Justin Henderson - Grunge Seattle

Roaring Forties Press

1053 Santa Fe Avenue

Berkeley, California, 94706

All rights reserved. First published in 2010

Copyright 2010 Justin Henderson

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0984316502

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Henderson, Justin.

Grunge Seattle / Justin Henderson.

p. cm. -- (MusicPlace series)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-9843165-0-2 (alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-9823410-7-0 -- ISBN 978-0-9823410-8-7 -- ISBN 978-0-9823410-9-4 1. Grunge music-Washington (State)--Seattle--History and criticism. I. Title.

ML3534.3.H46G78 2010

781.66--dc22

2010004580

T hanks to Susan Silver, Art Chantry, Charles Peterson, Chris Hanszek, Ed Fotheringham, Lisa Dutton, Pete Vogt, Karen Moskowitz, Michael Cozzi, Oscar Mraz, and all the others from whom I got the basic story. Thanks also to the writers of grunge books, especially Michael Azerrad and Clark Humphrey, and to the creators of websites on grunge, from whose work I borrowed much information and the odd quote. As always, this is for Donna and Jade.

Seattle in 1990.

T his book is intended to evoke a specific placeSeattle, Washingtonduring the era known as grunge, a rock-and-roll cultural explosion that occurred in Jet City in the years from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, as well as the grungy elements of the city as it exists today.

First, a quick reminder, since pop-culture memories tend to fade fast: before, during and after that ten-year period, countless bands in Seattle and elsewhere played music that passed for grunge, and well discuss a number of them in this book. But the four Northwest bands that eventually came to define grunge on the larger (more commercially successful) stage were Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden. These four bands, and a few other outfits, dominated the rock-and-roll world for a few years.

The roots of grunge can be found in the early to mid-1980s, and post-grunge aftershocks still ripple through the musical world today, years after the original Seattle grunge scene ended with a bang (goodbye, Kurt) and a whimper (when Soundgarden quietly disbanded). This book will show where grunge happened, taking a trip through Seattle and the surrounding territories, visiting the clubs, concert halls, recording studios, bars, coffee shops, streets, neighborhoods, and towns where grunge took root and grew from a close knit community of like-minded and adventurous musical souls into a major international culturaland commercialjuggernaut.

Speaking of commerce: Seattle is famous for originating a few things, and Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks, Amazon, and grunge can arguably be considered the top five. Note that four of them are mega-corporations and one is a rock-and-roll movement. That is what makes grunge significant, in part: although Seattle has been home to important artists and major architects (and earlier moments of musical glory, it being the birthplace of both Jimi Hendrix and the song Louie Louie), the Rainy Citys primary claims to fame have been its strikingly successful twentieth-century businesses, especially Boeing and Microsoft. These corporations shaped the city into the vibrant regional capital and internationally known destination that it is today. For all its liberal cachet and green credentials, Seattle is and has always been mostly about money and business.

Because of this, and because it is relatively small, located at the edgeboth literally and figurativelyof the cultural front, Seattle has often been a sort of also-ran, ruler of a region but a perennial runner-up in terms of national profile. This was true until grunge hit it big. And in the years since, though billionaire philanthropists have worked and spent assiduously to transform Seattle into a more culturally significant city, grunge remains the most influential cultural movement to arise in this city. As Spin magazine put it, in a story in December 1992, Seattle is to the rock-and-roll world what Bethlehem was to Christianity.

Visually, too, the city has its icons and attractions: Pike Place Market, the Space Needle, the black monolith that is the Columbia Tower, the Seattle Public Library, various museums (especially the waterfront Olympic Sculpture Park), diverse distinctive and charming neighborhoods, surrounding evergreen forests, and the lakes and bodies of water that define and (dis)organize the city. And Mt. Rainier, majestically brooding in the distance. Its paradise, with perhaps a bit too much drizzly gray rain thrown in. All things considered, Seattle is a lovely place to inhabit or visit.

Lets take a more detailed look at the city and its surroundings, allowing those unfamiliar with Seattle to gain a sense of how it lays on the land and to figure out where some of the more interesting or unusual sites, monuments, and museums, grunge-related or otherwise, can be found on a map or on the street driving around. The words driving around are meant quite literally here, because like many automobile-addicted American cities, Seattle has no mass transit system to speak of, other than a fairly decent bus system and one light rail lineand yet Seattle is geographically complex. Although many of the grunge sites are reachable by bus (buses are free in the city center), many of the sites mentioned in this book are easier to visit by car.

Seattle is sheltered from the North Pacific to the west by the Olympic Peninsula, with the Olympic Mountains, and by the waters of Puget Sound, linked to the Pacific by the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the north of the city. Seattle is further sheltered by the (West Seattle) peninsula that curves around to enfold Elliott Bay. Seattle is temperate, with very few days of extreme hot or coldbut that seemingly ubiquitous, drizzly rain and the low dark northern sky that spits it out slowly and steadily for months at a time drives the citys residents to distraction. Distractions like grunge.

Seattles many insular, close-knit neighborhoods are often defined, separated, or even isolated by hills or bodies of waterCapitol Hill, First Hill, Queen Anne Hill, Beacon Hill, Phinney Ridge and other hills rise up, while Elliott Bay, Lake Union, Green Lake, the Ship Canal, the Ballard Locks, Portage Bay, Puget Sound, the Montlake Cut, and Lake Washington, which defines the eastern edge of the city, encircle and flow past.

East of Lake Washington is suburbia, ruled by Bellevue, and beyond Bellevue, the country and the mountains, blanketed by a once seemingly endless pine forest that has grown increasingly suburban in recent years. There are many bridges in Seattle, including several drawbridges that allow the passage of boats, infusing the city with an authentic maritime quality.