It’s been three decades since grunge cracked the mainstream, but it remains one of the most important moments in the history of music. In a new series, we examine the important bands, gear and players from this remarkable movement.
Editor’s note: Everyone at was deeply saddened by the passing of Michael Leonard in July 2021. Michael was a valued and much respected contributor to both Magazine and in the years since. We present Michael’s final article here so that we may all remember him doing what he did best – sharing his enthusiasm and knowledge of music with the world.
If you want to feel old, remind yourself that 2021 marks 30 years since grunge went overground and, led by Nirvana, a score of revolutionary bands became household names and inspired millions to pick up and play it in a way that was altogether more angular and noisy than what had come before. By way of comparison, go back 30 years from 1991 and the Beatles had yet to sign a record deal, the Stones hadn’t even formed, and Britain’s biggest hero was Hank Marvin. Talk about “too much fucking perspective”…
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But even with so much distance between now and then, grunge remains a truly important and significant moment in the history of our instrument. Britpop’s shenanigans might have led to an epidemic of young men in Adidas Gazelles reaching for Sheratons, but it famously never really exported beyond these shores. There’s an argument therefore that grunge was the last truly global phenomenon in culture.
Grunge changed music, fashion, aesthetics, gear trends… all of which reverberate to this day. Check out how many bright young things in 2021 are pulled to the offset s that grunge ists used primarily because at the time they were unpopular enough to offer excellent bang for buck. It didn’t arrive out of nowhere, of course, and change from the 80s predominant trends – be it hair metal, winsome indie or slick virtuoso twiddling – had been coming for a while. But no one perhaps expected such a shift for the new so-called Generation X.
But in our enthusiasm to canonise, and in some cases pigeonhole a genre, it’s all too easy to focus on the big bands and forget that another important facet of grunge was its diversity. It was a ‘movement’ of often strange bedfellows united by little more than geography or the desire to do something different with than what had gone before. Even if only a select few would become megastars, all had their impact on what would come afterward, leading to a family tree that stretches further and wider than anyone could have anticipated.
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Many of those bands – and sadly, some band-members – have since left us but forgive us some nostalgia as we revisit the artists, records and instruments that saw grunge, 30 years ago, in bloom…
There’s an argument that Mudhoney are the true unsung heroes of grunge, the flannel brigade’s prophets without honour. They were name-checked by many of their Seattle peers from the start – Kurt Cobain was particularly enthusiastic – but the reality of their ongoing career is that they’ve only ever had one album even chart in the US’s Billboard 200. Yet they
Mark Arm (vox/) and Steve Turner (lead ) formed Mudhoney from the ashes of another cult punk outfit, Green River (who also featured Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament). Drummer Dan Peters would briefly moonlight for Nirvana, pre Dave Grohl. Mudhoney’s early photographer was a just-graduated Seattle local, Charles Peterson, future imager-in-chief for a slew of bands… Whenever there’s a discussion about grunge’s gnarly family tree, Mudhoney appear to be the trunk.
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just three months later. It was a two-and-a-half-minute Stooges-alike blast. “There’s something special about that first single, we were never quite able to recapture that sound, ” Mark Arm later recalled. “I don’t know if it was the s or the recording. It was just a really gnarly, gnarly sound. … I think it had more to do with the actual electromagnetic chemistry of what was going through our amps that day. It was just a cool, fried-out sound.
That “fried out” sound was down to an EHX Big Muff pedal maxed-out, and Mudhoney soon became synonymous with the art of fuzz. Following EP,
, was even named after their favourite stomps. Turner says the grunge aesthetic was: “Garage punk, and punk rock in general – a lot of it was made with cheap gear, and a lot of it was reclaiming gear that ists had kind of dismissed as garbage. Like the [Fender] Mustang. That was my ultimate back when I was a kid, but it was pooh-poohed when I finally got one. I could get them for $150.” You can keep your Floyd Rose locking trems and scalloped fretboards, Mr Widdle… a new/old way of thinking had begun.
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E) through the 90s, Mascis has proved himself an exceptional player who can rip screechingly discordant punk solos but also occasionally drop the melodic nous of one of his unlikely heroes, Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore.
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“When I play a solo I’m just expressing that moment, ” Mascis says. “It can go horribly wrong easily enough. Some nights you can pull stuff off, other nights you can’t … but you don’t know until you try.” He’s also a crisp rhythm player. Over the years, Mascis has guested on records by Sonic Youth, Buffalo Tom, Gumball, Mike Watt, fIREHOSE, and many others, making him noise rock’s big hairy Zelig. In more recent years, he’s increasingly turned to acoustic music… and he nails that too, being an impressively adept fingerpicker. Legend.
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New York’s Sonic Youth weren’t a ‘grunge’ band, of course, but their influence lies heavy across the whole scene as a sodden Seattle autumn. They were the ostensible ‘stars’ of
was still in their trademark crazy tunings (Thurston Moore is in GABDEG, Lee Ranaldo is GGDDGG). But it’s a relatively straightforward rocker, celebrating a scenario of J Mascis being President of the USA (something that’s less absurd now than it was 30 years ago). Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo also did much for the rehabilitation of the Fender Jazzmaster in noise rock, and both went on to have their own signature models.
Stone Gossard at Seattle’s Off Ramp café in 1991 during Pearl Jam’s support slot for Alice In Chains. Image: Alison Braun / Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images
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Of all the bands that broke big in 1991, Pearl Jam have been the most enduring. They’re survivors. ist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament had been together before in proto-grungers Green River, Mother Love Bone
Temple Of The Dog, picking up alliances along the way. The Seattle scene was rife with collaborations in the late 80s, and while MLB’s Matt Cameron went off to Soundgarden temporarily, ist Mike McCready stayed around, and picking up vocalist/occasional collaborator Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam was born. They only settled into solidity in 1990 but by the end of 1992, debut album
was almost grunge by numbers, lyrically, with dark subjects of depression, suicide, loneliness, and murder, but Pearl Jam’s sound was more traditionally ‘classic rock’ than some of their punkish peers which gave them a much broader appeal. Their anthemic, intentionally epic songs boast plenty of soloing and a bizarre war of words soon broke out about Pearl Jam’s grunge ‘credibility’: one
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Review said that Pearl Jam were “trying to steal money from young alternative kids’ pockets” and Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain angrily attacked Pearl Jam, claiming the band were “commercial sellouts” (the two reconciled before Cobain’s death). But the fans didn’t even care:
Gossard and McCready were never punk iconoclasts, in truth. Gossard tends to be the riffman, tuning to open D, but McCready’s a quite traditional lead player. “We’re pretty opposite as players, so we complement one another, ” says Gossard. “It’s a trade-off between us. You’ll hear Mike’s e up for the solos, but there are a lot of songs where my rhythm parts are playing the main riff.”
McCready admitted early on to being a huge SRV and KISS fan, which wouldn’t cut the mustard in Mudhoney. But impressively, they’ve stayed a solid unit. Coming out of a scene too-often characterised by splits, troughs and deaths, any 30-plus year career is tough to argue with. They keep fans onside with activism and a steady supply of ‘official’ bootlegs. An even flow, indeed.
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It may be a surprise, but Soundgarden were the first grunge Seattle-ites to score a major record deal, signing to A&M in 1989. ist/frontman Chris Cornell and ‘colour ’ player Kim Thayil (he prefers that term to ‘lead ist’) were the only constants in their 1984-2019 on/off career. It wasn’t until third album,
Although forever in the shadows of Nirvana and Pearl Jam in commercial terms, Soundgarden were perhaps the most ambitious band of the grunge era: Cornell’s bruising wail and Thayil’s use
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