know? And Eddie would say, yeah, because it's in
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: the fingers. It's just it it's the person. So Kurt
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: didn't have to be or Neil Young didn't have to be.
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: They didn't have to be technically proficient. They just had
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: to understand and energy and you know, pass that energy
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: onto the listener. And once you do that, you are
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: an incredible songwriter. Whether you understand music theory or not,
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: Whether you can run up and down you know, the
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: neck at lightning speed or not, doesn't matter. If you
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: put energy and feel into what you're doing, you're gonna
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: have a fan for life.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: You gotta give credit to punk rock too, punk rock.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: Kurt was talking about this in an interview that's on
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: YouTube where punk rock gave him the confidence to actually
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: try it, try becoming a musician because that he realized
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: that anybody can really play the guitar. It's how you
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: play it. Yeah, so that was huge. That was the
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: punk rock attitude Rock Podcasts. We'll be back after this, right,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: that's it.
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna be right outside those doors the next time
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: I have to come in here. I'm cracking skulls.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: The track that you picked from Nevermind I thought was interesting.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: It's not any of the songs that were hits. Yeah,
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: it's Loungejack which is a great song. Why that particular.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: Song so Loungejack to me was always and it's one
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: of the songs that we were just talking about it.
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: So it's not the song, but my answer, it's energy,
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: it's a feel. There's nothing special about that song. Technically,
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: it's kind of a straightforward run of the mill, hard rock,
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: slash punk rock song, however you want to describe it.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: But if you listen closely, there's tension starting from the beginning,
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: and it slowly starts to build by the time you
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: get to that last verse where he's screaming essentially the
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: same exact lyrics he did in the previous verse, with
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: the same vocal pattern and melody, but there's such an
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: angst to it, and there's such a release from the
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: slow climb, the slow, steady climb of that tension. He
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: finally pays it off in that last verse, And the
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: first time I heard it, I was like, oh my god, God,
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: how do you do How do you take such a
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: simple song, such a I don't want to call it
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: a throwaway song, but such a such a you know,
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: good simple song and put that much feeling into it
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: just by increasing the tension a little bit That's how
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: I when I first heard it, that was my take.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: It was like, this is what this band is about.
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: This band understands how to deliver energy more than what
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: I'm used to hearing.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: And I think that helps helps, hopefully helps for those
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: who may not understand why Kurt is so respected is
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: I think that may help to understand because his songwriting,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: he's telling a story sonically telling a story, not necessarily
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: maybe through the lyrics. Yeah, but he's a push and
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: pull the tension what's coming next. I have to believe
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: that that's part intentional on his part, but also just
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: part just something that just was innate, like just something
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: that he had. This is a gift that he had.
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I think there was
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: some intention, but I think the intention comes from the
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: fact that he knew that that was good music, all
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: of him, all of the years of him listening to
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: the Beatles and then the punk rock stuff he listened to,
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: hearing the catchiness, knowing you can make something heavy and
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: aggressive but still make it catchy. Knowing when if he
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: would have in lounge act, if he would have sang
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: the entire song the way he sings that third verse,
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: it wouldn't have been good, or if he never added
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: that part at the end, it wouldn't have been that
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: great of a song. He did it once he only
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like he gives you the
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: one payoff and that's enough for the song. So he
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: knew when in a song, or even maybe like I said,
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: in the solo of teen Spirit, like instrumentally he knew
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: whether his voice or the instrument, he knew when to
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: give you your money's worth.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we credit him or Butch Vig
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: the producer. But the other thing is the harmonies like
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: on a plane, Yeah, you know, and I love that
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: it ends where they just isolate that. Yeah, that's perfect.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: I don't know who his idea that was, but.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: I think and and I could be wrong, but I
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: do remember in research and and and just knowing uh
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: stuff from from just being a fan and reading and watching,
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: Kurt wasn't all that crazy about the idea of those
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: kinds of like, you know, he liked harmony because like
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: I said, he likes the Beatles, he likes pop. Yeah,
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: but he he also wasn't crazy about the idea of
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: doubling his vocals. And Butch is the one, according to Butch,
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: that got him to do it because he told him
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: that John Lennon did it.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: And that's that's the deal breaker there.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you're a musician and you find out
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: John Lennon liked something and did something, and you're in
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: that same veins somewhere in that in that world, you're
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: gonna do it.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: That's what makes a great producer. Right, Yeah, how do
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: we get this guy to do it? Okay, he loves
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: John Lennon, Let's go with that. It works.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And and and as stubborn, as as Cobaine
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: seems like he could have been at times, and as
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: snarky as we were saying before. When Butch told that story,
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: it didn't seem like he gave him much of a pushback. Okay,
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: and then did it.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: The of it booked on podcast. We'll be back after this.
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: During our brief information, let's take a fine crip from
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: Milambda Fantasy to everyday life.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: It's good to see this music's lasting effect is evident
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: in some of the younger people now, because in the
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: book you do talk about this Instagram account grunge Bible.
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: Is it? Chris Solona, I've always pronounced it with the
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: like sel yeah.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: And let's see, he's got a friend Ethan Shalloway too.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: They both run this Olivia Rodrigo, who, by the way,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: is really she's she's good man. I like she was.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: She was a follower at one time. What is grunge Bible.
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: Grunge Bible is wow, Grunge Bible is necessary. I'll start
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: off by saying that. And I love that it's from
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: guys that age and not guys our age because they
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: discovered the music and I talked to Chris about this
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: for the book. They discovered it mainly because they liked
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: it sonically, they liked what they heard. But when they
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: started reading comments that people were leaving on YouTube videos
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: or whatnot, and they saw that songs from that era
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: and I think Chris was talking about released from Pearl Jam.
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: When they would see what these songs meant to people
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: as they were leaving these comments and people would talk
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: about real, real personal things, it made them dive in
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: so deep to the entire era and all the other
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: bands and start reading lyrics, start reading about the lives,
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: the childhoods, the upbringings of the musicians, and they got it.
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: They understood they felt even though they weren't. They these
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: are twenty something year old kids. They were not there
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: when this happened. They were not alive. Chris was born,
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: I think two years after Cobain died. I think he
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: was born in ninety six. He said. But they got
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: it for the same reasons we got it when we
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: heard it live. And for them to have figured that
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: out on their own, I think Grunge Bible is serving
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: a huge service to the era, to the musicians, but
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: for all the right reasons. It's the connection to the
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: music that I guess they haven't found within their own generation.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: I'm a follower. Now. It's up to how many followers.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: Oh man, I think they're approaching a million. I don't
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: know what. I think it was over eight hundred something
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: thousand when the book was printed. It's probably higher than
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: that now, I guess. I don't know, but it's it's
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: up there. It's really really high. I think it's by
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: far the number one grunge related account on Instagram that
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: doesn't belong to a band.
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you mentioned when it was printed. When it's
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: out in June.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: So it's out, yes, So global distribution is June third,
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: So it's up on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, all
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: the places you can order online for global distribution to
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: ship on June third, but you can get an early edition,
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: an early release copy now through my website. Those are
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: all signed and dedicated to the person who buys it.
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: Once it's going from Amazon, I have no control over that,
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: but it will always be up on my website so
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: people can too.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll get to that. Just a few more questions
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: for you and then we'll go over the details on that.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: But by the way, there's my signed copy right there.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go, my chicken scratch.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: Nice. So as we move out of nineteen ninety one,
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: we see grunge blowing up Pearl Jams versus the follow
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: up to their debut ten huge record setting. It's sold
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: nine hundred and fifty three draventy eight copies exactly in
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: week one alone, nearly one million in one week. That
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: kind of attention was getting to be too much for
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: Freddy Vedder and Kirk Cobain. You say that both bands
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: intentionally change the production on their second album from Nirvana
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: was in Uterow. These albums were out in ninety three,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: and as we know Kurt wouldn't live to see beyond
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: the year nineteen ninety four as suicide April eighth, nineteen
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: ninety four. Was the enormity of his fame too much
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: for Kurt? Or is that too simple of a way
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: to put an answer as to why.
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's too simple. I think I think
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: the answer is, yes, it was too much for him.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: But there's a lot of factors that equal why too
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: it was too much, But yeah, the overriding factor is
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: it was he Look, I can't speak from a drug
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: addict's point of view, because luckily I've never gone down
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: that road. I don't know what it can do to
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: your state of mind, you know, when, especially when you're
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: already feeling a ton of pressure and a ton of
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: anxiety and a ton of sadness or unhappiness, and then
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: you throw drugs on top of it. But everything you
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: read about him and heard about him, parts of him
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: wanted the fame. Like there was always this dichotomy with
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: him and what he claimed he didn't like and what
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: he wanted. Those close to him said, Yeah, he wanted
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: to be a rock star. He wanted his band to
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: be big. I don't know why you wouldn't. If you're
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: playing music, you want people to hear as many people
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: to hear it as possible. But being in your mid
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: earlier mid twenties and you cannot leave your house anymore.
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: You can't go outside by yourself, you can't walk into
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: a store, you can't do anything without throngs of people
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: throwing themselves at you. I can't imagine what that does
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: to your psyche to be famous.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: When you want, when it's beneficial to you, that'd be nice,
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: but not you don't pick and choose, no, so and
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: this feeling like you're in a shitty mood and somebody's
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: coming up to you and they want something from you. Yeah,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: a complete stranger. Or on the reverse, he had a
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: lot of people that hated him, just simply jealous, pissed
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: off that he destroyed all the bands that this dude loved. Yeah,
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: and they're blaming him if he.
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: Had anything to do with you know, millions of people
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: buying the record he didn't know.
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: It's just screwed with his head.
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: I'm sure, yeah, I mean, how can it not look
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: I you know, you and I are in our early
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: fifties and we come from similar backgrounds, like we go
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: through We've gone through a lot of things, but I'd
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: like to think we're smarter and wiser and more put
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: together now than we were in our twenties. Well, we
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: didn't face anything like that, that insane amount of attention.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: So just try to get through your twenties and your
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: childhood by itself is tough. And then you add on
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: this level of fame that is you know, I mean
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: they were prisoners.
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: Did have they time? Didn't slowly develop?
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: No?
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: Literally overnight?
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, absolutely, Yeah. Their rise was even though they
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: were a band for a long time, they went from
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: obscure to you know, world famous, seemingly overnight. I remember
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: you mentioned Versus. I remember an interview I think it
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: was on MTV. I think that Jeff Pearl jam did
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: talking about the album, and they asked him what do
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: you think of the reception to Versus so far? And
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: it was just as the album was released, and I
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: remember him struggling with the answer, and he finally said,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: almost a million people listening to your songs in one week.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: He's like, I don't even know. I can't tell you
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: what that is. I don't know. I can't wrap my
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: head around a million people a million people listening to
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: the songs we just played and put on tape and
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: put out there like and you saw it in his face.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: You saw he was distraught. He was like, what does
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: this even mean? You know, yeah, you can't even count
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: to a million. How long would it take to count
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: to a million? You know, like it's just a giant number.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: Prior to that, they'd be playing gigs and they could
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: count the people in the room and probably would remember
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: them each time they played because they came back and
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: would see him again. Now, yeah, a million people.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, when we were younger, I remember
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: my group of friends. We were all a little too
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: quick to judge what these guys were doing. Like, you know,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: Eddie walked around around ninety four ish, well, no, not ish,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: around ninety four when vitology came out, and even a
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: little before that, probably Eddie. Eddie was wearing a mask.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: You saw pictures of him walking around wearing him that
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: like a clown mask, which is odd obviously, and his
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: behavior was weird, and he was drinking a lot. And
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: I remember years later he was talking about and he's like,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: I didn't know what I was doing because I was
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: just trying to get the hell away. I was trying
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: to escape. We didn't. We weren't prepared for this, you know.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: And young people do strange things when they're facing something
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: that they don't know how to handle. That's human nature.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: I would think that both Kurt and Eddie Vedder were
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: in our introverts.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you would think.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, it seems I'm an introvert and I go
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: to movies every weekend. And I don't know if this
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: may sound strange to those who are introverts, it won't.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: I go to movies by myself and I love it. Yeah,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, because I could just shut out the world
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: and I'm just there myself, lights out, and I wonder
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: what that would be like. Where suddenly one day I
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: can't do that anymore because I walk into the movie
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: theater and all of a sudden, all these people are
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: staring at me, coming up to me asking for an autograph,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: spitting in my face because they hate me, and then
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: another person loving me, and they have no idea who
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: I am, so it's all just rockstar adulation. I love you, Yeah, right,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: you don't know who I am, you know, And having
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: that disappear and not being able to do that. So
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: then now it's like, Okay, I guess I'll just have
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: to stay inside all the time, you know. And there's
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: a part of me, I guess, like everybody, you want
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: a little bit of adulation or you want people to recognize.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: You want people to say, hey, man, I love your work.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: But again, you can't turn that out and off. You
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: can't shift gears and decide you know what today, I
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: don't feel like being famous. I just kind of want
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: to just you know, I don't want anybody know. It
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: doesn't work that way. So when sick, because a lot
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: of people say, oh, well, woe is me. They're famous,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: they're rich and famous, give me a break.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: With everything in life, it's just every it's like everything
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: just ends up balancing itself out like pluses and minuses.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: Then they have to realize this ain't going away. So
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to embrace this
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: and that. And again going back to pro Jam, credit
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: to them, they're grounded. But Eddie Vedder particularly had to
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: embrace it and deal with it.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah he did, no, no, he did, and he came
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: out the other side and he you know, he has
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: two daughters and seems like he's his life is in
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: relatively good order, and that's that's great, because a lot
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: of people with that kind of fame, they don't lead
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: normal lives or seemingly normal lives, and some of them
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: don't even make it. I mean, he just turned sixty,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: I believe, and you know, some people don't make it
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: that that that far in that world. You know, it's unfair,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: and it's it's it's a shame that when someone wants
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: to give something to the world, whether it's music, art, writing,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: you name it, just be vulnerable give something. If that's
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: your purpose and you want to give something to the
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: world by releasing it, it's a shame that there has
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: to be ridicule that comes with it. And I don't
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: mean critiquing. Critiquing is great, right people can say, hey,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: I like what you did, but you know, I didn't
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: like this part or it's not really for me, but
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: I see where you're coming from. Great job. Like it's
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: never that it's we live in this black and white
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: world where like you said, I love you or I
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: hate you, right, and that shouldn't be the case. And
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: it you know, for people to even you know, the
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: times we live in now. With the Internet being what
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: it is and technology being what it is, we can
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: all put stuff out whenever we want. But the world
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: is it's very cluttered and people have to you know,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: they're not going to find us necessarily the way the
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: world found Nirvana. At the same time, you know, we
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: don't live in a monoculture anymore. There's there's lots of
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: things happening all at once. But when something does break through,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Were we doing all of this so
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: that can happen. Were we trying to become the most
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: famous people in the world. I don't think so, you know.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: And even if we were, how could we possibly process
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: how to handle that before it? You can't And that's
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: what these guys had to go through. It reminds me
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: of this conversation. This part of the conversation reminds me
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: of the song by Tool Cooker with a penis great Great,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: especially when your kids are in the car and the
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: right But there's a line that Maynard has in it.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: All you know about me is what I sold you.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: His point is exactly what we're talking about right now,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: Like you don't know that we don't know these people
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: in your example, the people coming up to you, they
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: wouldn't know you. They know what you gave them, they
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: know what you what you told them, it doesn't mean
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: they know you. And fans, admirers, haters all together, they
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: don't care about that, you know. It's it's more of
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: their self gratification that they want to approach you and
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: say something to you than how that might make you feel.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: They don't care about that.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: There's a great scene in the movie. It's the movie
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: with de Naro and Jerry Lewis. De Naro plays this
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: psycho fan of Jerry Lewis, who's uh, he's like a
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: Johnny Carson type guy as an as a late night show.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: But there's a scene in there it's just it's brilliant.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: Jerry Lewis is crossing the street and he's in the
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: city and this old woman stops him.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: Mars, you will not believe who's coming down the hip.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: Jerry Langford, Right, Oh, Mars, please hold on, Jerry, would
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: you please sign my order sign the magazine for Yeah,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: You're just wonderful. I've watched you your entire career a
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: joy to the world. Please, Clark, would you just please
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: say something to my nephew Marris on the phone. He's
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: in the hospital coming. You should only get cancer. I
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: hope you get cancer, Jerry.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: It's that quick that somebody can turn like that.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: Famous people to non famous people. Famous people aren't people, right,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: They're just they're there. They are these things that are
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: there for our entertainment and if we happen to run
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: into them, they have to entertain us, you know. And
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: it's not like that. It's it's tough and these guys
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: went through it big time back then. Yeah, it was
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: so so so quick, insanely quick.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: So let's wrap it up again. Let's let's talk about
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: where people can get that autograph copy. You have a website, yes.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: So the website is simply my name. It's Rob Janicky
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: dot com. That will always remain open for the book.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: If you want a signed copy delivered now, you can
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: go there if you and that's in the US only,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: it doesn't ship internationally. The Amazons and Barnes and Nobles
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: of the world online June third, that's when you can
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: get it anywhere in the world and they will not
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: be signed, but more people can get it that way.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: So that was fun for us to find out that
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: wasn't supposed to happen until the end of the year,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: and we found out that it's going to happen relatively quickly.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: Like the pre order is now, so you can do
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: that now if you're any where in the world and
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: you'll get it starting tune.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: Third, well, congratulations on the book. It's a great read
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: for those who are a fan of this era, but
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: also interwoven throughout as your own personal story and that's
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: what makes it very special. So congratulations on the book.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: And we want to I want to thank Keith from
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: Abandoned Albums because he was able to set this up.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: So yeah, thanks for having Keith.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: So it's a great guy and he does you know,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: he's he's he's one of the true music and art
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: fans out there.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: He's a great Yeah, Rob Janicke, thank you, Thank you.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: Eric. I really appreciate it. It was fun. That's it.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: It's in the books.