INTERVIEW: Mark Yarm

A History You Want to Know

This is a history you want to know even if you were never a fan of the genre. Even if you weren’t part of the Nirvana vs. Pearl Jam debate (Nirvana, for the record). Even if you didn’t need another reason to loathe Courtney Love. Even if you didn’t know a pre-Microsoft/Starbucks Seattle. Even if you have no clue as to what The La’s “There She Goes”, GnR’s “Mr. Brownstone” and Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” have in common.

But, if like me, this music was in your wheelhouse for a better part of your teens and early twenties, then you’ll no doubt eat through this meticulous (567 pages worth) collection of quotes, woven into an entertaining and revealing oral history in which a series of smaller stories are all sewn into the greater quilt of the work. One of the funniest aspects of this book is the style of contradictory narrative in which one person from a band says X happened and then a manager/roadie/ex-girlfriend/ex-band mate comes immediately afterwards and refutes the previous statement. Given the copious amounts of drug/alcohol usage of the time that is unflinchingly attested to within Everyone Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge, one can understand why some details, some twenty, thirty years later might not mean the same thing to all people.

The most important aspect of this work, as with any work that chronicles the lives of our beloved and tortured musicians, is the overtone of humanity. Not only are the “players” represented in this book, but a great many of the former band-mates who walked away before the word “grunge” became a household name and a way to sell flannel at three times the going rate.

Enter Mark Yarm, a freshly laid-off senior editor at Blender magazine, who at the behest of a friend and literary agent, set out on a two year journey to write the definitive oral history of grunge. read more »