News Everett True reminisces about Nirvana, 20 years post Love Buzz |
Veteran music journalist Everett True speaks out about inventing grunge, getting acquainted to Seattle Sub Pop bands, witnessing the rise and fall of Nirvana, and his special relation to the band. If I'd had any idea of the furore that I would cause by stepping off a plane at the snow-covered Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in February 1989, maybe I would have chosen my words more carefully.
I was in the Pacific Northwest to write a two-part story on Seattle's nascent Sub Pop label for my London-based music paper Melody Maker.
The resulting articles were later credited with breaking both Sub Pop - and "grunge" music - to the world. Sub Pop was starting to make a name for itself with its laconic, long-haired rock bands - Soundgarden, Mudhoney, the behemoth-like Tad, Nirvana, Screaming Trees and many others.
I was enchanted. I'd never encountered big dumb rock before.
Unlike metal, which by the late-1980s had degenerated into a bad LA parody of itself, these rockers had an urgency. Already, the Northwest had a sound of its own - "Hard music played to a slow tempo" - as Kurt Cobain described it to me in 1989. A word was needed to describe what was happening: steeped in garage lore and disposable. You didn't need to look far to find something that matched the dirty, abrasive guitar sound of Mudhoney: grunge.
Story courtesy of the Courier Mail.
Posted or updated: 07-25-2008 @ 4:14 PM (GMT) by Uanah.