Grunge

Grunge is the name given to the hard rock music produced by bands such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, and others, in Seattle, Washington, from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s. While the term provides a convenient blanket description, it also hides fairly substantial stylistic differences between the bands. Few, if any, of those groups ever described themselves as "grunge," and the stereotyping of grunge as humorless and angst-ridden is a serious distortion. Nonetheless, the same media scrutiny that bred those misrepresentations turned grunge into a worldwide phenomenon that shaped not only music, but also other aspects of popular culture such as fashion.

Through the late 1970s and early 1980s, punk and hard-core rock had embraced a do-it-yourself attitude in defiant opposition to the bombast and big money of heavy metal and arena rock. However, as the hard-core and punk movements began to wane in the mid-1980s, many of those independent bands retained their amplifiers and distortion pedals but began slowing the tempos of their songs considerably. As a result, many bands (intentionally or not) began to reproduce the sound of the arena rock bands on which they had originally turned their backs. Although this trend occurred throughout America, it became particularly noticeable in two groups of musicians in Seattle, The Melvins and Green River. Hailing from Aberdeen, Washington, The Melvins played a particularly sludgy form of hard rock, touring with their friend Kurt Cobain at the wheel of their tour bus before he formed Nirvana. Green River also received some attention in independent music circles, before splitting up to re-form as Mudhoney and Mother Love Bone.

Those two groups nicely illustrate the two poles of the grunge movement. Fronted by flamboyant lead singer Andrew Wood, Mother Love Bone's music clearly indicated the band's commercial ambitions, and after just a handful of shows they secured a contract with PolyGram Records--a situation amounting to heresy in the independent music scene. After Wood's death in 1990 from drug-related causes, members of the band secured the talents of San Diego-based singer Eddie Vedder and formed Pearl Jam.

In contrast to Mother Love Bone, Mudhoney openly satirized the entire notion of rock stardom. Their sound was considerably rougher, with front man Mark Arm's vocals closer to a hoarse shout than to singing. Taking their name from the title of a soft-core film directed by Russ Meyer, they embraced a faux-sexism that simultaneously spoofed and celebrated the excesses of big-name rock bands.

Soundgarden fell somewhere between the blatant commercialism of Pearl Jam and the unpolished garage sound of Mudhoney. Lead singer Chris Cornell possessed a powerful falsetto that went well beyond that of Black Sabbath's Ozzy Osbourne, his most obvious influence. Soundgarden built its reputation as an independent band, satirizing the misogyny of heavy metal in songs such as "Big Dumb Sex," but a lot of listeners seemed to miss the joke. The group's 1989 album, Louder than Love, was nominated for a Grammy, and Superunknown, released in 1994, debuted at number one on the Billboard charts. By that time the band's sound was closer to Metallica or Guns 'N' Roses (with whom they had once toured) than to Mudhoney or Nirvana. Soundgarden broke up in 1997.

It is likely that many of these bands would have vanished quietly, or perhaps not even formed at all, if it were not for Sub Pop Records. Founders Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman recognized the strength of the Seattle music scene and, like Berry Gordon, whose Motown label had popularized the pop and rhythm-and-blues of Detroit in the 1960s, they set out to promote their city's bands. From the label's inception, they showed an ambition previously absent from independent labels. Sub Pop's first release, a compilation of bands who, for the most part, weren't from Seattle at all, described the label as "The new thing, the big thing, the God thing: A multi-national conglomerate based in the Pacific Northwest." Most people thought it was a joke, but Pavitt and Poneman weren't kidding.

Many independent record labels in America had been releasing excellent music that never achieved any degree of commercial success, but Pavitt and Poneman were shrewd marketers with an unrivaled gift for generating hype. They hired a British press agent to promote their bands, and paid a correspondent from the British music newspaper Melody Maker to come to Seattle. They believed--correctly--that the best way to promote their bands in the United States was through a reputation that was build abroad. Soon the city was renowned as one of the foremost centers of independent music in the world.

Nonetheless, by early 1991, Sub Pop was nearing bankruptcy. Its salvation came from the wholly unexpected success of Nirvana's first full-length album, Nevermind. When David Geffen's DGC label signed Nirvana, the contract stipulated that Sub Pop would receive a two percent royalty if the album sold more than 200,000 copies. Most observers expected it would sell a fraction of that number. However, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the album's first single, became an overnight anthem, combining an infectious riff with a heavy guitar sound and lyrics which expressed a wry world-weariness. A few months earlier, Nirvana had been known to only a small number of independent music cognoscenti; now they were receiving airtime on top 40 rock and alternative stations throughout the world. Within a year, Nevermind had sold four million albums. Pearl Jam's Ten was released the same month as Nirvana's album, and although sales were initially slower, it sold an equal number of copies during its first year.