Eddie Vedder on the “definitive” grunge band
After nearly 30 years, it feels like we’re still recovering from the fallout of grunge rock. As much as the genre may have shocked the system back in 1991, there has never been another huge wave that has left a mark quite like Kurt Cobain did off the strength of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. While many would single out Nirvana or Pearl Jam as the perfect example of what a grunge band is supposed to sound like, Eddie Vedder thought everything the genre stands for comes from Mudhoney.
If you look at the timeline of the Seattle scene, the huge mainstream wave of grunge actually happened a few years too late. Before the flannel was being sold in stores around the world, artists like Melvins and an early incarnation of Soundgarden were already starting to congeal as far back as 1985, being featured on the first compilations for Sub Pop like Deep Six.
Pearl Jam was far from even becoming an idea, with Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament cutting their teeth in the band Green River, named after the local serial killer of the same name. Even though the band could throw down a handful of decent licks, the true power divide came from Ament’s ambitious side and the punk rock attitude of singer Mark Arm.
After one too many creative disagreements, the band decided to call it a day and split into two separate outfits, with Arm forming Mudhoney and Ament taking Gossard to form Mother Love Bone with superstar Andy Wood. While Mother Love Bone felt like the Seattle answer to what good hair metal was supposed to be, their success would be squandered once Wood passed away from a drug overdose in 1990.
Meanwhile, Vedder was working as a gas station attendant in San Diego, listening to all of his favourite underground music, when he got a tape floated to him from Gossard. Instead of the typical punk rock mentality, Vedder had a classic rock-tinged delivery that worked perfectly for the group, eventually heading up North to cut their landmark debut album, Ten.
Even though the band would get heaps of praise for their debut, Vedder thought that Mudhoney should get the lion’s share of accolades for birthing the Seattle sound, saying, “When it comes to grunge or even just Seattle, I think there was one band that made the definitive music of the time. It wasn’t us or Nirvana, but Mudhoney. Nirvana delivered it to the world, but Mudhoney were the band of that time and sound”.
While Mudhoney was certainly more ramshackle than just about everybody in the Seattle sound, their aesthetic is exactly what Seattle sounded like. Instead of catering to the masses with songs about self-loathing, many of the group’s greatest hits were about making as much noise as possible, playing up their punk sensibilities on tracks like ‘Touch Me I’m Sick’.
Pearl Jam would eventually be taking notes from Arm’s new outfit as well, incorporating those same punk rock ethics to the band’s next album Vs., featuring some of the heaviest tracks they would ever make, like ‘Go’ and ‘Blood’. Arm would even endorse Pearl Jam’s success over the years, opening for them and even coming out on stage for an impromptu Green River reunion. For all of the different sounds coming from the Pacific Northwest, the inclusion of Arm in the Pearl Jam story makes the whole scene feel like one happy grunge family.
