Mudhoney Articles
The Rocket
26 January '00
In Fuzz We Trust: Mudhoney
Twelve Years in the Making -- Inside Mudhoney's March to Fuzz
Mudhoney's career began with a belch. Twelve years ago at Reciprocal Studios,
Mark Arm burped into the microphone, inaugurating what would be the scruffy,
fuzzed-out chords, blunt bassline, the compressed, leaden patter of the drums
and nasally howl of "Touch Me I'm Sick" -- the song most of us would come to
know them by. That burp, combined with the sinisterly funny lyrics and the
raucous melee, proved to be a profound statement: Mudhoney had arrived, a
force with fangs bared, indeed, but one with a smirk on its face.
Throughout the next decade, as other bands began redefining the so-called
"Seattle sound," Mudhoney -- Arm, guitarist Steve Turner, bassist Matt Lukin
and drummer Dan Peters -- continued to redefine themselves -- both as Sub
Pop's signature band and later as a major label recording artist for
Reprise -- and remained a vital component of Northwest rock. Their sonic
feats were many, most of which were contained in their albums: Superfuzz
Bigmuff (1988), Mudhoney (1989), Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge (1991), Piece
of Cake (1992), My Brother the Cow (1995) and Tomorrow Hit Today (1998).
Mudhoney were the biggest band not to taste commercial success, which was
the proverbial blessing and curse. Years after the majority of the big bands
(Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice In Chains) had fallen, Mudhoney still stood.
Even so, the lack of commercial success had forced bandmembers to supplement
their incomes with day jobs.
Today, it's 2000 and Mudhoney have all but ceased to exist. Arm and Turner
are devoting their attention to Monkeywrench, who'll release an album,
Electric Children, in April on Estrus. Peters is roaming Seattle as a
utility drummer for the likes of Mark Lanegan and others. Lukin resigned
last summer and has since dropped out of music. Mudhoney aren't quite broken
up, but they have no bass player and no immediate plans.
So it seems appropriate that Sub Pop, the label that gave the world Mudhoney,
now issues a career retrospective called March to Fuzz: Best of and Rarities
to bookend an era. For a band whose recordings have graced more than three
dozen releases, who's done more for rock 'n' roll than often credited for,
such a collection is warranted. The two-disc (three-LP), 140-minute set,
compiled by Arm and Turner, gathers the highlights from each of Mudhoney's
six LPs, various EPs, singles and compilation tracks, as well as a bevy of
rarities, running the gamut of covers, unreleased tracks and B-sides.
The Rocket recently spoke to Mark Arm, Steve Turner and Dan Peters about the
anthology and their memories of the songs that comprise it.
"Sweet Young Thing"
From "Touch Me I'm Sick" b/w "Sweet Young Thing" single (1988, Sub Pop)
Peters: That was on the first single, obviously. The B-side was gonna be
"Touch Me I'm Sick" and the A-side was supposed to be "Sweet Young Thing."
And of course that all got flipped around.
Turner: That was our first recording session. We didn't even know [the songs
from that session] were going to be put out or anything. Bruce [Pavitt] just
had us go in there and do a demo. It was just a few hours one night, not much
thought put into it.
"Touch Me I'm Sick"
From "Touch Me I'm Sick" b/w "Sweet Young Thing" single (1988, Sub Pop)
Turner: I never really got sick of this song. Mark did, but he always changed
the lyrics around to try to keep it amusing to him. I guess he always thought
it was a throwaway song, that there wasn't much thought put behind it. But
that never bothered me. It never bothered me that it was the most popular
song or anything or considered our penultimate tune.... We were aware that
we were stuck in 1989; there was no use fighting it.
Arm: We did this Halloween show with Nirvana at the Paramount and my mom went
to it. Before "Touch Me I'm Sick," I said, "My mom's in the audience tonight
and this is her favorite song." But she doesn't know that song from "Here
Comes Sickness."
"When Tomorrow Hits"
From Mudhoney (1989, Sub Pop)
"Revolution"
From This Gift EP (1989, Glitterhouse)
Peters: We wanted to have a Spaceman 3 vibe on "When Tomorrow Hits." Then,
of course, Spacemen 3 went on to cover it under duress. They just wanted to
cover it just to prove that they could do a better version of our song than
we could of our song. And I guess they kind of did, because that was a cool
version. They were pissed about our version of "Revolution" because Mark
changed the lyrics. Sonic Boom didn't take kindly to that. It was supposed
to be a split single: us covering Revolution and them covering "When Tomorrow
Hits." When they heard our version [of "Revolution"], they pulled out of it
and got really bent out of shape.
"Hey Sailor"
From a bonus 7-inch for the LP edition of My Brother the Cow (1995, Reprise)
Turner: We were really drunk. We were almost done in the studio with My
Brother the Cow in 1995.... We decided we were going to record these stupid
little snippets of music and maybe use them as a free 7-inch. We just thought
the idea of a wasted 7-inch would be great. "Hey, bonus record. Ah, it sucks."
We just recorded these little things with horrible effects on every
instrument. Mark was playing the Farfisa. I was going through some kind of
ring modulator envelope filter and so was the bass so everything sounded
really bad -- new wave or art rock or something. Then we did the vocals
later. This is the shortest one on the 7-inch, but it's the funniest.
Peters: We each took turns fucking with the voices after the music was
recorded. I had just been informed by my wife that I was talking in my
sleep. She's like, "You were talking in your sleep last night." She said that
I said, "Muscle on up to the bar, sailor, and have another beer," which
became the lyrics for this. Lord knows what I was thinking about in my
dreams.
"Run Shit Head Run"
From the Soundtrack With Honors (1994, Maverick)
Arm: For some reason, we got pick ed to be on the soundtrack for With Honors.
And they sent us a little clip. It's Brendan Fraser as a college frat boy
running through the snow and the music for scoring the scene was EMF's
"Unbelievable." And the label said, "We would like a song like this." And
why they came to us for a song like that, I have no idea. We had this thing
that was this cool, sort of surfy instrumental. It didn't fit that scene
necessarily, but it's all we had at the time. And they said they wanted a
song with words. And so going with the theory that this piece of music was
gonna be running underneath Brendan Fraser running in the snow, I came up
with the words, "Run Shit Head Run," thinking that they would have to go for
the instrumental. And they didn't.
"Suck You Dry"
From Piece of Cake (1992, Reprise)
Peters: The idea for the video of that song was supposed to be 10 years on
and grunge was dead. There's a lot of cool ideas we had that never happened.
There was gonna be stuff on the TV, like footage of us playing at the Redding
Festival in front of 30,000-40,000 people and then the camera was supposed to
pan over and show us playing in a bar in front of 10 people. I think the idea
was lost. It still turned out to be fairly humorous.
"You Got It"
Originally a Thrown Ups song called "Bucking Retards."
From Superfuzz Bigmuff (1988, Sub Pop)
Peters: We actually started working on this song before Matt had even come
into the picture. It was me and Steve and Ed Fotheringham. We go down to this
practice space -- I guess it was 1987. Steve fires up his amp and he starts
playing that song and Ed starts screaming. I couldn't find a riff in there to
put a drum beat to. I was like, "Whatever, I can't play drums to that song."
A week later, Mark came in and somehow found a thing he could play on that.
I was able to get a drum part off Mark's riff, and Steve's riff just winded
around the song. Eventually it all fell into place. Now, I actually play off
Steve's riff.
"Fuzzbuster"
Originally appeared on Clam Chowder and Ice Vs. Big Macs and Bombers
compilation (1991, Nardwuar)
Turner: Nardwuar [the Human Serviette] sent us video tapes any time he wanted
to convince us to do something. Before we even knew him, he wanted to book us
up in Vancouver, B.C. and he started pestering me and Dan -- we lived together
at the time. The first things he sent us were all music tapes -- weird
Thirteenth Floor Elevators [footage], strange Canadian things, all sorts of
weird clips from the '60s. On the third tape he sent us, he put some funny
porno at the end. And of course we told him, "Hell, send us more of that."
It was like this really weird, jokey, crazy porno stuff. One was some kind
of weird French porno that had like this really bad plot dubbed over it -- it
was kind of like Firesign Theater porn. So then he sent more of that kind of
stuff, which was great.
Arm: You know, I never got any of that. I'm kind of pissed still.
"Judgment, Rage, Retribution and Thyme"
From My Brother the Cow (1995, Reprise)
Peters: We played it on Conan O'Brian. It didn't seem like we were going to
get on the show since we didn't have a hit. "Generation Spokesmodel" was
[the album's] first single and I guess I kind of figured we were going to
play that, but since we thought that "Judgment, Rage" was going to be a
second single, we decided to play that. Which was funny. It's a pretty
abrasive song. Two minutes of national TV. I think it went over like a lead
balloon, too. We didn't really meet [Conan]. Mark...said something to him in
the hallway like, "Wow, you're tall." And the guy was like, "Yeah, later."
"Tonight I Think I'm Gonna Go Down Town"
From Mudhoney/Jimmie Dale Gilmore split EP (1994, Sub Pop)
Turner: We were fans of Jimmie Dale Gilmore's when [the idea of recording
with him] was suggested to us. Mark and I flew out to Montana, met him and
rode with him to Seattle on his tour bus. Which was a blast, just hanging
out, getting to know him and his band. We decided to do a Townes Van Zandt
song ["Buckskin Stallion Blues," not on the anthology] together. The one we
did of his songs was the easiest one I could figure out -- I could fake my
way through that song and turn it into a really crude, kind of Johnny
Cash-style thing.
"She's Just 15"
[that's a typo, the correct song is "Paperback Life"]
From Mudhoney/Halo of Flies split single (1991, Amphetamine Reptile)
Turner: "She's Just 15" is so much of a rip off of Billy Childish that we
didn't even credit the song until this comp. On the single it came out on in
1991 it just had a question mark as to who wrote it.
"Pump It Up"
From the Freedom of Choice compilation (1991, Caroline)
Turner: This is the early 8-track [not the PCU version]. I don't mind the one
on the PCU soundtrack. Mark hates it. It's a sore subject with him.
Arm: I hope [Elvis Costello] never heard the version on PCU. The one that's
on the Anthology -- the 8-track version -- is fine. The [PCU version] is a
travesty. It was one of those movie deals. This producer came up from L.A.
and his deal was that he produces songs for movies. He had this brainstorm
and he wanted us to do Costello's "Pump It Up." So we were like, "We already
recorded it; you can use that." He's like, "No, I want to do it right." I
don't know if he even heard that 8-track version. So he took us to Studio X.
By the time he was done, he had two 24-track machines slaved together, so
basically there was 48 tracks on the damn thing. It was a nightmare. It was
so completely overblown and over-done -- for that song in particular. It
wasn't this fuckin' orchestral [piece]; it was a pretty simple,
straightforward pop song.
"Overblown"
From the Soundtrack Singles (1992, Epic)
Peters: Mark and Steve and Bruce Pavitt talked to Cameron Crowe when they
were filming that movie. The soundtrack had a lot of bands like Soundgarden,
Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains. [Crowe] wasn't really getting a different
representation of the Seattle music scene at the time. So Mark and Steve and
Bruce swindled our way onto the soundtrack. And of course we get on it and
make fun of everybody on it.
"Butterfly Stroke"
From "Butterfly Stroke" single (1999, Sub Pop)
Peters: It's a song about Michael Jackson. I think bits and pieces of it are
about him. Mark had just read this book that he also gave me called I Was
Michael Jackson's Teenage Lover and it's insane. It's about the boy who
accused Michael Jackson of molesting him. It's written by the private
investigator that worked for the boy's dad. And it's bizarre, some of the
stuff they talk about in it. I think Mark was inspired after reading that
book to write that song.
"Drinking for Two"
Previously unreleased, recorded during the sessions for Tomorrow Hit Today
Turner: We played it live at one show and Mark made some off-handed comment
about it being for his wife who was pregnant. And that started some rumor
that Emily [his wife] was pregnant and was drinking.
"Beneath the Valley of the Underdog"
From Tomorrow Hit Today (1998, Reprise)
Turner: That was a gloomy riff of Mark's. The whole song came together really
easily. We were definitely proud of that on that record. I thought it was
great. It was such a gloomy little number. I thought it should be a single
because I thought it was really catchy, not that I've been able to pick a
single or anything.
"Editions of You"
From "Butterfly Stroke" single (1999, Sub Pop)
Peters: I'm a big Roxy Music fan -- have been all my life. On one of our
first tours we all went out record shopping. When I was kid I had had Roxy
Music's Greatest Hits, but for some reason I didn't have it anymore. So I
decided I was gonna buy it. We get back to the van, "Hey, what you get?"
"I got this Roxy Music record." I get looked at like, "What the hell are you
buying that shit for?" After we signed to Warner Bros., we all order a bunch
of records from them, and Mark orders a bunch of Roxy Music records. He
starts listening to them and becomes a complete fan and decided he wants to
cover ["Editions of You"]. I'm like, "Finally, someone's coming around." The
first time I did an interview with Melody Maker I admitted to liking Roxy
Music and I think the other guys hung their heads in shame.
