Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge [Hardcover]

Mark Yarm (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 6, 2011

Twenty years after the release of Nirvana’s landmark album Nevermind comes Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge, the definitive word on the grunge era, straight from the mouths of those at the center of it all.
 
In 1986, fledgling Seattle label C/Z Records released Deep Six, a compilation featuring a half-dozen local bands: Soundgarden, Green River, Melvins, Malfunkshun, the U-Men and Skin Yard. Though it sold miserably, the record made music history by documenting a burgeoning regional sound, the raw fusion of heavy metal and punk rock that we now know as grunge. But it wasn’t until five years later, with the seemingly overnight success of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” that grunge became a household word and Seattle ground zero for the nineties alternative-rock explosion.

Everybody Loves Our Town captures the grunge era in the words of the musicians, producers, managers, record executives, video directors, photographers, journalists, publicists, club owners, roadies, scenesters and hangers-on who lived through it. The book tells the whole story: from the founding of the Deep Six bands to the worldwide success of grunge’s big four (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains); from the rise of Seattle’s cash-poor, hype-rich indie label Sub Pop to the major-label feeding frenzy that overtook the Pacific Northwest; from the simple joys of making noise at basement parties and tiny rock clubs to the tragic, lonely deaths of superstars Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley.
 
Drawn from more than 250 new interviews—with members of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Screaming Trees, Hole, Melvins, Mudhoney, Green River, Mother Love Bone, Temple of the Dog, Mad Season, L7, Babes in Toyland, 7 Year Bitch, TAD, the U-Men, Candlebox and many more—and featuring previously untold stories and never-before-published photographs, Everybody Loves Our Town is at once a moving, funny, lurid, and hugely insightful portrait of an extraordinary musical era.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Interview with Author Mark Yarm

Q.) Why do you think grunge took off in Seattle as opposed to somewhere else at that time?
A lot of it had to do with geographical isolation. Many people don’t seem to realize that in the ’80s--before the Starbucks/Microsoft/Amazon boom era--Seattle wasn’t the cosmopolitan place it is today. People in the rest of the country pretty much considered it the hinterlands; a couple interviewees told me that back in the day, people who weren’t familiar with Seattle would ask them, in all sincerity, “Seattle? Aren’t there cowboys and Indians out there?” Often times, touring bands would simply skip Seattle because it was too far out of their way. So, in effect, musicians in that region had to make their own fun. And in the process, they honed their own sound.

Q.) What are the biggest misconceptions people have about grunge?
Probably the biggest one is that all these musicians were overly earnest gloom mongers sticking needles in their arms. Of course, a few were overly earnest and some were sticking needles in their arms, but for the most part--and I think this comes across in the book--these musicians were just super-funny and huge jokesters.

Q.) Where does the book’s title come from?
Speaking of humor in grunge… “Everybody loves our town” is a lyric from “Overblown,” an extremely arch song Mudhoney wrote for the Cameron Crowe movie Singles. It pretty much deflates the hype surrounding the scene at the time and takes a semi-veiled jab at at least one grunge superstar.

Q.) What’s your favorite grunge song?
It almost seems too obvious an answer, but Mudhoney’s “Touch Me I’m Sick” is pretty much perfect--and perfectly encapsulates the scuzzy “grunge” guitar sound and scabrous humor of the scene. Nirvana’s “Negative Creep” comes to mind too.

Q.) Is there a grunge band that should have made it big that did not?
Had their super-charismatic lead singer Andrew Wood not died of a drug overdose in 1990, Mother Love Bone--the band from which Pearl Jam sprung--would likely have made it big. Also, TAD--a band fronted by Tad Doyle, who was marketed as a 300-pound ex-butcher from Boise--appeared primed for success in the early ’90s. But TAD was beset by bad luck at nearly every turn. Their downward spiral began when their album 8-Way Santa had to be yanked from shelves because the band used this hilarious, very saucy photo of a couple on the cover without their permission. (Google it.) Legend has it that the woman in the picture had since found God, and the couple took legal action.

Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge author Mark Yarm put together this list of 15 grunge tracks (ranging from the obscure to the chart-topping) discussed in the book.

1. Mudhoney “Touch Me I’m Sick”
2. U-Men “They”
3. Green River “Ain’t Nothing to Do”
4. Soundgarden “Nothing to Say”
5. Nirvana “Love Buzz”
6. TAD “Jack”
7. 7 Year Bitch “Lorna”
8. Mother Love Bone “Crown of Thorns”
9. Temple of the Dog “Hunger Strike”
10. Pearl Jam “Even Flow”
11. Alice in Chains “Fear the Voices”
12. Screaming Trees “Nearly Lost You”
13. Melvins “Sky Pup”
14. Candlebox “You”
15. Mudhoney “Overblown”

A Look Inside Everybody Loves Our Town

Pearl Jam

Nirvana

Soundgarden

---

Review

“Yarm’s affectionate, gossipy, detailed look at the highs and lows of the contemporary Seattle music scene is one of the most essential rock
books of recent years.”
—Kirkus Review, *Starred Review*
 
“Hardcore fans of grunge will treasure this.”
—Publishers Weekly
 
“Yarm, a former editor of Blender, interviewed more than 250 musicians, scenesters, and record business types
to deliver a personal, comprehensive history of grunge music…Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal

"Mark Yarm has assembled the gospels of Grunge music. Here is a warts-and-elbows refresher course for those of us who still find our memories of the era a little hazy."
─Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club

"A very noble record of the grunge scene—and an excellent addition to the growing library of oral history music books."
—Legs McNeil, coauthor of Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk and the forthcoming Resident Punk 

"Great oral histories are rare.  Hewing a narrative from all those chaotic and often conflicting memories with testimony alone and no guide-prose or stage direction is difficult.  Making that somehow intimate and epic is nearly impossible.   When a writer pulls it off, as Mark has with Everybody Loves Our Town, it's really a gift: the subject or scene finally gets its definitive record and the reader gains what feels like a room full of brand new friends.  One of the best rock reads in a very long time."
─Marc Spitz (co-author We Got The Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of LA Punk, music blogger VanityFair.com).

"In Everybody Loves Our Town, Mark Yarm collects and dispenses remarkable insights about a genre no one even wants to claim as their own. As a child of grunge – who spent a humiliating chunk of the 1990s in an Alice in Chains t-shirt – I loved this book; it clarified so many things about a sound and a time I thought I already knew."
─Amanda Petrusich, author of It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music

"A deeply funny story, as well as a deeply sad story--the glorious Nineties moment when a bunch of punk rock bands from Seattle accidentally blew up into the world’s biggest noise. Mark Yarm gives the definitive chronicle of how it all happened, and how it ended too soon. But the book also makes you appreciate how weird it is that this moment happened at all."
─Rob Sheffield, author of Love Is A Mix Tape and Talking To Girls About Duran Duran

"A definitive, irreplaceable chronicle of one of rock-n-roll's greatest eras. It should sit tall on any rock lover's bookshelf."
─Neal Pollack, author of Never Mind The Pollacks

“In an attempt to trace the real roots of grunge, journalist Mark Yarm compiled an exhaustive oral history from the people who lived it.  In his book Everybody Loves Our Town, there are interviews with everyone from the early adopters to those that were late to the party, but nevertheless helped extend [grunge's] shadow of influence by turning it into a look for the world to emulate.”
—The Fader

“This massively readable tome gathers recollections from every grunge band you’ve ever heard of (Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Melvins) and some you haven’t (we hardly knew ye, Skin Yard)…The genre’s first truly comprehensive insider history…It’s gossipy…and fascinating, with so much backstabbing and death it’s like Shakespeare, if Shakespeare had written about heroin addicts with bad hair.”
—Revolver (4 out of 4 stars)

“An impressive display of reportorial industriousness… It’s the feel-bad rock book of the fall.”—Bloomberg Businessweek

“Oral history is an art in itself. It’s why Everybody Loves Our Town will endure as a classic of monumental scale.”—Paste Magazine.

“For hardcore fans or people just curious about what the fuss was all about, Mark Yarm’s excellent new book –Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge” is well worth the read. Yarm has done an admirable job of assembling an engaging, funny and ultimately sad narrative by letting the people who helped create the Jet City sound talk about what happened in their own words.—Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Yarm’s account captures the essential tension that made the era so compelling.”—Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune

"We finished all five hundred and forty-two pages of this book in two days, abandoning all responsibility (this, friends, is why we do not have children; had there been any children about us, we would have locked these unfortunate creatures in the bathroom, so as to not be
distracted) and staying up until two in the morning, reading whole chunks of it out loud to poor long-suffering Support Team."--TheRejectionist.com

Mark Yarm's superb book, Everybody Loves Our Town: A History of Grunge details the dramatic rise of the grunge movement and all of its players, including Cobain, Love and Vedder, told through the voices of the people that lived through it.--Hollywood Reporter

“I came away from this book with a big smile on my face. Lots of it is like a gray day in western Washington; you’ve been kicked out of yet another band, and your girlfriend is spending far too much time with the drummer from the Melvins or the Screaming Trees. In the end, though, “Everybody Loves Our Town" made me want to be young, stupid and lucky again. Mainly, it made me want to be young.”--The Washington Post

“Everybody Loves Our Town should inspire new conversations about the unique culture and people that made grunge so unusual and unforgettable to so many fans. The book is timely, as 2011 marks the 20-year anniversary of  Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and Pearl Jam’s multi-platinum debut album, “Ten.” Everybody Loves Our Town is as good an excuse as any to put on an Alice in Chains CD and curl up with a good book about some great old friends with whom we haven’t spent much time in a while.”--The Washington Independent Review of Books

“Everybody Loves Our Town is authoritatively researched and compiled, often very funny and always just a little bit sad.”—Buffalo News

"Like a very extended and entertaining all-night bulls--- session among everyone who mattered during the late-'80s/early-'90s music scene."--Seattle Weekly

"The scope is encyclopaedic and the closeness to the subject unparalleled."--Record Collector

"A wild ride that is in turns uplifting and tragic." --Your Flesh

Named one of the top music books of 2011 by UK Telegraph

"Riveting, gossipy, and impossible to put down until the last quote has been read." --New York magazine's Vulture blog

“This exhaustive oral history features unknowns, cult figures, supporting players and stars; each gets the time he or she deserves as Yarm pieces together the arc of a scene that built itself from scratch, blossomed beyond most people's dreams, and then crashed. Yes, there are plenty of Kurt Cobain stories. But there's much more, too — indelible characters, weird scenes, creative chaos, laughs and tragedy and lots of cheap beer.”—NPR.org

"Gen-X music geeks: Here’s your holy grail." --Tulsa World

"The best book on music I've read this year." --Omaha World-Herald

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 592 pages
• Publisher: Crown Archetype (September 6, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307464431
• ISBN-13: 978-0307464439
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.9 x 9.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #74,325 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #13 in Books > History > Historical Study > Oral History

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read for fans of the music..., September 29, 2011

By 

Alex Nennig "al27" (Oshkosh, WI) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Being born in 1987, I wasn't really old enough to appreciate any of the music talked about in this book at the time when it first came out. That said, I kinda gravitated towards grunge after I started learning guitar. I loved the Melvins, and being a punk and garage fan, Mudhoney were an easy addition to my CD collection too. I bought some Nirvana albums and some Alice In Chains, etc. as I went along.

I think the main reason for me gravitating towards grunge was the simple fact that, even if that odd "title" for a supposed musical genre did encompass a large range of the rock landscape, from metal to punk to modern rock, it always included plenty of guitar.

I grabbed this book out of a desire to learn more of what went on with this movement, and because I usually find these oral history books a fun read, even if many stories are somewhat inflated and probably a little inaccurate.

Its a long book, but a very good one. Its a bit of a slow starter, but when Sub-Pop really gets its legs and a bunch of bands are being signed to the majors, the stories come fast and furious, and its always a great read. We hear a lot about all the big bands, plenty of the small ones, and a ton of concert stories, the band members view of the media explosion, how they felt when the hype died down, all that stuff. Like I said, a good good read.

Here are some things I learned reading this book (or at least found interesting, even if I already knew them):

-The Melvins' incredibly slow sludge music was influenced, not directly by Black Sabbath, but by "My War" by Black Flag, where the 2nd side of the record gets all slow.

-The girls of L7 were NOT all gay (Jennifer Finch and Dave Grohl were an item for a while!)... I don't really care one way or the other, honestly, but if you saw the cover of "Smell the Magic," it was almost as though they WANTED you to think they were the butchest chicks around.

-Kurt Cobain was kind of a tool bag. I mean, he seems like a decent guy most of the time, but after Nirvana hit it big, you start to hear a lot more stories of him being quite a d-bag to people.

-Courtney Love is one of the most horrid, deplorable people ever to have a career of any kind in the entertainment industry. I would have reached that conclusion just reading her own interviews in this book, but plenty of testimony from other people help reinforce that conclusion. The whole time I was reading about her, all I could think of is a joke from commedian Neil Hamburger: "Whats the difference between Courtney Love and the American Flag? ...It would be inappropriate to urinate on the American flag."

-Layne Staley from Alice In Chains was kind of the Johnny Thunders of the Seattle scene. He was a great talent who was a huge influence and made some excellent music, then he got addicted to heroin, and slowly dissolved into drug-related death. The descriptions of some of his sightings later on in the book match up almost note for note to what people said about seeing Johnny Thunders pop up through the 80s.

-I missed out on a TON of great albums... Half the fun of this book for me was finding out about these other great bands, most of whom you can buy used copies of their albums for dirt cheap here on amazon. As I type this, I have music from TAD, Mother Love Bone, and the Screaming Trees in my car. Its all been great so far. I'm happy this book has expanded my early 90s horizons.

If you're a music nerd with any passing interest in ANYTHING from the grunge era, this book is a fantastic, informative, well put together read. Check it out.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars After a slow start, it becomes amazing, September 4, 2011

By 

Kurt Conner (South Hadley, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I nearly gave up on this book shortly after I started it. I was born in late 1980, so I was only ten years old when Nevermind hit the stores and brought grunge into mainstream America. During the years that grunge was vital and relevant, then, I was a little too young to connect with it. My friends' cool older siblings liked Soundgarden and Nirvana and Pearl Jam (although the fourth big grunge band is consistently listed as Alice in Chains, I have never had a personal relationship with anyone interested in that band), and I had a couple of Pearl Jam CDs on my shelf collecting dust (because my mom had heard somewhere that all the cool kids liked Pearl Jam, and she wasn't going to tolerate a kid who wouldn't even try to be cool), but I was never really an active grunge fan. I mean, I liked flannel because it was a style that was kind to fat kids, but I didn't personally connect to the music. Even today, I generally reference Kurt Cobain when I'm helping people who want clarification on how I spell my name, but I'm certainly not a devoted Nirvana fan. And the first 100-150 pages of this book are largely concerned with the regional roots of grunge. Many vapid observations about bands you've probably never heard of: "Man, I went to that U-Men show at that venue, and I was sooooo drunk..." "Yeah, there was a dead cat at that one show, and it was crazy..." "Yeah, I met this member of my new band in my high school, and we smoked pot at his mom's house, then I met this other member of my new band in my high school and we smoked pot at my mom's house..." It was a bunch of people telling inane stories about when they used to be cool in their hometown. And with no connection, I was prepared to give up on the book and write a polite review about how it's only geared toward those who are already intense grunge fans.

And then Courtney Love showed up.

Into a world of rational observations and shallow analysis, Yarm starts sharing quotes from Courtney Love, who thunders in like a hostile unicorn stomping around in an uncovered septic tank. She spills her trash-mouthed crazy sauce all over the pages of this book and turns it into something amazing.

I recognize that Love's portrayal is generally negative, with different figures complaining about her toxic influence, and her own quotes being almost unfailingly agitated and disrespectful. And in the context of the whole book, she has a small role, only a few quotes and a few more references to her by other participants in the project. Still, the book changes at a fundamental level when she appears. It gets wild and unpredictable, especially since that's about the point where the narrative picks up speed. Bands start taking off on a national level, and the sources interviewed start sharing not only their thoughts but also their responses to the ways they were portrayed at the time. The book develops a sense of purpose, an epic scale like a collection of Shakespearean tragedies, and a grand historical perspective, and Yarm's gifts as an historian really begin to shine.

Yarm is, by all the evidence in this book, a phenomenal historian. The range of perspectives is simply astounding - nearly every member of every significant band, plus the music executives, the venue owners, the roadies, the random fans... In a few haunting moments, Kurt Cobain even speaks, as Yarm shares contextually appropriate excerpts from Cobain's suicide note and his journals. Yarm also shows a great deal of precision and care as he takes disconnected interviews and weaves them together to make clear moments and clear timelines. Yarm's sense of humor is wicked and brilliant, as he often juxtaposes contradictory memories or allows his stars to laugh about what their friends have said about them.

After the first rough couple of hundred pages, I loved this book at a level I can't really explain. I was excited for band members who would enjoy things that they did well, and when tragedy would occasionally strike, usually in the form of an overdose and a gripping memorial service (beautifully captured with reverent memories of the participants, sharing pain that hasn't really gone away in twenty years), I almost always had to put the book down and walk around the house for a while before I could get centered enough to return to the story. Band members still mourn the emotional wounds inflicted by their record companies, and producers still regret the hard choices that they had to make. Some people still nurse grudges, but most have grown enough to try to forgive those who hurt them twenty years ago. This book was honest and it was wise and it was powerful, and I recommend it to anyone. The long introduction is really only for fans of grunge and its origins, but the rest of the book is for fans of humanity, and this book is a treasure.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Grunge Music at its Best, July 27, 2011

By 

Jessica Cave "Jess" (Seattle, Wa) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

As a native Seattleite, I know first-hand how seriously we take our culture. Coffee, computers, and music - these may be our three biggest exports and this book cleverly discusses the last of those three. One of Seattle's most notable music accomplishments? Grunge.

With this book, Mark Yarm offers a fascinating and innovative account of grunge music in Seattle. The history of grunge is told entirely in interviews, featuring everyone from actual band members to engineers, record company owners, roadies, and music industry employees.

Launching its story with - who else? - Nirvana, this book takes the reader through a sometimes shocking, sometimes hilarious world of grunge music - and the people who hate that term. Amazing stories are told - which I'll let you discover on your own - and barriers are crossed. It's worth every minute of reading time.

As a note, this book is being released right around the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's Nevermind album, which is a noteworthy and quintessential addition to any music fan's collection. Do yourself a favor and grab a copy of the CD and play it as a soundtrack to a fascinating book.