Now, Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley's images are seen through their suicides- Layne Staley's heroin addiction was in effect a very slow suicide- but the way their lives ended doesn't reflect the way they were. And while there was a darkness to grunge, another myth is that it was just all these brooding, angsty dudes. But one of the myths of that era is that grunge killed hair metal- hair metal was a genre in decline at that point, and something was going to pick up the slack. MY: Most people cite the authenticity of these bands as something that spoke to them. Why do you think that happened, and what were these grunge groups providing that people hadn't been getting before? Pitchfork: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" spurred an immediate change in pop culture. Mark Yarm: I was at Brandeis University and into what was called "college rock." I picked up a DGC sampler and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was the first song on it. Pitchfork: What was your experience with grunge in the early 90s? "I don't think the amount of cross-dressing on stage and backstage during that grunge era has been matched since." In the following conversation with author Mark Yarm- not an unimaginative pseudonym for Mudhoney frontman Mark Arm, if you were wondering- we discuss the politics of grunge, the impact of heroin on the scene, and the music's legacy in contemporary rock. The tome tells of the big crossover successes- Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains- as well as relatively unsung bands like Mudhoney, L7, the Melvins, the U-Men, and Tad, who all helped define a major moment in recent pop music history. Last fall, along with the 20th anniversary reissue of Nirvana's Nevermind and director Cameron Crowe's documentary Pearl Jam Twenty, came Everybody Loves Our Town, a comprehensive oral history of grunge and the Seattle scene.
Paper Trail features conversations with the authors of noteworthy recent music books.
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