Grunge: Gen X Strikes Back

Years: 1989-1997

After '97 can be considered Post-Grunge 

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There are a couple of albums in history that had similar effects in terms of their impact on musical history, except, curiously, the effects were opposite. One was the Sex Pistols' "Never Mind The Bollocks," which we already saw in some detail during the Punk Era. Without intending to, they generated a structural change in rock music and were largely responsible for the New Age Empire of the 1980s. The other is Nirvana's "Nevermind" (coincidence of names?), which, without having the slightest purpose, finally buried more than 10 years of dominance by the new age synth pop and glam metal that had saturated the 1980s, signifying the return of rock to the forefront and the end of that kind of musical "Middle Ages" that was the 1980s.

 

How two albums with such low ambitions managed to change the course of rock history so much is one of those mysteries that will never be resolved. These are things that happen, rare phenomena that shouldn't be attempted to be understood. In this case, we're simply going to delve into the second case: the explosion of Grunge thanks to a single album. Of course, a single album couldn't generate a musical "Renaissance" on its own. It needed other quality bands to take advantage of the open door, and in this case, Nirvana wasn't the only band seeking to transgress the '80s aesthetic. It wasn't even the first. There were plenty of contemporary and even pre-Nirvana bands honing the sound we know today as Grunge. Some took advantage of the genre's 5 minutes (or 4 or 5 years, approximately) of fame. Others remained anonymous. The fact is, grunge didn't emerge overnight. Like all genres, it took a long time to brew underground, and there was already a very strong movement, not only in Seattle but also in other parts of the US and even in England, harnessing and polishing this sound. So when Nirvana ignited the spark with "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the explosion was imminent.

 

Grunge is an offshoot of alternative rock, which operated throughout the '80s as underground, anti-aesthetic rock, not seeking the spotlight that Glam or New Wave sought at the expense of musical quality. Around 1985, Seattle was one of the secondary cities in the United States that, due to its geographical location (I'm neither from here nor from there), began to develop its own sound, completely different from the one prevailing in other corners of the country, L.A. and New York, which were much more commercial. Seattle bands were fed up with that sound and began to generate their own, dirty, aggressive sound, based heavily on the vestiges of Punk and mixing some Metal into the heavy distortion and some arrangements. These Seattle-area bands, in turn, drew on the sound of bands from other parts of the country who had nothing to do with Seattle and who were precursors to Alternative Rock, such as Sonic Youth and the Pixies. These bands, which during the 1980s had a solid fan base on college radio but lacked media recognition, would be fundamental in inheriting elements to Grunge, such as heavy distortion, noise, and the start-stop song structure and the slow-soft verse/fast-powerful chorus. Among the heavier influences, Grunge bands almost all credit Black Sabbath as a foundation for most of their guitarists, with sounds close to Tony Iommi's Doom and the effects and riffs he would achieve through the style he founded thanks to the accident in which he lost a finger. Grunge, therefore, inherited above all from Metal the use of powerful and dark riffs, which were rarely used by Punk bands. Bands in Seattle would begin to incorporate the metal sound thanks to The U-Men, the first Punk group to fuse it with Metal, giving their music a distinct punch that fascinated other bands.

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The point is that by 1986, there were already a ton of bands in the Seattle area who played differently, but if you listened closely, they had a similar aesthetic, a sound that ended up unifying them and giving them a sense of cohesion. Shows generally didn't exceed 20 people, but in the Northwest, the weariness of Glam or New Wave was almost universal, so no one tried to rival this sound. There were bands with more punk influences, others with more hard rock or metal influences, but they all agreed that it was better to coexist than compete with each other. Ultimately, they shared a mutual hatred of the mainstream sound. That year, the first compilation by C/Z Records, an independent label, was released featuring the bands that would be considered founding members: Green River (later to become Mudhoney), The Melvins, The U-Men, Skin Yard, Malfunkshun, and Soundgarden. The bands weren't metal. They weren't punk. However, everyone could see that they had a shared something that connected them.

 

Mark Arm, Green River's vocalist, was the first to use the term grunge, quite by accident. It turns out that in a letter to a music magazine, he was harshly criticizing his former band, and among the adjectives he used to tear it apart was "grubby," which translates to "grimy" or "dirty." Thus, the term grunge was initially used derogatorily to refer to the rusty sound of distortion, but later the same magazine would use it to refer to Green River's sound. Record labels would continue to use the term, and the term would spread to other bands that used a similar sound.

 

At the end of '86, Bruce Pavitt founded the independent record label Sub Pop, which would be instrumental in bringing several of the early bands to the spotlight. Pavitt made sure to give this type of music a regional character, using the adjective he read in the magazine to describe his most iconic band, Green River, creating a strong advertising campaign (to the extent possible for an independent label) for the band's first EP, Dry As A Bone. Green River would split in 1987 to create two bands, one called Mudhoney under the direction of Mark Arm, and another that would float in limbo for a time with Jeff Ament and Steve Gossard (do those names sound familiar?) until it evolved into a group called... Pearl Jam.

 

In 1988, the British magazine Melody Maker approached Bruce Pavvit and Jon Poneman of Sub Pop, and they published an article on the "Seattle sound," which gave grunge a bit more visibility not only in the US but also in England itself. By this point, alternative was already a fairly strong movement in the rest of the country and was starting to expand beyond the colleges, so some bands became interested in grunge and moved to the Seattle area. Suddenly, there were a ton of outside bands imitating the grunge sound, but with a lot more melody. Some of the founding bands were upset by this and couldn't wait for the attention to leave their area and become an underground movement again, but other up-and-coming bands, like Nirvana, decided to add more melody to their songs to make them more accessible.

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Soundgarden was another band that "accessible" their sound, and was the first group to sign with a major label. Soundgarden consisted of Chris Cornell on vocals, Kim Tayhil on guitar, Matt Cameron on drums, and Ben Shepherd on drums, and had been playing together since 1984. They had been with Sub Pop since the label's inception, but hadn't been able to record an LP and switched to SST Records, another independent label that already had a well-established reputation and distributed their first album, Ultramega OK. The album performed relatively well and attracted the attention of major record labels to Seattle. It was A&M that offered them a major contract, and they became the first grunge band to sign with a major label, which also served as a platform for them to tour with Guns N' Roses.

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Alice In Chains was another band that had been making waves since 1987, with a rough sound, but with tremendous quality in the playing of its members and a powerful yet refined sound thanks to the quality of its guitarist, Jerry Cantrell's riffs. In 1989, a demo of the band began circulating, and several record labels showed interest after the relative success of Soundgarden. Columbia would eventually sign them, immediately putting them in the studio to record their first EP, We Die Young, which was a national hit on metal radio. Metal??? No matter, Columbia didn't care what label they slapped on it as long as it sold, and by 1990 they were already releasing their debut LP, Facelift.

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After Soundgarden dropped from their catalog, Sub Pop rushed to sign a new band that was making a lot of noise, called Nirvana, and released their debut album, Bleach, that same year, to little commercial success. Around that time, Jeff Ament and Steve Gossard, who had left Green River, had joined vocalist Andrew Wood to form a band called Mother Love Bone. The group caught the attention of Polygram, which signed them for the album Apple, released in 1990. The album was relatively well-received, and the band toured, but four months later, Wood was found dead of a heroin overdose. The group broke up. Gossard began playing with another guitarist named Mike McCready, who encouraged him to invite Ament back. They recorded an instrumental demo with several songs influenced by '70s hard rock. They invited former Red Hot Chili Pepper member Jack Irons to sing, but he wasn't interested. However, he took the tape to San Diego, California, where it ended up in the hands of a surfer friend named Eddie Vedder, the lead singer of a small-time local band. After hearing the songs, Eddie became interested, wrote lyrics for three of them, added his own vocals, and sent the tape back to its creators in Seattle. On the way back, they sent him money to travel and join them. By October, Pearl Jam had signed with Epic Records. Their debut album, Ten, was released in August of 1991, and initially had only decent sales.

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By decent sales, we mean an average of 40,000 copies per album, which in 1990 was a very high number for grunge bands, accustomed to scraping by on gigs with 20 people and underemployment at gas stations. So selling 40,000 albums was already quite an achievement. The point is, media attention was causing the numbers to start rising. By 1991, shortly after the release of Pearl Jam's Ten, Nirvana released their second album, distributed by DGC, a subsidiary of Geffen Records. Nevermind started quietly, but it was well-positioned thanks to the trio's already-established fame in the Seattle area. Little by little, demand began to increase, spreading like an epidemic with its epicenter in Washington, while the single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," was also gaining ground and making inroads. They came up with the idea of ​​making a video for the song, which would be broadcast on MTV, and overnight, both the song and the album became a huge hit, so huge that Geffen had to halt production of its other artists to keep up with demand. By January 1992, it had reached number one in the charts, dethroning Michael Jackson's Dangerous. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was omnipresent on radio and television.

 

"Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Nevermind would catapult Nirvana to mega-ultra-superstardom, but it also had an impressive ripple effect. The interest in these bands, which until then had been exclusive to their home region, spread like wildfire across the country. Suddenly, no one cared about Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe, or Poison anymore. Seattle was becoming the new Liverpool, and anything that didn't match their sound was out. Pearl Jam's Ten, which had been slow to take off, suddenly shot up to multi-platinum status and remained at the top of the charts for over 10 years. Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger had a similar effect, though it would be 1994's Superunknown that would become their most iconic and best-selling album. Alice In Chains' Dirt also became a sales blockbuster in 1992, and one of the darkest and most representative albums of Grunge. The 40,000 copies that seemed exorbitant for these angry little bands were suddenly nothing, and they were selling millions of copies and generating millions of dollars, and they were famous, and they were sought out for interviews and for Unplugged, and they didn't know how to deal with it all. The bands appeared all day on MTV, attended award shows, and were nominated for Grammys (interestingly, since they didn't know where to put them, they were put in the Metal category). Pearl Jam and Soundgarden would make a collaborative album called Temple Of The Dog in 1991. Stone Temple Pilots released their debut, Core, at the end of '92, with the peculiarity of being the first band related to Grunge that did not belong to the Seattle area, since they were based in Los Angeles.

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Grunge's impact was massive, not only musically, but also in terms of marketing and culture in general. For starters, most of the bands had tremendous musical quality. Without necessarily being virtuosos like the progressive monsters of the '70s, most had enormous mastery of their instruments, musical knowledge and a foundation in hard rock and '70s metal, and above all, they had a true love for rock. Proof of this is that they spent years barely surviving on their music. In fact, many felt uncomfortable with fame, like Kurt Cobain, who would say it was the last thing on his mind. Eddie Vedder, frontman of Pearl Jam, also felt the burden of fame. In general, many shared that discomfort, and it led them to seek refuge in hard drugs, primarily heroin, which was the drug of this generation (interestingly, for folk it was marijuana, for hippies it was LSD, in the '70s it was cocaine, for Grunge it was heroin). Not that they were addicted to it because of fame; many had been addicted to it before, but their addiction worsened because they didn't know how to deal with fame and money. The point is that they weren't in it for the money, but for the rock, which produced a high-quality product, light years away from the glam bands of the '80s, who were only after dollars and girls. So the product practically sold itself, since teenagers were already fed up with the meaningless bands of the '80s and, at the same time, identified with the sound and message of grunge. Record companies would invest millions in advertising, but with a very different approach than just a few years before. The grunge aesthetic, moreover, was the complete opposite of glam. The grunge musician was a dirty, scruffy guy, wearing Converse or mining boots, ripped jeans, a T-shirt, and a long-sleeved plaid flannel shirt, with dirty hair... in contrast to the shiny, glamorous side of glam. The way of dressing would become a global trend, bringing with it the beginning of a brand fixation. The '80s were a commercial and somewhat banal decade, but in the '90s, it intensified, exploiting the idea of ​​"you are what you wear." Thus, it wasn't just about selling grunge sneakers; it was about selling the Converse sneakers Kurt Cobain wore, and the brand quadrupled its sales. Companies not only exploited grunge directly, but also began exploiting teenage angst in their personal lives through commercialization. Another difference in promotion was that the focus was more directed toward television broadcasting through videos. If in the '80s, video creation wasn't taken SO seriously, by the '90s, MTV (which began its regionalization in Latin America with the decade) was established as a music monopoly that decided who sold and who didn't. If you didn't appear on MTV, you had no exposure and you were a nobody. So, bands put a lot of care into crafting their videos, almost as much as they did into their music. Recording the famous "unplugged" was also essential, and a status symbol for the band that was invited to perform an acoustic performance by MTV. They say grunge generated a media and commercial impact not seen since the hippie era. And I'd say it was even greater since in the '90s there was much greater exposure, more money for advertising campaigns, and different tools, but I can't really compare because I wasn't there in the '60s.

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Musically, it also had an impact, bringing to light the Alternative movement, which it initially drew on. The bands that initiated the underground Alternative movement, such as R.E.M., Pixies, Sonic Youth, Jane's Addiction, etc., emerged from obscurity when the Cobains, Vedders, Weilands, Staley's, etc. declared themselves their idols. Thus, these bands that inspired this generation emerged thanks to the widespread adoption of Grunge and the current opening for quality bands and new sounds. They gave rise to new alternative bands, collectively forming a new Bronze Age of Rock with the high-quality musicians, albums, and songs that emerged in the first half of the decade.

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Musically, in addition to the aforementioned, we can also count on the harsh vocal style, mostly deep and gravelly (except for Kurt, who was higher-pitched), although capable of reaching very high pitches when shouting. Eddie Vedder was the most prominent vocalist. Both Nirvana and Pearl Jam would renounce their success by trying to make their subsequent albums, In Utero and VS, respectively, even more transgressive, raw, violent, and difficult to listen to. They succeeded, but they couldn't prevent their albums from being sales flops, reaffirming their status as leaders of the movement.

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Meanwhile, in England, the debut of a band called Radiohead was being linked to Grunge. Pablo Honey is more alternative than true Grunge, but the influences of the sound from the British Isles were already noticeable. At the beginning of '94, another British band confirmed the influence of the Seattle sound with their debut album, Bush, with the album Sixteen Stone. In England, Grunge would spark a countermovement called Brit Pop, with bands like Blur, Oasis, and Suede, with diametrically opposed aesthetics and philosophies.

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By April, news of Kurt Cobain's suicide would break. He couldn't stand the pressure of fame and ended up shooting himself, becoming a martyr of his generation. Pearl Jam would have a lawsuit with Ticketmaster over the commissions they were charging for their concerts, and they would end up not playing concerts for a while. Alice In Chains and Stone Temple Pilots were beginning to unbalance due to the heroin addictions of their respective vocalists. Lyane Staley was increasingly unpredictable, failing to perform at concerts or sessions. By '95, Alice In Chains would release their last self-titled studio album, and Lyane would join the grunge supergroup Mad Season, with members of Pearl Jam, Walkabout, and the Screaming Trees, although the group didn't take off as expected. AIC didn't formally break up, but they would never return to the studio. Lyane seemed increasingly lost and erratic, and finally, in 2002, he was found dead of a heroin overdose. STP, for their part, had suffered a commercialization of their sound with their third album, Tiny Music, accentuated by the number 4 hit. They also had problems due to Scott's lack of commitment due to his drug addiction. By 2002, after releasing their fifth album, Scott Weiland and Dean DeLeo had a serious falling out and announced their disbandment. Soundgarden would collapse in 1997, and Cornell would embark on his solo career.

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Grunge was itself a suicidal genre, drawing on its sense of self-respect and recklessness from its punk influence, so it couldn't last long. It was an explosive genre, and in the violence of the explosion, it burned out very quickly. For practical purposes, by 1997, the most representative bands had already collapsed due to internal conflicts, the deaths of members, or had simply lost interest in continuing. The survivors changed their sound to a much more commercial one, moving away from the initial transgressive aesthetic, as was the case with Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots. Grunge can't be considered completely closed in '96, but those bands would be more focused on an alternative and more commercial sound from that date on.

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On the other hand, there were some bands that didn't start in Seattle or have to break new ground like these founding bands, but they took some elements of Grunge and mixed them with more melodic songs. Some call this wave "Post-Grunge," and I'm referring to bands like Foo Fighters, Creed, Collective Soul, Silverchair, Audioslave, Live, Staind, Puddle of Mud, Days of the New, Marcy Playground, etc. For practical purposes, we'll consider these bands for the second phase of Alternative.

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Anyway, Grunge had a very short period of glory, like Punk, but both managed to change the structure of Rock, in diametrically opposed ways. A brief, but fiery, explosive period in which you could detect in the air that something was happening, and which, I think, we who lived through it will never forget. The musical quality was tremendous, and it was the springboard for other alternative groups that together managed to make the first half of the 90s an epic.

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In short, Grunge had a very short period of glory, just like Punk, but both managed to change the structure of Rock in diametrically opposed ways. A brief but fiery, explosive period in which you could detect in the air that something was happening, and which, I think, those of us who lived through it will never forget. The musical quality was tremendous, and it was the springboard for other alternative bands that together managed to make the first half of the 90s a Bronze Age of Rock. Perhaps at the time it wasn't appreciated as much, but in retrospect, we wish there was such quality today... we'll analyze the rest of the alternative bands in more depth in the next Age of Rock.

 

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By Corvan

Nov/3/2010

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