How Grunge made rock music big for the last time in the early nineties

Rock music is, well, maybe not dead, but has not set any accents for a long time. The last time in the early 1990s, when Grunge conquered the world from Seattle - above all with their figures: Kurt Cobain and. How it came about andWhy Grunge helped rock music to a new sizewe reveal in this article.

Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains-the important Grunge bands have made timeless music that is still relevant today.

It was almost 35 years ago that Grunge came up and took the music world on the left within a few weeks. Hard to believe how quickly time flies and how little innovation the rock genre has delivered since then. Especially since you have to state that the time in the grunge was really relevant and set standards lasted for just four years - namely from 1991 to 1994.

And then of course the question also arises: Why did Seattle become a metropolis of the grunge and not New York, Los Angeles or Chicago? Well, there are of course various reasons, especially that forming bands such as Alice in Chains and Soundgarden came there (Nirvana came from Aberdeen, about 130 kilometers from Seattle). Otherwise you have to state: The geographical location of Seattles was more, well, unspectacular. The next larger cities are Portland (about an hour from Seattle) and the Canadian Vancouver (three hours away). Otherwise there is not much special in the 700,000-inhabitant city, but: there is at least an international airport, a few well-known companies such as Microsoft, Boing and Starbucks.

The prerequisites of changing the (music) world from Seattle were therefore not greater than from any other city of American. To understand why Seattle of all people became the cradle of the grunge, you have to go back a bit.

Grunge is a variety of rock music, and in the 1960s it came into the city in a large style. So they played1964 in Seattle (the hotel room in the Hotel Edgewater Inn is still rented out with surcharge), a year later the. The Seattle Pop Festival took place a week before Woodstock in 1969, with: Chuck Berry, Led Zeppelin, the Doors, the Byrds and Ike & Tina Turner. And speaking from Woodstock: Of course one of the greatest rock icons of all time comes from Seattle, namely Jimi Hendrix (who, however, "only" gives four concerts in his hometown).

At the end of the 1970s, punk came up, in the course of this the Ramones also played in the city - and this left the fact that the youngsters in Seattle left significant traces. Because while everyone was clear that it was almost impossible to ever reach the status and ability of a Jimi Hendrix, the Ramones showed the youngsters: even with simple guitar riffs you can stand on stages and become rock star. It was correspondingly attractive for young people to deal with music and they quickly found like -minded people - so the foundation of a subculture formed from which grunge could even be created.

Much of what should lead to Grunge was-as is always due to chance: some protagonists met at nearby University of Washington, including the founders of the influential Grunge label Sub Pop called Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavitt as well as the later sound garden guitarist Kim Thayil. Then with Heart there was a band called Heart, whose tour manager Kelly Curtis was reminiscent of LED Zeppelin. This Kelly Kurtis got to know the music business, which enabled him to later become the manager of Mother Love Bone, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam. Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson in turn married the filmmaker Cameron Crowe in 1986Jerry Maguirewithhas turned, and later withSinglesThe film for the Grungs phenomenon-including the corresponding soundtrack with bands such as Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, Soundgarden & Co.

What many also do not know: Metal was also a big number in Seattle and the surrounding area. The city, for example, produced queensryche, from the nearby Aberdeen (the hometown of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana) Metal Church. Seattle always had a soft spot for hard music, even large international bands such as AC/DC and the Scorpions have never had such a large fan base in the USA as in Seattle. In addition, one should not forget that hard rock and hair metal with bands such as Guns N 'Roses, Poison and Mötley Crüe in the end of the eighties have increased the interest in hard guitar music immensely.

So what is simply not true, but is repeatedly postulated in connection with Grunge has been created: Grunge was created overnight and went through the ceiling. It's just not right. Because there was already a label like C/Z, the indie magazine op and radio station like Kaos. Soundgarden also received their first record contract in 1988 and Sub Pop was also founded in the same year - this was the same - on which bands such as Mudhoney, Green River and Nirvana were then committed. What was still missing at the time: Nobody reported on the bands and their music.

This changes when Sub Pop in 1989 let the authors Everett True from the Melody Maker Melody Magazine fly in from the United Kingdom to report on the bands from Seattle and the surrounding area. From a record information from the band Green River, True then took over the term grunge (it said: "Ultra Loose Grunge that destroyed the morals of a generation") - and a new genre was born.

Nirvanas then appeared in mid -1989 BleachHowever, did not yet find a large audience - the band played the associated tour in front of a maximum of 200 fans. Grunge only experienced the breakthrough in 1991. At that time, Guns N 'Roses and Metallica were the largest bands in the planet, which also includedMetallicaandUse your Illusion I & IIeach published legendary plates that underpin this status. But: Also three grunge bands released albums that changed the (rock) music sustainably: released sound gardenBadmotorfinger, Pearl JamTenand nirvana the Grungs album par excellence:Nevermind. All of these plates came out within 44 days. After that the world was different.

With the success of Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Nirvana, the scene in Seattle also exploded. The British journalist Mick Wall wrote at the time that the bands succeeded in mixing metal, independent and pop in a new way. Added to this was the changed appearance: instead of high -touped hair and make -up, it went back to dirt, truthfulness - and to the core of the whole, music. The representatives of the grunge also saw themselves as rock stars, but as humans like everyone else. But that became an illusion with the success of the bands; A fact that Kurt Cobain broke for a few years.

It is interesting that the record companies did not make a big distinction between the bands from the Grunge and Hard rock camp and sent them together: Alice played the support for bands such as Megadth and van Halen, Soundgarden for Guns and Skid Row, Temple of Dog Foundations Forum in Los Angeles.

The sub-pop founder Jonathan Poneman once said to the question mentioned at the beginning why Grunge happened in Seattle, of all things, Grunge could have arisen all over the world-and probably that is true. But time also played the bands at the time, which benefited from the fact that MTV recorded their videos in the rotation and Nirvana, Pearl Jam & Co. with their hits likeSmells like Teen SpiritandAlivewere washed into the children's, youth and living rooms around the world. It was a coincidence that really good records and songs came out of the same corner at that time and came from the same corner. As a nirvanasSmells like Teen Spiritappeared, that was the last spark that had the grunge exploded as a genre.

At the same time, important grunge bands such as Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone and Alice had just signed record contracts with major labels in Chains, which gave them completely different options with regard to promo, touring and merchandise. Nirvana had also switched from Sub Pop to Major - for retrospectively, 72,000 dollars. After all: it was also agreed that Sub Pop with two percent of the revenues ofNevermindwas involved. With around 30 million records sold, a total sum came together. Especially since Warner took part in Sub Pop with 49 percent in 1995 - for a proud twenty million dollars.

In this respect, Grunge ended up broken the same fate, the punk broken (or the new German wave in Germany): it was captured and swallowed by the mainstream and its mechanisms. At the latest when NirvanaNevermindMichael Jackson and his albumDangerousIt was clear from the number 1 on the album charts: that was a big deal. As a result, there was suddenly Grunge fashion, Seattle was overwhelmed by Talentscouts and MTV switched his complete program from one day to the other. Only: The protagonists of the scene themselves were not very enthusiastic. The perfidious thing was that the less this - especially Kurt Cobain - crowded into the spotlight, the greater the desires. And because there was no way to escape the hype for many musicians, they fled into parallel worlds, that is, in the drugs.

Alice in Chains, Mad Season, Hole, Soundgarden: They all have to struggle with the influence of drugs - and with the resulting death of band members. Kristen Pfaff from Hole, John Baker Saunders from Mad Season and the walkabouts, also, Chris Cornell von Soundgarden and the Temple of the Dog - and on April 5, 1994 also Kurt Cobain.

The musicians often came from simple, if not poor conditions, zero were prepared for their celebrities. It hit her completely unprepared. And in particular Kurt Cobain, who suddenly considered an idol and role model, could not and did not want to do justice. In March 1994, Cobain survived an overdose of heroin, in April he literally took his death into his own hands and shot himself with a shotgun. However, this did not detract from Grunge's success, on the contrary: Alice in Chains made it with her acoustic EPJar of Fliesto the top of the charts, SoundgardenensSuperunknownbecame their most successful album and Peal JamsVitalogyAlso sold like cut bread.

Nevertheless, or precisely because of this: Grunge already steered his end, which was mainly due to the many imitators, which, although there were nothing to do with a comparable sound picture, had nothing to do with the original bands such as Bush or Candlebox, later of course also bands such as 3 spins down, States, Silverchair and Nickelback. The only real grunge band that survived the grunge was and is Pearl Jam.

And so Grunge fell lightly brightly at the beginning of the nineties and exterminated everything, but then rose in itself and went out as quickly as it burned. Nevertheless, the effects and the influences that Grunge have evoked can of course still be felt. How did Jack Endino, Seattle producer legend, who worked together with sizes such as Nirvana, Soundgarden and Mudhoney, just put it as nicely: “It was like a gold rush; And those who survived are happy to have been there. "