The early 1980s in America was a time of media saturation. With the growing importance of technology people were constantly being bombarded with new things, but many young people didn’t feel that the slick music videos offered by MTV or other media represented themselves or their concerns accurately; the resulting alienation and apathy led to the emergence of a new sound that became known, simply, as Grunge (TeachRock, No Date).
Grunge arose from the economic recession that Seattle had been deeply affected by in the early 1990s. The movement was ‘borne of a blende puree of idealism and cynicism, encompassing the themes of Generation X disillusionment with societal norms’ (Children of the 90s, 2010). With high unemployment rates, the grey and depressed mood of the region at the time seemed perfectly encapsulated in the dour visuals and indifferent lyrics that Grunge offered (TeachRock, No Date).
Melody Maker was one of the most popular music newspapers in the United Kingdom at the time. It’s main role was to discover new bands and write about those unknown bands, so that they could later be covered by other magazines such as Melody Makers biggest rival, the New Musical Express. During the 80s, Melody Maker started covering more indie and alternative rock music and at the end of the 80s and start of the 90s, the magazine started focussing mostly on this newly emerged genre, Grunge.
Grunge started out as a mostly Seattle-based genre, kick-started by American bands signed to the Sub Pop record label. Some of those bands included Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, Hole, Alice in Chains and Nirvana. For UK-based Melody Maker to cover this America-based genre, it meant they had to send one of their writers to Seattle to cover the Grunge scene. Their main reporter on the scene became Everett True, one of the magazine’s staff writers and assistant editors, who constantly travelled to and from Seattle to keep the magazine up to date with what happened on the other side of the pond.
Everett True, whose real name is Jerry Thackray, is a music journalist as well as a musician under the name The Legend!. He worked for the New Musical Express for 5 years before starting at Melody Maker in 1988. Only months after switching magazines, True was sent to Seattle to report on the emerging Grunge scene. “The first trip I ever got offered was the trip to Seattle to cover Sub Pop. Now, I didn’t actually get offered that trip. It got offered to other journalists, there was two of them and they couldn’t do it. So when they said, ‘Do you want to go to America, to Seattle?’, I was like ‘Yeah’. You pretty much got to do whatever you wanted to. I got to do what I liked and got given a bunch of free stuff as well, so it was pretty cool (True, 2017).”
On these frequent trips to Seattle, True got to know most bands on the Sub Pop label on a personal level and became good friends with some of them, including Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and his wife and frontwoman of Hole, Courtney Love. Another musician he got to know on a personal level was Mark Arm, frontman of Mudhoney and former frontman of Green River. Arms is said to be the first person to describe music as Grunge, when describing his former band Mr. Epp and the Calculations in 1981 (Mayberry, 2008).
The Grunge generation grew up on Punk, Heavy Metal and Hardcore and took elements of those genres to create its own sound:
Grunge music is generally characterized by "dirty" guitar, strong riffs, and heavy drumming. The "dirty" sound results primarily from the common use of heavy guitar distortion, fuzz and feedback. Grunge fuses elements of hardcore punk and heavy metal into a single sound, although some grunge bands perform with more emphasis on one or the other. Grunge bands were noted for their punk and indie attitudes, and the music shares with punk a raw sound, fast tempos, and often vocal delivery. However, grunge also involves slower tempos, dissonant harmonies, and more complex instrumentation reminiscent of heavy metal. (New World Encyclopedia, 2014)
Grunge was a very much angst-ridden alternative lifestyle full of rebellion, mostly youthful against pop culture. Grunge fashion was a visible representation of that rebellion, which allowed people to express themselves in an allegedly unconventional way. The clothes were easy going, cheap and durable and ran against the 80s flashy aesthetic. The fashion was mostly made up of ripped jeans, combat boots, thermal shirts, plaid shirts, knit ski hats and greasy, unwashed hair. The Rolling Stone defined the look as “all hair, sweat and guitars” (Azzerad, 1992).
One of the biggest Grunge bands at the time, and the band this essay will focus on, was Nirvana. Nirvana was formed in 1987 and established itself as part of the Seattle Grunge scene by the end of the 80s. The band originally consisted of Kurt Cobain on vocals and guitar, Chris Novoselic on bass and Aaron Burckhard on drums, however, they had a second guitarist for a few months and changed drummers multiple times during their carreers, having Chad Channing in the band for 2 years around the release of their first album and finally getting Dave Grohl to join the band from 1990 onwards. The band released their debut album ‘Bleach’ through independent record label Sub Pop, to which they were signed. The Sub Pop label was founded by Bruce Pavitt in 1986, after already having existed as a fanzine and radio show before then. Nirvana’s second album, ‘Nevermind’ was released through DGC Records in 1991. Their third and last album ‘In Utero’ was released in 1993, following frontman Kurt Cobain’s overdosing twice earlier that year. After another overdose incident in 1994, which turned out to be a suicide attempt, and a second suicide attempt, Cobain checked in to a recovery centre in Los Angeles. However, he fled on the first of April and was found dead in his home in Seattle on the 8th of April 1994, with a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head.
Like mentioned before, Everett True was Melody Maker’s main reporter on the Grunge scene and became close friends with Kurt Cobain over the years. For that reason, he has written many articles on Nirvana for Melody Maker. From reading many of those articles that are published on the Rock’s Backpages website, it becomes clear that Everett True at some point gets to know Cobain on a more personal level and his style of writing about them changes. Whereas the first pieces he wrote on Nirvana were normal introductory articles in which he came across as very professional, positive and excited, his later pieces on the band are written in a more rebellious and personal style, in which his attitude changes from being journalist-artist based to writing about the band as a friend would, including him (Everett True) cussing frequently in the articles and being very harsh and almost disrespectful towards the band.
However, according to True (2017) this change in his writing style is not just due to his relationship with Cobain, but mostly because he ‘learned how to write, got more confident and [his] experiences changed’. He does admit the friendship affected his writing style, saying he ‘used to go to opposite extremes, deliberately slagging people off if they were [his] friends’, just to prove that he could talk in a negative way about them.
The first interview Everett True did with Nirvana, ‘Nirvana: Bleached Wails’, was published in Melody Maker on the 21st of October 1989. His style in this first article is very introductory, like you would expect from a first article on a band whose name has only been dropped once before in the magazine in an interview with Mudhoney. As fashion was a substantial part of the Grunge culture, True introduces the band members not only by describing their character and position in the band, but also by describing the way they look:
Chris is over six foot tall, friendly and wired… and has Elvis sideburns… [Kurt] is your archetypal small guy – wiry, defiantly working class and fiery... He has a small goatee… Chad Channing, the drummer, is the quietest of the trio… On stage he’s a visual blur. He looks permanently stoned. (True, 1989)
In the early pieces like the aforementioned one, True already writes with some humour in his articles, making small, almost random comments such as ‘[Kurt’s] pet rat once bit Bruce Pavitt, Sub Pop records supremo’ and ‘a cat walks by on a leash’ (ibid). Overall, he seems very excited and positive to be learning and writing about this new genre and the bands that came with it. This was also the reason why he was able to get so many people on board with Grunge and Sub Pop according to True (2017) himself:
Because I went over there and I wasn’t familiar with hardrock.. In the 80s in the UK it was almost a dirty word, hardrock, so when I went to Seattle and wasn’t familiar with this music at all, to me it was really fresh, really new and exciting. So I was able to write about it in a kind of artificial line, like “This is fucking fantastic, this is the most exciting new thing you’ve ever heard”. And I was able to write that because I had that ignorance, that naivety that you can’t fake. Once you hear something, you hear something, you can’t really pretend like this is the first time you’ve heard this music. So I go to Seattle and they supply me with alcohol and everything else, and suddenly I get it, I’m like “Oh, this is why people like big time rock, because it’s fun!”
The second interview True did with Nirvana, ‘Tad and Nirvana: The Larder They Come’ (17 March 1990), and both the live review of March 1990 and the ‘Nevermind’ album review of September 1991, continue with that same genuine enthusiasm and positivity. However, from the interview ‘Nirvana: Station To Devastiation’ that was published on the 2nd of November 1991 onwards, True’s writing style changes. It becomes visible that he has actually become a part of the Grunge scene instead of just writing about its music, he becomes more free in his writing and his style becomes quite rebellious with lots of cussing and multiple mentions of destroying things in every article.
Since the band has been around for a couple of years at this point, it’s safe to assume most of Melody Maker’s readership will have heard about Nirvana by now, and Everett True therefore stopped introducing the band members early on in the pieces. To illustrate, in the 1991 interview, he only introduces their full names and positions in the band in the 7th paragraph, after already mentioning Kurt Cobain and Chris Novoselics first names multiple times in the previous paragraphs.
Like mentioned before, True started writing about the band destroying things a lot in every article. The aforementioned 1991 interview is the best example of that, as the 2500 word interview is purely about the vandalism caused by the band. The introduction of that interview reflects the tone of the rest of the piece perfectly:
On their recent European tour, Seattle’s masters of chaos, Nirvana, managed to set their tour bus alight, upset the Pogues and The Ramones, piss into Ride’s champagne bucket and almost get dropped from their label. Everett True joined ‘the only band around at the moment who know what rock’n’roll is all about’ on their current US tour and witnessed hotel rooms trashed, venues incinerated and anarchy reign supreme. (True, 1991)
Despite the fact that the whole article is solely about the vandalism caused by the band, Everett True still manages to not make the band members seem like bad, unlikable people. He even asks the band the question, ‘Doesn’t this sort of behaviour just lead … journalists like myself to assume you’re just a bunch of redneck no-good delinquents?’ (ibid), making the reader realise that that is what you would be expected to think about the band after reading about this sort of behaviour.
In a live review of July 1992, all of True’s enthusiastic beginners spirit has suddenly faded away simultaneously with Nirvanas enthusiasm on stage. It becomes clear from the article that Nirvanas destructive, high-energised stage demeanour is gone after they turned into ‘corporate entertainment, however much the band decry it’ (True, 1992). They are not ‘rampaging drunk and breaking equipment’ like you would expect from the band who’s attitude built their career, because the audience at their festival shows don’t care that it’s Nirvana on the stage. The band’s excitement was gone, and so was True’s, the only thing left to them was their sound, ‘Nirvana still sound life-affirming… [Kurt’s] voice is still inexhaustibly expressive, emotive, his guitar still bleeds angst’ (ibid).
In the interviews after that, Nirvanas trademark attitude is still far from visible and True’s writing style is very calm. The interview ‘Nirvana: In My Head I’m So Ugly’ (18 July 1992) is an extreme example of that. The interview is split up in three different parts, True interviews Kurt, Chris and Dave separately for this one, and the whole interview is really calm and barely about music at all. The interview later that month, ‘Nirvana: Crucified by Success?’ (25 July 1992) starts out with a similar calmness, in as much as the band doesn’t say many ‘grungy’ things, but there is a certain tension al throughout the piece, as the band members are all in the same room doing the interview together. At the end of that piece the tension leads to Kurt Cobain snapping, bringing all of the frustration back that used to be his trademark a few years before:
“It’s not isolated,” snarls Kurt. “It happens to me all the time… every time I go out, every fucking time. It’s stupid. And, if it bothers me that much, I’m going to do something about it. Fuck it, rock doesn’t mean that much to me.”…”I have to hear rumours about me all the time,” the singer growls. “I’m totally sick of it. If I’m going to take drugs that my own fucking prerogative, and If I don’t take drugs it’s my own fucking prerogative.” (True, 1992)
True’s grunge writing style comes back as well after that interview. In ‘Nirvana: Cobain’t That Peculiar’ (May 1993), True completely disregards all of the traditional interview guidelines. Most of the piece is just him talking about his own experiences, most of which are not even related to Nirvana or the show at Cow Palace they are currently at, with Kurt commenting on things every once in a while. The whole piece in general doesn’t seem to have any real structure to it, with every other paragraph talking about a whole different topic, not related to the show they are at nor what they were talking about before. Though half of it is True himself talking about almost random things, he blames Cobain for getting off topic, making it clear once again that True isn’t interviewing Kurt as a journalist anymore as much as interviewing him as a friend:
So what relevance does all this have to the Cow Palace, or to whether L& kicked ass?... We were discussing the show, right? You think you’re a major league star, you think you can get away with telling us any bogus “boy” story right?... The first time I saw Nirvana, I was so hyped up by the guys over at Sub Pop, I expected some fucking punk band who’d come along to change the fucking world. They didn’t suck exactly, but I’m sure glad they got rid of that extra guitarist. (True, 1993)
The rest of the pieces True wrote on Nirvana that year are in the same informal style, with True talking a lot about his own experiences in life, and his own thoughts about things, instead of writing more traditional interviews.
The last interview Everett True did with Nirvana was ‘Kurt Cobain and Kim Deal: Sleepless In Seattle’, in December 1993. True didn’t write any pieces on Nirvana after Kurt Cobain’s death in April 1994, commenting on it saying: ‘I didn’t write anything when Kurt died, because I wasn’t there. I was in Ohio when Kurt died. My paper called me to confirm it and I spoke to my editor directly, he just basically said, “You do what the fuck you have to do. You don’t have to write about it.”’(True, 2017)
Bibliography:
REFERENCE LIST:
Azzerad, M. (1992) Grunge City: The Seattle Scene. Available at: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/grunge-city-the-seattle-scene-19920416 (Accessed: 21 May 2017)
Children of the 90s (2010) ‘Grunge Style and Fashion’ Children of the 90s. 29 April. Available at: http://childrenofthenineties.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/grunge-style-and-fashion.html (Accessed: 21 May 2017)
Mayberry, S. (2008) ‘The Early Years’ The History of Grunge: A look at the Seattle sound and the media. 12 March. Available at: https://grungehistory.wordpress.com/2008/03/12/the-early-years/ (Accessed: 19 May 2017)
New World Encyclopedia (2014) Grunge Music. Available at: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Grunge_music (Accessed: 21 May 2017)
TeachRock (No Date) The Emergence of Grunge. Available at: http://teachrock.org/lesson/the-emergence-of-grunge/ (Accessed: 19 May 2017)
True, E. (1989) Nirvana: Bleached Wails. Available at: https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/nirvana-bleached-wails (Accessed: 21 May 2017)
True, E. (1990) Screaming Trees, Nirvana, Tad: Pine Street Theatre, Portland, OR. Available at: https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/screaming-trees-nirvana-tad-pine-street-theatre-portland-or (Accessed: 22 May 2017)
True, E. (1990) Tad and Nirvana: The Larder They Come. Available at: https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/tad-and-nirvana-the-larder-they-come (Accessed: 22 May 2017)
True, E. (1991) Nirvana: Nevermind (DGC). Available at: https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/nirvana-inevermindi-dgc (Accessed: 22 May 2017)
True, E. (1991) Nirvana: Station To Devastation. Available at: https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/nirvana-station-to-devastation (Accessed: 22 May 2017)
True, E. (1992) Come As You Aren’t: Nirvana at Isle Of Calf Festival, Oslo. Available at: https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/come-as-you-arent-nirvana-at-isle-of-calf-festival-oslo (Accessed: 22 May 2017)
True, E. (1992) Nirvana: Crucified by Succes? Available at: https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/nirvana-crucified-by-success (Accessed: 23 May 2017)
True, E. (1992) Nirvana: In My Head I’m So Ugly. Available at: https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/nirvana-in-my-head-im-so-ugly (Accessed: 23 May 2017)
True, E. (1993) Kurt Cobain and Kim Deal: Sleepless In Seattle. Available at: https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/kurt-cobain-and-kim-deal-sleepless-in-seattle (Accessed: 23 May 2017)
True, E. (1993) Nirvana: Cobain’t That Peculiar. Available at: https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/nirvana-cobaint-that-peculiar (Accessed: 23 May 2017)
True, E. (2017) Conversation with ^^^. 11 April.
^^^ As this work has to be anonymous I can’t state my own name, but this is taken from a conversation I had with Everett True for this assessment.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES:
Hann, M. (2013) ‘Sub Pop: 25 years of underground rock’. The Guardian. 4 July. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/jul/04/sub-pop-25-years-underground-rock (Accessed: 21 May 2017)
M., R. (2015) ‘Grunge Revivalism: Why America’s Angriest Genre is Coming Back’. CultureTease. 14 September. Available at: https://culturetease.com/2015/09/14/grunge-revivalism-why-americas-angriest-genre-is-coming-back/ (Accessed: 21 May 2017)
Melody Maker (no date) Available at: http://www.afka.net/Mags/Melody_Maker.htm (Accessed: 16 May 2017)
Moore, R. (2010) Sells Like Teen Spirit: Music, Youth Culture and Social Crisis. New York: NYU Press.
Perry, K. (2000) ‘Melody Maker pensioned off’. The Guardian. 15 December. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2000/dec/15/pressandpublishing.uknews1 (Accessed: 16 May 2017)
Price, S. (2016) ‘The Nineties: Grunge, Britpop, Dance, and the Music Press’ Last Hurrah’. MJ403: Journalism in Context. Available at: https://moodle.bimm.co.uk/course/view.php?id=546 (Accessed: 16 May 2017)
Serpick, E. (no date) Nirvana Bio. Available at: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/nirvana/biography (Accessed: 21 May 2017)
Strong, C. (2011) Grunge: Music and Memory. Burlington, VT: Routledge.
True, E. (1989) Mudhoney: Sub Pop, Sub Normal, Subversion! Available at: https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/mudhoney-sub-pop-sub-normal-subversion (Accessed: 21 May 2017)
True, E. (1992) Soundgarden: Camden Underworld, London. Available at: https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/soundgarden-camden-underworld-london (Accessed: 22 May 2017)
True, E. (1993) Nirvana: Cow Palace, San Fransisco. Available at: https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/nirvana-cow-palace-san-francisco- (Accessed: 23 May 2017)
Wikipedia (2017) Everett True. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_True (Accessed: 20 May 2017)
Wikipedia (2017) Grunge. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge (Accessed: 20 May 2017)
Wikipedia (2017) Melody Maker. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melody_Maker#1990s (Accessed: 20 May 2017)
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