Mudhopey
WHEN YOU THINK OF THE WORD "GRUNGE"
in the context of music, one band immediately
comes to mind: Mudhoney. In the forefront of
the whole "movement" as much by chance
as through their talent, they were catapulted
to the front pages of mags everywhere fol-
lowing a story written by a British journalist
flown over to Seattle by Sub Pop. What followed
was an amazing sort of hype that led chain
stores to advertise "the grunge look" and a mass
migration of bands and wayward types to
Seattle. A few years after the fact, the hype has
dwindled and many have packed up their bags
and left. Mudhoney, however, remains.
I recently spoke to Steve Turner, Mudhoney's
guitar player, and found out that he was
heavily into skating during skating's lean
times, while getting into music and playing
in his earlier bands. Ten years after their
inception they are hitting the US for a tour,
and their new LP Tomorrow Hit Today should
be out by the time you see this. Support
aging skateboarders and pick it up!
A lot of skateboarders make their own music; do you think that
skateboarding and music draw the same kind of people?
From the beginning skaters just always wanted high-powered
music when they rode ramps and stuff, to get pumped up. Nugent
was voted number one for years by Skateboarder magazine. It
was practically the only thing you were allowed to listen to. It
seemed to just make sense. In the early eighties, when the whole
hardcore thing was happening, skateboarding was just a part of that.
Even if you weren't a skateboarder, you still had a skateboard going to
shows and shit. It was underground, and I guess that's when you had
the beginnings of street skating with street urchins skating away from
campus cops.
What's the difference in your band now from ten years ago? Did you think
that you were going to be around for this long?
We thought about it to the extent of saying that we wouldn't be around
for this long because when we started it was just kind of a side project
band. We were thinking that we would record some stuff, put out some
singles, play some shows, and then form real bands. A year later it was
sorta taking off, and we were touring and stuff. We sort of made an
agreement that we wouldn't go past three albums, because most
bands suck after three. But we think we're still pretty good,
so I guess we've become careerists!
Did the hype affect what the band did.
or thought?
We ignored the hype as much as we could,
and just did what we did. But the hype was
great; it was so surreal. The longer it's been,
the more we talk about it: "What was that
weird point in time...?"
What are the biggest and smallest shows
you ever played?
The biggest show would have to be
Reading or one of those huge English fes-
tivals, with like 50,000 people. Maybe
more. The smallest show would be....
I can't even think which town it was.
Maybe Louisville, Kentucky? We drove
eight hours from Ann Arbor, got to the
club around 5 and no one was there.
We stuck it out, and there were about six
or seven people there. They paid us $22,
a six pack of beer, and a pack of ciga-
rettes. It didn't even pay for the gas. The
promoter came and got us and we did a
radio interview before the show. He kept
apologizing, "I'm really sorry, I'm not
dressed for the show right now." And we
were like, "Whatever." He had on jeans
and a t-shirt. Then we saw him at the
show, and he had his hair combed into a
big fake mohawk, a frohawk, and
camoflage pants on, like, "Awright!!"
Talk about your record label,
Superelectro.
That started out about five years ago.
It's still limping along. There were
three things that had to be put
out, and I was talking to Pavitt,
and he said, basically, why don't
you put them out and quit bugging
me. The new Mudhoney vinyl will
be on Superelectro, so maybe that
I will wipe out some of the debt.
How does Mark come across
as remaining bitter after all
these years?
Bitter about what? I think his voice
just sounds like that sometimes. He's
a pretty pleasant guy most times, but I
guess anger and spite sound better in
rock than happy.-Wez Lundry
What hardness toothbrush do you use?
Soft, although when I lived in Bellingham I didn't use one for a year.
When was your last Slats (notorious Seattle junkie and ex of the
Silly Killers) sighting?
I haven't seen him for quite a while, although last Halloween I
dressed up as Slats and was pretty convincing. It was scary; I had
people coming up to me and telling me I owed them money, and I had
to explain that it was my Halloween costume.
When did you get into skating?
My dad imported sporting goods, and he got some skateboards
in 1976, so I started riding those. I remember my favorite was one
that had rubber tires because I could skid out and leave a mark, like
my stingray bike.
Where did you ride?
The Mercer Island ramp in 1979. My friend John Lee had two quar-
terpipes using the frames of jungle gyms for the templates, and then he
had a halfpipe. I also went to Olympia Skatepark about half a dozen
times before that closed in 1980. After that, we skated the Fife ramp,
which was the first good, 12 foot wide ramp we skated. Then we skat-
ed the Issaquah ramp.
What was skating like for you back then?
The only reason I really got into music was through skating. I didn't
I have any interest in rock at all until I started hanging around the ramp.
It was right when it was going from the gonzo Nugent at full blast to
Devo and the Sex Pistols and stuff. One weekend there was a big down-
hill contest in Bellevue, and a bunch of people from Olympia came and
stayed at my house, and that same weekend Devo was playing on their
Freedom of Choice tour t the Showbox. So we went to that because at
that point, Devo was using skaters like Brad Bowman in their videos and
stuff. At the show there were quite a few people walking around who
had their Rector Protector kneepads and Vans shoes on. There was no
opening band; they just showed the videos, so there were tons of
skaters there. The next day was the contest, then that night, Black Flag
and Soldier played. Those were my first two rock concerts; it altered my
world quite a bit and I got totally into it. We didn't have any idea what
it was about, punk rock or new wave, and the stupidest people were
walking out of the place, hippies that were dressed "punk" for the night.
This one long-haired guy had a toilet seat around his neck, and I was
like, "What? Is that normal? I hope I don't have to wear one of those."
"THIS ONE LONG-HAIRED GUY
HAD A
TOILET SEAT
AROUND
HIS
NECK
The many adventures of Steve Turner,
clockwise from left: Layback at the Fife
ramp. Full pads and helmet, sweet potato-
pie at Mercer Island. Slash-a-cruncher at
Mercer again, all circa 1979. Good solid
rock 'n' roll, Mudhoney style, 1998.
DUS
NCS