Mudhoney Articles
VH1.COM
Fall '02
In 'N' Out Of Grace
Mudhoney Ponder Their Pop Stardom That Never Was
In 1988, Mudhoney's Superfuzz Bigmuff EP created a blueprint for grunge with its deafening,
distorted guitars and raging vocals spewing from the mouth of a longhaired malcontent. The
anti-anthem "Touch Me, I'm Sick" was surpassed only by Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" for
the sheer power of its youthful nihilism. One of the few of Seattle's seminal bands that signed
to a major label (Reprise) and survived, Mudhoney were in the studio as recently as June, and
are touring the U.S. as we speak. Band founders and clowns of the grunge graduating class, Mark
Arm and Steve Turner sat down with VH1 to reminisce about the year punk broke - and everything
else that broke with it.
VH1.com: What is "grunge"?
Mark Arm: Grunge is dirt. It's scum. It's a word that I think was used to describe just
raspy-sounding rock. And around 1983 or '84, there were three records that were pivotal to
this whole thing. There was the Tales of Terror record, the first Redd Kross album, Born
Innocent, and the first Poison 13 record. And these were all bands that came up through punk
rock, hardcore, but they were doing something else. It was still like full-on rock and roll.
And it was sloppy and it was loose and it was nasty and it was a lot of fun. And that's what
got us going.
VH1.com: How is grunge related to punk rock?
Steve Turner: It was one and the same when we started playing music in the punk rock
world of the early '80s. That's all it was, you know? [Then] Black Flag started growing their
hair out. Meat Puppets started growing their hair out... We started growing our hair out...
We were all kind of slowly getting out of hardcore. I mean, hardcore is such a dead end.
Arm: There's great bands. There's Discharge, Minor Threat, Black Flag - and then there's
all these copycat versions of those. So it's just like, what's the point?
Turner: You can't go any faster, so you just start listening to other music that's maybe
a little slower. I had no roots at all in '70s rock. I had some friends from high school like
Stone Gossard, who was kind of a metal kid. He turned me on to Motorhead, Alice Cooper.
Arm: I was a little bit too young to catch on in the '70s. So it was totally fresh to me
in like, 1982.
Turner: And it certainly was a lot more fresh than the regurgitated sounds of young
hardcore teenage America at the time... By the time Mudhoney started, I'd been living up in
Bellingham [Washington] for a year and just listening to really noisy weird stuff. I was
turning Mark on to this stuff, too. And it seemed a lot more like what we were after. It was
noisy and slightly more difficult, yet really simple musically. We went for that. And for us
to even think anything was going to come of it was ludicrous. I mean, we thought Mudhoney was
just going to be another little short-lived project. We'd maybe get a single out.
Arm: A single, yeah.
Turner: And then I'd go back to school. That was the plan.
Arm: He never did.
Turner: Well, I did. I just dropped out again. Twice.
VH1.com: Can you remember when the Seattle scene really started to take off?
Arm: I think my exact words were, "Hold on fellas, the roller-coaster ride is about to
begin."
Turner: It happened several different times. Mudhoney started touring a lot in '88 and
started getting the whole Sub Pop initial wave of recognition. So that was a real underground
kind of vibe. '88-'89 was pretty much the peak of the Seattle thing to most people that were
in it. And then it really exploded in '91 with Nirvana.
Arm: And Pearl Jam.
Turner: I was sick of it by '89. I was over it.
VH1.com: What was your reaction to Nirvana's success?
Turner: Well, the funny thing is, as soon Nirvana popped up, we knew they were a great
band and everything, and we always kind of like joked that in a perfect world they'd be No. 1
on the charts. And once they actually hit No. 1, it was like well, actually, the world still
kind of sucks.
VH1.com: After so much hype, did musicians feel pressured to reject a commercial sound?
Turner: But see, most of that music wasn't really that gnarly sounding or anything. I mean,
we never had a hit, and it's pretty obvious why we never had a hit.
Arm: We would be in England, and journalists would be asking us questions like, "So when
you become huge famous pop stars..." Well, wait a minute! What are you talking about? Have
you heard us?
VH1.com: Do you think grunge still exists?
Turner: There's nothing that I can even consider grunge music. And never did, really.
Arm: There are some bands, like Nebula and Queens of the Stone Age, who have that sort
of sound. Some of the kids call it "stoner rock."
Turner: If you're talking about loud music with guitars, there's always going to be
people making noise on guitar.
