Tomorrow’s sound today





Grunge survivors Mudhoney still locked in the garage

Originally published in Eye Weekly.

It’s been 10 years since “Touch Me I’m Sick” and we’re still waiting for Mudhoney’s last wah-wah. Lord knows The Man has tried to keep them down, but all attempts to hold them responsible for the G-word that rhymes with “sponge” (and the bands it spawned, like Sponge) have failed.

The charges don’t stick because Mudhoney were mere innocent bystanders in the Great Grunge Inquisition of 1992. It’s always been nothin’ but a G thang for Seattle’s super-sonic survivors, but in their book, the G stands for Garage (or, as the British would say, “gare-aj”). And with the arrival of Rhino's Nuggets box set, the Lyres Matador reissues and, er, Rob Zombie’s Zombie-A-Go-Go label, the time has come for Mudhoney to strike themselves from Chapter One of the Grunge Chronicles and reassume their proper position as the missing link between the Troggs and Nashville Pussy.

“No matter what,” observes super-fuzz superman Steve Turner down the line from Birmingham, Alabama, “we are where we are in the historical footnote section of the book, and I don’t think we mind that. But to us, it doesn’t quite ring true necessarily, because we were there and we know that we weren’t at the beginning of anything.

"I think of us as a post-hardcore band. We’re not exactly purists of garage – the garage stuff now seems like it’s also pretty heavily ‘77-punk-influenced. I actually like the mid-'80s '60s-style garage stuff better, like the Gravedigger Five, the Morlocks, even Poison 13… Zombie’s label just seems like a good excuse for him to make his style of record covers!”

While one could view Mudhoney as missionaries converting wayward high schoolers into mod-punk bargain-bin regulars, Turner insists education is not part of the program. If anything, Turner and mates Mark Arm, Matt Lukin and Dan Peters – all on board since '88 – have outlasted their fellow flyers of the flannel for the simple reason that they don’t give a fuck about anything.

“I don’t care about what young people like,” Turner laughs. “We open for Pearl Jam a lot and it’s all right, but you don’t really feel like you’re getting through to many people. I’m always amazed when I meet young kids that actually know some history that goes beyond, like, 'Hüsker Dü invented punk rock!’ 'The Mummies invented garage!’ Or… 'Matchbox 20 is a good band!’ We had a lot of people coming to our shows five years ago that probably had no business being there. Which was great – we should have capitalized on it more!”

Well, at least they can stake their claim as the only band with a Pearl Jam song named after their bassist. But there are more significant accomplishments of which to speak – namely, the swampadelic newTomorrow Hit Today (Reprise/Warner). The record marks Mudhoney’s return to their hometown (well, spiritually speaking) of Memphis, where the A, D and G chords first engaged in the threesome that gave birth to rock 'n’ roll. And they couldn’t have asked for a better tour guide than producer Jim Dickinson (the Stones, Big Star, Spiritualized). Thanks to him, the fuzz hasn’t sounded this deliciously nasty since the opening bars of “Sweet Young Thing Ain’t Sweet No More.”

“We weren’t really that familiar with his work at all when we started working with him,” Turner reveals. “But then I realized, 'Oh, he did the third Big Star record – OK, that’s my favorite Big Star record.’ And I love all the Panther Burns stuff he was involved in, and I always knew that he was into noisy stuff and had kept himself up to date, producing Clawhammer and the Replacements. He’s a really good listener – he really concentrated on the rhythm section and somehow got the bass to sound way better than we ever had before.”

Longtime 'Honeys will recognize the album’s titular response to the 1990 classic “When Tomorrow Hits.” Has hitting the 10th anniversary mark made Mudhoney – sniff – nostalgic for ye olde golden days of grunge?

“No, not at all,” Turner responds. “It is kind of boggling to us when we actually think of it, because it doesn’t seem that long ago, and we certainly never thought we’d be around this long. I mean, everybody is probably surprised we’re still signed to Reprise. We never lost them any money, so that’s probably why. And our A&R guy is still there, which is rare – he’s been working at the same company for seven years, which I think is a record for the music industry.

"But, oh man, I’ve tried to forget most of those days. The whole thing was compounding ridiculousness. It just kept getting worse, culminating in Bush.”

But, then, can Turner ever really forget being hailed as the “Eric Clapton of grunge” by Rolling Stone?

“My parents loved that! They didn’t know who Eric Clapton was, but they went out after that and bought me an Eric Clapton book. I was like, 'Gee, thanks, mom! Hmmm… alcoholic, stealing people’s wives – I can do this!’ ”